This Montreal Camgirl Gets Paid to Masturbate

In the early 2000s, Melody Kush was just a Canadian girl living in Montreal trying to get by working barely over minimum wage. Today she is an internet superstar living off the money she makes from masturbating in her bedroom.

Viewers on sites like Chaturbate and MyFreeCams purchase tokens (worth about five cents each) to tip models like Kush. The hundreds of camgirls broadcasting on these sites at any one time work towards goals of token amounts that get them naked and doing various sexual activities.

I meet Kush at her apartment on a day in late June, ironically St-Jean-Baptiste Day, a Quebec holiday. Since it's the beginning of summer when kids are back from school and people are vacationing, it's a "crunch-time" camming season when she has to hustle harder to make bank. But she does it. In fact, Kush says the most she's made in one sitting of getting herself off on webcam was around $2,200 in four hours—that's about $550 per hour, so you can start reconsidering your career now. She regularly makes at least $200 in the few hours of each day she cams, and she usually cams four days a week.

She takes me to the scene of the moneymaking: a small, whimsical room with a single bed covered in a polka-dot duvet with a blow-up unicorn head mounted on the wall (she calls him Sterling). She excitedly opens her "tickle chest," a box filled with at least 100 sex toys immaculately organized at the foot of the bed. Next to it stands a closet exploding with lingerie, brightly coloured clothing, and flashy accessories like a white, faux-fur animal hood with blue LEDs. Part of being a camgirl is being creative.

"There's my glowstick camshow. You crack a bunch of glowsticks, you put them in the bottom of the tub, you put like two-three inches of water… then I have two blacklights and you put them in there and then I have a glow-in-the-dark dildo and I also have some dildos that light up and you wear glow nail polish, glow-striped socks."

Clearly this girl isn't fucking around when it comes to the cam game. By this point, you might be wondering how she got here, the answer is simple—she had an experienced, business-minded mentor.

Ariel Rebel is essentially the mother of an industry family Kush belongs to: The Rebels. Rebel recruited Kush when she met her while working together at a skate clothing shop in Montreal. They started doing cam shows together and eventually Kush sustained enough interest to go out on her own. "Mama Rebel," as Kush calls her, wanted to create a safe environment with the group where industry models could support each other. Ten years later, they have five solid members including themselves and Gemma Lynx (from Ontario), Minnie Scarlet, and Alaina Fox (both from California). They're all in the process of launching their own solo sites as Rebels, but Kush has had her own erotic blog since her debut on the internet in 2007, Breakfast at Melody's. Today she's moved her blog over to Rebel Mayhem.

Of course these girls are hot, that goes without question. But Kush's personality is the main reason for her success.

"Camming is really like having your own TV show," she says. "If you're a pretty face and you talk like a cardboard box, you're not going to do well."

She's constantly smiling, giggling, and putting the most positive spins on every word she utters, on and off cam. Even if she's having a bad day, she has a moderator in her chatroom to let her know "Hey, stop being a bitch"—her fiancé. He's always there to watch over and encourage her, as well as silence any assholes in the chat log.

"I think showing people how special our bond is and sharing her camming moments creates a special mood in her room and really shows people our love. It seems to attract all the right people," her fiancé says. "The fact that she's naked is an absolute bonus, I mean who doesn't want to see their lover naked and enjoying themselves."

They're not shy about their relationship online. Even though some have said it "ruins the fantasy," a vast majority of her fans were happy for her when she announced last year that she'd be getting married. They even are helping fund her big day—her best day economically on cam was a fundraiser for her wedding. But that doesn't mean that her career hasn't affected her relationship.

"Having to put so much sexual energy into my work doesn't leave a whole lot of room for the sexual energy I want to have towards my relationship," she says. "I'm fulfilling a lot of other people's sexual fantasies before my own and that can be an obstacle." And while her fiancé has been her biggest support system, some other important people in her life are in the dark when it comes to her cam career.

"The fact that what could be weighing right now is the need to tell my family," she says out of nowhere to me. While her brother knows, neither of her parents do—she says she wants to be more established before she drops that bomb. She's hoping she gets to that point with the launch of her solo site in the next year, but she already has a huge number of fans.

She has over 91,000 followers on her Chaturbate. Watching is free, but in order to make requests or contribute to a goal, tokens must be purchased and given to her. She regularly has over 1,000 people watching her at a time—one of her fans even joked with her, "How does it feel to have an entire small hockey arena watching you masturbate?" They're from all over the world, but there's an especially high volume of Dutch and French fans since she cams in the afternoon when it's evening in Europe.

"If people are talking to me in French for two sentences, I can tell immediately if they're from Quebec or if they're from France," Kush says.

Kush is extremely Canadian through and through—she was born in Vancouver, went to high school in Ottawa, and moved to Montreal at 18. She's 30 years old, of Acadian decent, and speaks both French and English fluently. And she's a huge Ottawa Senators fan.

Besides watching hockey, she has a bit of an off-kilter hobby that goes right along with her skill of hustling. She's really into bar games, specifically poker. She enters online tournaments and regularly places. Her fans have even helped fund a few trips to her "mecca"—Las Vegas, where she did a cam show where she "stuck a dildo to the window and basically fucked [the city]."

Just like Kush, Montreal is sexy and that's no secret. Even though this girl has to work from her apartment most of the time, she's no homebody.

"It is such a sexually liberated city—I can be open about what I do for a living to new people that I meet without worry of being judged," Kush explains. "Having this city at my disposal when I do get out of the house is really important."

She's really into electronic music, so if she needs to schedule around going out to party, it's no issue. Oh, and it's no coincidence her name is Kush: she stays high, lighting up every day on her morning walk to go get coffee.

"I grab a coffee, I go down to the water, I smoke my doobie, I shower, I get ready for cam, I answer my emails, whatever," Kush says.

Camming is not the only time she's working—she's constantly coming up with contests and themes for her shows, while planning out her full schedule. Even though she's killing it right now, she knows that her career as a camgirl is not forever. She has a serious interest in being on the other side of the camera photographing models in the future, but for now she is happy being one of the sweetest internet hustlers out there.

@allison_elkin