Working in phone sex

Female, 33, Roscoe Village
For a couple of months in the late ’90s, I was a phone-sex operator. I wanted to write a screenplay about the business, so I answered an online ad that read, “Do you have a young-sounding voice? Can you do an accent? Become a phone entertainer!” The service was desperate for “authentic Latinas” and suffering from a shortage of “little girl characters.” I was hired right away. I did two characters: The first was Karla, the spicy Hispanic vixen with really-really brown nipples. For some reason, the men always wanted me to stress how brown they were. For Karla, the phone madam ran a picture online of some Egyptian-looking girl with extremely brown nipples. I guess the madam knew her demographic: There was not one caller who didn’t want me to describe the absolute browness of my nips.

I also voiced “Tabby,” the innocent—but curious and willing—redhead adolescent who was a good little bad girl. This character became my most popular; the demand for “Daddy’s little girls” was unbelievable. Seriously, some of these dudes should see a shrink. I won’t even go into how young these “bad pervs” wanted me to pretend to be.

To keep track of repeat clients, I divided the calls between two categories: “good pervs” and “bad pervs.” He wants to lick off whipped cream from my toes: good perv. He wants to doodoo in my mouth: bad perv. In fact, I developed a whole Pervy Decimal Filing System with nicknames for each one: “Assistant Principal Perv,” “Major Leaguer,” “Pulitzer Prize Winner.” (Yup. For two months, I spoke to an award-winning author in a 13-year-old’s voice.)

After just one month, I became the site’s most requested girl. My notations were thorough; I knew what these pervs wanted. “Closeted Dude” wanted to talk about licking my armpits? No problem. “Truck Driver Man” hoped I’d describe kicking him in the balls? My pleasure. “Bible School Teacher” needed to hear me pee in a shoe? Fine. (Come on, I didn’t really pee in a shoe. I had my techniques for aural illusion.) I became so good at creating believable scenarios for my pervs I began to scare myself. So I stopped—and wrote a play about it.