Lark (First & Forever 5)

He winked at the camera, pulled up a chair, and plunked a blow-up sex doll with a big inflatable dick into it. The doll was wearing a T-shirt featuring a cartoon bird above the caption, “Come fly with me! SkylarkSF on Gayze.” Then the guy stepped out of the frame and froze the shot on the doll.

I quickly typed in that website and created an account. When it asked for a screen name, I went with “Hawk,” in keeping with his bird theme. That wasn’t just random. Since my last name was Hawkins, that had been my nickname in high school. Next, I found his page and spent twenty bucks to subscribe to it for a month.

Then I sat back and eagerly waited for Lark to return.

2

Lark

Keep ’em waiting for the peen.

If I was going to teach someone how to be a cam boy, that would be lesson number one. Not that anyone ever asked me for advice, but they should. After doing this job for about a year, I’d gotten pretty good at it.

The trick was knowing how to keep an audience on the hook. There were hundreds of guys out there just like me, all of them trying to earn a buck by getting naked for strangers on the internet. What was to stop viewers from clicking over to some other guy’s live feed and taking their cash with them?

Just one thing—anticipation.

Give the audience a little at a time, and keep them wanting more.

It was a lot like burlesque. Well, except that a lot of my performances ended with me jacking off for my viewers with a dildo up my ass. That part really wasn’t much like burlesque at all.

But hey, different times.

Tonight, that “grand finale” was still several hours away, and it was reserved for a special audience. I’d just spent the last couple of hours dancing, flirting, and very slowly undressing on a busy cam site. While I’d made some tips along the way, the real goal had been to build my fan page audience, so I was in no hurry to show the goods. In fact, in those two hours, I’d only stripped down to shorts and a fireman’s hat.

In some ways, I treated the job like a bachelorette party stripper with different themes and costumes. Most cam boys didn’t do that, so it was a way to make myself stand out. More importantly, it kept me entertained. Getting naked for money should be fun, right?

After I paused my camera on a blow-up sex doll advertising my fan page, I had about thirty minutes to take a break and get ready for my next show. I reached for a towel and wiped the sweat off my face before pulling on an oversized sweatshirt. Then I put the plastic fireman’s hat back on, just because I liked it.

I went downstairs for something to drink and found some of my housemates in the kitchen. Casey glanced at me and grinned as he said, “Hi, Lark. That’s quite the outfit.” He and Theo, his hot doctor boyfriend, were sitting at the table playing cards with our landladies, Yolanda and JoJo.

I glanced down at my clothes. You couldn’t actually see the shorts under the big, rainbow tie-dye sweatshirt, so it looked like I wasn’t wearing any pants. I was also sporting yellow rain boots with that fireman’s hat. Casey never really knew what to make of me, but I thought I looked cute, so I said, “Thanks.”

When I opened the refrigerator, I discovered my section was empty. I was constantly forgetting to go to the grocery store, so this was nothing new. I eyed the cans on Casey’s shelf and asked him, “Would it be okay if I stole one of your sodas?”

“Help yourself.” Casey was a big, loveable bear of a nurse, with messy hair and a scruffy beard. He’d resigned himself to the fact that I was a mooch, so he added, “If you want some dinner, there’s leftover Chinese food.”

Like I was going to say no to that. I stuck a half-empty carton of fried rice in the microwave, then sat on the counter and watched the card game curiously. JoJo tucked a lock of platinum blonde hair behind her ear and smiled at me as she asked, “Would you like to join us?”

“No thanks. I don’t know how to play whatever that is.”

Theo said, “It’s Texas hold ’em poker, and I’d be happy to teach you.” The hot doctor was a fairly new addition to our household, and it seemed like he was making an effort to win me over. He didn’t need to try, though. I automatically liked him, because he made my friend Casey happy.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m doing a live stream on my fan page in a few minutes.” I was glad I had an excuse, because I was terrible at trying to learn games that had a bunch of rules.

When the microwave beeped, I gathered the carton, the soda, and a spoon. Then I said, “I’ll see you later. I’m going to keep the tree company for a few minutes, before I go back to work.”

They all thought that was odd. It was obvious by the looks on their faces. I was used to people thinking that about me, and I didn’t mind it.

We’d put up a big, beautiful tree for Christmas, and it was going to be taken down in just a couple of days, on January first. Yolanda said we had to, because it was getting crispy and dropping tons of needles. Even though I knew she was right, it still made me sad. It had been the best tree ever, and I wanted to enjoy it as much as possible before it went away.

I ate my dinner sitting on the coffee table and looking up at the towering pine, with its colored lights and pretty ornaments. Then I hurried back upstairs and rummaged around in my armoire, which was stuffed full of costumes. I decided to go with my angel of darkness look, so I changed into a black jock strap and tiny black shorts, sat down at my makeup table, and took a look at myself in the mirror.

What I saw made me shriek. I tried to fix my disastrous hat hair with a comb and some spray gel, and then I pawed through my makeup basket and applied a quick smoky eye. I had a real love-hate relationship with my thick, dark eyebrows, and I took a moment to try to shape them with some brow gel. Finally, I added some tinted lip gloss and leaned back to assess my look. I’d tried to find a balance between my masculine and feminine sides, and I thought I’d pretty much pulled it off.

After taking a minute to position the camera and move some stuffed animals and clutter out of the shot, I put on the main part of my costume. The glossy, black angel wings were one of my favorite things, because they were absolutely beautiful. They were hooked to a black harness, and I buckled the straps around my chest and shoulders, then tied on a black silk mask. I considered finishing the look with a pair of high heels but decided to go barefoot instead. They wouldn’t really show anyway with the way I was framing the shot, so why suffer needlessly?

When I took a look in the full-length mirror on the back of my bedroom door, I didn’t see Larkin Genardi, the awkward Italian-American kid from L.A. I didn’t even see Lark, the man he’d grown into. Instead, I saw someone else—someone confident, sexy, and mysterious. I wasn’t really this guy, but it was fun to pretend to be him for a night.