I cant remember what year it was, maybe 1997 when I ended up working in phone sex. I had left my job to travel overseas for six weeks and when I returned I needed to find work to pay rent. But not just any job. I had been working with courier companies on the radio, and the misogynistic old, white male drivers were soul sucking to work with. Entitled, rude and impossible. I feel like saying weaponized stupidity.
Auditioning As a Phone Sex Worker
Jobs were advertised in the daily newspapers, and it was depressing to look. One ad caught my eye, it was phone sex for $11 per hour. A combo of work from home and in the office. Bonus! I thought to myself, I can do that. I made and appointment and trekked to their office for an interview, without giving much thought to what that interview would look (sound?) like.
It was an unassuming office, upstairs in an upmarket area of Melbourne. Most of it was a big open space which was never used. There were small rooms with bean bags where you could take calls in privacy on hands free handsets. And an office with a main call room. It had a couch and that’s where my interview was to be.
The manager had the capacity to listen in on calls, and my test was to take a real call and have phone sex with them. Holy hell, I had no idea what to say so I let go and allowed my imagination, combined with vast previous experiences take flight. It was not so hard really, and the guy on the phone only took a few moments to come.
I walked back into the office, the manager was beetroot red, and the supervisor F who would eventually become my lover had a wide grin on her face.
I got the job.
Phone Sex Was The Job That Delivered in So Many Ways
This was the time before we had easy access to video. These were audio calls and for that reason they were kinda fun. Lot’s was left to the imagination and we were a creative bunch of women. Working at the office was actually interesting with the group of women that worked on the phones.
We had a system, sophisticated for its time that would allocate calls, time them ($5 per minute). It would even reroute calls to home phone numbers. I didn’t just take calls but I was in sales as well, encouraging guys that would enquire to partake of our services.
They would be sneaky and try to get off on simply talking to us at reception, but we had a mandate to cut them off before they could, knowing they would call back.
Not ALL Calls Were The Same
Not everybody wanted to just have sex. We would have a lot of callers that were lonely men that simply wanted someone to talk to, a listening ear and a kind voice and that was kind of sad. We would spend time having real conversations with these guys. Maybe the men’s loneliness epidemic has been in place for longer than we think, and it is only now that it is getting press time.
The longest call I had was one of these. They do say that I can talk, like really talk, and this call lasted for eleven hours. Lucky I was working from home at the time, so I could make myself comfortable. We spoke a lot about gardening, growing food and other mundanes, interspersed with phone sex every now and then.
He just didnt want to hang up. He was a nice guy, gentle and kind, not like some others. I hope he found someone to share his life with, the fantasy he shared with me was fleeting.
My Coworkers Were Amazing
The people I worked with were a mixture of backgrounds but somehow we meshed very well. The only one who didn’t fit was the manager who was creepy as. He would listen to our calls A LOT. Not for quality control, but for personal perversion, he was also sexist with all of the women, something we eventually fought back against, and lost our jobs for speaking out about.
The women were amazing. F the supervisor was a feisty twenty one year old with a terrifying past of abuse, M lived with an abuser who would force her to strip naked and climb in the boot of his car, drive her to an isolated place, and force her to dig her own grave. G the older woman who sounded so sexy yet took calls in stained tighty whiteys, grey hair flowing over her shoulders, and A the baby of the group who we both corrupted and protected at the same time.
And who could forget P, very conservative to look at, a churchy, she would scream so loud on the phone that we wondered if it was fake or real. She was an enigma but we were all misfits and nobody really cared.
It was an eye opening experience, one that I will never forget, stay tuned for more.
PeaCe out