Page 65 - AVN December 2024

Strella began her sex work journey in 2018, when she got a job as a cocktail waitress at a gentlemen’s club in North Carolina, where she was residing at the time. She progressed into stripping and then live camming on Chaturbate, launching her OnlyFans in 2019 before the wave of sign-ups during the pandemic.
“I was still stripping and I really liked doing in-person sex work because it was totally different being able to connect with people,” Cami recalls. “And I wasn’t able to connect with anyone during COVID so camming kind of gave me a little bit of an outlet.
“I got kind of lucky... I was never very successful on Chaturbate. It was truly just used as a means to market myself a little bit and then I funneled it to my OnlyFans. Then once that community grew I started getting bigger on social—on Instagram and TikTok.
“TikTok was ultimately the catalyst for rapid growth for me and my business.”
It was through TikTok that Strella built an organic following of military servicemen. “Because when I was in school I really wanted to work with military members with traumatic
brain injuries and PTSD,” she says. “That was a big goal of mine, so I randomly cultivated a very large military veteran following.
“I’m just a civilian, I was never in the military but it was just a community that I always felt resonated with me. Because as a sex worker you’re also kind of on the outskirts of society and you have your own little ecosystem of people.”
Strella tells AVN that prior to sex work she became entrenched in a multilevel marketing company that also was “a training organization led by people with very strict conservative Christian values.”
“So strict that they had me be a born-again virgin,” she explains. “We’d go to the seminars and they’d encourage you to give your life over to Christ. My brother got me involved originally, but he had no idea that this organization was what it was and he got out as well.
“He’s still a Christian, so he didn’t get fully out of it I guess, but it helps him so I’m like, good for you, dude.”
Strella says she got involved in the company during a period when she took a break from her undergraduate studies and moved to Seattle.
“And they had me do all these crazy things and I basically cracked,” she continues. “I couldn’t keep it together. I watched porn once and I had to tell my coach or my mentor... He’s like, ‘Just pray over me, it’s going to be OK. It’s going to be OK.’ It was so weird, I was like this is so creepy.
“The second time I talked about anything sexual was when I had sex. So I basically broke my vow of celibacy and that’s when he called me ‘a sex addict.’ And I was like, ‘What? That sounds crazy. I’m a sex addict, that’s wild.’
“So it was really a self-fulfilling prophecy, I guess I am because I had sex once in a year. So he sent me to what I affectionately call a slut conversion therapist.”
She adds, “You’ve heard of gay conversion therapy... it was like that, but for slutty or promiscuous people.
CAMI STRELLA | 12.24 | AVN.COM 65