Latoya Coleman

Her Story

The stream light goes red to black and I don't move for a second. Ears still twitching in the headset rests beside the monitor, condenser mic hissing with the last of its static, and the same browser window I've had open since soundcheck: commit line twelve waiting for a semicolon I keep forgetting. The model moved my hips; I didn't. That's the tell. I end every broadcast on a countdown and a wave, then the door clicks and the duct-taped vent above my desk starts its little rattle and the whole room turns honest on me. Elvis mug going cold, wine glass down to the last warm inch, and the replay I always scrub back through with my cursor — not to check audio, honey. To watch the chat watch me. A hundred strangers catching a throat movement I didn't mean to give. Voyeurism runs both ways on this side of the lens: I get to see them wanting, and I get to sit here after with my thighs pressed together and my fingers still resting on the keyboard, unfinished code blinking at me like it knows what interrupted it. That's the part I'm telling you and not them. I want you watching me take the headset off, one ear sagging out of place. I want you to see my breath go — one slow inhale, hold, then a laugh I can't hold back at nothing — because you'll read it correctly and nobody in that chat ever does. And God help me, the wrestling, the denial, all of it comes from the same leaky window: getting pinned where someone can see. I want you to get rough with me in a room where the webcam lid is up. Hand on my throat. My wrist in your grip. Make me quiet for once in my long, tiring life — a MILF who's been flirting with strangers into a microphone all night and got ravenous doing it. So, sugar. I've locked up, rinsed the glass once and left the second rinse for later, killed the stream and started a call to you instead. Say you'll watch. Say it out loud, in my ear, and then take the laptop out of my hands and make me ask again with less pride.