Transcript of Flirty Little Secrets | 3

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Good to know that service works down here. Hi, how are you?

Where are you?

I'm in the Bahamas.

What?

Wow.

Yeah, my friend Nina—

Gracie was poolside when we got on the phone in July of last year for one of our semi-regular check-ins. I wasn't trying to interrupt Gracie's vacation with a boring work call, but she had just told me over Slack that she had something to share about a crazy interaction she'd had on OnlyFans.

Basically what happened is I get a new subscriber and I message them and I'm like, hey person, what brings you here? And they go, well, I'm in recovery for breast cancer and the wife of a subscriber So I came here to, like, see, like, what it's all about. And this guy is busted and she is definitely pissed.

And yeah, this sounded stressful, but I figured, how bad can it be? In all likelihood, this lady's husband was just a random subscriber that Gracie wouldn't know from Adam, right?

I didn't know who it was at first. I was like, oh, I don't know who your partner is, blah blah blah. And they were like, 'it's this person,' and I was like, 'Holy shit, this is probably the person I know the best on here.' Oh wow.

Yeah.

Wow. Yeah.

So because Gracie is not naive, she knows that some of her subscribers have romantic partners in their lives. There's one study of OnlyFans subscribers, not peer-reviewed admittedly, that suggested almost 90% of them are married. But Gracie was not aware that this particular guy was spoken for.

I also don't have a habit of asking that. Like, I'm like, tell me a little bit more about yourself. And it's like your job or what you do for fun. It's never like, tell me your— like, I'm not here to remind anyone of their wife and kids.

Gracie told me that she had felt a special bond with the subscriber. It was mostly a friendship, albeit one that he would occasionally steer into the realm of romantic and sexual fantasy.

It would be like, we're having wine in a French château. And it would be like describing the date, and then we go out to the lake and we have like sex in the lake. But then it would immediately— it could immediately flip back to like, hey, I hope your comedy tour is going well.

Um, basically collaborative fan fiction is how it is.

How about— yes, yeah, exactly, exactly. And then I would kind of like— I would be like, oh my God, that's so hot, blah blah blah, which I wasn't lying about. I was like, yeah, this guy's good at this. Um, and it's fun. It felt very innocent, you know. A great example of my relationship with him is we would be sexting, and then the next day I would post like, oh, I'm sick in bed, and he would send me a tip and be like, go get soup, you know. So, and I think that's understandably what his partner is very upset with. You know, she even said she was like, it'd be one thing if he was just jacking off to Pornhub, but he's now spending time, money, and energy on you, and that's a hard pill to swallow. Um, yeah.

Gracie was clearly rattled. I'm sure I would have been too if I were in her shoes. But I was curious, did she feel responsible? Guilty even?

Okay, here's the thing. I don't feel guilty because I had no knowledge of this. Even if I did, it's not my problem. My first instinct was to stay neutral. Like, my mantra in life is no sudden movements. Like, see what's up. Does this person want to confront you? Do they want to blame you? Do they want to divorce their husband? Like, what's up? But I did feel like very sympathetic And I said, wow, I, I can only imagine how tough that is. I'm really happy to hear you're in recovery. And then I just said, how are you feeling about everything? You know, she goes, I respect it for sure. She goes, you're funny and, and a stunner, so I get the combo. And, um, I'm just deciding how to feel about all this new information.

Did any part of you think like, I should just not engage on this?

Yeah, I think if it had been like you're a whore and a homewrecker and blah blah blah, I would not have engaged. But I think because she immediately off the bat sounded curious, mature, and very gentle, my first instinct was to comfort her. I was like, if this will take me like 2 minutes to send these messages. And if I can tell her, hey, no, we've never met up, we've never even video chatted or called, if I can kind of help her. And then once it started being like, oh hey, I have more specific questions, and can you like give me pointers on how to spice things up, and who better to teach me than like his fantasy girlfriend? And I was like, okay, hon, this fucking sucks. Like, my heart really went out to her. I was like, look, The most gentle thing I can offer is this is very much his problem. And women, like, we have a tendency to bear the burden of things that, like, are not on us. But yeah. And then she just said, thank you, heart. And then he's since unfollowed me. And, um, yeah, I was gonna block both of them, but then he wasn't there to block.

And it feels weird that I'm not in contact with him anymore, even though I am like the last person to be worried about in this situation. Obviously way higher stakes, but it does feel weird. Like, I'm wondering, oh my God, I hope they're okay. Like, I hope they're working through it.

The thing you said to her at the end about how like this is his problem, um, when you say problem, are you talking about the fact that he wants this or needs this, or the fact that he was dishonest about it with her?

The fact that he was dishonest. And she did mention in her correspondence, she was like, I'm really pissed because obviously, like, she's going through fucking cancer. She mentions, I don't feel very sexy right now. Um, and so she point-blank asked him if he had had any interest in anyone else, if he needed anything else, and he flat out denied it.

That was something she recounted to you in her— in one of her messages?

Yes. She said, I'm like the most upset about the dishonesty because I'm an open book with this person. So I understand that anger of being like, hey, I'm open, I'm flexible, I want us to work, I'm giving you every chance, and you— so it almost makes me think it's like you men need a secret to feel excited, you know? It's like, it, it's like, would this have been as comforting or as titillating to him if he had been open about it with his wife.

That question really struck me. As I've mentioned, I'm a married man, and I confess I do love having a little secret. If you listen to my old podcast, Backfired: The Vaping Wars, There's a whole subplot about my addiction to nicotine, and some part of the allure for me in cigarettes and vaping was the fact that I would often do it in private. It was a dirty little habit, but it was my dirty little habit. And even now, I still gravitate toward those hidden spaces. A burner account on Reddit, a late night at a blackjack table in Vegas when all my friends have gone to bed. It makes me wonder whether OnlyFans is less about sex and less about these pseudo-girlfriend experiences and more about that pocket of privacy, that place where you get to be a version of yourself that you don't show to anyone else.

Everyone has that version of themselves. The curious one, the lonely one, the "I miss who I used to be" one. It's precious, and it may not mix well with who we are now on the outside, at work, at holiday parties, at church. Sometimes the only safe place to let that person out is online. But when that online self starts feeling more vivid than your actual life, what does that say about what we're really looking for? Why do the lives we lead on the internet sometimes feel truer, more exciting, or more alive than the ones we lead in daylight? This is Only Fantasy, episode 3. Flirty Little Secrets. Thanks for coming all the way from— where'd you come from today?

Today I was in Encino shooting in Encino.

The day before we dropped into the Creators Inc. house last summer, Leon, Sam, and I visited a recording studio in a strip mall Mall in Burbank, California, to talk to porn star and OnlyFans creator Rachel Steele. Rachel's got stunning green eyes, a full head of auburn hair, and a voluptuous figure. I can only hope to look that good when I hit my 60s. I asked her how her day of work, AKA having sex on camera, went.

Can we be honest?

Please.

So I worked with a new talent today, a new male talent that was recommended to me by another woman in the industry who has a large following. So I I just took her word that this person would be fine, and he couldn't perform. So I drove 45 minutes to an hour to get there, got up really early, did hair and makeup, packed up clothing and outfits, paid the photographer, and, um, yeah, he could not perform. But— Yeah. So, other than that, it's a beautiful day, and, you know, this is part of the job.

So occupational hazard.

Yes. Rachel Steele, like so many of the creators we've talked to, has been on OnlyFans since the pandemic, but her path to it stretches back to a distinctly pre-OnlyFans era of online sex work.

Rachel kind of stumbled into the porn industry, as one does. In 2005, she was in her 40s, running a hair salon in Tampa, Florida, and happily married. In true Florida fashion, Rachel and her husband Mike love to unwind by hanging out by their backyard pool.

We were just out there on a hot day drinking margaritas, and I was all buzzed up and feeling fun and funny. So I just jumped in the pool and I jumped out and I'm like, look, look, wet t-shirt contest. Ooh, I'm Bo Derek. Ooh, take a picture. So he did. He started snapping pictures. And then a couple of days later, he said, you know, those pictures we took by the pool actually came out pretty good.

The pictures were so good that Mike ended up submitting them to an online contest looking for America's Hottest Wives. Rachel won something like $600. She thought, well, hell, this is easy. Can I take more pictures by the pool and make another $600? She went back online and discovered a whole world of websites devoted to hot wives and mature women.

She also found out that there were a growing number of webcam sites where men could pay money to see women get naked on camera, a sort of virtual peep show. This was the early 2000s, and at the time, camming was a new and burgeoning business.

Hey, this is one of those dirty websites.

Huh? Scantily clad coeds?

Why, you little—

Rachel wound up connecting with the webmaster for a UK-based cam site, and he helped her get set up as a camgirl. The first step was picking a stage name.

I said, what about Rachel? But I don't know about the last name. And he said, you have nice strong hard abs, why not just Steel? Like abs of steel, Rachel Steel. And I was like, oh, I love that. So that was it. That's how Rachel Steele was born.

It's Superwoman vibes for sure.

When Rachel Steele made her online debut, the campsite she was on was relatively straightforward. Rachel's image appeared on a homepage as a thumbnail with a lineup of other women that men could choose from. Rachel would log on, click a button that said, I'm available, and a green icon would show up next to her name. Almost like a taxi cab on-duty sign. And like a cab driver, Rachel would sit and wait for a fare.

And it was 10 minutes, $35. If you want sound, which I don't understand why they wouldn't, but some chose no sound, then it was $45. And that was it. You get a 10-minute session, and if they want another session, it would be double that. It was very basic and simple and easy.

Once a customer paid, they could enter her virtual room for a one-on-one session. She'd start with a quick conversation, a sort of consult, much like she would do at the hair salon.

What do you wanna see today? What can I do for you today? And then they would tell me, and then I would just play out, play out whatever it is their fantasy was.

This is something I should know. Are cams one or two ways?

Great question. That's another choice. That's another choice that you both have. Most of 'em wanted it off. They didn't want me to see them. And it— and, you know, back then too, I feel like there was a lot of shame because I remember people just in the dark hiding and telling me their kinks, their fetishes, and just being very shamed about it. One was into food. He would say, what's in your fridge? And I'm like, you know what's in my fridge. Just tell me what you want me to go get. And then he would tell me mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup. Pickles, cucumbers, whatever. Do you have any chocolate sauce? And I was doing this all in my husband's office, his corporate office. He was a retired Marine, square peg as can be. And I'm in there with a rubber sheet on the floor, squirting maple syrup all over me. And, you know, with a dildo and a cucumber and mustard and mayonnaise all over me. I would do him at the very end of the day. Because I'm like, this is too messy. I have to take a shower. I'm gonna mess up my hair and my makeup.

So you're, you're at $5.30.

Because I can't go to my next appointment with ketchup in my hair.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Not everybody's kink.

So. Rachel quickly learned there's no such thing as average or normal. When someone new logged on, she was never quite sure what they'd ask her to do. She just had to roll with the punches.

There was other fetishes like foot fetish, shoe fetish. Probably one of the craziest ones to date would be the scuba gear.

Mm.

You would probably think the craziest one is going to be something so sexual. And this is not. It's— he's like, do you have scuba gear? And my husband was a diver. I'm like, I do. It's right in the closet. I'm looking right at it right now. What do you want me to put on? He's like, flippers, mask. The snorkel thing. So I put it on, and then I would sit in the chair and pretend that I'm underwater and just, like, move my arms around and, like, make motions with my mouth that I'm, like, underwater. That would be a 10-minute show, and he would just masturbate to that.

That is— I've never heard anything like that. I've heard of a lot of kinks. Yes. And that is awesome.

Yep.

Every single one is different. Everyone has their own little thumbprint.

Rachel learned a lot about the variety of sexual fantasies out there, but she didn't learn a lot about the personal lives of the men she performed for. There was a ticking clock. If they paid for 10 minutes, the camera would automatically go off after 10 minutes. There wasn't a lot of time for small talk. And yet, for Rachel, all those little peeks behind the curtain added up. Did you kind of get anything, obviously more than money, out of those kind of connections where it's like, "Oh, I know you," and they're like, "You—" How did that feel?

I loved it. I was laughing and happy. Like, it was like a little kid playing dress-up, you know, with a chest full of clothes. And then I'm like, I never know what's gonna come next. I loved it. And I felt good because people would quickly say at the end of sessions sometimes, you know, "It feels so good to be able to do this. I've been so shamed all my life. I'm kink-shamed," or, "I'm in a very vanilla marriage." and there's no way my wife would ever play like this with me. So I was like, wow, I'm really helping people. Like, there's a lot of people that are feeling really good after these sessions, and I literally helped them mentally, emotionally, spiritually, you know? And it was making me feel good too, to be able to help like that.

Rachel eventually set up a camera in the corner of the office and started recording herself doing the live webcam sessions. She found a site called ClipsForSale.com where she could upload and sell these videos direct to consumers. This was when Rachel learned that she fit a well-known and lucrative niche in the porn world. Maybe you've heard of it. Shit. I cannot believe a fine woman like this produced a guy like Stifler. Dude, I took some MILF. What the hell is that? M-I-L-F. Mom I'd like to fuck. Yeah!

The word MILF was popularized in 1999 thanks to the movie American Pie. In porn terms, MILF doesn't necessarily mean an actual mom. It refers to an actress who reads on the screen as a mature, older woman. So, you know, anyone over 30, which includes me. Gulp. In a savvy marketing move by Rachel, she realized she could basically keep making the exact same content, but put the word MILF in front of every title and it would get a lot more traction.

Milf wears heels. Milf's feet. Milf. I put milf in front of everything, and, um, that was it. That was my label. So milf scuba.

Yes. Now maybe this is common knowledge— after all, milf was the number 2 most searched term on Pornhub last year— but I personally was shocked to learn from Rachel that a lot of milf porn is often about forgive me, incest play. The male actors in these videos are usually young enough to be their co-stars' sons, and in fact, in many cases, that's who they're supposed to be playing, even though they're often billed as the stepson or the student to avoid rules against portraying actual incest on screen. Were you surprised that there was a market for that? Like, is it that—

that fantasy was widespread enough that they could be Yeah, mostly because it's not really my fantasy. It's not like what I fantasize about. So it's always a little surprising when people tell you, you know, their fantasies and then it's huge. And to this day, it's like MILF is one of the number one searched genres out there.

As Rachel embraced her newfound status as a MILF, she also started incorporating her husband into some of the videos. She had to make sure he didn't talk too much or show his face so that people didn't see how old he really was. Eventually, he got tired of it. So Rachel found other partners and started making real deal pornos that she produced and wrote herself. Can you tell us about some of the early storylines that you had success with?

Yeah, there was one called Breakfast Fuck, and since then I've done— What happens in that one?

Well, it's a long story. If you want to know what happens in Breakfast Fuck, you can still find the 9-minute video for $11.99 on clipsforsale.com, along with the Breakfast Fuck sequel and a host of other brilliantly titled content.

Blowjob for College-Bound Stepson, Beauty and the Monster— that was actually alien porn— Squirting MILF, um, Come in My Shoes, Slave Boy. That's my favorite. MILF Mayhem. Torturing my boy toy. Oh, one of my favorites: Leave it to my beaver.

If you couldn't tell before, I was pretty flabbergasted by the whole incest thing, and I couldn't help but press Rachel on what exactly is going on with the guys who are into it. Were you— were you, um, at first skeptical of the people who wanted this? Were you like, ew, you want to fuck your mom?

No, because, um, Early on in the cam days, there was a couple of guys that did say stuff about mom and mommy. And they would explain to me, you know, this is not because I think about my actual mom. It's just part of my fantasy, like— And then I just, I, you know, put it all together and realized that it's just older woman, younger man. They like the age gap. There's all kinds of different little parts of it. It's a little complex.

Because I think, like, yeah, I mean, it's— it does strike me as, like, one of the fetish that people would keep secret because they're— they would be scared for people to find out that they want that. I think it's because the inference that most people would make is, like, you want this because you have sexual feelings for your mother. Yeah. And that, as you say, that is the definition of taboo, right?

Yeah, yeah. And but it's, it's sad because, uh, if you say, Daddy, I like daddy stuff, I like daddy porn, I like, you know, that's okay. But when it's mommy, it's something's up.

Maybe Rachel isn't exactly on my same quest to save men, but it's clear that she feels connecting with her fans and accepting their unique kinks and desires is about more than just servicing one individual's need. It is, in a small way, for the greater good.

You know, I feel like that helps society as a whole if people can just be who they are and without harming anyone in the process. You have happier individuals walking around instead of angry individuals that are suppressing everything and keeping things in and feeling— it can really mess with you mentally if you don't feel like you fit. And if you have these, these thoughts and kinks and desires and fantasies and everyone's telling you you're sick, you know, how are you in society? So we just need to have more acceptance. And that's just not happening today, you know, trans community, everything. It's, it's just, we're, we're like going backwards. We're going backwards to the Leave It to My Beaver days, and it's just not good.

It's way more leave it, way less beaver.

Exactly. So, Gracie, I feel like I was judgy enough in that interview about other people's porn preferences here that I should confess that I too have looked at porn on the internet.

Oh, really? I thought you were the only one who abstained. This is shocking information. I know, I know.

Sad. No, I actually remember very distinctly the first time I saw porn. It was probably when I was in 4th or 5th grade. I remember I was at a family friend's house. My mom's friend had a son who was a little older than me, and he took me upstairs to his room while our parents were hanging out. And on the very same day, he showed me porn and also eBay.

Wow. Those are both highly addictive. That's a lot for one day. Like, your life would never be the same again. Truly, truly.

And so, yeah, I just remember the video he showed me, which I don't know, I guess he had downloaded from somewhere, and it was just like an extreme close-up of a penis going into and out of a vagina.

Does not sound sexy. It sounds like a nature documentary.

It really was like— it almost looked like a hydraulic pump or something. Uh, I did not find it particularly erotic or alluring, uh, though I suppose I was kind of morbidly intrigued. Um, it wasn't until later on, and I don't remember exactly when this happened, but I did eventually start looking at porn on my own time, I guess you could say. Um, And I was finally like, okay, yeah, I'm, I'm interested in this. So what were you into? So my most vivid memory that I still carry around, uh, is of a cam girl who, as far as I could tell, was not a porn star. Like, she wasn't famous exactly, but she was a professional internet personality, like a proto-influencer, I guess you could say, who also got naked on camera. And I honestly still remember so much about her to this day. Um, She had, like, bleached blonde hair. She was kind of alt, a little Hot Topic. She wore, like, chunky necklaces and band t-shirts, and she would wear her pigtails up really high up on her head. Mm.

Spacetails. Yeah. Spacetails means you go to Warped Tour. Yes. Okay, that checks out. Yeah.

What was her name? Her name was Sunny. No, no last name as far as I knew at the time. But then we started working on this podcast together, Gracie, and I looked her up and I got her email address and her phone number and I called her.

Blast from the past.

What did you want to do on there? Like, what did you want to show the world? What was your goal or your dream or what were you imagining?

I didn't have a goal or a dream. I honestly didn't. I knew I was going to be naked.

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I submitted my first nudes ever on the internet, taken with an analog camera and scanned to this website, and I made number 1 really quickly. And I was like, that's cool, that's awesome. I'm fucking cool. I'm cool on the internet. This is cool.

I love this. That is Sunny Crittenden, one of the first women I ever had a crush on from the internet.

This was ratemenude.com. This was before hotornot.com, and you submitted naked pictures to it. They would post your pictures and people would basically just rate you 1 to 10, and the person who got the most 10s was at the top of the list, and then it went down.

Sunny lived in an apartment above her mom's wallpaper store in Canada. She didn't have a job and was on welfare. Her world was small, but she did have a computer, and she used it to tap into a much larger world via the internet. On Rate Me Nude, she felt like a star, at least at first.

I wake up one day and all of a sudden I'm like number 20. Like, I just dropped 20 places. I'm like, oh my God, what the fuck happened? Like, overnight.

Looking at the girls who had knocked her off from the number one spot, Sunny noticed they all had something in common.

There's all these women that have style projects written on their bodies in eyeliner or Sharpie.

They all seemed to be associated with something called the STILE Project. STILE spelled in the creepiest possible way, S-T-I-L-E. And I'm like, what the fuck is STILE Project? Pretty soon, Sunny realized that there was this portal that she could step through, this corner of the internet that really intrigued her.

So I loaded up the portal and realized what it was and thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life. And I made it my mission to be asked to be on it.

Gracie, I don't know if you can picture this, but the Style Project cam portal featured 6 cam girls at a time, so 3 on top, 3 on bottom. Okay, so kind of like Brady Bunch style? Yeah, exactly. Uh, that's also how Sunny put it.

When the web page reloaded, they would each have a new picture of what was happening, you know, quote unquote live.

What was so cool about it to you?

What was so cool about it was that they were all people my age. From all around North America and the UK and Australia and New Zealand, um, and we all had this connection, this like internet nerd connection, but they got to be visible. Like, they were elevated above anybody else on the internet because their faces were right there, you know, and their personalities were right there on full display, almost like a TV. And I wanted that, for better or for worse.

After becoming a fixture in the Style Project chat room and befriending the site's founder, Sunny got herself a slot in the portal, and she started posting. This was a few years before Rachel Steele started camming, and the crazy thing to keep in mind here is that it was also long before streaming video. So the webcam Sunny was using, and that everyone on Style Project was using, was just taking still photos.

There was no streaming and there was no audio when I first started. Uh, it was just still images uploaded every 30 seconds to a web page that was also refreshing every 30 seconds. We were there to show off, like we were there to be exhibitionists, and nudity was part of that. It just reminded me of burlesque, like we were there, we were naked, we were beautiful, but we were also funny and entertaining like Mae West. Like, what I saw what I was doing is like being a stripper, like a digital stripper but without the dancing. Ah yes, digital stripping.

Or as I called it when I went from dancing IRL to OnlyFans, sex working from home.

You can be pantsless for both, right? Uh, well, for Sunny, it was kind of perfect. She really liked being a digital stripper. She kind of felt like it was her calling, especially as she built this community around herself, uh, first on Style Project and then later on a website called camwhores.com, which I confess, is probably where I first encountered her.

Suddenly I felt popular for the first time in my life. Like, I'm an only child. So, I mean, I am a very solitary, independent person, and I am not used to having people pay attention to me at all. And pretty much since I got to the internet, I've realized people have treated me special. Which is a weird feeling. And I don't know how to describe it other than feeling special. Like, if I were to visit somebody's state, like one of my audience members, say I was to go on a book tour, I could probably stay at people's houses on every single stop without problem, and they would treat me like a queen. And they would treat me special. They wouldn't treat me just like anybody else, or just like another friend, or like somebody they're doing a favor for. I would be an honored guest, and that was a weird feeling, and still is a weird feeling.

It's so funny because today's digital strippers, whether they're on Campsites, OnlyFans, whatever, like they're there because it can be lucrative. You know, if it's not their job, it's their side hustle. But the way Sunny describes it, like, she was in it for the love of the game, you know? She felt like the front woman of a cool indie band with culty groupies or something. Totally.

That's, uh, that's what I picture also. Um, especially because Sunny's internet groupies weren't limited to Style Project or camwhores. Uh, she also had a LiveJournal, uh, where she would post every day, like the equivalent of a book a month of, you know, just extremely raw, often funny confessional memoir about her childhood and various struggles she went through growing up. And I think that LiveJournal was a big part of the appeal for a lot of her fans, including even me to some extent. Like, I thought she was hot, but more importantly, I thought she seemed cool. You know, she sort of made me feel the way multiple girls in real life had made me feel, which was like She knows something I don't, and I want to know.

Kind of like girls you might have known at school but would never dare approach.

Yeah, exactly. Though even with Sunny, I was just a kid lurking and looking at her photos. Like, it didn't even occur to me that I could approach her or send her an email. So I was curious when I talked to her as an adult about the people who did do that. Like, who were these men who actually reached out and had a parasocial relationship with her? And what were they getting out of it?

Are you familiar with the daddy stereotype in the kink sense? No. Okay, that's a bigger conversation. A daddy is usually a man, usually an older man, who sees a young girl sees potential in her and wants to nurture that potential to build her into the ideal person. There's men who fit that stereotype, and a lot of them are the people who watch cam girls.

Interesting. And so how would— and so how would they express all that to you?

So when I started, I was in college and I was going to school to be a copywriter, and one of my final projects was to do an ad campaign for Jones Soda. And so I had several men that were watching my webcam at the time send me very expensive Jones Soda merch from their website, like all this expensive stuff, but it was all to help me do better in school and do better with my presentation. And that's what I mean by they want to help you do well. Because somehow it's, it's a reflection on them that they picked a winner, if that makes sense. Hmm. Or they, they put their money on the bet on the right horse. I have a really complicated relationship with all of my father figures, and I respond well to positive male attention. I find it very motivating. And so I respond to the daddy type person very well. So I was all about it.

Pick me, pick me. So Leon, I am happy to report that these daddies are still alive and well. I'm lucky enough to have a handful of my own on my OnlyFans page. They're kind of gracious folk who send me extra tips simply because they're invested in my life. Like they know the latest drama, they can see that I've had a bad day. They want to celebrate something with me. And when they can contribute to that, I think they feel like they're a part of something. And that, I have been told, gives them a certain kind of satisfaction. Yeah, I can see that.

Though there is another aspect of Sunny's experience, Gracie, that I think you'll relate to, which is that she told me that almost all of the men who followed her and interacted with her on camwhores were married.

Ah, yes. Those people are also alive and well.

Made me very aware of the fact that marriage probably doesn't work for anybody because they were all married almost. And with the exception of one, the wives didn't know about it, and I thought that was shitty.

And so what was your inference of like what was going on there?

I just think people get married for the wrong reasons, usually, usually because of societal pressure more than the fact that they actually should or want to. Um, and nothing is more evident in that belief than the cam world, because like, well, the husband's sitting there talking to a cam girl on the computer or on his phone The wife's sitting there knitting a blanket, oblivious, and he's totally talking dirty, you know? And that happens so much. Or worse, he's spending her money on the camgirl. I've seen that happen a lot too.

And so did you feel like, um, like something was missing from these men's lives that they were getting from you? Um, yeah, probably.

Like, most of them were middle-aged and had kids of their own, um, younger than me usually, but they just didn't connect with their wives. Like, their wives were grown-up women and we were girls, you know, if that makes sense. That's what they wanted. Yeah. And it's not that we were young, because not all of us necessarily were. I mean, I was, I was an adult. Um, it's just that we were young at heart, and they are also young at heart, and it's hard to find other people who are young at heart at that age without feeling foolish, I think. I reminded them of the girl that they had a crush on in high school, and they were reliving that feeling, a lot of them. Um, and a lot of them just— their wives weren't that girl anymore. She was now, you know, 10, 20 years older. She's who I am now, you know.

I understood exactly what Sunny was talking about. Sure, people are driven to OnlyFans for the sexual taboo, the newness, that titillating secrecy. But there's a handful of subscribers I've chatted with on my page who seem almost nostalgic, like they want to time travel back to a time before they made all those safe and practical decisions. Their secret digital lives with camgirls or OnlyFans creators are about more than just boobs. They're about rediscovering butterflies.

Well, when you put it that way, it almost sounds innocent. Though you gotta imagine the wives in this equation wouldn't see it that way. What surprised me about Sunny's take on this was that she really didn't sound like she was looking down on these married men. And I wonder if it's in part because their attention and their devotion was fun for her too. Like, Gracie, you seem like you've gotten butterflies yourself doing OnlyFans, and it occurs to me that we focus so much on the secret lives of subscribers, but it stands to reason that for a lot of OnlyFans creators and cam girls, engaging with these guys is a way to get something that they can't get in real life either. Like, by the time Sunny started streaming actual video on Camwhores in 2005, she had a second child and a husband, and all kinds of responsibilities. And streaming, I think, was an escape from that.

I had just moved into my first house, which is still this house that I'm in now. And, um, I, I have my own carport. Like, the room I'm in now is a carport that's been changed into like an actual room. So it's like an extra room off the side of my house, and it's got doors so it's completely contained. And so I would do my camming in here after my kids went to bed. Mm-hmm. With the door closed. Mm-hmm. And always solo, never with my husband.

God, that sounds so lonely.

Yeah, I think it was. The thing about a virtual life is that it's virtual. How did having this following and this, like, pretty active community of fans and admirers How did it affect your social life in the real world?

I became agoraphobic and didn't have one. Like, I didn't have a real-life friend. Let's put it this— no, no, they were all internet friends. I had one real-life friend, maybe two, three, in the last 25 years. Um, maybe up until 4 years ago. Like, it was just few and far between. They're all internet people. My whole world just became the internet. Like, I only left my house for doctors' and dentist appointments. There was— it got to the point where one of my internet friends, one of the people that has been reading my live journal since forever, um, Paid for me to get a subscription to the Toronto Star newspaper so that I would have an excuse to walk to the end of my driveway every day. And I couldn't even do that.

These days, Sunny is less lonely. She has a new partner who has opened up her life, and through that relationship, she's made real friends, not just internet friends. But the internet and her time as a camgirl remain core to who Sunny is. In fact, a lot of her energy is now spent maintaining what she calls her Camgirl Museum. It's an online repository of screenshots, photos, blog posts, and other ephemera that might otherwise have been lost to history. Sunny was archiving this stuff in real time, like literally printing it out off of her computer, because she could tell even then that it would one day serve as a valuable record of the early internet.

I was just grabbing at straws. I was just grabbing things randomly, like as if the building was on fire.

And so you were like an internet pioneer, but you were still kind of like committed to the tactile world.

I just think that things have to exist in the world for them to be legitimate, or legitimized, I guess, is more to the point. Because if, if they only exist online, they can be deleted, they can be lost. I've lost so much stuff over the years, like nothing digital is permanent. So I started printing things out.

Do you feel like that's true about relationships too, that they have to be in the real world to be legitimate or legitimized?

I didn't used to think that, but now I do.

Back in Burbank, I asked Rachel Steele if she had ever brought any of her online relationships into the real world.

I did make, I would say, a handful of friends through being in this business. They're all overseas. One is in Croatia, one is in— there's two in Scotland and one in England and one in Italy.

Did you feel like you got to Really know anyone?

Um, well, I did get to know someone because he's my partner to this day.

When Rachel met her current partner, she had been on her own for about 7 years after her husband Mike passed away. She was living in Maine and liked to interact with her fans on a messaging app called Kik. That's K-I-K. There was one day when she had put out a mass message to her contacts on there and was going through all the individual replies, looking at the little profile pictures that appeared next to each one.

I scrolled and scrolled, and I saw his picture, and then I clicked on it because I was like, wow, he's like— something about him just made me stop scrolling. So I clicked on it, and I looked at his picture and enlarged it, and I was like, yeah, he's really cute, I'll say hi.

He was from Istanbul but lived in New York City, and he had been a fan of Rachel's for a long time. He couldn't believe that his favorite porn star was actually talking to him. And then they kept talking.

I liked him because he wasn't, like, too fanboy-ish, you know? And we ended up meeting. I told him to come to Maine. That's where I was living at the time. He said, "I'm in New York. You can come to mine." And I was like, "No, I'm not going to New York City to a stranger's house. Come on." You know? And he's like, "Oh, okay." And I'm like, "You can come to Maine. You can come to my turf." I know, you know, everyone in this neighborhood knows me, so don't even think you can try anything funny. So he came and we spent the weekend together, and then we just kept chatting, chatting, chatting, and then, um, started seeing each other, decided we wanted to be exclusive, um, and then COVID hit, so we moved in together. Do you have actual children? I do. Okay. Sons or daughters? A boy and a girl, and they are grown up and gone. What does the son think? He's not crazy about it.

It turns out Rachel had a secret of her own. Her late husband hadn't wanted their kids to know that they were in the porn business.

And he's like, when I'm dead, you can tell them. So he passed away, and I waited a year or so and thought about it. And then, you know, my kid— they're older, they're in their 20s. And I'm like, I don't like living a lie. I don't like this. Why are you traveling so much? Where do you go? You know, why are you going here and there?

And oh, you kept this like a total secret? Yes. For all— for until they were in their 20s? Yes. Holy moly.

My whole family, nobody knew. Um, so he was—

they thought you were just a retired, uh, hairstylist?

I was just like a little trophy wife, and Mike was just paying for everything and taking care of everything, and Mike was you know, doing it all. But they didn't know. So, and my daughter, she was funny. She just said, "I knew it. I knew you were doing something like that.

I knew it." Woman's intuition. Yeah. Do they know that your current husband was someone you met as a fan?

Yes, they do. Yep. Yep. And he's their age. Oh, he's younger. Yes. He's the same age as my kids are. No kidding. Yeah, so there's a little age gap there.

Okay, so he, he, he does have— he like has a, like, an active fantasy about an older woman. Like, he is attracted.

He always has. He said ever since he was feeling sexual, he was attracted to older women. Um, so yeah, and then he was masturbating to my porn And when we met and, you know, started seeing each other, it was his little dream come true. And then we've been together for 6 years. He's still a fan. Your biggest fan. Yeah.

You just described like 99% of subscribers' fantasies.

Yes, truly. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. So you see, fellas, the dream can come true. What begins as a secret that lives inside your computer can become your actual life. And maybe even your actual wife. Anything's possible.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying anyone should try to meet and fall in love with a creator. In fact, please don't. But I found something sweet about Rachel and her young hubby. However, not all fantasies have a fairytale ending.

She was so convincing. In the beginning of our supposed relationship that by the time it got to the 'we're an item' phase, I was in. I believed her. And then when I found out she was lying, I was crushed, destroyed. And suddenly you begin to see yourself as a dollar bill, and outside of that, you're nothing. That's next on Only Fantasy. Listen to Only Fantasy on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of Only Fantasy early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.