After we had decided to be phone sex operators but before our phones were working, Rachel and I got together with Donna and rented Girl 6, Spike Lee’s film homage to phone sex.
At first the movie made us giggle, and we were disappointed at how unlike our company the fictional one seemed to be. After all, the movie showed operators working in cubicles, having official training sessions, and calling each other “Girl 3” and “Girl 7,” even over coffee. Later in the story the heroine began working from home (working for Madonna, no less), and then we got more interested.
All the situations that seemed so silly to me at the time – the customer calling from his cell phone in the car, the guy asking over and over to meet her, the businessman staying late at work to call her – all of these have now happened to me. I once had to insist that a customer pull off the road; he wanted me to keep talking to him and make him come while he drove. I actually fought with him about it, explaining that I really didn’t want to be responsible for a car accident.
And while I don’t call any of my colleagues “Girl 42,” I do use their character names. We all do, it’s just easier. Some of them know my real name, but most of them call me Kristi, even the ones who know me fairly well. It might be different if we were physically working in the same place, but it might not. Besides, all the names are common, and we have characters named Jennifer and girls named Jennifer. Even the boss refers to us by our character names.
The movie got a little uncomfortable when Girl 6 started getting regular business from a man who called himself “Mr. Snuff.” She didn’t know his real name, and he didn’t have her direct number, because in the fictional service, the customer called a main phone number and an attendant put him through to the phone sex girl.
The Mr. Snuff calls were upsetting. He wanted her to tell him that she was a worthless whore. She had to say things like,“I’m unhappy because I’m a fuck-slut.” She did it, though she was clearly uncomfortable with that dialogue. He would then explain to her how he was going to end her suffering by tying a plastic bag over her head and fucking her while she died.
We were all uneasy, but hey, it was just a movie. Donna assured us that she had never had a caller like that.
Mr. Snuff started to get more aggressive. “Let’s do it for real,” he said. “How about I come over there and we’ll do this for real?”
The girl in the movie obviously didn’t know what to say. She hung up and told the service not to put him through anymore. “Send me someone sweet,” she begged.
Her phone rang again and she raced to pick it up, but instead of her “someone sweet,” it was Mr. Snuff. He knew her home phone number and had called her directly.
All our hearts raced. He was on his way over, he told her. Finally she said, “But you don’t know where I live.” And he recited an address. Visibly terrified, she slammed the phone down and ran out of the apartment. It was definitely frightening, and in a realistic way.
Now as it happens, the man did not show up at her apartment, and she did not die in the movie. And it was just a movie, so it needed plot points. But still, it made me wonder about fantasy and reality and how often people actually do cross the line.
•
For the record, the vast majority of men who call me are perfectly pleasant and charming. Some, though, are a little creepy.
“I like to hear you beg,” said one caller. “I want to do a rape fantasy, but you need to talk, beg, plead.”
I was agreeable. I enjoy most rape fantasies. He sounded intense, but that was fine. It went well enough, with him breaking into my house, slapping my face a bit, pinning me down underneath him, and forcing me to do all kinds of unspeakable things. Nasty but good.
“Don’t hurt me,” I begged him. “Please, I’ll do anything you say.”
“Yes, you will,” he hissed. “You’re going to do everything I say, but I’m still going to hurt you.”
“Yes. And I’m going to turn you over and fuck your pretty ass.”
“Oh god, please don’t. Please, just let me go.”
“Not a chance, you little slut.”
“Please, if you let me go, I won’t tell anyone, I won’t call the police or anything.”
“Yeah?” he said. “Well you won’t call the police if I kill you, either.”
Just what I wanted to hear.
On the other hand, there are guys with horribly vicious fantasies who are themselves funny and warm. There’s just no predicting it. Like Timothy, who is into nipple torture. Not just pain, but actual torture. I like him, though. He’s a just an average, run-of-the-mill accountant with nasty, cruel fantasies.
The first time he called he told me he wanted to hold a cigarette lighter to my nipples. He seemed very happy that I didn’t freak out. His calls are always short, often less than five minutes long, and always outrageous. I just play along, pleading and making pain noises.
“You’re naked,” he whispered once, “and you’re lying sideways across the bed. Your head is hanging backwards over the edge of the bed and your arms are tied over your head.”
“Ohhhh,” I answered truthfully, “I like this. I’m all exposed.”
“Yes,” he hissed.
“I can’t move away from anything you want to do.”
“Yes, exactly,” he murmured. “I’m stroking your breasts, and suddenly you feel me near your head. My cock is right at your mouth.”
“Ohhh, I want to lick it…”
“No,” he said firmly, continuing to play with my nipples. “Not yet.”
I whimpered.
“That’s good, bitch, you just do what I tell you,” he said softly. “Now I’m going to light this cigar. See, the tip is glowing red.”
“I’m watching the cigar,” I said softly. “I can’t take my eyes off it, and I’m so scared… please don’t hurt me…”
“Suddenly I shove my cock in your mouth,” he said. “That’s it, take it all.”
I obligingly began to simulate blowjob sounds.
“Now don’t you dare stop sucking,” he warned menacingly, “and don’t even think about biting down.”
I intensified my whimpers and scared noises, letting a few muffled “please”s and “no”s slip through.
“Oh yes,” he answered. “Now I’m lowering the cigar to your nipple…”
I shrieked into a pillow and didn’t hear whatever he said next. It didn’t matter anyway, he was done.
Timothy calls me about twice a month (and I see his name on my caller ID much more often). He always talks about torturing my nipples, generally clamping them and burning them with a lighter or even an acetylene torch. Lately he’s been into needles and piano wire.
I jokingly refer to him as “the guy who wants to set my nipples on fire,” but weird as it is, I like him as a caller. He’s easy, first of all. I know exactly what he likes.
And I do find it erotic. I don’t really want to try having a lit cigar taken to my breasts, but the scenarios he builds are sexy, and I can identify with erotic nipple pain. I think my mind just blanks out on the amount of agony he would actually cause me, and replaces it with something more tolerable.
No, the really scary calls are the guys who, like Mr. Snuff, make me worry that they might actually be serious. Probably the most genuinely frightening person ever to call me sounded perfectly average at first. We chatted a little, then got into your basic sex scene. All was well until we got near the actual intercourse part, and he said, “You want me to fuck you?”
“Oh yes,” I replied. “Please fuck me.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m gonna fuck you.”
Sounds simple enough, but he didn’t stop talking.
“I’m gonna fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck, fuck, fuck, Fuck you, Fuck You, FUCK you, FUCK you, FUCK you, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCKYOU…”
He started off softly but got progressively louder, and his voice was almost sing-song. The emphasis was on the work “fuck,” and it had a “tic toc” rhythm. It got more and more intense.
I thought: I am now talking to an actual serial killer.
I broke in. Maybe I could distract him. “Oh yeah, baby, I can’t wait to feel you inside me.”
He seemed to recover. “Oh yes, I’m stroking my cock for you now…I’m gonna put it in you, put it in your wet pussy…”
“Oh yesss, yesss, do it now, honey. I want you so bad.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m putting it in, I’m gonna fuck you good, gonna fuck you soooo good, gonna fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you fuck fuck fuck you, Fuck You, Fuck You, FUCK you, FUCK you, FUCK you, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU…”
Uh huh.
When I was about 20, I worked with emotionally disturbed kids, one of who had a disorder called “echolalia fixation.” It means that he never spoke except to repeat what someone else said, and then when he did finally say something, he fixated on it.
Conversations with him sounded like this:
“Want a cookie?”
“Cookie… coooooookie…. cookiecookie…. coooooooooooookie… cookie… cookie… COOKie…cookiecookiecookie…COOKieCOOKie… cookiecookiecookiecookiecookie… COOKieCOOKie… COOKIECOOKIE COOOKIECOOKIECOOKIECOOKIE….”
He could literally go for hours. Sometimes it would be possible to distract him, but usually we just had to cope. I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was talking to this same kid, all grown up. It was genuinely disturbing.
•
The one I’ve found most difficult to handle to-date has been Jordan. On his second call, I had to look him up in my card file to see if we had spoken before. We had, but neither of us remembered it. I guess he calls a lot of girls.
“What did we talk about last time?” he asked.
“Oh, you think I keep notes about all the guys I talk to and what we talked about?” I teased.
He laughed. “Yes, I think you do.”
I laughed too. “You’re right, I do.” I flipped the card over and looked. “We played that I was your 14-year-old niece that you kidnapped and raped…”
“Oh, yeah,” he interrupted. “The snuff thing, huh?”
I didn’t answer right away. I looked at the card again. There was no “bad” notation, and I certainly would have remembered a snuff call.
“No,” I said carefully. “I don’t think so. I think it was just rape.”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “Okay, sure. You up for doing that fantasy again?”
I hesitated, wondering whether I should mention that I don’t like blood. But no, he seemed to be looking to repeat his last call, and that one had obviously been fine.
“Sure,” I said.
He started telling me the scenario, and as he did I remembered the previous call. I was a scantily dressed young girl, and he lured me into his car. As soon as he gave me an order I didn’t like – maybe it was “unbutton your top” – I complained and he snarled, “You see this knife?”
“Yes,” I whispered, frozen.
“You do exactly what I say and you won’t get hurt, got it?”
I whimpered and started to plead.
“Shut up,” he snapped. “Just shut up and do what I say.”
“Shut up” is a strange thing to say to a phone sex girl. My voice is my only connection with him. So I took “shut up” to mean that he didn’t want me to talk, but I continued to make noise – to cry, whimper, and moan.
He pulled the car off the road and into the woods. He held me at knifepoint, grabbed a bag from the car, tied my hands, and marched me deep into the forest. In a hidden clearing he pulled my clothes off, threw a rope over a high branch, and hoisted me off the ground by my wrists. He reached in his bag and pulled out a whip (he didn’t describe it so I don’t really know what he was imagining) and started using it on me savagely.
I screamed and cried and begged, but there was nothing upsetting about the call yet. It was perhaps a little more violent than average, especially when he started talking about the whip drawing blood, but it was just a fantasy like any other. I recalled that in the earlier call he had cut me down, bent me over a fallen log, and raped my ass. We seemed headed in that direction this time as well.
Bent over the log, I was sobbing and pleading, when he again said, “Be quiet! You’re too noisy, bitch. Cut out the crying, I’m sick of hearing it.”
I paused, again not sure what that meant. Was it just dialogue? If he didn’t want me to talk, and he didn’t want me to cry and moan, what exactly was I supposed to do?
I made a quick decision, and stuck my head in the pillow, continuing to make noise but pretending I was trying not to. I figured that was what the real person in that situation would do.
Preoccupied with the crying issue, I barely noticed that he had begun to ask me questions as he raped me. The questions were quiet and loving, as if he were soothing a scared child. “What’s the matter, baby?” he asked. “Is something wrong, sweetheart?”
He became audibly more excited every time I told him I was scared, or hurt, or especially if I said something about bleeding. I was talking quietly, and getting softer with each answer. I don’t quite know why, but I was pretty well into the fantasy by then, and I felt… weak. I felt like my will was draining away, leaving me barely enough energy to answer him.
Later on, I thought a lot about why I reacted this way. I’ve (thankfully) never been trapped in a situation where I was experiencing that sort of relentless pain, but it seems to me that there might be an upper limit on screaming and begging. Eventually exhaustion and hopelessness would have to set in, and that’s where my head was. My crying was tired and bleak.
Just as it felt like I was just completely out of strength, and he was at the peak of his excitement, he did something unexpected.He pulled the knife out and plunged it into my stomach, stabbing me three or four times in a row. I didn’t scream; I was too tired to scream. I just moaned and sobbed, feeling my life’s energy ebb away, and wondering in a separate portion of my brain if that’s how it really feels to be beaten down and finally killed.
“What’s the matter, darling?” he asked soothingly.
“Bleeding,” I whispered.
“Yes, you’re bleeding,” he answered, quiet but aroused.
“Hurts,” I whispered.
He whispered something unintelligible. I had to ask him to say it again.
“Have… you… had… enough?” he asked softly, dreamily.
“Yesssss,” I answered, not knowing whether I was answering the fantasy rapist or the caller.
“Good,” he murmured, and hung up the phone.
I stared down at the receiver in my hand, and tried to pull myself together. Please, I thought to the universe, please send me someone sweet.