July 2–9, 1998

cover story

Sidebar: Philly After Midnight

Sidebar: Groans versus GIFs

Confessions of a Phone Sex Worker

How does it feel to stoke men's fantasies over the phone?

		The woman next to me moaned enticing commands into the phone in a thick Spanish accent. Hanging up, she lit a cigarette and muttered, "Asshole."

F or Gayle Gorman, the experience was enlightening, exasperating—and often very sad.

We all know what those "Phone Actresses Wanted" ads really mean—a blow-off job with flexible hours and a decent work-to-pay ratio for someone with the ambition of a beach bum, the catch being that you have to eat, breathe, think and talk sex. Okay, didn't sound too bad—"might even learn something," I thought to myself.

The heavily made-up fat lady sitting behind the desk told me that I didn't need a college degree for this job. (Oh, well.) She said that all I had to do was talk to them. "Like, you know how to do that by now or you're a moron." Okay, so, I'm not a moron—this was gonna be easy.

I had my very own cubicle with a plastic shower curtain. I was surrounded by unnerving sounds of ecstasy—an incredible collective orgasm was taking place. But when the men got automatically cut off after 10 minutes, the sources of those hair-raising sounds would emerge from behind their curtains. Immediately, there would be laughter and snide vulgarities about the men who had just jacked off to the sound of their voices.

I furtively listened as the woman next to me moaned enticing commands in a thick Spanish accent. She had no shame, standing there with her curtain wide open, giving me a sly and knowing wink as she ran her hand up and down her thigh. Hanging up, she lit a cigarette and muttered, "Asshole."

ALL A GAME

I caught on quickly—women have always been great at faking orgasms, at making men feel great, at convincing them that we're having a great time, too. It became clear to me that this was all a game, too—a dupe. More of the same pulling of the wool over naive, stupid and lonely men's eyes—many of them actually turned on by the alluringly packaged girls on those late-night commercials—and subjecting them to the contrived sensuousness of our voices, of our tone and our words, lulling them along with visions of Playboy and MTV.

Yes, at the phone sex company, men were considered a distinct and distant species, just as in any other gathering of women. But this was a business, and the point was to make tons of money off of that very notion.

So I began to transmute the most basic of physical longings into something tangible and immediate, marketable and consumable. But soon after I lost my inhibitions, the FCC bowed to the grace of God and government and decided it was time to regulate this highly personal use of our public telephone lines (see sidebar). We were no longer allowed to pretend to participate in any acts of sex. As long as people were calling us, rather than the now more popular call-back services, it was a business line and therefore subject to federal regulation. So now we could only talk about it.

		I told him to use the bristle side on the already sore spot on the inside of his thigh. I heard him whacking, and each time he hit himself I commanded him, "Harder!"

IS THIS REALLY SEX?

So many of the men who called up didn't know what to expect anyway—was this really sex? Are you a real person? Is your name really Daniella? The number of guys who actually and immediately demanded to be jacked off was fairly small. And, after the FCC regulation, that wasn't what I was supposed to be doing anyway. It was my chance—and justification—to snoop.

Probing questions about sexuality tend to create a form of instant intimacy and self-expression (remember Sex, Lies and Videotape). Safe behind the guise of the bold Daniella, I asked the kinds of questions I would never ask a stranger face to face, and I was increasingly told things that a man would never say to a strange woman face to face.

"What's your most intense fantasy?"

("To have two girls at once.")

"What's your favorite position?"

("Doggie-style.")

"What do you like to do when you're alone?"

("Call you up" or "Jack off.")

"What kind of women do you like?"

("Anyone who'll go out with me.")

All were typical answers.

There were certain special instances when I really picked up on the guy on the other end, who I'd get along with in such a way that it would lead to sarcasm, to witticisms, to coy banter only edged in sex. I usually couldn't bring myself to fake it with them. Rather, I ended up actually flirting in a much more intellectual kind of way, challenging the whole setup, picking up on their personality, asking lots of questions and offering my own insights and experiences. Then they were surprised:

I asked Mike from Alabama what his fantasy was. He wanted to be on a beach in Mozambique writing The Great American Novel—an autobiography about his '70s generation. He felt that the '60s generation had left us with nothing but drugs and a huge unanswered metaphysical question. The love and peace never carried over. He made me laugh and we talked about Vonnegut. Then he told me that he'd lost his legs in a hit-and-run accident.

		"I'd rather you be mean to me from the start than mean at the end," he said. His response made me wonder—what are men and women doing to each other?

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

My questions became even more personal and leading. I was hearing such bizarre things—the kinds of things that I had only heard in the context of jokes before—jokes that were an easy way of expressing fear, insecurity and incomprehension of so-called deviant tendencies. I was in a position to be an Oprah, a Phil or a Geraldo—but up close and personal, confidential and, most importantly, anonymous. And most men were more than willing to talk.

He told me that he was all dressed up.

I asked him where he was going.

"Nooo. I'm all dressed up like a woman."

I asked him about his mother.

"She was a very strong personality. The girls next door were in charge. They gave me a spanking if I didn't obey them."

I asked him about his first time having sex. He said he was 32.

"She made me suck on it at first. Then she put it in me."

I asked him if he likes to be hurt.

"I don't know… when she put me on her knee and hit me I felt taken care of. I felt secure."

I asked him about his dressing-up thing.

"I just like to be recognized as a girl. It's hard 'cause they expect you to be a male."

HEELS AND STOCKINGS

He was telling me about his slave and he kept saying "you."

"I'd dress you up in heels and stockings, make you walk around and wear a collar… are you going to suck these heels?"

"No."

Silence.

"You better suck these heels."

"Or else what?"

"I'll hit you… with a paddle… on your ass."

Now I was silent.

"Now, are you going to suck these heels?"

"No."

"You're pissing me off."

I didn't want to let them hurt me and I certainly didn't want to hurt them, but this was not what they were paying for. I was called "Mistress" again and again and asked to describe how I would punish them. I would be like, "What the fuck," and ask them why they needed to be punished. "I've been bad," or "Because I'm dirty." I would ask why they wanted me to hurt them. "Because it makes me feel safe and taken care of"—like the guy whose fantasy was to be treated like a baby, with diapers and all. Mommy, mommy.

Then he wanted to pee in my face.

ASHAMED AND CONFUSED

The sadomasochism thing was new to me.

Never considering myself prudish or close-minded about sex before, I found myself cringing when the other women would sit there with their curtains wide open so we could all see, slapping their legs to animate what they were doing to the man on the other end.

I didn't understand why they would want me to step on their balls with the heels of my shoes.

Frankly, I became totally aggravated with these men and occasionally allowed Daniella to take over. I proceeded to pretend to whip some poor schmo with a hairbrush—the only thing he had handy. Then I told him to use the bristle side on the already sore spot on the inside of his thigh. I heard him whacking, and each time he hit himself I commanded him, "Harder!" making him scream out with each hit. "Louder!" I'd say as he moaned and groaned, as Daniella became more enthusiastic about it. And when the call suddenly ended, I sat there in a stunned silence, feeling ashamed and confused.

And then there was Eddie, the vegetable farmer from Georgia. He described his basement torture chamber to me and told me all about nipple clamps and other paraphernalia. His mistress would get him stoned by shooting pot into his penis and then she would shoot herself up through her clitoris. They did "coke fucks" so that he wouldn't lose his hard-on, and then she would tie his arms up over his head to a swivel hook in the ceiling, tie his balls up to another one in the floor, and then spin him around while whipping him. At that point, I didn't even wonder "is this guy putting me on?" because I was learning that absolutely anything was possible.

More and more, it became obvious that men were incredibly confused about gender, about how they're supposed to behave, and about what women want from them. According to so much of what they said, these men felt that they were being discriminated against because they are men—just as women are, but much less obviously.

John thought that women are too aggressive—"They just want sex and don't think men could want anything more." And Pete the TV producer felt women were only nice to him because of his job.

CROSSING THE FANTASY LINE

Then there were the guys who were lonely and latched onto you, who found something in your small talk that gave them that bright yet distant spark of hope that they wouldn't have to be alone forever.

There was Mike—who's 44 and lives out in the woods of Ohio with his two Irish Setters, who's a self-proclaimed "old-fashioned romantic," who likes to hold hands and take walks in the park, and who called me "a good girl" for knowing where Lake Schroon in the Adirondacks was. He desired more of me as I became more concrete, as the picture in his mind of the long-legged red-haired beauty I'd described to him took on a new reality. He brought up the notion of real contact; he crossed the fantasy line and wanted me to write to him. He wanted me to talk about myself and tell him what I liked. I pictured being out in his deep woods and told him I liked lightning storms. He added, "Listening to the rainfall from inside a tent."

He started to take shape for me, too, out in the woods with his dogs, his slight twang beginning to acquire a paternal edge. I listened to him talk about sharing and caring, about "a woman's feelings, her emotions, and giving without expecting anything back." I asked if he'd ever been married and he told me that his wife of 13 years was killed by a drunk driver. We ended the call, not by being abruptly cut off, but by him wrapping it up with "I guess this is too good to be true."

Not once did we mention sex.

BLAME THE MEN

The realization that there was no real possibility of connection with these men saddened me. I didn't want to add to their constant dissatisfaction with women and relationships. So many of the other women who worked at phone sex goaded the men on, never seeming to realize that their desire to see us as real people was a fragile and serious sentiment. There was a camaraderie among most of the women—an "us and them" attitude that allowed them to unite through the common theme of male-bashing.

Sometimes I thought that many of the women reveled in lying to callers and taking their money because it allowed them to get even with the abusive boyfriend or husband who was waiting for them at home, or the ex they'd never forgiven.

The type of woman, real or not, portrayed by phone sex becomes either the object of abuse or a revered, all-powerful, untouchable figure. What's left for women to be after those fantasies are stripped away? Trying to come up with some sort of answer to that question only led to heavy sighs. The men I spoke to had no clue.

EMPTY

Toward the end of my stint at the phone-sex company, I became bitter and brazen. It was becoming difficult for me to listen and talk to these men. Where I used to be curious, I became exasperated, and where I'd wanted to connect as a real person to a real person, the reality of what was going on became too much for me to deal with.

Their responses of "I'd rather you be mean to me from the start than mean at the end," or "Might as well beat me to hurt me… won't hurt as much as a broken heart," made me question what it is that we—as men and women—do to each other psychologically.

Phone-sex givers have an arsenal filled with manipulative techniques based on want, on desperate need, and on something that we, as women, have but that they, as men, do not. Is this what men are really scared of? That women don't really need them? Instead of addressing questions like these, we construct edifices of denial that do a superficial job of smoothing out the cracks. And, like drug addicts, we're left with only an emptiness inside.

How was I personally affected by this experience? No, my sex life has not noticeably improved, though I may be more open-minded and knowledgeable. Maybe I'm more understanding and patient when it comes to men but, then again, maybe I'm more cynical and jaded. Whatever it is, I'm glad to have had the chance to play psychologist without a Ph.D., I'm glad to have been a priest who heard many a confession without having gone to a seminary, and I'm especially glad that I was a welcome surprise to so many men who expected only the worst.