What?!

“That’s what he said.” She laughed. “Another 20 minutes.”

Does he not like me? I mean, he must like me because this is his second request for me in a row, but…

“Oh, don’t worry about it, hon.” More laughter. “You should hear what he calls me.”

Oh. Okay.

And it is okay, because really? When my daily work consists of talking through scenes that would get most people shunned by polite society, if not actually arrested and/or stoned, I don’t get tripped up by the words the callers throw at me. If they keep calling back, I must be doing something right. And yet.

And yet.

This particular caller dresses in panties and a garter belt and stockings to talk with me, at least, he says he does. He wears bright red lipstick, and gets a great deal of comfort out of wearing breast forms in VERY busty sizes. (The week after I told him about my 42DDDs, he said he had gone out and gotten a 42GG breast form. I think he’s trying to one-up me.)

He is dressing as best as he can to be a woman. He’s got a cock and all, but he wants to feel like a woman. But his casual misogyny when he’s feeling horny and demanding is just more hot air added to his inflated, twisted notion of what a woman should be. He dresses “like a slut”, so he can get used like one in our fantasy. He begs for details about my supposed sexual exploits, so he can call me a slut. It’s an imaginary slut sorority that he and I are in together, but outside our scenes together, that sisterhood evaporates and we’re back to the basics.

“Can I talk to that cunt again?”

It turns him on, to talk that way. It reinforces the paradigm quite firmly: virgin/whore. Dressing himself like a tramp, my caller gets to play with being degraded, with being a slut, with the trappings and behavior stereotypes that go along with being a horny woman. He eats it up, he loves it when I call him a greedy little slut. And yet.

“Can I talk to that cunt again?”

Yes, you can. But as a person who has actually been called a cunt numerous occasions, to another person who will never in real life be called a cunt, I wanted to let you know: Those last 20 minutes went by really slow.

But some whispers are, how shall I say… useless. Not because of the dispatcher, but because of the caller, and because of the inadequacy of words, and the inherent self-centeredness of everyone’s sexual world. One whisper I particularly dislike is “wants to be dominated”.

Because on a seven-minute call, unless it’s part of an ongoing, regular phone relationship, you aren’t experiencing domination. You’re experiencing someone being loud and stern at you while you get to do exactly and only what you want to do.

The seven-minute sub, if it was a sandwich, would be your delicious choice of any imaginable ingredient in the world, on two slices of grocery-store sourdough, with maybe some mayo. I would be wearing a hairnet and high-heeled boots, and I would hand your sub to you on a plate and yell, “EAT IT!” at random intervals. But you don’t mind the noise because it’s exactly the sandwich you want. At least the filling is, and that’s what people order sandwiches for anyway, isn’t it?

The seven-minute sub wants the domme call because he wants to lick my ass or worship my boots and he can’t imagine any other way that he would do that without a strong woman being involved.

The seven-minute sub is the ultimate bratty bottom. He doesn’t need a safe word, because he can pull out of his bottomness at any time and say, “Actually, I’m not into that…” Or just say “NO!” and hang up, like one person did on me last week.

The seven-minute sub is playing at it. Some might say that all phone-sex subs are playing at it, that there’s no way to truly dominate someone over the phone. My experience? Not true. I have several regulars who take everything I dish out and are clearly relishing the feeling of being dominated. I have a particular favorite whom I have told to lick his come off of his leather sofa at the end of the call, and he does it, no question, even though he’s already come.

Point is, you can get there in 90 minutes, or even 10. But seven minutes of phone-sex domination is just a scold and a wank. I’ll do it for the money, but believe me, the longer you give me to make you a sub, the tastier it’s going to be.

What do you do in real life?

By that he means, “What do you do when you’re not bringing men to orgasm on the phone?”

Now, I don’t have a problem with the question. It helps keep me grounded in the totality of who I am. So I tell him: I’m a writer. I’m a choreographer. I’m a performer. But I don’t know why he wants to know. Is it just one more detail to add to the fantasy? Is it something like the “hooker with a heart of gold” stereotype? Does it make it better or worse for the caller if I’m a grad student, a dancer, a desperate housewife, a sorority sister getting her kicks, a out-call prostitute resting her cooch, an environmental activist, an underpaid junior-high teacher, a feminist playwright? I’m not sure.

There’s also an issue with definitions: what is “real”? Is the life I lead on the phones, are the encounters with Jason T. and Frank N. and Teddy F. entirely unreal, transient, without metaphysical or emotional value? Because here’s the thing: I have had sessions where the caller cried for a couple of minutes afterward, the cathartic impact was that real. And I have had extremely satisfying sex with my partners that is essentially the same as phone sex, that is, mutual masturbation with dirty-fucking-pig talk.

And this is one of my premises, in all the work I do: Talk, of the dirty-pig variety or otherwise, is real. Talk makes us human, and helps us to interact with others. “It’s just words.” Well, yes. And no. It’s words, but not just. Whether you’re using words to flirt, fuck, or foment social revolution, you’re creating a space in two or more people’s heads where change or challenge or awesome dirty-pig sex–or all of the above!–can take place.

So I will never meet any of my callers, and our talk may end in nothing more than a damp paper towel, but those 10 minutes, exchanging words, are just as real as the rest of our lives.