Chapter 1
16 February
Dear Michael,
What have I done?
How can I tell you about it?
I have sold myself for Bitcoin. Please don’t laugh—or please, I hope you’re laughing. I don’t even know how I may explain this to you...
Casual chat with a strange man in public. Idle tongues do the devil’s work, you know. Somehow, some way I do not quite remember, Bitcoin got mentioned.
I may have leaned an odd way, so as to give him a glimpse down my shirt. If so, that was surely accidental. Also, with that little smile you know and love, I may have used the words, I’d do anything for Bitcoin. If so, I must have been joking.
In fine humour himself, he suggested a price. He pulled it off just right—you know what I mean—“Anything whatsoever? For, say, x BTC?” From most men, that would have come as stilted, cliché, and a bit creepy. He made it a dare, and so very amusing. Not to be a bad sport—what was I to do?—I coyly played along with some negotiations: “Well, almost anything for 2x BTC. Anything at all would be twice again the price.” “Okay, how about something for 1.5x? Meet me halfway, right in our middle, and make it something special.”
He was so witty. And—he had Bitcoin. I’d never even considered doing such a thing, letting a man touch me for money; though I’ve had some idle fantasies of anonymous sex as you well know. And—Bitcoin! Plus, witty—which I guess is the dangerous part, because I didn’t even realize how serious this all was until his tx to me already had two confirmations, and I was getting naked on a bed in a hotel room.
The best I can say of him is that he reminded me of you, which was much to his advantage. Or maybe he reminded me of Mephistopheles, just as you are my personal Faust. Devil’s details are such differences.
When he entered me, I felt I had passed a point of no return as irrevocable as the transaction he’d sent to buy me. The veil of humorous banter now pierced as I was, it occurred to me too late that I’d never be quite the same again; it changes a person, doing such a thing. Michael, I let a man fuck me for cold cash. What am I becoming? Whatever it is, I will tell only you, I don’t dislike it. I struggled with it for the moment of his first thrust, then surrendered myself utterly. Not to him, whoever the fuck he was, but to what I had accepted as my price, for I belonged to that now...
I imagined my body being fed through a one-way irreversible compression function, and coming out the other side to be forever signed and stamped with this deed on a global public ledger. I didn’t sell myself to a man, but gave myself over to Bitcoin; and Bitcoin now owns me, I could feel the evidence of that ownership thrusting deep inside me, where I’ve let no one but you for years... It felt to me as if a religious sacrifice, whereas I laid down my body upon the altar of Bitcoin as a thing to be transacted, transmuted, transubstantiated by the command of what is writ on the blockchain... And from there, I went wild! I once told you I have a Bitcoin fetish, and I was living it with no turning back. I reached out and pulled this man’s head down to mine and kissed him passionately, sucked his tongue into my mouth, felt him respond as he fucked me harder and I felt his cock swell up inside me as if it would burst... I wanted him in every part of me, I wanted his mark on me for what this represented, him as an executioner sent by the god of Bitcoin to sign and seal me as a sacred crypto-whore.
I came so hard I almost passed out, and so loudly I’m sure people a half-dozen rooms away must have heard me. He came inside me, and I felt filled as a final seal binding my flesh in service of this magnificent machine to which I have now given myself so totally. I went limp, feeling as if I were floating in another world, as if I could feel pseudorandom numbers flowing into me, through me, filling me with some perfectly uniform chaos which makes perfectly probabilistic order. I could hear him dressing, telling me I could stay awhile and leave when I wanted—bidding me good-bye. I thought irrelevantly to myself of how polite he had been through the whole transaction.
I never even asked his name, nor did he ask mine. What we did was literally anonymous.
After awhile, I got up. Dressed. Did not at all wash up; I wanted to keep the feel of this on me, in me. Unsuccessfully attempted to straighten up my hair; gave up and decided to be proud of walking out of a hotel looking so obviously fucked. Briefly considered stealing the hotel’s bedsheets. Walked out the door without looking back.
I came home, pulled up my node’s wallet on a nice big screen, opened coin control. There it is, the magic coin which owns me. I sat staring at the pertinent output point, mesmerized. My fingers found their way to my other node, then to my input point. I begged the coin’s command, my new master. I came again. Brought my fingers to my lips, and sucked them slowly, tasting the residuum of mixed fluids. Prayed to the coin, worshipped it, fervently wished to let a thousand men partake of my flesh for its greater glory. Then began writing to you...
You’re the only one who may understand; and you’re the only one whose reaction I fear. Let me be put up in headlines as a bitwhore, and I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of me. But you, I adore; and given the special nature of our relationship, I don’t know whether you’ll praise me or disown me, or both. I am excited to tell you; I am terrified to tell you. This letter was hard to begin, easy to write; is harder to end, hardest to send...
Will you deign to touch me, when next I see you? —Will I ever see you again? Will you kiss me again where you first kissed me?
I’m blushing now. You always liked to make me blush, difficult as it is to produce such an effect in me. I wish I could show you a video of me getting fucked by an anonymous stranger for BTC. ...and now, I can feel my cheeks burning bright red.
With arousal and trepidation all at once, I now slip this into our customary PGP envelope,
For to await your word,
/ Bitcoin’s now, but yours always /
