A photo of the author From Harvard to webcam girl Once, I was a shy nonprofit drone. Now, I make money reading Anais Nin in the buff -- among other things

Last autumn I sat in a midtown cubicle sorting receipts for my boss’s monthly expense report. I had recently earned my master’s degree from Harvard and had accepted a coveted yet thankless entry-level position at a well-known philanthropic organization in New York City. My parents were proud of me, and I was proud that they were proud of me. Convinced that I was doing the “right thing,” I spent a year botching Excel spreadsheets and crying in office bathroom stalls. This is the American middle-class 20-something’s dream, I told myself.

At best, I completed simple administrative tasks, such as printing paper and hoarding Post-its, with mild competence. I relished these peaceful moments, for the majority of the time I felt more like a 2-year-old filing estate taxes with crayons. At my annual employee review, my boss placed me on “Performance Probation,” citing at least five or six reasons why I could not be trusted with so much as a stapler. She added that in spite of my attempts to reach out, touch base and other mildly suggestive office essentials, my communication skills were “not improving.” Maybe I’m just dumb, I thought. Maybe I really can’t communicate with people. Maybe I shouldn’t communicate at all.

Tell that to Marina, I now think, staring at the unlikely reflection of a smoky-eyed 25-year-old woman in my lipstick-strewn bathroom. Marina, my online alter ego on a popular adult webcamming site, is the new and improved “me.” She dazzles men with discussions of Indo-European languages while seducing them with her perky derriere, bending over before the camera to reach for her pen, with which she scrawls on a memo pad: Dyno_Schlong. That username, one of over a hundred in her chat room, is simply t...