I first ventured onto OnlyFans thanks to Dave. Dave is not her real name. Dave has been the name of most of my pets. It’s also the imaginary name I give people when I don’t want to use their real name. This particular Dave was a friend of a friend of a follower on Instagram who happened across my feed and started following me. Whenever someone extremely attractive follows me on social media, I immediately assume they’re trying to catfish me. I’m a bald, vaguely European mobster-looking type of dude. The type of man women see and think, He’s willing to pay for sex.
But Dave felt different. We had some poet friends in common. She’d attended the university whose bookstore I work at. I can’t remember when I discovered she had an OnlyFans. I think she joked about it in an Instagram story or something—an offhand comment like “OMG can’t wait to wear this on my OnlyFans page!” with some kind of OnlyFans-appropriate attire. It felt safe. Like, this is someone I know!
Still, I didn’t want to subscribe to her OnlyFans. But at the time I couldn’t remember the last real-life person I’d seen naked. And Dave was definitely a real-life person. I once saw her across a very crowded New Year’s Day poetry marathon. It was as if she’d jumped straight out of an Instagram post. She was gone before I could even say hello. Maybe that made it fun, too. The mystery of knowing her without ever having to introduce myself and say something stupid with gravy all over me.
Then there was the money issue. A subscription to Dave’s OnlyFans cost $20 a month. I’m a poet. Not your classic high-earning job. Not to mention it almost feels silly to pay for porn in this day and age. So much of it is free and at your fingertips as long as you’re willing to watch ads with unsettling Sims people fornicating with step-siblings. But then you start doing the math: O.K., well, I usually buy people drinks to see them naked later. Drinks cost more than a month’s subscription to an OnlyFans page. You convince yourself: You’ll just subscribe for one month. Satisfy your curiosity. See this Dave naked a few times, then go back to reading epic poetry or whatever you do on a Friday night, the rain slowly pelting the windowsill near your lonely-ass head.
So I subscribed for a month. One month passed. Then another. And then another.
Subscribing felt like I had been brought inside a sexy inner sanctum. Dave wasn’t normally my type. I like weirdo librarian no-makeup types. But she was fun—and perky. But also dark. And real. All that. Sometimes at the same time. I liked that I could see the sweat beading up over her tattoos.
I’m a bald, vaguely European mobster-looking type of dude. The type of man women see and think, He’s willing to pay for sex.
Why do men love pornography? Because we are constantly horny. I’m talking 24-7. But we also crave connection. And space. (Sorry, we’re complicated creatures.) I’ve heard it said that when men pay for a sex worker, we’re not really paying for the sex; we’re paying for the person we had sex with to leave afterward and not move in their collection of porcelain Hummels the next time they come over. We’re paying for the intimacy and the distance.
And intimacy is not something you get in your typical porn video. (Don’t mistake nudity for intimacy.) With OnlyFans, you’re let into someone’s life. Literally into someone’s actual bedroom. There are countless videos that feel like they were made only for you. Sexy snaps of a lady flashing her breasts while she’s in line for an oil change. It’s not overly manufactured. That in and of itself is hot. I once was mesmerized by a video of a woman who talked about the long hours she had to work at the liquor store, the kinds of candies she liked and hated. She was just kind of sitting in her underwear chatting away as we perverts typed sort of normal, non-sexy messages to her. It felt like we were connecting. It definitely had the illusion of connection. It also helped that she was fun and sexy and half naked. And that I could close my laptop after and go to sleep.
With Dave there’s a lot of fantasy and a little real life, the perfect ratio. On Instagram she shared that she was having a hard time with her ex. She was on the run with her toddler in Hawaii. There were helicopters chasing her and everything. She’s trying to get custody of her kid back. She has weird tattoos in weird places. One across her sternum indicates her last wishes. I can’t stop watching. Or paying to watch.
I’ve paid for other people’s OnlyFans, and it’s mostly squirting-eggplant-emoji-filled D.M.’s trying to upsell me: “Are you up?? I’m covered in peanut butter!!” with some $30 video attached. Unless the video is a human hand coming out of my screen with a real-life pizza I can actually eat, I don’t think I’m going to click on that. Some lady sent me an unprompted D.M. last night that simply said, “I’m falling hard for you, just wanted to let you know. 😉” Sorry, FlowWithSky, you’re no Dave. Dave would never try to shake me down or toy with my horny emotions. She’s above that kind of stuff.
And that’s why I subscribe. Although I am a little behind on my monthly fees. Sorry about that, Dave. Until I catch up, I’ll have to satisfy myself with her Instagram stuff, which is alternately funny, sexy, strange, and heartbreaking. She did this little dance the other day that just destroyed me. Dave forever! As long as the rent’s not due.
Jim Behrle is a poet living in New York City
