The Dark Side of Phone Sex

You know, ever since I stared working the phone sex lines everyone who knows about my job is intrigued by the taboo nature of my work.  There seems to be a mix of morbid fascination and sexual intrigue.  I’ve noticed there are a lot of books about the subject and very few seem to cover what everyone wants to know.  Who are the women on the other end of the line?  This is a tough question to answer.  It’s like asking ‘who is the average American?’  Really?!?!  Is it Bob, the mechanic trying to pay child support for three kids?  What about Maria, the Latin immigrant who wants to be a teacher?  Or maybe it’s John, the middle manager trying to save up for both college and a dream vacation with his wife of fifteen years.  You see; there is no such thing as the average American.  And there is no such thing as the average phone sex operator.  She could be a nineteen-year-old college student trying to earn some extra money.  A thirty-something stay-at-home mom trying to make ends meet.  Or he could be a twenty-something man trying to pay off debt.  Yes, there are male phone sex operators.  Or anything in between.  I can only speak for myself, and I don’t mind telling you that finding another experienced phone sex operator to trade notes with is like trying to find that one needle, only in about a hundred hay stacks.  The other problem is, no one really wants to hear about the nitty gritty of the industry.  It’s sex, and sex sells.  But everyone’s idea of sex is different.  Except for the pure physiology of putting object A into slot B (and that’s open to interpretation) there is really a lot that goes into sex.  And the intrigue is phenomenal.  The mystery surrounding phone sex amuses me really.  I mean, on the surface it’s very simple; a client calls to get off and the operator assists.  The reality is, it’s a messy business.  We’re humans, and as such we have emotions and emotions are messy.  It really is an art form to perform for clients and not create some kind of emotional attachment.  I have had clients that are so enamoured by my characters that they often ask to meet me.  I have been offered marriage, money, plane tickets, jewelry, shopping sprees and just about anything else you can imagine.  I’m not telling you this to toot my own horn, this is a reality.  It sounds great, right?  What woman doesn’t want to be offered these things?  Every time I talk to a client that enjoys my services too much, I feel guilty.  I shouldn’t, I mean they [should] know it’s a fantasy and they’re paying for that.  I don’t mind telling you that if I was single I may have been tempted enough to take a few of those offers.  And I have no doubt that there may have been phone sex operators who have.  A lot of people think that being a phone sex operator is a lucrative job, it’s not.  The pay sucks.  The average PSO only sees about 5-7% of the profit made on a call that costs $3.99/minute.  I once read an article that claimed the average PSO made $2000 per week!  Ironically, there was no evidence offered to back up that claim.  And by my calculations, a top performing PSO would have to take over 6500 minutes worth of talk time to make that kind of money, they would have to be talking almost 24 hours, a day seven days a week.  Not very realistic, is it?  However, if I could make that kind of money doing what I do, you can be damn sure I’d have found it by now and there would be a lot more phone sex operators.  What a phone actress/actor gets paid for is just that, to act.  You’re not getting the real deal.  We are exposed to the underbelly of sexual desires, and it’s not pretty.  It’s really hard to maintain a healthy outlook on sex while doing this job.  As a woman, I found myself becoming jaded and angry at men in general.  My husband bore the brunt of this.  I came to believe that men are hedonistic animals with no regard for women; treating them more like chattel than humans beings.  For a long time I was bitter and frigid to my husband thinking that when it comes to sex, all men are alike.  Only treating women with some degree of respect to get in their pants.  It felt like it took forever before I could realize that the act of sex itself is very animalistic, but that doesn’t mean it’s demeaning.  Yes, there are men who are sexual predators, seeking women for one-night stands.  On the flip side, there are just as many men, sometimes the very same predators, who want the companionship and trust of a meaningful relationship.  The havoc this job has played on me psychologically is astounding.  It’s not very surprising that the average PSO only lasts a few months.  I started this blog to tell women, like me, who are considering this line of work what this job is really like.  I am not here to romanticize the sex industry, there are more than enough web sites that do that.  I’m not doing this to lure clients, hell, I don’t even know what number my clients call to talk to me!  I have no idea what it’s like to be an exotic dancer, a porn-star or an escort, I’m a phone actress aka phone sex operator, and I write what I know.  In this post I’ve highlighted the downside of this job.  I know it appears to be a dark picture, but it’s real.  I’ve decided to make this a two-parter.  In my next post I’ll tell you about the upside, after all, there are two sides to every story, and this is no different.