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There is a grotesque lucidity to having a fever. I remember lying on the bathroom floor, pressing my hot cheek to the cold

white tile and feeling like I could see every speck and crumb and hair in microscopic detail. I had Bodhi with me on the pink

bathmat, which was not terribly clean. He was whimpering, though not fully crying yet. I had nothing left in my stomach, but

that didn’t stop my body from trying to heave it up anyway. I felt if I could keep the hot red balloon of my forehead pressed

to the tile then it might pass. If only I could hold still a moment longer, I’d be able to stand. Bodhi turned his head to

look at me, and we stared into each other’s eyes. His were brown like mine and Jinx’s, but marvelously dark and liquid. He

opened his mouth and let out an absolute geyser of puke.

I yanked down a bath towel, crawled over, and wiped him off. He didn’t get too much on his jammies, but the bathmat was done

for. I rolled it into a burrito and pushed it into the corner. As I was holding him, he heaved again and puked down my shirt.

It smelled like sour milk, and I gagged. “Oh, baby,” I said, “I know, I know,” as I bounced him and tried to peel off my vomit-y

T-shirt at the same time. There was nothing for it but to strip us both naked and get in the shower.

That day was a blur. Almost as soon as I lay down, Bodhi puked again, soaking the sheets. I built us a nest of towels and

brought a mixing bowl in from the kitchen so I wouldn’t have to leave him every time I needed to puke. The main thing I was

thinking was that it would be dangerous for him to get dehydrated, so I nursed him again. We both had a fever. I cued up endless

episodes of Sesame Street on my laptop and propped it on a chair beside the bed. We watched with monk-like focus, our eyes hollow bowls of liquid suffering in which Cookie Monster’s tiny reflection danced. Every time I googled what I should do in this situation, I lost myself reading the descriptions of all the possible things it could be. There were no clear action items. Going to the store and buying fever reducer was so beyond my capabilities I actually started laughing. I texted Shyanne: Help! Bodhi and I have the stomach flu and I don’t know what to do.

She texted back: You’ll get through it!

Whenever I went to the bathroom or to the kitchen for water, I lingered, hoping to be discovered by Suzie or Jinx. I never

saw either one of them. Suzie might be at work or class, and I didn’t know if Jinx was out or shut up in his room.

When it started to get dark again and we were both still puking, I began to panic. How long could a baby throw up the contents

of his stomach without needing IV fluids? When would this ever end?

I called Dr. Azarian’s office around nine p.m., and there was a twenty-four-hour help line where you could leave a message

in an emergency. I left a mildly incoherent voicemail, then there was a knock on my door.

“You okay?” Jinx poked his head in the dim room.

“We’re sick,” I said. “And he keeps throwing up and—” My voice broke. I did not want to cry, so instead I kind of yelled.

“I’m scared.”

“Oh, poor baby, did you call his pediatrician?”

“Yeah, I left a message.”

“Have you taken his temperature? Wait, are both of you sick?”

I nodded. “I don’t have a thermometer,” I said, “because I am a fucking idiot. Do you have to put it up their butt? I don’t

want to put anything up his butt, I can’t! I can’t do it!”

“I’m gonna run to Rite Aid, I’ll be right back,” Jinx said.

He returned half an hour later with a thermometer that went in Bodhi’s ear, and cold Gatorade and Pedialyte that neither of

us was sure if Bodhi was allowed to drink, and fever reducer and saltines. I was so grateful it made me panicky. “I’ll pay

you back for all this stuff,” I said. “I’m so sorry you had to go to the store.” I realized as I was saying it that I was

about to throw up. “I need to puke, could you leave?”

“What? Give me the baby!”

I handed him Bodhi and hunched over the mixing bowl, heaving and heaving though nothing much came out. And that was when I felt it. Jinx’s large hand rubbing circles on my shoulder blades. I was still retching and couldn’t stop, and now I was also sobbing. I couldn’t believe he was seeing me do something so ugly and being so kind. Shyanne did not believe in getting sick, she saw it as a form of weakness, and she certainly didn’t want to be involved in someone else vomiting. When I stopped heaving, Jinx automatically took the bowl and left the room to dump my pitiful two tablespoons of bile and rinse it out.

He came back. “If I keep Bodhi, do you think you could sleep a little bit?”

“You can’t, he’s still puking,” I said. “He might puke on you.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve been puked on many times in my life, Margo, sometimes by adult men.”

I looked up at him. The room was dim and what little light there was came from behind him, so I couldn’t really see his face.

“You’re being too nice,” I said.

“Here, take these.” He handed me some Advils and a Gatorade. “Try to sleep. If I need you, I’ll wake you. I took his temp

and it’s not that bad, it’s only 101. I gave him some fever reducer.”

“It’s too nice,” I said. He had already slipped out of the room, though, Bodhi in his arms, and closed the door gently behind

him. I fell into a state that, if it was not sleep, was sleep adjacent.

At midnight I received a call from a cranky-pants Dr. Azarian.

“Just so you know, the stomach flu is not an emergency,” he said.

“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know.”

“How often is he puking?” he asked.

“About every hour or two,” I said. I felt sudden panic that Bodhi wasn’t in bed with me, then remembered he was with Jinx.

“How does he have anything left in his stomach?”

“Well, I’ve been nursing him, I didn’t want him to get dehydr—”

“Stop! Stop nursing him! Jesus Christ.”

“Oh,” I said, “like entirely?”

“When he hasn’t vomited for six hours, you can nurse him again. Or give him Pedialyte. Do you have access to Pedialyte?”

“Uh, yes,” I said, remembering that Jinx had bought some.

It was like when you got a test back in high school and went over the answers in class, and you could swear the textbook never said anything remotely like that. You were supposed to feed babies every two to three hours. I thought they died if you didn’t! It never would have occurred to me to take a baby in a weakened state and stop feeding it.

“If his fever goes as high as 104, go to the ER. Otherwise, just try to get through the night. You can come in tomorrow. You

don’t need an appointment, come to the office and I’ll squeeze you in.”

“Okay,” I said. I didn’t want to explain that I was also puking frequently enough that driving and visiting his office was

definitely not a thing I could imagine doing. I trundled out to the darkened living room on shaky legs. Jinx and Bodhi were

on the couch watching Sesame Street . My dad patted the couch beside him. I lay so my head rested on his thigh. “I can take him,” I said, not making any motion

to take Bodhi.

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway” was all Jinx said.

Together we watched Elmo’s haunting monologue. There were so many questions. Elmo was evidently a child, but where were his

parents? He had drawn a picture of himself with other larger monsters holding his hands, though whether these were living

or merely longed-for parents was unknown.

I snapped awake alone on the couch and went to find Bodhi asleep in his crib, Jinx on the floor right next to him, dead asleep,

his face mashed into the carpet. I looked at my phone. It was three a.m. I climbed into bed and moaned with gratitude. For

the first time in hours, I didn’t feel like I was about to throw up. We had slept. My eyes were hot and wet. “Thank you, thank

you, thank you,” I whispered to God or Jinx or maybe Dr. Azarian. I fell back asleep with the unusual feeling that we were

safe.

In the morning, I woke to see that Bodhi was already awake in his crib. He wasn’t fussing. He was contentedly playing with

his toes, trying to jam his feet into his mouth. Jinx was gone. The sun was coming in the window and splashing down onto us.

“Why, hello,” I said, and Bodhi squawked with delight and turned his head to look at me, smiling. I still couldn’t get over

those curly little smiles.

What I am trying to say is that I was not thinking about the WangMangler promotion. So when I did finally log in to OnlyFans on my laptop, I almost couldn’t interpret what I was seeing. I had 931 new fans. I accidentally shoved my laptop and knocked it off the bed. I’m lucky it didn’t break. Bodhi was in his Bumbo seat on the floor, slouched over like he had pudding instead of bones. I jumped up and down in front of him. He was getting pretty chonky, and he was still super bald. He had a sort of miniature Hitchcock vibe, and he was delighted that I was leaping around.

Overnight I had made $4,645.

“Wow,” Jinx said from the doorway, “you’re feeling better! What happened?”

I froze, crouching in a position of such obvious guilt that there was absolutely no way to explain it. I opened my mouth.

Every lie I thought of seemed absolutely insane. And I thought, Jesus, after this night where he has seen you at your worst

and been so kind and helped you so much, you’re going to lie? So I told him. I told him everything.

“Oh, Margo,” Jinx said. They were at the dining table now because when she first told him, he’d been so upset he walked out

of her room and slammed the door, and after ten minutes she’d followed him, trying to reason with him as he paced tight circles

in the living room. She’d then convinced him to drink tea with her at the table and talk about it more reasonably.

“I hate this,” Jinx said. “I hate it.”

“I know,” Margo said.

“You don’t want to get mixed up in that, in those kinds of girls. And it just—it will change the way guys think of you, and

not in a good way.”

“What are ‘those kinds of girls’?” Margo asked. At first, she’d been so purely alarmed at how upset Jinx was that she’d kept

apologizing. The longer this went on, though, the angrier she became.

“Girls who use sex to get what they want, you know...” Jinx said, trying to find a way of describing sluts without using

the word slut .

“Like my mom?”

“Not like your mother,” Jinx said.

“She was working at Hooters. Isn’t that how you met her?”

“I did meet her there. But there is an important difference. At Hooters they don’t take their clothes off.”

“So if Mom had been working at a strip club instead, you wouldn’t have been interested in her?”

“Not seriously. Not romantically.”

“Because other people have seen her naked?”

“Listen, it’s like buying a car. A used car is a better value, but you never really know what has been done to the car, you

know, whereas if you buy a new car—”

“I can’t believe you went with the car analogy,” Margo said.

“Obviously women are not cars,” he said, holding up his stupid gigantic hands.

“Well, then tell me: What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to take care of us?”

He didn’t say anything. Margo kept thinking about Murder. How was her father okay with a guy like that, a guy who murdered

people for money, who once famously punched a reporter and knocked out two of his teeth, yet he had this huge moral objection

to her posting pictures of her boobs on the internet?

“This is what I have,” she said, “this is how I can do it, and if it keeps us safe with a place to live and diapers and clothes

for Bodhi, then I don’t care.”

Bodhi started fussing, and Jinx automatically stood and held out his arms for him. The moment Bodhi was in Jinx’s arms, he

quieted. “It’s a hard situation,” Jinx admitted, as he bounced Bodhi gently back and forth.

“And I shouldn’t have had him,” Margo said, as though some rip cord had been pulled inside her. “I know that, okay? Everyone

told me it would ruin my life and it did. They were right, and I was stupid, and I didn’t get it. Okay? But now I’m here.”

“Yes,” Jinx said. “Now we’re here.”

They were quiet for a moment. Jinx rolled his neck back and forth, and Margo could hear a sound like gravel sliding in a box. That was not a sound a neck was supposed to make.

“What about the guy?” Jinx asked. “What does he think? About you doing the OnlyFans?”

“What guy?”

“Bodhi’s father,” Jinx said.

“I don’t see why Mark really gets a vote here,” Margo said.

“Mark,” Jinx echoed. Margo had never told him who Bodhi’s father was. He’d never asked directly. “Mark the mark.” Jinx smiled.

That’s what they called the fans in wrestling: “marks.” A hangover from wrestling’s carnival beginnings. “I’m guessing Mark

wouldn’t want his son being brought up in all that, and if it’s an issue of money, maybe he would—”

“He made me sign an NDA,” Margo said. “I’ve already been paid off, so there’s no squeezing more money out of him, if that’s

what you mean.”

“An NDA? Jesus, what is he, famous?”

“No, he was my teacher.”

“He was your teacher ?!” Jinx was so livid it looked like he was about to cut a promo. Margo had never seen him that mad in real life before.

“Yes. English 121. Fall of my freshman year. A tremendous educational experience.”

Jinx coughed, reached for his tea. Breathed in, then out. “Yeah, I don’t think that guy gets a say. But as your father, I

think I do get a say, Margo, and I don’t want you doing this. And that’s final.”

Margo could see that even he heard how ridiculous he sounded. “Oh yeah, as my father? You forbid it?”

“Margo,” Jinx said.

“Give me the baby,” Margo said, holding out her arms for Bodhi.

Reluctantly, Jinx handed Bodhi over, looking as weirdly hostile and sad as a renaissance painting.

The whole day sucked. It should have been a day of joyous celebration. Instead, Jinx stayed locked in his room, and Margo pretty much remained in hers. She had not been entirely aware of how many small moments in the day Jinx had begun taking Bodhi, freeing up her hands, and she missed his help sorely as she tried to load puke-soaked sheets into an industrial washing machine with a baby strapped to her front. The only real upside was that the anger gave her energy, and the sudden influx of new fans was unexpectedly thrilling. All day her phone buzzed in her pocket, money and dicks pouring in. She knew she was too haggard to make new content, but starting tomorrow she’d need to shoot better pictures and fast. She decided to broker a deal with Suzie. Clothes, and in particular costumes, seemed the easiest way out of the finite number of possible butt and boob configurations.

It was dusk. Bodhi was down for a nap in his crib in Margo’s room, and she brought the baby monitor with her when she knocked

on Suzie’s door.

“Margo!” Suzie cried from her bed. “Come cuddle me!” She held open the blanket, and Margo climbed in beside her.

“Oh, it’s warm under here,” Margo said.

“Are you and Jinx fighting?” Suzie asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

“I’m sorry,” Suzie said. “What was it about? Like, I mean, I heard some of it, but I still didn’t understand what triggered

it.”

“Okay, so you know how I lost my job? I started doing this website,” Margo said, and launched into a brief description of

OnlyFans and how it worked.

“Why would anyone pay that much, though?” Suzie asked. “I mean, it’s the internet, you can see naked girls for free.”

“Because, like, it’s more candid and intimate. It’s the difference between anonymous vagina and a specific girl’s vagina.

Like, a real girl who you feel like you get to know and who will message you back.”

“When I was little, I would masturbate to SpongeBob, ” Suzie said. The abruptness of this gave Margo a little zing. She always kind of liked that, when things suddenly went sideways

with another person.

“How little?” she asked.

“Like nine? I was precocious,” Suzie said. “My family was super religious, so I thought thinking about naked people was sinful, but if I masturbated to something everyone agreed was okay...”

“Like SpongeBob .” Although which character on SpongeBob could it possibly have been? Margo didn’t even want to ask. She was afraid it was Patrick. In fact, she felt it almost had

to be Patrick.

“Exactly. Biblical loophole. Tiny Suzie Sex Genius.”

Margo had never considered Suzie’s sex life before. While Suzie never seemed to have a boyfriend, there were always boys hanging

around, and Margo suddenly realized Suzie might be sleeping with them. Dressed as orcs.

“Anyway,” Margo said, “I was thinking that cosplay could help me with the taking pictures stuff because it gets dull real

quick. Like, how many pictures of your boobs can you take?”

“Oh, right,” Suzie said, nodding. “I mean, I guess that’s okay. As long as you don’t, like, masturbate in the garment. Or

if you do, you know, have it dry-cleaned.”

Margo nodded vigorously. “Yeah, no, that seems totally fair.”

“I can’t believe you’re a porn star,” Suzie said. “It’s kind of glamorous!”

“No, it’s not,” Margo said. “I feel weird about it. I wasn’t expecting Jinx to be so... violently anti.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“I don’t know,” Margo said. She was already thinking about how Jinx would move out and they’d have to find a different roommate.

“Do you think I’m a slut?” she asked. She had not meant to ask that; it just came out.

Suzie seemed to think about it. “I mean, are you sleeping with any of the guys on there?”

“No!”

“Then how could you be a slut?”

Margo pondered this. “I feel like there is a way in which, even if a girl isn’t having sex with anyone, like even if she’s

a virgin, if she shows her boobs or dresses for sexual attention, she’s still considered a slut. I mean, right?”

“I guess,” Suzie said. “But it seems weird to say a celibate person is a slut. Like, you’re just pretending words have meaning

at that point.”

They were both quiet for a moment.

“Oh my God,” Suzie said. She sat bolt upright.

“What?”

“It’s because you know . It’s because you’re in control of it! That is what makes someone slutty or not slutty!” The skin of Suzie’s lower lip was

bitten and peeling. “Think about it. If a girl doesn’t know she’s hot and is innocently going about her business, and some

guys spy on her naked, she’s not a slut. But if she knows guys want to see her naked and charges them money to spy on her,

she’s a slut. The same physical thing is happening in both scenarios, guys see her naked body, it’s just in the second one

she knows what’s going on and she’s in control.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Margo said. It was an interesting point. She’d had a similar thought before, which was that if sex wasn’t

shameful and being paid wasn’t shameful, then why was it shameful to have sex for money? Or sell pictures of your boobs or

whatever? Where was the shame coming from? How was it entering the system?

“I think it’s because you’re the one making money. How much money are you making anyway?” Suzie asked.

Margo hadn’t realized how badly she’d wanted Suzie to ask this.

“This month I’ve made over four grand.”

“Holy shit, then who cares if you’re a slut?”

“Right?”

“Hell yes, I mean you get to stay home with the baby, you’re safe, you’re not having contact with these people. Four grand

a month?! Fucking slut it up!”

Margo laughed. She was no more or less a slut than she’d been five minutes ago, but now she felt so much better, the relief

was almost indescribable.

“You have the power,” Suzie said.

“I guess,” Margo said.

“Don’t let Jinx treat you like shit. Kick him out! If he doesn’t like the way you make a living, he can leave.”

“Well, it would still be really nice if he paid rent,” Margo said.

“Sure. But money is power, Margo. And you’ve got it, baby.” She kissed Margo on the cheek and then pulled back. “You smell like puke, sweetie.”

Bodhi still seemed to be soundly asleep, so Margo took the baby monitor with her in the bathroom and ran a shower, thinking

about what Suzie had said. She took her time and, when she emerged, stayed in the bathroom, drying her hair, applying moisturizer

to her legs, all the little things she normally skipped because Bodhi was usually fussing in his Bumbo seat in there with

her. There was a knock on the door.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It’s me.” It was Jinx. “Can I say something really quick?”

“Uh, I mean, I’m still in a towel.”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said, and cracked open the door, letting in the cold outer air. He had Bodhi on his chest. She must

not have heard him wake up. “I was just thinking, you know, about the OnlyFans stuff. When I was wrestling in Japan—the mafia

is really engaged in the wrestling scene there, so all these Japanese mafia guys would be at the matches and sometimes take

us out afterward, and one night they took us to this sex club.”

Margo was nodding open-mouthed. The entire situation was so deeply weird.

“Anyway, I remember that night watching the sex show and thinking, That’s a helluva way to make a living. But then I thought,

you know, who am I to judge? How is it that different than what I was doing, wrestling? We’re both using our bodies to entertain

crowds of people. We’re both doing this real-fake thing. Honestly, even the risk of STDs is nothing compared to the risks

I was taking in the ring.”

“Uh-huh,” Margo said.

“And it’s— Wrestlers know that even with us, part of it is about sex. About seeing us half naked up there, and Rick Rude or whatever, sure, but even a guy like me, you know, you get thrown over a stanchion and they’re touching you all over, they’re grabbing you like...” He paused, struggling for how to describe it. “I just... I changed my mind, Margo. I want you to understand, especially if I am living here, that I know you are not a car. That I respect you and the fact that you are trying to raise this child on your own. Whether you post pictures of your body on the internet, it doesn’t matter. I just... really, I was feeling protective of you. People treat sex workers so badly and with such disdain, and I didn’t want that for you, but somehow that just resulted in me treating you with disdain for being a sex worker, and that’s not what I want to do or who I want to be. You’re my daughter. I will love you forever no matter what.”

Margo was stunned.

“Okay, that was it,” he said, and ducked out of the bathroom and closed the door.