When someone posted on the PSO support forum about a GFE call, I was stumped. People were going on about GFE like it was an industry-standard acronym, but it sure as shit wasn’t in my company’s handbook (a 12-page, badly edited text document with pink used for emphasis). I asked, and my colleagues clarified: GirlFriend Experience.

Ahhh. No wonder I didn’t know what it was. Most of my callers are more into panty parties or BBCs or slut-fuck gangbangs, and unless they share lipstick tips with their girlfriends or routinely call them whores as part of their courtship–hey, I don’t know, it probably happens!–then they aren’t looking for a girlfriend.

But then I started thinking through my callers, the real regulars, and while I don’t think the callers themselves would classify me as a GFE, they were asking me for all the traits of one:

• Romance. One of my guys “shows up” for his calls on my doorstep, wearing boxers and a big grin, and carrying a bag of whatever toys or goodies he wants to unleash on me (for my birthday it was a waterproof vibrator and a cream-filled milk chocolate cock). Also, a dozen long-stemmed red roses. Awww!
• Non-sex-related conversation. Dale called me a few weeks ago, looking for some advice on how to introduce himself to BBWs (Big Beautiful Women). Since then he’s called back a few times; sometimes we fuck, and sometimes we just talk.
• Regularity. Consistency (the first one sounded like a different situation) I have a standing call with a trucker from Iowa. Every Tuesday evening at around 10:30. The dispatcher doesn’t even ask him anymore if he’s looking for anyone in particular, she just patches him through. Just last week we agreed that we should let the other person know ahead of time if anything is going to come up the following week. Oh, hell… we’re scheduling date nights. If that isn’t a GFE, I’d like to know what is.

Point is, some of my callers are looking for something in addition to or beyond sex. They want a connection, a feeling that someone is on the other end who cares. The GFE is primarily about being a fun conversationalist, having a listening ear, letting your “partner” know how much you appreciate the roses, keeping them in the loop…. All the things that go into a good, IRL girlfriend still apply here.

And you know what? Even if I have to check my note cards every now and then… I can give them that.

Well, most of my callers aren’t tops. Most probably don’t even know what that means. Most are sissy-girls and mommyfuckers, or guys who want me to be vicious and yank their pink satin thongs into a wedgie. The ones who call and want to get rough and/or nasty are staying in their own head, and throwing shit at me to get their rocks off. Whether that shit sticks to me or not is really irrelevant. In line with the 7-minute sub, I guess these guys would be the 10-minute tops.

Well, last week I got a caller who actually did a fucking intake interview: what I liked, what I thought I was good at, what I looked like when I was 12, what I fantasized about with my real-life partners, and what I’ve actually done and enjoyed in real life. Something about the way he did it, I let my guard down. And then he turned it around on me, and I was … floored.

He had paid attention, picking up all my details and weaving them into something else that I could tell was his turn-on, but with enough of my own real-life bits to make it very, very sticky. Not like syrup is sticky, or velcro, but like a cape made of barbed hooks is sticky: once it’s on you, it’s in you, and if someone pulls at it, you go wherever they take you.

It was unnerving to be on the other end of that treatment. He figured out some of what made me tick, made up the rest with a pretty good guess, and I was putty. He was good. He was merciless. He was a foul-mouthed bastard. He was … actually, he was to me as I am to the vast majority of my callers

It was an open-ended call, so the profit motive was strong to keep him going, at least in the beginning. But by the end of the call, I was sweating and panting and torn between wanting the story to keep going and needing it to stop because I was afraid I might faint. Afterwards, while I was trembling and rehydrating, it hit me that I had never felt more deserving of the phrase “sex worker”.

He called me the next night, too, and when the dispatcher gave me the call, she said, huh, that’s weird, he normally only calls the really young girls. And I laughed and said something blasé about my roleplaying skills. I didn’t say anything about the excited little girl jumping up and down inside me. She’s not a marketable skill. She’s just me, and doesn’t come out for anyone but a real daddy.

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.