MommyMilkers42 gets their name on the board for having gold kills even though they did nothing else besides teabag—crouch repeatedly on an enemy’s corpse—for the duration of the match. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hilarious, but I don’t teabag because I’m not twelve and I’ve got better things to do. For example, I pick up this kid’s slack while they dip their pixelated genitals on a player named Adolf_Healer.

I didn’t intend to make a living out of this nonsense, but it’s been two years since I started streaming and I have sixteen thousand Twitch followers. Between subscribers, ads, and donations, I make about five hundred dollars a month. I haven’t told anyone yet, but I’m saving for a procedure, a present for my eighteenth birthday.

Tomorrow I’ll be legal, but I was thirteen when I discovered, sitting before a mirror with my legs butterflied, that I had an ugly vagina. I feel like maybe everything fell out when I hit puberty. I looked up the term “meat curtains” after seeing it on 4chan and read that women who had them were “used up.” Back then, I was still a virgin.

My big labia are also uncomfortable. I can’t wear lace underwear because they get twisted and poke through the little holes of the fabric, pinching my flesh, so I’m stuck with granny panties unless I want to suffer. Toilet paper gets everywhere. Riding a bike is the worst.

I like the rest of my body. My boyfriend Josh says my popularity on Twitch is “mostly because of my tits,” and I can’t tell if that’s flattering or insulting. He was behind me on my still-made bed when he told me this, lying in a pile of plush toys. My star-shaped string lights exaggerated the pockmarks on his face. I sat at my desk furiously clicking my mouse, destroying noobs once again after MommyMilkers42’s childish display. Josh reached over to twirl a greasy strand of my hair. I swatted him away, annoyed by his constant need to touch me while I worked.

“Don’t get mad,” he said, “They’re great.”

“Yeah, not like I’m good at this or anything.”

My camera and microphone were turned off because the quickest way to lose followers is to reveal that you have a boyfriend. It ruins the illusion that they can have sex with you. The word “VICTORY” flashed across one of my two curved monitors and my desktop hummed as the cooling fans spun. All this magic behind the glass of my custom-built PC. I removed my cat-ear headset and gave Josh a knowing look.

“Eat it.” I smiled.

“That Genji was awesome,” he said. “Out of control.”

This match’s Play of the Game featured one of my teammates, TheDoinker, destroying everyone as the character Genji with his ninja sword. He shouted, “Ryujin no ken wo kurae!” when he used his ultimate ability, which meant, “Take my Dragonblade!” He ran from player to player swinging his katana, slicing and dicing like a madman. When he was done, he spammed a voice line that said, “mada mada” for “not good enough.”

“Who do you think kept that Genji alive?” I asked Josh, ready for another fight.

“You carried that team.”

“You’re right,” I said. “My back hurts.”

I scrolled through the comments in my Livestream chat. They were mostly from users I recognized, posting the usual “GG” for “good game,” and thirsty men heaping praise on my healing skills. Most of the comments I got were from lonely guys, the kind who didn’t know how to meet real people. Or maybe they never wanted to meet real people. I know I usually didn’t. They’d ask me about my day or what my plans were for the weekend, telling me I was beautiful and calling me a queen. I felt like the girlfriend of thirty faceless strangers.

“I’m sorry, baby,” Josh said. “Do you want me to rub your back?”

“No, it’s okay,” I said. “My back does hurt though. And I’m sick of playing Mercy.”

Mercy was a support character. There are three roles in Overwatch: tank, DPS, and support. In other words, there are players made to take damage, players who do damage, and finally, players who help them all recover. It’s obvious which job everyone likes best. A well-known stereotype in the gaming community is that only girls play support, the least popular role.

I’m not sure what it says about human nature that most developing boys prefer to shoot things over helping others. I once heard my preteen brother joking about bringing a gun to school. When I told him it wasn’t funny, he called me a social justice warrior and stormed up to his room. I didn’t see him again until he came downstairs and asked our stepdad, who he called “dad,” if we could order Wendy’s.

“My brother refuses to play anything besides DPS,” I told Josh.

Josh began breaking up some weed on a silver tray that rested on his lap. “What a bitch,” he said, packing the glass bowl.

“Yeah.”

More comments came in. Best Mercy ever ;), Twitch thot and luv u Miss Anthrope–my screen name. I ate a potato chip and licked my fingers.

“Where’s he at?” Josh asked. He opened a window, lit the bowl, and blew the smoke outside. “Want some?”

I accepted the hit. “He’s playing Fortnite.”

“Are we still on for Thursday?”

I nodded. We’d been playing Dungeons and Dragons together ever since we met. He was one of my first streamers. These days, I average about fifty viewers anytime I broadcast, but even when I only had ten, Josh was there.

“Sorry I can’t stay for your birthday,” he said. “Duty calls.” He worked at White Castle.

“It’s okay.”

This weekend was only Josh and I’s third visit, but we messaged for months before he came to see me in Baltimore. He drove ten hours from Detroit and was staying at the Days Inn.

Josh was also complimentary of how I played, how good I was. It helped that he gave me twenty bucks every Livestream. I lied to my stepdad that Josh was twenty-one, but he was twenty-seven. Josh got the old “impregnate my daughter and I’ll kill you” speech at dinner the night before. We could only hang out in my room with the door cracked.

“All right, streaming’s done for tonight,” I said. I panicked when I closed out of Overwatch and my screen was covered in vaginas, before and after photos from a plastic surgery forum called RealSelf. On the left, the labia were splayed out like the flowers of a Georgia O’Keefe painting. The ones on the right were just little slits, or at least had smaller and shorter inner lips. According to users, labiaplasty was 95% worth it. That was pretty good. I immediately pressed the power button on my PC tower and looked at Josh on my bed, still glued to his phone. The rainbow lights of my gaming rig dissipated. He looked up from the plushies.

“It’s so good to see you, baby girl,” Josh said. He wore a band T-shirt with an indecipherable name, a script like tangled vines.

“You too,” I said, relieved.

“What do you want for your birthday?”

“You, Daddy.”

He was the first person who ever let me call him that. On the one occasion I brought it up with my ex he had been disgusted, saying it was for people with “daddy issues.” Who didn’t have those? I thought it was hot. My half-brother and I haven’t met our real dads anyway. Imagine, one minute you’re having a one-night stand, and decades later you have an unknown kid. I don’t have daddy issues. Can’t miss something you never had.

Josh kneeled by my chair. He reached his hand under my shirt, a Grateful Dead tie-dye populated with dancing bears. It was my mom’s. She was such a hippie, I never understood why she went for a military guy like my stepdad. At least we got health insurance. He entered my brother’s life early enough to be his real father, but I never liked him. Our mom’s been in the hospital five years now, still in a coma. Life is absurd—one moment you’re mailing out invitations to your next essential oils party, and the next you’re a hit-and-run victim. Since then, video games have been the only thing that make sense to me.

Josh moved his mouth toward my belly and pulled down my shorts. I pushed him away.

“What?” he asked.

“I can’t. Not tonight.”

I hated knowing someone could see it that close, could smell it. But guys loved that stuff. One time, a creep followed me off a bus and asked if he could “lick my pussy.” Men are like bloodhounds, wanting to even when I was on my period. Every time we did it, I would just lie there, waiting for it to be done. Josh also did this weird tongue-tornado thing and I didn’t have the heart to tell him it sucked. Did anyone like it?

Josh sighed, fiddling with the chunky skull ring on his fingers.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“You know I don’t like it,” I said.

“Like what?”

“That.”

“Is it me?”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “I’m just self-conscious about it.”

“Why? It’s amazing.” He slipped his fingers inside me and I relaxed. “You have a magic pussy. See? It feels so good.”

I thought, for a moment, that maybe there wasn’t anything wrong with me. Everyone who’s seen it has liked it, but he said it “felt” nice. I wished he’d tell me it “looked” that way too.

“Can we turn off the lights?” I asked.

He smiled and unplugged the string lights before pressing his face in between my thighs. I breathed hard. Something in me turned to a vision of my stepdad in place of Josh.

“Stop,” I said.

He kept going and I felt a terrible pressure on my chest. We heard footsteps a few moments later. Josh jumped back onto the bed as I scrambled for my pants.

“Lo!”

I pulled them over my waist and took a breath. “Yes, Dad?”

He got mad if I called him Jack. I’d learned to pick my battles.

“Y’all hungry?”

“Nope,” I said. “Thanks.”

We heard the steps again and I peered through the crack in my door into the pitch-black, searching for anything. Nothing was there. I heard pots clanging downstairs. Josh tried to touch me again, but the moment had passed. He said a soft goodbye and slipped me a twenty before driving home for work.

I turned my PC back on and vaginas were all over my screen again. Flaps splayed to reveal a warm red center. Purple-ended lips that looked like cauliflower and wide clitoral hoods. They were all “outies” in the before photos. Nobody had an “innie,” a perfect split, and asked to have their inside lips elongated. It just wasn’t done.

I queued up for a match, which ended up being terrible. Someone called another player a “faggot” in voice chat and another person quit, citing homophobia. I ended up making a comeback, pushing two players off the map at the same time. I typed into the chat: 4 the gays.

Someone responded: u wld want a guy 2 suk urs fg.

Another kid got on the voice chat and said, “This team is garbage. Lucio, you’re fucking trash. Uninstall Overwatch.”

The boy had a whiny voice and a distorted microphone quality that sounded like he was using the Wi-Fi at McDonald’s. I donned my cat ears.

“Wow, someone’s salty. Toxic.”

“Wow. Another girl who only plays support. You sound like a fucking bitch.” Of all things, his username was BigDaddy34. I felt a flash of anger. My heart pumped as I began to sweat. I had to remind myself, during the bad games, that this would pay off.

“You’re probably fat, bitch,” he said. “You sound like you have a fat vagina.”

“I don’t think that means what you think it means,” I said, starting to laugh.

Someone named Verylongdong typed into the match chat: Well mommy is full of sh it.

Other users included Sadfap, Bigoletit, and Deeznutz, a classic. I quit, ripped off my headphones, and sat in silence. I could hear my brother screaming the n-word through the wall and a bang, probably him throwing his controller. In just an hour, I would be an adult.

I went downstairs for another soda to find my stepdad on the couch, drinking a beer and smoking his hookah. He’d bought it the last time he deployed. The smoke leaked from his thick mustache and he stared at a football game on the television. I recognized the purple jerseys of LSU. He called for me to sit down next to him, extending the hose of the water pipe. He’d never let me have any before.

“You’re old enough now,” he said. “Happy birthday.”

I took the hookah and thanked him. It tasted like melon, smoke, and something more chemical, almost astringent. It filled my lungs as my mind raced. Cold and shaky, I coughed and handed the nozzle back. I put two fingers to my throat, trying to tell if my heart was beating fast or slow.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Spice,” he said. “It’s like synthetic weed. The government can’t test for it.”

Josh told me about a time his friend overdosed on spice and had to go to the emergency room. The guy was joining the military and needed to pass a drug test. K2, spice, was technically legal and easy to get at any gas station. I’d read stories online of people taking one hit and going psychotic. Like the guy who ate someone’s brains on bath salts, sparking conspiracy theories of the zombie apocalypse.

“It’s fine, just like weed,” he said. “I thought you liked weed.”

“No,” I lied. My chest hurt.

“Come on, I can smell it.”

There was no arguing with that.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you do upstairs,” he said, grabbing my shoulders and pulling me down across him. He stroked my hair. It was the most affection he’d shown me since I met him in an airport seven years ago. I shook my head, trying to get him to stop. I thought I might vomit. I wanted to sit up, but something inside me remained frozen. Nothing made sense.

“What do you want for your birthday?” he asked.

I tried to think. My birthday. Yes, it was my birthday. What was my name? Charlotte, but he never called me by my real name, just as I never called him by his. He called me by my mom’s. I did look like her, and I wondered if that was true for everything. If I had her to thank.

“I don’t know,” I said. I felt him rest his hand on my back. My body went rigid as he ran his hand further down and rubbed his palm in circles across my flesh.

He started to crest his hand over to the other side, dipping his hand in the crevice between my crotch and thigh. I lifted myself from the couch without a word, bolting upstairs as if summoned by some unseen presence. I had tunnel vision. All I could think about was how high I was, and how desperately I needed to leave. I always took a shower when I got too panicky. The stairwell was dark. I had to hug the rail: I could not gauge the height of the steps.

Upstairs, I locked the door to the bathroom behind me. I texted Josh from the toilet, asking if I could move in. He said no, because of his mom. I wondered if she knew about me. I turned on the shower and waited for the water to heat up.

I stripped and laid down in the tub, holding my stepdad’s straight razor in one hand and a mirror in the other. I wiped away the steam and studied myself. It seemed to pulsate as the room shifted. One of the lips was longer than the other. I thought of my brother in the other room and set the mirror down. For my birthday, I wanted to turn back time.

Grabbing the right lip between my index finger and my thumb, I stretched it out as far as it would go. I could touch my thigh with the thing, which wriggled in my fingers. The sensation was unbearable. I breathed in and tried to do it quickly, but it wasn’t a clean cut. I yanked at the lip and hacked. It took at least five motions. The razor clanged on the bottom of the tub. I used a towel from the rack above the toilet to apply pressure to my crotch. Water carried the bloody worm to the drain, and I watched it float down with horror. I did not, could not, do the other one.

When the bleeding had slowed, about an hour later, I put a pad in my underwear and sat on a towel at my desk. I wanted to see my fans. The red light of the webcam flashed. A flurry of messages came in wishing me a happy birthday. Dozens of men I would never meet. I played a game and fell asleep with my face on the keyboard. Donations kept pouring in.