Web Cam Woman
from
The Best American Short Plays 2007–2008
one of five monologues collected by Daniel Gallant under the heading Five Story Walkup
[An attractive WOMAN enters. She comes up from the theater aisle. Establish an imaginary door to her apartment. At the start, she is poised to enter. She speaks to the audience.]
Hi. Come on, come home. With me. . . . Just promise you won’t tell. I want to show you something . . . private. Don’t let on what you see. Here we are . . . 2B. But you just watch from where you are. That’s right—stand here, nicely on the welcome mat, next to the mezuzah—not mine—it was here when I moved in! I didn’t want to take it down! Hey, never tear down a prayer. Not that you’re not welcome, you are! But you can’t go in my apartment—you can just peek! Now, once I’m inside—this is important—don’t ask why: DON’T MOVE, DON’T SPEAK! Okay, I’m in. . . .
[She moves fast around the walls of the apartment, back flat to wall.]
When I talk over here . . . they can’t see me. If I flatten myself against the wall, I am out of range. So now what do you see? You see me. And I look . . . perfectly ordinary . . . normal . . . right? Nice eyes, good trim figure—I work out! Tasteful dye job. Not from a bottle. From a salon. And my apartment—2B—it looks perfectly normal, ordinary, too . . . an ordinary studio, rent stabilized, but stabilized too high, like a patient in ICU with a high fever—ha-ha. An ordinary sofa bed—it’s cute, isn’t it?—only $899 from Jennifer Convertibles—an ordinary coffee table, ordinary TV . . . ordinary bowl of mixed nuts.
Except for one thing! The seven cameras!
[She establishes the seven fixed locations along the ceiling.]
Camera one! Camera two! Camera three! Camera four!
[Gestures off.]
Camera five, bathroom! Camera six! Camera seven! They are trained on the center of my . . . very ordinary, normal apartment. Don’t tell! Promise.
[She checks her watch. She slinks around, delivers following line downstage to audience.]
Men pay to watch me; this is how I make my living. I am what they call . . . a Webcam woman. I can’t believe my good fortune: I just had to tell someone . . . who isn’t, you know, part of it. Wow! They won’t expect me for another five minutes—the mikes are not “on” yet . . . the cameras are always on . . . but . . . This is easier than going to the office. I was an office temp.
[She slinks around the perimeter of the room, inhales to get less of a silhouette. To herself.]
Suck it in, Suck it in.
[To the audience.]
Now, I just stay home and do what I do and it’s permanent. And men, the video voyeurs, sign on—I accept MasterCard and PayPal—to watch me do . . . what I do. The trick is, I have to forget they are watching, or it isn’t fun for them. I have to be . . . myself. I can . . . lie around on my couch, read the paper . . . they do expect me to masturbate, and—well—I do. I think they want me to masturbate more . . . it is amazing how you sense . . . this electrical “other”—which is, I guess, the “static” of their attention—I can never really forget—oh, yes, the masturbation—isn’t it boring, waiting for me, maybe twenty-four hours, to start? And I can’t get creative—it has to be just ordinary, normal, little at-home casual diddling, almost unconscious—not peep show stuff. . . . I don’t put on makeup, oh, maybe a little eyeliner, but no fancy panties. . . . But they never know when I am going to do it, so I guess that’s the element of suspense in it for them, as I read the Times, or vacuum. I wonder—how great is this for them? But they never complain. They like that it is . . . natural. Hey, I am making $10,000 a month, I used to worry about making the rent, the Time Warner bill, the Con Ed. Now, I can afford slipcovers. It’s fabulous. Isn’t it?
[She checks her watch.]
Three minutes! I got to tell you something—[She flattens herself, lower; we have the impression of a mouse running round the edges of her cage.]—I had sex once, with a man, for them. The man didn’t know they could see. . . . He didn’t notice all the cameras. But something went wrong; he kind of . . . shriveled inside me, and . . . and he excused himself and pulled out . . . out of me, out of my apartment. I think of that guy, sometimes.
[Upright again.]
There are forty-nine of them. I know, of course, from the charge cards. They live in all the contiguous United States, and now I have one in Honolulu. A lulu in Honolulu. I am so happy and relieved that I discovered this new way to make a living. They pay so nicely: never miss. I used to have to get up and catch the D train by 8 a.m. to get to work by 9. Work, work, work—really dull, at the computer all day long. Now, I sleep in!
[She dons a beautiful ivory white silken dressing gown.]
They watch me sleep. . . . You know, it’s funny—it disturbs . . . my dreams. There must be something to R.E.M. sleep that is . . . private, that doesn’t want . . . to be observed. So my sleep is getting light. Fitful. I dream I am . . . being not just watched, but that men are chasing me to the edge of a cliff and I wake with this yank—like being forklifted back to consciousness—and I can’t catch my breath, here in the notquite-dark I use a night-light, so they can still see me—and [She starts to crack a bit.] I get a little scared sometimes, my heart pounds and pounds. I have them, the orgasms, the paroxysms, so many, some nights, but after the first two orgasms they just get . . . irritating. I know they are getting their money’s worth. But I get . . . no . . . [She launches into the Stones classic.] “Satisfaction . . . but I try, and I try, and I try . . . and I try. . . .” Until I am . . . well, dry, and rubbed raw. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be! Some of them speak to me—that’s extra, but I will allow it. They address me on the speakers. [She points.] See those little perforated metal “mouths”—those are their speakers—which I have to turn on in [Checks watch.] two minutes! 120 seconds! They can direct my movements. [She imitates a deep male voice.] “Arch your back.” “Writhe.” “Cry out my name!” Confession: I don’t like the word “masturbation”—it sounds so . . . turbulent. You know what? I don’t want to do it! I’m not in the mood, even for myself! I just want to be alone! In peace! Or to be with someone real, someone present!
[She is starting to lose it.]
I remember . . . belly flesh! Kissing someone’s navel . . . Oh, those were the best sleeps, belly to back, arms . . . around my waist. . . . Warm in winter—I felt safe. I am not safe now, am I?
[She checks her watch.]
Okay. Mikes on. I can’t be absent too long. . . .
[She flips the audio mikes on and slips the silken sash from her robe. She performs two skips, as with a jump rope.]
I perform little fitness sessions, so they can see me work out a bit.
[She playfully loops the silken sash around her neck, makes a comic gesture as if garroting herself.]
But this is what you really want, isn’t it?
[She stares hopelessly out, the sash a noose.]
This is worth, what, a thousand on MasterCard? PayPal! Only I never get to collect, do I? But . . . God.
[She closes her eyes.]
It will be worth it. . . .
[She addresses the cameras.]
My name, my name was—Eva Marie! My mother named me that! After Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront.
[Her eyes pinball, she is connecting to her true self.]
No, wait. I don’t want to kill myself. . . . Kill Eva Marie Saint? I want to . . . to get even, I want to . . . thwart you. And you! And you! And you!
[She gives the fist to each camera. She pulls the rope away from her neck, cracks it like a whip.]
You’ve ruined it for me—it started with the e-mails—why
did I get those messages? “Enlarge your dick!” “Molly Bang Butt!” “My boyfriend has a BIG BANGER and I have a Tiny MOUTH!” I couldn’t go into my own in-box and now you are in my own room, my inner sanctum—Oh, EFF YOU—I WON’T PLAY ANYMORE! No more CYBER MOLESTATIONS, if you please. . . . I want you to pay and pay and pay, and not ever get to see me do what you want me to do. You know what?!
[She makes a mock punch, shadowboxing the cameras, one by one.]
John! Larry! Mike! Ike! Gordon! Lionel! GEORGE!
You made me fulfill your fantasies . . . now you can suffer mine!
[Music: “Someone to Watch Over Me” begins . . . softly. She dances, as if with a partner, dreamily, her arms around herself, She turns her back to the audience, gives a funny, “EFF you” twitch to her hips, looks, smiles defiantly over her shoulder.]
This is it, pay pals!
[There is the sound of men breathing, from many men. Music: “Someone to Watch Over Me.” She is smiling, moving sensuously in her solo dance for that “certain someone.” Spotlight on her solitary, ecstatic dance. Isolated spot on her face, beatific, longing. She sings.]
There’s a certain someone, I’m longing to see . . . I know that he . . . will turn out to be . . . someone to watch over me!
[Blackout.]