|
|
 |
I'm Seen, Therefore I Am by Vanessa Grigoriadis -- page 2
"What I really hate is that every guy demands that you take your top off, all the time," says Tamra. "It's like, I will take my top off when and if I want to. I used to say: Guys, go look up the definition of 'voyeur.' Of course, in the Webster 1999 dictionary the definition of voyeur has changed. It used to mean just watching people in their everyday lives. Now it says something about watching people perform sexual activities."
If Tamra thinks there's something empowering about deciding when and when not to take her top off on camera, it's because she's been schooled in the Voyeur Dorm party line. The site, Hammill maintains earnestly, is not a porn site, but a celebration of freedom of expression and sexual pride, a zone that merely
records these young women in their natural and unashamed state. Excessive nudity, like lounging around buck-naked, is not encouraged by Hammil and there are no bonuses for it. The girls spend most of their waking hours in baby-Ts and miniskirts, typical mall-going regalia, or maybe the occasional sports bra. That said, they don't shy from exhibitionism: when they swim, it's usually topless, and often on chat they'll strip down at the insistence of the hundreds
of rabid men on the other end of the modem, who then duly offer praise about the girls' beauty. Also, whether it speaks to their boredom, their "Gen Y" bi-curiousness, a sense of showmanship or a genuine desire for female affection, the girls do fool around with each other on camera in ever-shifting pairs. "Each of us stays at our own comfort level," explains honey-blond Amber,
carefully setting down a plastic bowl of soup on a glass coffee table in the middle of the living room. "I showed my crotch once and someone printed out an image of it and mailed it to me. So now I don't do that anymore."
She blows on a plastic spoonful of soup. "We used to have real plates and cutlery but no one would clean so Hammil took them away." She takes a sip and makes a face. "This is gross. Are you hungry?" she asks me. "Do you want my soup?"
"Yeah, the reporter really wants your nasty-ass soup," jokes Milla. They've all been introduced to me as Vanessa, but no one calls me that once during my stay. To the guys on chat and the girls in the dorm, I'm the reporter, or sometimes Reporter Girl, some underpaid, undersized super hero. The girls mostly address each other by their screen names and, as if to maintain a consistent
artificiality, everyone else goes by a handle, too: the gold-necklaced guy who is tech support on the dorm computers — and used to date Alex — is introduced to me as "Romeo."
"Hey, Alex," calls out Tamra. "Robyn wants to switch chat with you today 'cause she needs to get her hair cut." The girls must chat for two hours per day — most say that they chat more than that, if only because there isn't much else to do.
Trixie walks in. Without a word, she turns the living room cam on me.
"Hey, guys, what are we doing for an activity tonight?" asks Milla. Every night, they do a special show online, like body painting or playing naked cardgames; if they do a striptease, Hammil will give each of them a sixty-dollar gift certificate to Victoria's Secret. It's empowerment at its most suspect
— like when a mother promises her daughter a car if she loses fifteen pounds.
"We're doing 'sleeping with the boys,' like a striptease where we're dressed up as guys. Or else Jello wrestling," says Amber enthusiastically, lighting a cigarette. "Alex and I are going to Donatella's for dinner with the reporter, so I'll pick stuff up at Walmart."
"Of course you two get to go out to Donatella's," says Milla, rolling her eyes. "Was I consulted on these activities? I still have my period."
"I vote for Jello wrestling," says Tamra. "But let's use pudding. Or whipped cream. That's easiest."
"Why dontcha use whatever's in the dishwasher?" calls out Hammil, putting an arm around Nikki.
"Ewww!" yell the girls, in unison.
Hurrah: Is the reporter girl going to eat Alex out?
Rexx: Tell Alex to suck on the reporter girl's nipples
Topless yet elaborately made-up, Alex motions for me to come into her room. It's big, with a walk-in closet and a private bathroom. There are four cams in there alone, including the "booty cam," so named because it's trained ass-height in her shower stall. From the lilac towel wrapped around her waist, it's easy to deduce that she's just given the guys on-line that special treat.
"Is that all you have to wear to dinner?" she whispers, looking me up and down. Unlike the guy with the guitar I met yesterday on the street, she doesn't seem to find my white skirt flattering. "It's a really nice restaurant." It's unclear if she's concerned that what I'm wearing is not dressy enough or not provocative enough. Maybe at Voyeur Dorm there isn't much distinction between the two. "Um, I have a black skirt, but it's kind of long," I mumble, confused. "I guess I could wear my black tank top with it."
"Okay," she says skeptically. "Well, do you want to borrow something?"
I say thanks but no thanks. The lines of chat directed my way are already making me feel unnervingly close to her experience; walking a mile in her shoes or, literally, her skirt, isn't going to help.
"My deal is that anyone can borrow anything they want as long as they just tell me first," explains Alex, as Amber walks in and plops on her bed. "But all the girls — not Amber, but the rest of them — just take my towels, my shoes, my curling iron, whatever they want. At every Monday meeting I say
the same thing: If it's my shit don't touch it. Robyn's all, 'Well, Hammil buys you all your clothes. And it's like, 'yeah, he buys me clothes, but these are the clothes I need to go on TV.'" Alex, as the most photogenic, if not the prettiest, girl in the house, has been picked to "represent the dorm" in the media. Because of her VIP status, she's the only girl who actually makes the $500-a-week salary that Hammil has told the press he pays the women; in fact, it's more like $200 for everyone else. "I had a $70 thing of nice, nice Estee Lauder makeup and it's gone," whines Alex. "Fifteen-buck thing of concealer and in two weeks — "
"Gone!" says Amber. "It's fucked up. Once, Hammil bought me this nice strapless dress from the mall, and Robyn's all telling the guys on chat, 'Amber sucked
her boss's dick for that dress.' That's just wrong." She looks angry. "Plus I did not do that."
"Yeah, if I was fucking and sucking I'd have a mansion in Clearwater," says Alex, selecting a tube top from her crammed closet. "Mercedes outside. Drinks by the pool."
Alex slips a top over her head and I realize that it still has a pricetag; in fact, a lot of stuff in her room does. "Some of the guys on chat are so cool — they send me stuff all the time," she says. Amber holds up a dogeared copy of Charles Bukowski's Run with the Hunters. The girls are allowed to accept gifts, but no cash. "This guy who's totally in love with me sent me a cordless phone 'cause he said he doesn't want me to get a crick in my neck," says Alex. "Lookit these two pairs of underwear this awesome guy sent me too." She shows me two nude-colored thongs. "They're CK. Damn! Nice, right?"
There's a lot of whooping from the living room as a guy in a black shirt and metallic gold tie spins Tamra around the room.
"Ugh. That's Tamra's boyfriend," says Alex, rolling her eyes. "He's a magician."
"Can't make himself disappear, unfortunately," says Amber, rolling hers too. "Total dork."
"Major. Major," agrees Alex.
Hammil bursts into Alex's room. "Ladies and gentlemen, we now have a dishwasher in our front yard!" he shouts. "We are now officially white trash."
Joeblow: Where are the three of you going? To have an orgy?
Rexx: are amber and alex and reporter girl going to blow the ugly guy with the shaved head
George: The reporter girl is making my dick hard in that black dress
At 6 p.m., Amber, Alex, Hammil and I leave for Donatella's, a stucco Italian restaurant on Tampa's main drag which serves twenty-dollar pastas but is located next to Circuit City. "God, I feel like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman," says Alex, unfolding a
peach-colored napkin. "Eating mussels and shit at a nice restaurant. I'm all, which fork is which?" All around us, middle-aged men in suits are having business dinners. So are we, but when we walked in they all looked up and stared.
"See, I'm a big fish in a small town here in Tampa," explains Hammil, sipping a glass of Perrier. A college dropout brought up in Falwell's Church of God, Hammil made his name in Tampa as sidekick to morning DJ Bubba the Love Sponge at "Power Pig 92.3," authoring such gag songs as "Just Another Redneck Monday" (Clean my gun day/Beating up my son day). The girls at the dorm have nicknamed him Dr. Evil, and while his head is shaved, his demeanor is pretty harmless. The only truly creepy thing I learned about Hammil was that all the girls' screen names are the names of his ex-girlfriends.
"You know, I preach to these girls hard," says Hammil. "I say, 'Listen, I worked hard my whole life — I cleaned toilets at McDonald's for four years, for chrissakes — and I will get paid from this. I deserve it. And you need to figure out what you're going to get from it.' It's a great opportunity for them to improve themselves, to work on their body and their minds."
"It's a good time to just concentrate on me," agrees Alex.
Hammil and a friend got together the $375,000 in start-up costs for Voyeur Dorm but had a hard time raising the $60,000 it took to keep it going each month. Last year, he sold 50 percent of the company to Internet Entertainment Group's Seth Warshawsky, the 25-year-old cybersex mogul responsible for distributing the Pamela Andersen-Tommy Lee video and nude images of Dr. Laura Schlessinger. The dorm's net hit $250,000 per month, and it's only going up. Press releases started rolling out of I.E.G.'s Manhattan offices; the dorm did Hard Copy, Inside Edition, Extra, Rivera Live and Jenny Jones. When the city of Tampa tried to close them down, claiming that Voyeur Dorm was an adult business in a residentially zoned neighborhood, they got on Court TV and made the local papers every week (the case has been appealed to state court). In August, the dorm was on Howard Stern twice.
"Howard made me bob for tampons in an aquarium with red dye in it," says Amber, picking at her pasta. "Milla tried to pee in a box with kitty litter but she couldn't."
"Howard was yelling at us on the phone that he'd hang up if we didn't," says Alex. "The whole thing was pretty degrading."
|
|
|
|
