Have any of you ever had a job, no matter for how short a time, that you have kept on the 'down low', either because it was a secret just for yourself, or you were worried how other people would react to it? Maybe you collected sperm samples from virile boars? Maybe you gave sperm donations of your own? Perhaps you were involved something a 'little less than legit.'?
About a year ago, I worked as a 'freelance chatline operator' which is the polite title for someone who engages in dirty phonecalls. I did this for about a month, whilst my husband worked in Sandy Land. I had his full support, mostly because he wouldn't be able to eavesdrop on my fruity conversations.
A friend of mine had tried this work, and she said that it was fun, and an easy way to make a little extra cash, in your own time. As I was confined to my military quarter with two young children, and little money, these benefits seemed too good to miss out on, so I applied with a very large agency, and set to work.
The first part of the job involved recording a number of messages, which would be played to callers as part of a menu; they would decide what sort of conversation they wanted to have, be it a clean chat, kinky, mature lady, or hardcore. I had to invent a persona, give myself a name, age, set of 'interests', and some topics I liked to talk about, be that literature, television, or being spanked very hard across the arse with a wooden ruler, according to which category I was recording for. I decided to call myself Lyssi, (in reference to Lysistrata), I was '19 years old, with flame-red hair and peridot-green eyes'.
I was amazingly nervous waiting for the phone to ring that first time! Would I know what to say? Would I be able to say anything at all?! Maybe I'll freeze or burst out laughing? I needn't have worried, it was actually really easy. In fact, I surprised myself at how easily I was able to slip into character...
I got to talk to a massively wide range of people. I had believed the stereotype before I got into this work, that the 'clientele' would just be dirty, pervy blokes who were virgins and lived at home with their mothers. And to be fair, some were. But I talked to surgeons, pharmacists, teachers, police men, lots of long distance lorry drivers, women and couples.
One common factor amongst my customers was that you couldn't guess what they would be into just by their voice or what they said they did for a living. I talked to one gruff-sounding lorry driver with a strong Yorkshire accent. Right, I thought, this guy is going to be quite predictable. But I was wrong. He wanted me to describe dressing him in a girl's school uniform, with pigtails, stockings and suspenders, in minute detail. I had to try and replicate the sound of each item of clothing as I described putting it on his body, using the zip on my cushion covers, the jingle of my belt buckle, the squelchy sound of a spoon being twisted in a juicy orange. He wanted to be shamed in public, have me drag him through the high street of a town by his plaits, and then violated by a stranger. He climaxed very loudly and then hung up. Presumably to continue his delivery of whatever freight he was carrying.
Another 'memorable' caller wanted me to, ahem, wee for him. He said the sound of tinkling would turn him on. How could I refuse such a novel request? I immediately set about turning the kitchen tap on just enough to trickle. And then I rustled some kitchen paper at the mouthpiece of the phone. This seemed to do the trick. He was very grateful, and then asked me if I would be kind enough to poo for him the next time he rang. I had retired from this type of work before I had the joy of answering that particular call, but I had made a mental note to leave out a wet teabag to drop into some water should I speak to him again.
I was also honoured to be included in several rowdy Glaswegian stag do's. Easiest callers of all. They simply forgot to talk to me! They would soon be reminded when they saw their phone bills, and that they had been charged £2 a minute, and were on the phone to me for an hour!
I was also an unexpected eavesdropper in some interesting scenarios. One time a gaggle of City Wankers called me, high on God know's what from Canary Wharf (apparently). They were convinced that they were talking to the pneumatic, plastic-breasted model on a particular cable channel that devotes itself entirely to promoting phone chats with pneumatic, plastic-breasted models. After listening to them ramble on for forty five minutes, I soon heard the voice of a security guard who wanted to know who they were, and where were their I.D's. A very entertaining hour!
In the end though, I had to give the job up. Sometimes it wasn't practical to go into full raspy-breathing, cushion-cover unzipping mode, when my mother was staying with me, for example. Plus doing a full night shift, which was required at least once a week, wasn't really plausible when I had to take care of two toddlers the following day. But I did enjoy it, a lot of the time, although not in a titillating fashion, no, I just enjoyed this rare insight into a surprisingly varied cross-section of society. The lonely, the ashamed, the bored, and not only the callers...
