“Hello? This is Becky! Who’s this?”
“Hi, Becky. This is Connie.”
It was a woman. A woman! A female caller is actually really rare. Women don’t pay for sex in any form with the frequency that men do. Women buy sex toys and watch porn, yes. But they don’t usually invest in prostitutes or phone sex lines. I didn’t know why Connie was calling, but I was glad she did. We ended up talking about Victoria’s Secret bras for more than forty minutes. (Talker tip: Women are the easiest calls because once you start talking about sexy stuff with a lady caller it feels normal to go off on a tangent about what the best way to get a stain out of silk might be, because who has time to run to the cleaners for one little spaghetti stain? Like do you even know how often I get stuck at work because my stupid boss makes me recount all the twenty-dollar bills in the petty-cash drawer over and over again at the end of the day? I mean HELLO! Just because he has OCD doesn’t mean I have to miss spin class, right? See that? Tangent!) I forget how the call ended. I think Connie just ran out of time or something. I don’t think she got off. I’m going to be honest with you; I have no idea how to get a woman off. I know I have lady parts so theoretically I should know, but I don’t. I know what gets me off, but I can’t be sure that delicious pizza and being left alone to play The Sims on my laptop will do it for other women.
When the call was over, both the older ladies had gone. I was offered the job! I felt I had really accomplished something! It had yet to dawn on me that the accomplishment involved men breathing heavily into my ear. The trainers explained to me that every girl who becomes a talker is assigned a number. The numbers are in chronological order, and if I left the company for any reason and then came back, my number would remain. My number was 1266 because I was the company’s 1,266th employee. Theoretically speaking, my number is still 1266. If a caller wanted to request me, he would be able to do it by number and/or by name because there were never two girls with the same name working for the company at the same time even though talker names were recycled. Gina asked me what I wanted my name to be. I chose Melody, figuring I had the melodic high-pitched voice to pull it off. I was Melody, girl 1266.
One of the trainers walked me over to human resources. YES! There was a human resources department. This was a real place of business! Isn’t that weird? I met with another plus-size black woman; this office was beginning to look like my family reunion. She gave me a packet of paperwork to fill out and explained to me that they couldn’t offer me a medical plan. This meant nothing to me as I was still, remember, twenty-one years old. She explained the rules of the company and made me aware that I was on probation for the first three months of my employment there. She informed me that working at the company would be a fun experience as there were random tea parties and holiday celebrations all the time. Every girl’s birthday was celebrated, and there were lots of games talkers played to boost morale. Each talker had the ability to gain “stars” for calls longer than ten minutes. Stars could be saved up and then turned in for Best Buy and Target gift cards and other prizes. There were talkers who saved stars to buy Christmas presents and furnish their homes. The HR woman took me on a tour of the office. I met the receptionist and the supervisors. I met the operators. Operators are not talkers. They take the callers’ credit card information and then put them through to the talker requested. (Talker tip: Make friends with the operators. If a caller requests a girl who isn’t currently at work, an operator can suggest that the caller try a new girl. You! They’ll send you a note detailing what the guy is into, and when you get the request . . . that’s right! You make two dollars before you even say hello! But operators only do this for their friends. Remember this.) I was showed the nap room. This was a twenty-four-hour, seven-days-a-week company. We were open on New Year’s and Christmas and every major holiday in between—those days paid time and a half, which meant you could make $22.50 an hour. You could choose your own hours, working from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for a more traditional workday or 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. if you preferred. Even better, 8 p.m. to 8 a.m., when the base pay shot up to nine dollars an hour. For those who liked to work overnight, falling asleep was a real hazard, so you could reserve some time in the nap room and spend your hour-long break in there taking a snooze before you got back on the phones. This was going to be an amazing place to work. I asked how I could apply for a position other than talker. I was informed that every woman at the company started out as a talker and that while it takes years to move up in the company it could, in fact, happen if I worked hard enough. But when the HR woman introduced me to Girl 150 who was still just a talker, I got how long it could take to move up in the company. What hope did Girl 1266 have? I was sent home to develop a life and character for Melody as if I’d be with her a long time.
I started work the next day. I was given a headset with my number etched into the side of it. Branded. In the supervisors’ office, where I punched in, there were always two supervisors on duty along with a receptionist. Always a man and a woman. I walked down the hall to my locker to put my purse away (actually, I still wore backpacks back then as if I were forever on my way to third-period science class). The talker floor was a huge dark room filled with cubicles. One side of the room had windows but that didn’t matter as the shades were always drawn to ensure twenty-four-hour darkness on the floor. There were usually about thirty to forty talkers working at a time. They sat in cubicles lined up one by one in about six rows with a computer sitting on every other desk. A talker never sat directly next to another girl because the caller wasn’t supposed to overhear the next talker. For the first week of work, I was to sit in the talker representative section. This is where the expert talkers sat and trained new talkers and helped them adjust to sucking a dick over the phone. These women I cannot remember by name, but their numbers are still as clear as day to me. Numbers 2, 5, 10, and 20 all helped me on my first week of talking. These women had been with the company since the beginning. They made the most money on the phones because the majority of their calls were requests from the same customers they’d been talking to since the ’90s. Number 2 was a Trinidadian woman with a slight accent on the phone but a thick “What the fuck did she just say?” accent in real life. She was the OG of the talker floor. If you were talking too loudly, she’d come directly to you and tell you to “quiet ya mouff!” Number 10 was much sweeter and my favorite, frankly. She was a black British woman. I would listen to her coo her accent into the ears of men who had been calling her for a decade. Every call was like a reunion for her. The majority of women on the talking floor were mothers. Some were college students who needed flexible hours. Most had more than this one job. Some were also strippers or dominatrices. Some were just there to make extra Christmas money for their grandchildren. Most, no matter their background, had been there for way too long, and none of them had moved up in the company. From the beginning, I was scared that I’d be there too long myself, picking up calls in the year 2020 from people I’d been talking to since 2005.
The company was founded by a husband and wife, a white couple who were almost never in the office. They were usually on their way to a cruise or just coming back from a cruise. The company’s staff was 95 percent women. Most of these women were black. Any woman who held a job title above talker was a smart, problem-solving woman with a huge list of responsibilities. There were a few men who worked at the company, all as supervisors or doing clerical work or as security. Each one of them was connected to a woman or women who worked there. A husband, a son, a boyfriend of a talker. Men were only hired after a woman who worked at the company vouched for them. When the phones were really busy, no matter what was going on or what department they were in, all of these smart black women had to get on the phones and pretend to be stupid young white girls for the pleasure of white men. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Or anyone else there, for that matter. That’s why we were all constantly being distracted by games to collect stars to turn into gift cards to buy stuff with. Everything was about how much mo
ney we could make so that we didn’t have to take a look at what we were really doing. It worked for me and it worked on me. But I told myself I wasn’t degrading myself for some faceless caller. He was the one paying to get all sticky and gross while listening to me recite Cosmo’s latest list of ways to give the perfect blow job. I was safely in a cubicle in a nice office building flipping through magazines and making a decent amount of money while pretending to be a gorgeous white girl named Melody with daddy issues. Sure, there were a lot of calls that were gross and degrading in a way that I couldn’t shake off. But what was I supposed to do? Quit? It had taken me so long to find this job in the first place. Quitting would just take me back to square one. I couldn’t afford that. In order to not walk away from the phones feeling tired and dirty, I had to allow myself to be convinced that I had the upper hand.
My therapist had an opinion about my new job. She didn’t think it was a good idea. She thought it was psychologically damaging and hurtful to all the work I’d done to get over my depression. I knew that she was right on one level, but I was actually really happy at that job. I was good at it, which gave me a sense of accomplishment, and I was able to afford to help my mom out with the rent, which made me feel productive. I was able to go out with my friends and not worry about how I was going to pay for dinner. I could afford to have fun. I couldn’t let what I said on the phones be real to me. Most of what I said and heard was hilarious, and it made me laugh. A lot. I was making fun of those men as soon as I hung up. If I was on a domination call, I’d make fun of them while still on the call. Also, I don’t want you to think that every caller was some terrible creepy man rubbing himself and wanting me to call him Daddy. When I first started taking calls, I worked Saturday nights from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. for the bump in pay, and the majority of calls that came in were from soldiers stationed in Afghanistan. Those soldiers were very polite and lonely. Not one of them wanted me to pretend to give them a blow job. They didn’t call for sex at all. They called because they wanted to talk to someone who wasn’t their family. For one, their loved ones were usually asleep at that time of night. But also they didn’t want to talk to people who missed them. Who were worried about them and wanted them to come home. One soldier explained to me that it was emotionally taxing to talk to someone you missed, who missed you, too. That wanting to be there for that loved one and hearing about all the things you were missing out on could make a person feel worse than they felt before they started talking. We talkers were paid to pick up the phone and be nice. That’s it. The average soldier would stay on a call for more than an hour. Sometimes two hours, until his prepaid card was out of minutes. The talker and the caller can hear when the system is going to cut the call off. At the end of the call, a soldier would always say, “Ma’am, it’s been real nice talking to you, so thank you for being kind. And remember when you go to bed tonight that we’re out here fighting for your freedom and fighting to make sure you’re safe.”
As I mentioned, the average caller was not a creepy old man with his hands on his balls. He was someone who just wanted to talk to a girl he imagined was pretty who wouldn’t reject him . . . and Charlie Sheen. Yes, a lot of calls were from creepy men who called me a bitch and a slut as I pretended to love it. It absolutely could be degrading work no matter how many “nice guys” called in.
My therapist was having none of it. She really thought I should reconsider this job. I asked her again what she thought I should do. She sighed very deeply, and said to me, “Gabby. I think that you are smart. You’re very smart and you know what this line of work can do to you. I believe you can figure out a way to stop it and still get what you want.” I said okay without really knowing what I was saying okay to.
About a month and a half after I started working at phone sex, I turned twenty-two. I didn’t work on my birthday, but a few days after, a supervisor called me into the conference room at around two in the morning. I followed her in, and the trainers, supervisors, and receptionist presented me with balloons, a card, and a box of chocolates for my birthday. The card was signed by multiple talkers, most of whom I didn’t even know. I was surprised, because I’d mostly kept to myself and hadn’t made friends yet. I thanked them all and went back to the phones. During my lunch break at around 4 a.m., I went into the break room to read my book. Terrifying Tales by Edgar Allan Poe. The supervisor who’d called me in for the surprise birthday moment saw me reading and asked if I read a lot. Then she asked what I did for my birthday. I told her, and she asked me a few more questions about myself. After I answered them, she remarked that I was smart and went back to her desk. I remember thinking that if I was as smart as she and my therapist said I was, I would’ve been able to find a job where I didn’t have to hear the word cock a hundred times a day. The next day the same supervisor called me into the conference room again. I expected more balloons, but the room was empty. She sat me down and informed me that one of the receptionists was leaving the company and said that if I wanted the position it was mine. I’d been working for less than two months and already I was being given a promotion! Receptionists made twelve dollars an hour. Technically speaking, I had the potential to make more money as a talker, but as a receptionist I didn’t have to pretend to blow anyone, so it was a better job. I was off the talker floor. (Maybe I am smart?) My receptionist training began that same day. The rumors that I was a lesbian who’d slept my way to the promotion also started the next day.
Things can sometimes work out if you’re smart, but my greatest virtue is patience. I had a demeaning job that required me to pretend I was sucking a dick over the phone every day. Even after my promotion to receptionist, if the phones were busy, I had to leave my desk and go back to the talker floor and pretend to be an empty-headed girl for some creep to jerk off to. It wasn’t ideal, but I was eventually promoted again and again and again until I began training to be the person who interviewed hopeful applicants. I was becoming Gina. I was with the company for three years. I was patient enough to turn the degradation into something positive. I took what I learned on the phones about secrets, shame, and pleasure, and applied it to the real world around me. I learned how to talk to people. I learned how to flirt with everyone and everything. I learned to lead with my personality. I learned to deal with rumors. (If the girls on the talker floor thought I got a promotion by being a lesbian, I let them. All the lesbians I know are dope and get shit done. I’ve certainly been called worse!) I learned to boldly ask for what I wanted. I learned that your average businessman works hard and carries plenty of shame as well as self-entitlement. (Also, he might be wearing panties under his suit and that’s his business.) I’m not afraid to say anything to anyone. I’m not afraid to be anyone. I’ve already experienced the worst of people, and I’ve learned that we’re all still human. My patience taught me to survive as 1266, and my intelligence helped me say yes to acting when the opportunity was presented to me.
I’ve had acting roles that I felt demeaned me as much if not more than the phone sex calls. I took those roles because it was my job to take them and because the relationships and experience I’ve gained will eventually allow me to create and play my own characters. I want to tell my own stories, and someday soon I will.
13
Is This a Date?
“If you’re looking at me, I’m your type!”
—Dizzy Moore (BFF)
FULL DISCLOSURE, I DON’T KNOW dick about dating. I started doing it pretty late in life. Nineteen. I was basically a grandmother. I know that you’re probably thinking, Oh, right! You didn’t date before you were nineteen because of the . . . “fat thing,” huh? First of all, there’s no need to whisper. Yes, I was a fat child and then a fat teenager, but boys liked me. Probably not as many as liked the thin girls, but I was really funny, and I was cool. I knew every rap song on the radio and every lyric DMX ever wrote (this was very sexy and solidified me as a catch . . . in my own mind). I could sing; I always had my own money, so I never begged for some boy to buy me a Snickers or
anything; and I was generous and fun to be around. I’m not saying I was beating boys off with a stick, but I had admirers.
In the seventh grade, a boy sent me a note one Friday asking me out. (It’s important to know that in junior high a guy “asking you out” means asking you to be his girlfriend. There is no actual going out required.) After school, I had a friend send a note back to him saying yes. We didn’t have each other’s phone numbers and didn’t know where the other lived so we didn’t speak over the weekend. On Monday morning, I sent my new boyfriend a note that said, “It’s dead.” We never spoke again.
When I was in the eighth grade, a ninth grader asked me to be his date to the prom. This was a big deal because it meant that I’d be the only one of my friends who’d get to go to prom a year early. That’s some Kelly Kapowski shit right there. I said, “Yeah! Cool.” About a week later, my date asked me if I’d bought my dress yet and what color it was so that he could get me a corsage that matched. At this point I realized I was afraid of prom. PROM! Do you even know what goes on there? You have to put on a dress and makeup. MAKEUP! And you have to dance. Not just by yourself but with the dude who brought you there. IN FRONT OF EVERYONE! Also, since you’d be there with that dude, he probably liked you, and you probably liked him, so everyone would know you had FEELINGS for that guy! ICK! And then at the end of the night you’d probably have to let him kiss you! Your ample bosom would heave up and down in anticipation; it would be like all of a sudden you’re in a romance novel. And then you’d have to meet his family, and he’d have to meet yours, and then you’d settle for him and get married, and then you’d be just as unhappy as your mom when she was married.
This was all happening too fast. BAIL. ABORT MISSION. I looked down at my feet, and said, “I don’t really have time to find a dress. Go with someone else.” Then I walked away bravely. Okay. Maybe not bravely. I was scared. Not of prom, but of boys. I was scared of relationships in general. I’m not sure what boys and relationships represented for me back then, but I didn’t want any part of it. Meanwhile, my junior high crew of black girls my age with first names ending with the letter a were all boning boys. My best friend was only technically a virgin, and my other friends already had a designated room in the school’s basement where they’d go get it on. But for me, even the idea of dancing with a boy was enough to make me shut down.
This Is Just My Face Page 13