Don, Susan and Michael do not generally put their pictures up on public Web sites, preferring instead to trade and communicate ¡ª often using instant messaging ¡ª with a more select audience of their own choosing. Susan, for example, has occasionally viewed Don's camming sessions. She says finding an audience is not difficult.
¡°I do have ads up on a couple of different Web sites but I think there are networks of people," Susan says. "If you meet somebody and they know 20 people who know 20 people who know 20 people, it is pretty easy to get an expanded community.¡±
That is just what Don has created. At first, he surfed the Web looking for still images of naked female exhibitionists. Then around the year 2000, ¡°when I learned that computers could broadcast cams, I watched a few ladies, usually only topless, perform for me on the Web ¡ Eventually I met a [woman] from Florida who showed me everything and begged me to get a cam. I did, and soon found myself stripping for her. I looked for others who liked it too, and didn¡¯t have to look far.¡±
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For Don, ¡°camming¡± usually means displaying himself masturbating, often with one or more women, and sometimes a man, as his audience. Often the camming is mutual, with Don and a woman, using her Web cam to display herself to Don, instant messaging dirty talk back and forth.
'Avenue of escape'
Now, Don tells me, he has about 120 regulars with whom he frequently chats and ¡°cams.¡± He has had virtual sex over the cam with many more people than that, and he does it most nights when he is on the road.
¡°The digital world,¡± he says, ¡°gives me an avenue of escape to secret desires where I can find fulfillment.¡± He is able to satisfy ¡°a private hard-core lover hidden inside of me¡± that he can express online in anonymity.
That anonymity is important because Don, who tells me he is a conservative Republican Catholic and somewhat shy in real life, is married with children. His wife knows nothing about his online sex life.
¡°I am basically a moral person but flawed major league when it comes to sex," he says. "And yet there is this secret side to me that must be satisfied ¡ I have always had a streak of exhibitionism in me and felt guilty about that.¡±
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He is torn. On the one hand, he worries there might be something wrong with him. On the other, he feels release when he¡¯s ¡°camming.¡±
¡°I think of [online exhibitionism] as pure erotic expression of human desire," he says. "We seek escape from our difficulties, from our routine or pressures, and this gives it to us.¡±
So far, it's tough to say whether Don's form of escape will continue to grow, or if the novelty of digitally mediated exhibitionism will wear off. But it's clear that, for now at least, many Americans are thrilled by the prospect of being their own porn star.
Brian Alexander, a California-based freelance writer and MSNBC.com's Sexploration columnist, is traveling around the country to find out how Americans get sexual satisfaction. Alexander, also a Glamour contributing editor, is chronicling his work in the MSNBC.com special report "America Unzipped" and in an upcoming book for Harmony, an imprint of Crown Publishing. In the final installment in this series, he discusses whether we're satisfied yet.
