Let's Not Meet Again

My Roommate's Client

So this story is the culmination of months' worth of terror and stress, but I can't keep a clear conscious and continue with inaction. I'm at the end of my rope here.

It all started at the beginning of the semester. I'm a freshman double-majoring in two foreign languages, and my roommate Amanda is a psychology major. Everything was going great for about two weeks, until Amanda told me that she had a friend who worked as a camgirl and wanted her to start camming as a means of extra income. Now, I didn't have a problem with this inherently as it was none of my business and I don't have a problem with people's sexualities, and she even promised to buy me nice things once she made it big.

However, when she started doing shows, the legalities said that she couldn't do a show with another person in the room unless they were employed with the site as well. This made sense, they didn't want anyone under 18 doing sexual shit for their customers. However, this started to take its toll after I would be in my hall's lounge until 2:00 in the morning every night. My grades started to drop, and I started to get extremely sick.

About this time, Amanda started sleeping with one of her customers, Michael, who lived in our town but didn't go to our school. Michael would push her boundaries and forced her to call him "Daddy" even in casual conversation. So in addition to doing shows late into the morning, she would have Michael over for a few hours on top of that. Sometimes he would even show up unannounced, though thankfully I was never in the room at those times. It escalated one night when he asked Amanda why he never saw me in our room, and he demanded that we have a threesome whether I wanted to or not.

Now, I don't know why, but something compelled Amanda to run down to the lounge/study area and loudly announce this to me in front of all my friends. When I was outraged (rather understandably I would say) she flipped and stormed off telling me that I'm being ridiculous and making too big a deal out of this. Needless to say, the little time I spent in the room completely ended, and I spent about a week living with a friend off-campus. This also proved to be awful, as my walking distance to class everyday tripled.

It got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore, and filed a health and safety check on Amanda. I knew for certain that she had gone off her medication, and was about 80% certain that there was weed in our room somewhere. It wasn't my proudest moment, but I sincerely hoped that she may be expelled, and I could sleep in peace knowing she would hopefully get the help she needed. On top of playing Brutus here, a mutual friend and I held an intervention for her, saying that as a survivor of sexual assault some years prior, I could not remain in our situation and preserve my physical and mental health. I thought we actually got through to her. We hugged, we cried, she went back on her meds and said that after the next pay-day, she'd quit. She even broke up with Michael.

And for a few weeks more, things were good.

That was, until, I was sitting in the lounge as usual, when she burst downstairs begging me to do research on a law firm in New York. She filled me in on the drama that core of this problem revolves around. Essentially, she did a private show for a guy as usual, making around $350. Almost immediately after she finished, she received a message from a guy with the same name saying that he would be pressing charges against her for fraud. This guy all of a sudden dropped all of her personal information to her, including her full birth name, home address, personal email, and where we go to school. He claimed that his lawyers got the site to flip and turn it over so he could press charges. So after my research, I told her to call his bluff and ask for his lawyers' bar numbers, even though I had already googled them and found an upscale criminal defense firm in New York City. They were able to work through it and deduced that someone had taken his name and went through with the show that he paid for. He said his name was Calvin, that he was a poorly adapted trust fund kid our age who didn't really care about losing $350 as much as he did being played.

The whole thing seemed ultra sketch to me.

But progressively, they started talking more, until she came down one night to tell me that she's going to visit him in Virginia in December because he's pressing charges against the guy pretending to be him and he needs her to testify. I told her that this was fucking nuts, as this is how human trafficking happens. I told her to wait until she is served with physical papers summoning her to court, and not just Calvin saying that he'll subpoena her soon so she may as well come anyway.

As of me writing this, she still intends to go to Virginia, alone, to stay with him.

As if it couldn't get any worse, one day I came back to my room to grab my laptop, cigarettes, and study materials to find them on a Skype call together. Amanda was smiling, it was a bizarre experience to say the least. She noted that it was me, her roommate, finally coming home. He introduced himself by first name, and I left mine at "Amanda's roommate." He told me that my voice was sexy and I should come with her to his place in December, and I told him my boyfriend would hate the idea. What stays with me, though, is when he said "You clever girl, asking for my lawyers' bar numbers" in a voice befitting some 80s slasher villain.

Calvin told her to go check our mailbox because the new phone he bought her would be arriving any day. She asked me if it's okay if she leaves Skype open, and I wish I could tell you that I said "No, of course not, why the fuck would you ask me that?" but I didn't. I said it was fine, and stayed out of the line of sight of her webcam.

Calvin and I had a long, awkward conversation where I tried to learn as much as I could about him without revealing much about myself. Here's what I got: He's English, with a London accent. His parents are insanely rich and he never had much of a social life. I learned his major, his minor, what school he goes to and why he goes there. But the entire time, his webcam was off and his Skype icon was still set to the default.

Now, she may have put me through the emotional ringer to say the least, but I couldn't live with myself knowing that I let something horrible happen to her. Last night, she came down to the lounge to tell me that Calvin had bought her a brand new Macbook Pro, and that I should send him my Amazon Wishlist so he can buy me anything I want. Because he likes me. Because he wants me to start camming for him. And he knows my name.

I didn't sleep last night. I did research on everything I could. I looked up the history of his family (they have their own Wikipedia page) and did searches for him on Facebook and LinkedIn. I found a Facebook page with his name and a cover photo of his school's crest, but the return image search of the profile picture yielded (of all things) a Russian metal performer. It also said he was in a relationship, (sorry Amanda.) Yet in spite of this, I don't have any proof that he is who he says he is. Hell, he could be some forty year old with a high voice and a knack for accents.

I'm at a loss for action. My RA said that the only thing the university could do for me is put me in a safe room across campus, and Amanda won't listen to me. If you PM me, I could give you more information on Calvin and his family, in the hopes that maybe someone can legitimize this guy. Any advice would help at this point.

But at any rate, Calvin, let's not ever meet.