Three days after he died, I was standing on my back stoop at 10:00pm with two of my oldest friends. It would be the first night I would sleep alone in my little house, just me and the kids. Friends had been sleeping on the couch since the news, no one felt ready to leave me on my own. They were debating who was going to stay and I was insisting I was fine alone. Silently, I came to the realization I’d never actually been alone. That would be my first time, the only adult.
My phone had been buzzing all afternoon as more and more people learned what happened, offering condolences and making plans to visit, bring food, and do all of the things the beautiful people do when something horrible happens. More people had been texting, and it seemed like it was suddenly everyone at once. I mentioned it to my friends.
“Yeah, Marvel posted it on Facebook. We didn’t know if we should tell you,”
I looked at them sternly. “Never discuss with each other whether or not to tell me something. Fucking tell me. I can take it. Whatever it is, I have you two to help me handle it.”
Marvel, the one and only, thank god she broke the news to our wider circle. She is a widow herself. I was initially annoyed, but then instantly glad she put it on social media for I had to. I didn’t want to be the one breaking the news. It made sense why my phone wouldn’t stop buzzing. Marvel was from the record store days, she knew everybody. I felt weird.
“Should I post? Am I supposed to post? What do I even say?”
“I don’t know. I guess do it if you want to?”
“Do what you feel, there’s no right answer.”
That night, I texted other friends “am I supposed to put something on Instagram? That feels…weird.”
Everyone agreed there was no right answer, and they didn’t know. As it got close to a week after it happened, I put a selfie of us up on Instagram with a heart as a caption. I didn’t know what else to say.
After some thought, I posted on Twitter too. I had a small following, and I wanted people to know that I would be offline for awhile. I considered whether it was cringe to post about your dead husband on social media. But how else do Millennials tell each other things?
I put up a picture of us and a post that said he’d died by suicide, and “if you’re struggling, please don’t do this, please seek help.” Then I closed my phone and didn’t think about it for days. I had been active on Onlyfans in the weeks prior. I had moved out, and was staying at AirBnbs trying to juggle finding a house and moving the kids and dogs, while also dropping them off school and doing my best to pretend everything was normal. It felt my life was crumbling before my eyes.
When I came back to social media days later, I was shocked. My post, juxtaposed with my recent onlyfans activity, had been shared and reshared as “Woman Fakes Husband’s Death to Sell Nudes.” Reddit got ahold of it and I made it to the front page of r/trashy the same day his remains were transferred from the medical examiner to the funeral home.
It's such a strange experience, watching yourself go viral in the wake of your husband’s suicide. Feeling confused and unable to stop the tide of hate directed toward me that followed. I couldn’t look at my phone. I didn’t know who to talk to. I didn’t know how to make it stop. None of my friends knew about my online presence. I spent a lot of time on the floor as people came and went and walked the dog and brought me water and flowers. At night I would lay in bed, blocking people and deleting the messages I could. A horrible little man named Adam wrote an article about me on knowyourmeme.com. Look ma! I’m famous. What time are you coming for the funeral?
The internet attention meant that peers and acquaintances started to recognize me. I watched with bleary eyes as former record store customers started to comment on reddit.
“These are the record store people.”
“Ew, I knew these people, this is disgusting.”
“They have kids.”
I watched as the people online picked apart my parenting, wondering how exactly selling pictures of my butt to strangers interfered with my ability to love and protect my children.
Once they got our names and linked to his obituary, the narrative morphed into “Slut Profits off Husband’s Suicide” and the ghastly “He killed himself because of you” messages rolled into my DMs, my email, my texts. I would lay in bed and read the death and rape threats and claims from strangers that I was the reason he was dead, because I was a slut. I should be ashamed of myself. I caused his death because he found out I was naked on the internet. It was my fault he died, he literally killed himself because of me. I would fall asleep on the phone with a man I knew only as daddy. His calm breathing and “shhhh, everything is ok” in my ear the only thing that would make the shaking subside.
“He killed the wrong person” was a popularly repeated sentiment, along with “women can’t be trusted” and “have you no remorse?” At the same time, I rocketed to the top 1% on OnlyFans and made more in one month there than I’d previously ever seen. The haters love to hate, but they also love seeing you with your pants down.
At first, I attempted to reason with them, thinking if I could just convince everyone that he loved my nudes and always wanted to fuck me on livestream, they would understand it was not my fault he died. I tried to explain that he was the reason I sold content in the first place.
-
I cheated on him 7 years into our marriage. It was when we owned the record store and the kids were 2 and 3. I didn’t actually have sex with anyone, but he never believed me. It was some secretive hardcore texting and petting and making out, and it caused a massive rift in my marriage that I sometimes (often) wonder if it wouldn’t have been better if we had ended it then. After 6 weeks of sleeping in the basement and leaving me handwritten letters and making me mix CDs about what a horrible cheater I was – there’s a lot of songs to choose from – he decided to forgive me, so long as we open our marriage.
I had been the more sexually experienced when we met, though I was 4 years younger. He had always been jealous of the exploits I had gotten up to, specifically the threesomes I’d had after high school and during college. Though they were nothing I was particularly proud of, dark and drunk escapades with friends that turned into lovers that became people I don’t speak to anymore, the only thing I learned during those drunk escapades was that I am very straight and I have a drinking problem.
As a condition of staying married to me despite my cheatin’ ways, I had to agree to have a threesome with him. I was desperate to do anything to get him to stay, I was terrified he would leave me, deeply codependent and actively drinking. We were parenting toddlers, living in poverty and owned and ran a business together. I was desperate to keep him and eagerly agreed to do whatever he wanted. We used OkCupid and Craigslist to chat with potential unicorns.
We got lucky and met an absolute bombshell named Shawn. We went on an adorable date with her and all agreed we liked each other enough to get naked together. We had sex, and then started dating. She was beautiful and kind and warm and loved taking me on fun and cute dates. Dave would stay home and she would take me out, and we’d hook up together after.
She was so sweet to me, and I loved being near her but after the second time I realized it wasn’t about enjoying ourselves together but about punishing me, making me watch while he fucked someone else. He blamed me when I didn’t enjoy it. After a month of hookups, I asked them to please have sex without me. If they insisted I participate, I would drink too much and fall asleep next to them as they would bang. I encouraged them to see each other, and consistently either passed out or made excuses.
She wasn’t interested in dating only him, and after a few months she moved away.
He wanted to find a new girlfriend together, but I did not want to. I told him I would prefer he pursue having sex with other women without me. He did, eagerly, and from then on had side pieces on and off for the last 13 years of our marriage. I met his last girlfriend at his funeral.
At first it was exciting, thinking about who I could date, but reality hit and I realized I didn’t want to ask out any of my friends. It felt weird, having been married so long. It felt gross and sketchy to message men in my friend circle or try to meet men in bars and ask if they wanted to smash. I didn’t have any confidence and I hated my body. I was ashamed of myself and thought I was disgusting and ugly and overweight. I told him I didn’t want to but that he could keep seeing the women from Craigslist. It was easier that way.
He suggested camming as a way for me to experiment with having boyfriends outside of our marriage that didn’t actually involve dating and might make a little bit of money too. Bonus, I didn’t have to get naked, I could stay covered because of my mombod! While I wasn’t sure exactly what camming was, I agreed to try it.
He was ecstatic. From the time of my first pregnancy, he would no longer have sex with me naked, so I had a collection of lingerie which he gifted me at every opportunity. Most of it was shein bodysuits, uncomfortable and ill fitting, but he would insist that I “get dressed up for him” if I wanted any attention or intimacy. I hated wearing it, and for my online persona I insisted instead on a booty shorts, knee socks and band tees aesthetic instead.
I joined myfreecams and chaturbate as Molly Bloom, the girl from the record store. He directed the pics and chose my outfits and what I would do onscreen. I had no confidence and was miserable. I didn’t feel real. It didn’t feel genuine. He took racy pictures for me with makeup on and false eyelashes, very PG13, and I would run a weekly live stream show where I would kneel in front of my record shelves and play albums on a portable turntable. Tips from my viewers activated my vibrator and brought me to orgasm. He would watch my streams from the record store, sending me tips, getting off to his “favorite TV show.” If I ever tried to be online when he wasn’t available to watch, he would be furious. When I went through his laptop last summer, I found screenshots from those camshows. He was my biggest fan.
One thing people do on chaturbate is have sex live, and he very much wanted to try it. Any time we had posted pics of us together (not his face, of course. Just dick) we would get tons of comments saying how huge he was and how lucky he was, and he loved the attention. He wanted to fuck me while people watched, and while I was turned on by the idea, I hated it the one time we tried. I was super self-conscious about my post-baby body, and his insistence that I constantly be covered made me feel deeply uncomfortable on camera.
After the first time, I didn’t want to do it anymore, and fairly soon after that my sister found my content and I shut all of my accounts down.
The following summer, a man reached out to me on Snapchat. He had been a follower of my camshows and recognized me from the store as an infrequent customer. His name was Chris. He was quiet and kind. Respectful. His initial message was to say if we were ever looking for a third, he was very interested. Dave was eager but I didn’t want more group sex. I got him to agree to let me date him on my own to see how it went. I left it open to having more threesomes, but knew already that wasn’t going to happen. Sex with multiple people never goes as planned.
On the night of the date, I was anxious. I came downstairs after spending a long time getting ready and as he said goodbye to me, he kissed me and then looked me up and down and asked “is that what you’re wearing?”
It shredded my confidence. I had been nervous already and wasn’t sure this date was a good idea, but in that moment, he destroyed me. Tears came to my eyes. He backpedaled.
“I just thought the idea was to go out and be sexy, you look like you’re going to the grocery store.”
I was angry and hurt, I left and didn’t change my clothes. By the time I was in the car, he had texted me to apologize and tell me he had just been joking.
Miserable, I went on the date. We had a drink that went very well, we talked for hours. He was charming and funny and interesting.
After, we went back to his place. I texted Dave a picture of our legs together, on his bed. He texted back telling me he hoped I was going to have sex.
I wasn’t sure what to do. While I honestly would have eagerly jumped on this man if I didn’t have to tell my husband about it, something about this felt icky.
We made out, and the making out eventually led to sex. I felt mostly awkward and didn’t cum. He told me he couldn’t finish with me looking at him and asked me to get on my knees facing away while he jerked off onto my ass. I left, not knowing if I’d see him again.
When I got home, Dave was drunk. Really drunk. Scary drunk. He wanted to know everything about the date. He wanted to hear about the sex, every detail. I wanted to shower, but he pushed me into our dark bedroom and had his dick in me before I had a chance to protest. He fucked me while he told me what a slut I was, what a good girl I was, what a perfect wife I was, the words juxtaposed with his hand around my neck, and slaps falling across my ass and face. I tried to lay still and count, my method for disassociating from the sex I wished I wasn’t having.
I never thought of it as rape. I didn’t ever tell him no.
I laid as still as I could and counted with my eyes closed, waiting for him to finish. He passed out after he came in me, and I was able to push him off me and finally shower. I never saw Chris again.
-
3 months after he died, I finally got the reddit post taken down. It wasn’t hard, I emailed the mods and they removed it. I wondered why I hadn’t done it sooner. The knowyourmeme article took a little longer, but it got removed too.
I still get reshared on meme pages every now and again, so when something I’ve tweeted blows up and gets reposted, it makes my hands shake to see I have a lot of Twitter notifications. I get DMs of all sorts, and randomly there will be one that just says “You should be dead, whore.” and I’m reminded of the cruelty of those who can hide behind anonymity.
As I’ve felt more comfortable sharing my story here, I’ve felt less and less like I have to defend myself online. I let people say the mean things they want to say. I let people’s opinions of me affect me less and less.
I love you.
This entire post makes me want to give you a hug and tell you you're amazing and fucking lose my shit on the keyboard warriors out there on your behalf. I hope you're finding your body confidence again without him around to shit on you because of his own insecurities. FUCK.