What it’s really like to be one of the biggest OnlyFans creators in the world

Blue Eyed Kayla Jade’s memoir ‘Call Girl Confidential’ will challenge the way you think about sex.

Laura Roscioli is a sex writer based in Melbourne. Her column on Fashion Journal is here to make sex (and the conversations around it) more accessible and open-minded. She believes that the best learnings come from lived experience, and she’s here to share hers — and other people’s — with you. You can follow Laura on Instagram at @lauraroscioli.

When I read Call Girl Confidential, OnlyFans creator Blue Eyed Kayla Jade’s debut memoir, I was wet.

I know what you’re thinking… but no, it wasn’t that kind of wet. I was literally wet. I was sitting in a creek, my back in the sun, sipping a dry white wine on a hot day while reading about a woman inserting alien eggs into herself for money.

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I’ve been a fan of Kayla Jade’s content for years. Her easy-going, girl-next-door GRWM videos typically involve her discussing various escorting jobs, clients and the things she’s been asked to do. Her approach is extremely laid back, which highly contrasts with the things she’s talking about: men cheating on their wives-to-be, being nervous but excited to have sex with a female client and what a start-to-finish booking looks like.

That same tone comes across in her book. The opening scene, for example, is her straddling a literal saddle while a client in a loincloth growls at her and “a machine that fucks” kicks into gear underneath, all while she’s struggling to stay in character. “I’m always getting distracted,” she writes.

The further I got into the book, the more I learned about what it’s actually like to become one of the most famous OnlyFans creators in the world, and the more her laid-back tone stood out. It felt more stark than just a part of her classic New Zealand relaxed persona. Was it something… strategic? Protective? Performative? Provocative? I couldn’t quite place it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

I think it’s amazing that female creators have platforms like OnlyFans where they can create and own their own sexual content, determine their rates, their narrative and their look. Mainstream porn companies have been driving that narrative and autonomy for far too long.

But there’s this other side to OnlyFans that Kayla writes about. This side of competitiveness. Of constantly needing to go bigger. More stunts, more scripts from fans, weirder and weirder shit that starts to feel more gamified than it does sexy. It’s a world where livestreams are set up like a Star Casino. It’s a full-on strategy — collabing with certain creators with bigger followings, playing tipping games and building moments for money.

She recounts this one game that she set up with fellow creator Honey Brooks, that’s basically spin the bottle with a balloon.“You write down sex acts on little slips of pink paper, roll up the paper and then push them into balloons, ready to pop them whenever someone tips enough,” Kayla explains. She describes it as a way to “keep the dopamine dripping, baby.”

“If there are prizes involved, the viewer turns into a gambler, hell-bent on winning.”

This gave me an insight into OnlyFans that felt new to me. I’ve been aware of it as a platform for selling naked photos and videos, where you can sext and respond to requests like touching yourself or stroking your feet in the bath. The way that Kayla writes about how she and other creators engineer those moments, dragging things out, setting targets, telling viewers, “You’re not getting it until we get to $1000,” turning sex into something that people compete for in real time, is fascinating to me. It takes the sexiness out of it. It’s not about pleasure, passion or even connection at that point. It’s about competition. About winning.

This kind of mentality is what makes her such a successful creator.

When I spoke to her on the phone after reading her book, I asked about the feeling of being turned on by the camera and why this work speaks to her. Does being watched actually turn her on? Does the whole thing excite her sexually or is it more about being the best at something?

“I definitely love being watched,” she told me. “My focus has become more on the shot rather than actually enjoying the content.”

She writes about this in the book. “Just the presence of the camera turned me on… as if it was growling in my ear: That’s it. Spread your legs wider.” For her, the camera acts more as a tool for creative expression than a vessel for pleasure. She describes it as “locking into a different zone.”

And I’ll be honest, I found the simplicity of it almost confronting. But why? Why would a woman talking about the sexual acts she’s being paid to do with such ease and such nonchalance make me feel anything at all?

Kayla is someone who has experiences that sound completely surreal when read about on paper. She’s out here filming scenarios where “the invisible man has his way with you”, working with clients whose whole goal is to “fuck and film every OnlyFans girl on the Gold Coast” and flying all the way to LA for a Hollywood A-lister who was “lacklustre” in bed. And yet she delivers them like casual anecdotes.

I’m the kind of person that overthinks every sexual encounter, who has literally made a career as a sex writer out of interrogating the feelings behind the sex. Kayla’s reflections read more like a story time (which is conincidentally the name of her podcast, Storytime with Kayla Jade).

And I think it comes down to this: we’ve been so hardwired to associate sex with shame and meaning. Yet reading her memoir, filled cover-to-cover with stories of livestreams, fragile male egos, celebrity “freak-offs” and co-parenting, I didn’t catch a lick of shame.

I think there’s this notion about women who work in the adult industry, that they’ve entirely dissociated while working in order to cope. I asked Kayla about this. “It was just normal to me… it wasn’t a big deal. I was just comfortable in my own sexuality.”

She told me that writing the book gave her an opportunity to sit with it all, that sometimes she forgets that the things she does for work are as wild as they are. That putting it down on paper made her go, “what the fuck — like, have I actually lived this?”.

Ever since I worked as an escort myself, I’ve had this theory that the most successful women in the sex industry are those who don’t always feel the need to over-intellectualise sex. It’s often perceived as unhealthy but I wonder if it’s actually really fucking healthy.

Because Kayla is not here to change people’s lives. Or therapise them through their break-up. She offers a sexual service, whether online or in-person, where specific experiences can be asked for and delivered, no questions asked. And whatever the client wants to do with that is up to them.

She makes money, provides for her kids and has built an entire life on her own terms. “I just really love it,” she reflects. “I love being creative and expressing myself.”

Get your copy of ‘Call Girl Confidential’ by Kayla Jade here.