Page 121 of Antihero

DeGrado fell into a massive Bond-villain swivel chair behind the desk, swung around, and propped his ridiculous lime-green sneakers on the desktop. A hot-pink neon sign behind him glowed #PROUDSLUT.

“Please,” he said. “Sit.”

The armchair opposite was significantly lower, so Evan had to look up at DeGrado. Mercifully the knee-length kilt had gathered to swathe his thighs.

DeGrado splayed his hands and then tented his fingers over his solar plexus. He looked like he was posing for the cover of a finance magazine from 1986. “Ask me anything,” he said grandly.

“Some people might be concerned that some of the content you run is illicit—”

“Look, we all have haters,” he cut in. “Everyone who accomplishes anything in life does. Guys like me and you, right? Tall poppy syndrome, they call it. It’s, like, an Australian term.”

He had sad-sack eyes, top and bottom pouches like slider buns, and when he spoke his hands flopped outward apologetically. This is just how it is, those hands said. How it’s always been. The eye tic, the try-hard jaw jut, the way his lazy tongue softened his “r”s, residual from a childhood speech impediment—it all spoke to a guy who’d spent his life scrambling as hard as he could to stay king of the shitheap.

“Of course there are complaints out there,” he went on. “But what we ask in here is: What’s our ‘why’? And it’s this: A judgment-free environment. Free choice, free speech, free sex, pro-women, pro-desire, pro-play, pro dignity of sex work, pro-safety, pro paying workers, pro giving people what they secretly want. And we do our best. We do our best. We verify all vendors who post, which helps us get around CSAM and IBSA laws—oh, sorry, Child Sexual Abuse Material, Image Based Sexual Abuse. So it’s on them. It’s on them if they post something illegal. We do our part but we’re like the post office. Someone wants to mail something illegal, it’s not like we can search inside every envelope, can we?”

“So some of your content is illegal?”

“I mean, we host two hundred terabytes of video. At peak hours we serve ten thousand pages per second. We’re talking billions and billions of views. You know how much a billion is, brother? That’s, like, everyone. Everyone’s watching. And the Christian right or feminazis or whoever can always claim that maybe one or two of them are blackmail tapes, nonconsensual, trafficking, underage, posted under fake user verifications, whatever. But this is the world we live in. And here in the real world? Good enough is great.”

“Well, I’m sure you have procedures in place for legit complaints,” Evan said.

“Of course we get file-takedown requests, people asking us to block IP addresses, all that. And of course we take every reasonable measure, dialogue internally, roll takedown requests through legal, comply with court orders.” A conspiratorial flicker came across DeGrado’s face, a bid for comradery. “But—off the record now—it’s not like we can investigate every time some holy roller files a complaint. There are so many fake requests. I’m sure you can imagine. Some activist gets a wild hair, boom-boom-boom, they just file a bunch. We can’t be expected to take down work product every time someone’s got bunched panties or we’d spend all our time and manpower investigating instead of, you know, doing our job. And we have mouths to feed, right?” A wink. “And to fill. I mean, we create so much revenue for people. Not just the subscriptions, but ad revenue, too, helping grow small businesses. Propecia, dildos, sports cars, power drinks, concert tickets, steaks, hair-growth pills, whatever. Our vendors get a piece of all that. We make them stakeholders. It’s very democratic.”

Evan thought of the money flowing into the VenSend accounts of Anca’s rapists, paid to them because they had raped her.

“Injustice” wasn’t a strong enough word. It was grotesque. Commercialized monstrosity.

“Plus?” DeGrado loved to talk. And Evan was happy to let him. “Confidentiality is huge for us. A lotta places haveta sink millions into cybersecurity protection against getting hacked, all that. But for us, the numero uno issue is the privacy of our clients. So we can’t just open up the kimono anytime someone claims to have a legal issue.”

“So you don’t think any of the claims are legit? Not one?”

DeGrado’s mouth twitched. He let his sneakers pull off the desk and tug him forward. Behind him, the pink neon #PROUDSLUT sign gave off a faint buzzing. “Not sure I like this line of questioning, brother.”

His hand wandered over to the phone on his desk and surreptitiously touched a button, though “surreptitiously” for DeGrado was anything but. “Like I said, Frankie’s getting here soon. I have some prep to do for the meeting. So: Thank you for your time. And again, let me know if you want me to get you some photos.”

“Pretty simple question, isn’t it?” Evan said. “Brother.”

DeGrado blinked a few times rapidly. “I don’t like your tone, man. I don’t like the tenor of this interview.”

“I thought you’re pro giving people what they secretly want. This is what I want. An answer.”

The door opened briskly and the security guard bulled through into the office, a weighty thunk reverberating as the room resealed itself. He stood awkwardly, arms crossed. He looked like he had a great affinity for squats. “Everything copacetic, Mr. DeGrado?”

Evan was pleased they were finally dispensing with first-name chumminess and the we’re-all-a-big-family charade.

DeGrado stood up, hands on hips, standing at the edge of the dais elevating his desk. Now that the guard was here, he was safe to strike an alpha pose, though it was undercut by the kilt and the floral blouse. “No, it’s not. Get this piece of shit outta here.”

From the brass-studded armchair, Evan looked calmly at the guard. “If you touch me, I will hurt you. Badly.”

The guard didn’t quite sneer, but his upper lip peeled back a bit. Evan was generally underestimated, perhaps his greatest advantage.

The guard unholstered the Taser. “C’mon, buddy, let’s not make a scene.”

Evan watched him grow tense, amp himself up.

Two thundering steps shuddered the carpet, and the guard grabbed for Evan’s shoulder, aiming with the Taser with the other hand.

Popping up from the chair, Evan took the wrist, twisted the arm, stripped the Taser, and neatly reversed the joint.