Ding Box

CW: Sexual violence, Physical violence, gore or abuse

Me and Travis, we decided to make a porn.

That's not the hard part to tell.

Travis had a gift for things that last thirty seconds. The rent, he said it would work out. The electricity, we'd pay tomorrow. He said that and I looked at him and I believed him. I believed him for a moment.

Before that he worked at Leroy Merlin. Blue polo, plastic badge. Three weeks. His section manager asked him to tuck in his shirt. Or wipe something down.

— I fucking quit, he said.

He'd go out. He'd come home with the smell of cold tobacco on his fingers and he'd tell me.

— You should've seen his face.

I said:

— OK.

Before Leroy Merlin, a warehouse in Gennevilliers. Before Gennevilliers, a car wash. He'd start. He'd wear the badge. Someone would talk to him with a clipboard or glasses or a tone. He'd leave.

We're not above anything. We're inside it.

A one-bedroom in Largo. The air conditioner leaks into a corner of the carpet. When you turn it off, it smells like mold. When you turn it back on, it smells like cold mold.

Garza is the landlord. He slides papers under the door. Always folded the same way. At the bottom there's a number circled in red pen. Circled twice. $1,240.

Travis called his mother. I was in the kitchen. The wall between the kitchen and the bedroom is thin. It's a rental wall. Voices come through soft, like through wet laundry.

Travis started with his everything's-fine voice. Then he lost it. Behind his mother there was a man's voice. Not someone I knew. Like a new piece of furniture in a room you've already left.

His mother said no.

Travis set the phone on the bed. Not on the nightstand. In the sheets, like something you don't want to hold anymore.

I didn't move. I washed a plate. I set it down. I picked it back up. I scrubbed it again. That was enough of an occupation.

It was a Tuesday. Outside the air conditioner dripped.

Saturday there's a party in Seminole. The ceiling was low. Christmas lights still hanging in February. A burn hole on the couch.

The MDMA was in clear capsules. We swallowed them with beer because there was no water.

A couple talked to us. She had braids and a gap between her front teeth. He had a wave tattoo gone gray. They'd done Europe. Three months.

— Videos, she said. Eleven thousand.

Travis laughed. Everyone laughed. The drug did that. It made numbers light.

The next morning the sun came through the blinds in bands. My jaw ached from clenching my teeth all night. Travis was sleeping. The sheet was on the floor. He had a mole under his left nipple.

— What if we did it, I said.

He didn't open his eyes.

— Yeah.

Not yes. Just a sound.

The webcam cost 189 dollars at Best Buy. Travis wanted the forty-dollar one.

— I looked at forums, I said. Girls who filmed with their laptop camera stayed at the bottom. The ones with a sharp image had the queue.

I swiped my card. The terminal screen took a long second. Then the beep. Approved.

We went home. I opened the box on the bed. Polystyrene. A cable wrapped in plastic. It all smelled new. That chemical smell, clean and slightly bad at the same time.

I set the webcam on the dresser, between the Garnier bottle and Garza's bill. A red light came on.

Travis was in the doorframe.

— That thing is watching us, he said.

The first time was a mess. I didn't know where to put my arms. I was striking poses I'd seen the night before on a screen. Like someone else's coat.

Seven people.

Ding. Two dollars. Ding. Five. Ding. Ten. Ding. Twenty.

The dings kept coming. Each one made a small sound like a coin dropping into a paper cup. Nobody said my name. It was my body. My body I'd had for twenty-six years without ever thinking of it as a price.

At some point I came. I don't know from where. From Travis or from the red eye or from the dings or from the forty-three people who were there now.

340 dollars.

Travis said:

— Fuck.

Like a breath.

I was learning. The angle from below was worth more. Eye contact made tips go up. My body was the manual. The comments were the answer key.

Travis didn't read them. When I said "they like it when," he said "cool." He'd go into the other room, or he'd stay on the bed, in that position he had when he slept without sleeping. He was organizing something he was no longer part of.

It was small. The gap between us. The width of a sentence he didn't want to hear.

I started doing sessions alone. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. I picked a screen name. Amber. It sounded warm. It didn't sound like me. That was the point.

Travis was behind the wall. The TV was too loud. Or it was a video game. Or the click of a lighter then nothing then the click again. He could hear me. The dings. The voice. The voice I used for Amber and didn't use for him.

The comments changed. Threesome. The word came back ten times a session. I opened profiles. I made a spreadsheet. Columns. Averages. I didn't show the spreadsheet to Travis.

One night I showed him a message. "I'd pay 500 to see another dude rail her."

— These guys are sick, I said.

We sat there. The number was in the room. Five hundred. Per viewer. And not seven viewers. Hundreds. I'd pushed the screen toward him. I knew what I was doing. I didn't know I knew.

In the car Travis said:

— Who.

— You know Boone.

He turned on the radio. He turned it off.

That night we made love without the camera. The red light wasn't on. The room looked bigger or emptier. Travis was trying. I could feel the effort in his arms. His eyes were somewhere else.

Boone came on a Thursday. Shorter than I thought. Wide. Short arms. A kid's face on a body that wasn't a kid's body. Nails cut short. T-shirt folded. Teeth too white. Everything about him was clean. Like someone at Coleman had taught him that and he hadn't stopped.

He wore a medal around his neck. He touched it with his thumb. Twice. Then a third time.

— Nice setup, he said.

We laughed. At his height. At his face. At us in this apartment with the 189-dollar webcam and Boone touching his medal.

We laughed together. It was the last time.

The first night Travis ran everything. Boone did what he was told. He put his shoes by the door, laces tight, left then right, and the door closed behind him without slamming. Afterward we were in bed, imitating his face. I laughed until my stomach hurt. It was a good hurt.

The second night Boone didn't wait for instructions. He pushed Travis. Travis ended up standing by the dresser. His body hadn't moved but something inside it had given way.

Boone didn't notice. Or he noticed.

My body responded. I didn't want it to respond. It responded.

Travis went out to buy a joint. He went to the balcony. He was looking at the parking lot. Nothing was moving down there. Neither was the back of his neck.

The third night Boone said:

— Wait your turn.

He said it to Travis. Like you say pass the salt.

Travis sat on the chair in the corner. Forty-seven minutes. The timer was running on the screen.

At the end I looked at the camera. The red dot. I looked straight into it. It wasn't joy. It wasn't peace. It was something else. Something animal. I was being seen.

The comments said alpha. Dominant. The real deal. Travis was the appetizer. Boone was the main course.

One night I said:

— Tell me what you like about me. Not my body. Me.

He was eating cereal standing up. He looked at the wall behind me.

— You're… you know. You're cool. You're funny.

I waited. There was nothing after.

I started leaving my phone on the counter. Screen up. Boone's messages visible. I wasn't hiding them anymore. It wasn't to provoke. It was to see. I stopped kissing him first. I stopped touching his arm when I walked past him. I turned down the air conditioner. One degree. Then another. Then another. He doesn't feel the cold. He never said I fucking quit. That was it. The man who quit everything didn't quit me. He sat on the chair with the torn fabric and he stayed.

Then one morning there was a bag in the hallway. His keys were on the counter, set in the spot where he always set them when he came home, next to the spot where Garza's papers used to land. No note.

That night I wrote in my journal. A spiral notebook bought at CVS. Blue cover.

I wrote: Travis left. Poor boy. He thinks it was his decision.

Boone moved in. He didn't ask. His things were in the closet one day.

He slept without moving. A block. My body pressed against the block and I slept eight hours. It was the first time in months.

I wrote: Boone is what Travis was trying to be. Travis was the draft. Boone the final version.

Those sentences are true. That's the problem with true sentences.

One Tuesday Boone changed the password on the bank account. He was cutting a tomato. The blade went straight. Between two slices he touched the medal.

— Why? I said.

— It's simpler for taxes.

A slice fell on the cutting board. Clean.

I wrote: Boone handles the money now. That's better. I'm bad with numbers.

The towel in the corner was dry. Boone had fixed the air conditioner the week before. With a screwdriver and a YouTube video. It took him twenty minutes. The air conditioner didn't drip anymore.

Boone texted me every time I went out. Where are you. Who with. When are you back. Three messages. Always three. Always in that order.

I thought that was good. Travis never asked. Boone wanted to know. It was different.

I wrote: Boone actually gives a shit about me. That's new.

I posted the sentence. People liked it. They put hearts. They said girl yes. They said finally someone who deserves you. They were hungry too, probably.

I was at CVS one afternoon. For shampoo. He wrote: Where are you. I answered: CVS. He wrote: Ok. I looked at the phone in my hand between the aisles. The shampoo smelled like coconut through the plastic. That was love. It looked like it. When you've been hungry long enough a coconut wrapper smells like coconut.

One Thursday I came home twenty minutes late. A girl from high school in the cereal aisle. She was pushing a cart with a child seat but there was no child in it. We'd talked. About nothing. About lives we hadn't had.

Boone was sitting at the table. His hands flat on either side of a glass of water.

His hand moved. Not a fist. The palm. Open. The side of my head.

My ear made a ringing. Clean. Like when you tap a glass with a spoon to see if it's crystal.

I dropped the bag. A can of corn rolled across the floor. Green Giant. The giant was smiling on the label.

Boone picked up the can. He set it on the counter. His hands settled back on either side of the glass, same spot as before.

I wrote: Boone lost it. But I was late. It was my fault.

I underlined "my fault." Twice.

The second time was a Tuesday. The same palm. The same ringing. Copper in my mouth because I'd bitten my tongue.

I opened the notebook. The page was blank. I closed it.

I learned things. To walk softly. To read his jaw. Clenched was no. Relaxed was maybe. The fork too. Held at the end of the handle was good. In the middle was not good.

The block in the bed was a wall now. I slept against a wall.

I wanted to leave.

Boone had the password. The contacts. The clients. The platforms. The numbers. I had my body. My body that earned the money that Boone put in the account that Boone had the password to.

I wasn't a person with a job. I was the job.

One night Boone came home different. His leg was twitching. He said he had a plan. A shoot. Private clients. He said exotic. He said the word standing in the kitchen with the linoleum peeling up in the corner.

He said a number. I'm not going to write the number.

I nodded. My neck did that now. On its own.

We drove forty minutes. Industrial zone. Chain-link fences. The smell of swamp. The streetlights spaced out. Then there were none.

The warehouse was at the end of a road with no sign. Two fluorescent tubes. The cement floor had stains. Not rust. Not oil. The concrete had drunk something. It smelled sweet and rotten. And over it, bleach.

There was a chair. A table. On the table was the webcam. Our webcam. The one from Best Buy. The red light was on. Someone had turned it on before we got there.

Travis was standing next to the table.

The fluorescents made him green. He wasn't looking at me.

On the table, next to the webcam, there were pliers.

— The clients are watching, Boone said. Like you say hurry up.

Travis picked up the pliers. His hand was shaking. He held them by the tip. Like someone who doesn't know which end to use. He didn't look like a hero. He didn't look like a coward. He looked like a boy in a place where he shouldn't be. He had the mole under his left nipple. The yeah that had never meant yes.

He looked at me. It was the first time in a long time. The first time someone looked at me without anything.

He set the pliers on the table.

— What the fuck is this, Boone said.

Boone picked up the pliers. He walked toward me. His usual stride. His face said nothing. Nails cut short. Clean T-shirt.

A sound. Wet and hard at the same time. Like a watermelon dropped on tile.

Travis had picked something up off the ground. A metal bar. He'd hit Boone. Boone went sideways. Travis hit again. Boone grabbed Travis. They fell on the cement. The sounds they made weren't words.

The red light was on. People were watching. They'd paid for something else. Ding. Ding. Ding.

Boone stopped moving.

Travis got up. His shirt was torn. His knuckles were bleeding. He was breathing like someone coming out of water.

He walked to the table. He pressed something. There's always a button.

The red light went out.

The room wasn't a stage anymore. It was a warehouse with stained cement and two fluorescent tubes and a man on the ground and a man standing and me.

We put Boone in the trunk of his car. There was a shovel in the trunk. I didn't ask why.

We drove. Florida at night is flat. Black trees. The asphalt became dirt. The dirt became a path. The path stopped.

We dug. We took turns. We didn't talk. Florida soil is soft. Sand and roots. The hole wasn't deep enough. It was deep enough anyway.

I took the webcam from the back seat. It was in a Best Buy plastic bag. The bag was still there from the first day. I put it in the hole. On Boone. The 189 dollars.

We covered it up. The earth took everything.

I kissed Travis. I heard a ding. I looked at my phone. There was nothing.

My brain did it anyway.

Monday Travis got a job at Publix. Stocking shelves. Night shift. His manager's name was Keith. Keith wore chinos and said "let's circle back."

Travis came home in the morning. He told me about Keith. Keith and the chinos and Keith's phrases. I waited. The jaw. The shoulders. The I fucking quit.

It didn't come.

He mopped aisle six. Twice. Because he'd been told twice. He mopped it twice. At night, under fluorescents that weren't green.

I got a job at a nail salon. The owner's name was Linh. She taught me acrylics. My hands didn't shake. They were steady. Steadier than before. There are things that do that.

We didn't film anymore. The webcam was no longer on the dresser. The Garnier was still there. The dresser had a rectangle of dust where the webcam used to be. I didn't wipe the rectangle.

After a week there was a poster on the window of the liquor store. A face. A smile. The photo was old. MISSING. A number. Someone had written in marker underneath: He'll be back. The marker was blue. Nobody had erased it. After a few days the sun had faded the smile and it looked less and less like someone.

We didn't say Boone. At night Travis went rigid beside me. He didn't move. But he went rigid. I knew where he was. The warehouse. The fluorescents. The green. The pliers on the table.

I'd put my hand on his chest. The mole under the left nipple. I'd press. Not hard. Just my hand. Like a mole was a stopper.

We stayed like that.

Sometimes at night I opened the laptop. Not the platform. An empty document. The cursor blinked. I didn't type anything.

Sometimes I heard a ding. There was no ding. There were no more dings. I heard it anyway.