Back in my grandparent’s living room, I’m pacing around in a panic. The woman from ChatRoulette begins a countdown. “29,” she types. “28.”

I call my friends. Everyone’s asleep.

“25. 24.”

I call home and wake up my dad.

“What were you doing in the video?” he says.

Up until this point I’ve never given him a reason to be disappointed in me.

“You know,” I say. “Playing with myself.”

There is an incredulous silence. I feel intense shame. I want to sink into the floor. Finally, my father speaks: “Give me a second to turn on the computer.” I stay on the phone with him as he scours the internet for a video of his son masturbating.

“20. 19.”

I decide to delete my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles. If this video of me goes viral, I don’t want to be around to face the music.

“16. 15.”

I delete my profile on the news site I write for. I consider whether I could be fired for this and conclude that it will be easier to get another job in journalism if there isn’t a video of me masturbating on YouTube.

“12. 11.”

I jump back on Skype and ask for instructions on how to wire the money. She says I need to go to a Western Union. I tell her that it’s one in the morning. “Don’t fuck with me,” she responds.

“10. 9.”

I perform a Google search of my name to see how easy I am to find. I never gave her my last name, but she could certainly identify me by my face if she somehow found me online.

“7. 6.”

I find a low-grade website that provides information to people who have been extorted on the internet in similar ways.

“5. 4.”

I read the entire website. My sense of shame recedes as I learn that I am far from the only person this has happened to. The website recommends that I call my blackmailer’s bluff. It’s not worth the trouble for them to actually post my video, the site explains. But if I give them money, they can bleed me for months.

“3. 2. 1.”

I have stopped responding to her messages. It occurs to me that the woman I saw on Skype is probably not the person who is messaging me. That video could have been ripped off any porn site as a way to coerce me into exposing myself.

When the countdown reaches zero, my blackmailer ends our conversation: “Fuck you.”

They log off.

I delete Skype immediately. Then I clear my entire browser history. I turn off my computer for good measure. I fade into an uncomfortable sleep at 4 a.m.

I’m woken up five hours later by a phone call from my editor. He asks why I deleted my profile. I have no answer for him other than, “I’ll fix it.”