Stroke My Cast

Crowning the 41 messages crowding my YouTube inbox this morning is a note with the subject: “You Are My favorite Cast Fetish Porn Star!”

The letter mimics dozens I’ve received from my flood of recent subscribers who compliment my beauty and wit before asking me to stroke my leg cast/wiggle my toes/put a sock on it/crutch around/paint my toes/change my cast for them in my next video.

I don’t think anyone anticipates their fan base to be overrun by the international recreational orthopedics community. But in today’s digital world, “a view is a view,” even if it’s a German cast fetishist jerking off to a vlog about me breaking my foot. And if anyone in Hollywood can capitalize on attention from subversive anonymous masturbating fetishists, I’d rather it be me than Whitney Cummings, so I’ll take what I can get.

By the by, my parents couldn’t be fucking prouder.

My path to becoming a “superstar” in the Rec-Ortho fetish world is par for the course in my life. Earlier this year, after having a semi-breakdown scrolling through my baby-engagement-wedding-filled Facebook feeds, I decided to celebrate that I am a single freelancer years out from intentionally getting knocked up. I created “30 Before 30,” in which I’d spend the last six months of my 20s doing 30 things I’d never done before, blogging and vlogging about them along the way.

Things were going swimmingly—I moved to a new city, trained for a marathon, invented a sport—until the twist of fate probably anyone else could’ve seen coming. Ten minutes into “Going to Burning Man,” I tripped on a camping wire. I was sober and innocently looking for the Info Tent, but my 90-pound backpack made what would have just been a klutzy fall into three broken metatarsals. I couldn’t walk, run, or drive—let alone jump out of an art car on the playa after a peyote-induced orgy (it definitely would’ve happened)—for the next two and a half months.

At 4 AM, when I learned the news, I sobbed hysterically on a cot in a mostly empty, eerily illuminated makeshift medical tent, every surface of which was covered with a fine sifting of alkaline playa dust. A sympathetic nurse drew “The Man” on my splinted, freshly broken foot, which was elevated, MacGyver style, on stacks of diapers, while my doctor gave me tough love, calling me a “closed-minded, stubborn fucking bitch,” and correctly predicting a high presence of Taurus, Sagittarius, and Capricorn in my chart.

“You need to allow, to receive. You’re trying so hard to get some kind of a ‘big break.’ Well, here’s your fucking ‘big break.’ Now chill the fuck out and let life come to you,” she said. Angel-Doctor, as we’ll call her, then launched into psychic life-coach mode, telling me that I was meant to have this experience, that she foresaw that it would somehow launch my career and reboot my life because being forced to “chill the fuck out” would make me get out of my own way.

When the sun rose over the playa, I braved the day and the Port-a-Potties with my knee-high splint and mismatched crutches, lamenting the death of my first marathon, 80 percent of my to-do list, and my new inability to drive my car—which had conveniently broken down along the way—back to Los Angeles, where people drive… like fucking everywhere. Plus any fantasy I had of getting laid at Burning Man, let alone for an entire season, was destroyed. Who the hell was gonna find me sexy now?

Well, as it turned out, a lot of people.

A couple weeks later, bored shitless from recovering at my parents’ house, I shot a new video for “30 Before 30.” Being an optimist, I crossed off “Running a Marathon,” switching it to “Breaking My Foot.” I was high as a kite on codeine and shot what was maybe one of the least funny routines of my life. I elevated my swollen foot on the couch while I taped and slapped together some mediocre footage. I threw the piece of crap online, not expecting more than 100 views. But the next morning, the YouTube statistics showed it had passed not only 100 hits, but 300.

Really?

My first fan letter was what tipped me off. A guy emailed me throughout the day, sweetly complimenting me on not only my humor, but my toes… and my splint. He begged to know when the new cast would be on, when my new videos would be out. When I asked him why, he told me that a “big community” was excited about me, and asked me to tag the video “leg cast.” I did. By the next morning, the video had cracked 1,000 hits. Then 4,000.

Thanks to the Recreational Orthotics world, the members of which fetishize chicks in casts, my Twitter followers and Facebook fans kicked up, with profile pictures of long leg casts (LLC), double long leg casts (DLLC), and plenty of casted feet and toes. Messages poured in from Brazil, Germany, and Hungary. Apparently, my video was being posted on private fetish message boards across the world, and I was a saucy welcome change to the usual, boring “girl crutching” clips.

I freaked out for about an hour until I decided to embrace my newfound stardom. My reasoning was simple.

1. Isn’t the whole point of putting your work on the Internet so people can see it? When it comes to objectification, is there really any difference between posing for Maxim and posting for a Rec-Ortho message board?

2. As an open-minded person (fuck off, Angel-Doctor), I believe “to each his own.” In a post-modern, media-soaked world, people have freedom to explore what makes them happy, and—unless a person is dangerous or into kids—who am I to judge someone’s bliss? I mean, I once legitimately had a crush on a Muppet.

3. Everyone starts somewhere.

This was the jumping off point for my next video, “Getting A Leg Cast Fetish Fan Club.” I covered up everything except my new black “short leg cast with toe plate” (SLCW) and did a montage of me playfully posing with my orthotics, set to Hot Chocolate. It currently has 8,700 hits, and my latest video about Burning Man is at more than 2,200.

And the attention continues to grow. I have over 15,000 combined hits on the three videos. I’ve been asked out, praised, and invited to make exclusive content for fetish sites. Men have written candidly to me about my open attitude toward a fetish they were once so ashamed of, ensuring me that, except for the more stalker-driven enthusiasts into amputees, Rec-Orthos are a sweet bunch who are just more turned on than most guys at the sight of me at the podiatrist.

And as I set up my camera today for my newest video, the last with this SLCW, I wonder what will happen to my fan base once I’m back to normal. But I guess I’ll just take it one step at a time.

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