Alysia Sawchyn currently lives in Northern Virginia. She is a nonfiction editor for Sweet: A Literary Confection, and her writing has appeared in Fourth Genre, Barrelhouse, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere.
Sawchyn's nonfiction, “Phone Sex, Revisited,” was originally published in The Southeast Review Volume 35.2 and was one of our 2017 Pushcart nominees for the 2018 Pushcart anthology.
Phone Sex, Revisited
I don’t often talk about my brief stint as a phone sex operator. The information surprises, often prompting a high-pitched, overly enunciated Really? or excessively personal questions. Let me get this out of the way: Was it hot? No. Did you get off while doing it? No.
I am less bothered when women ask me about it because there’s often an alliance there, underlying the curiosity. Choosing to work in the sex industry gives the illusion of control, dangles the elusive promise of mastery over—or, at least, acceptance of—one’s body and sexuality. We all want to know what that’s like.
Those who know about my previous occupation sometimes look at me hard, like there might be an outward sign of my past, like I should be somehow marked by desire. I am generally a disappointment. My daily life predictably consists of too much coffee and too much time at a desk. When I’m tired, though, my speech slows and drops, picking up places I’ve lived, most noticeably a drunken four months in North Carolina, and those who have heard me speak in those vulnerable moments tell me that’s when they get it.
“Your voice,” they say.
Drained of all affectation, intentional or otherwise, I can sound pretty sultry. My already alto voice has been sandpapered rough by a decade of smoking, and I’m enjoying its sensuality while it lasts.
I got the phone sex job through a woman named Taylor. She had small Chinese characters tattooed four inches in from each of her hipbones, and there was something satisfying about wrapping my mouth around them—I liked the idea of tasting truth or joy—even though I don’t remember what she thought they meant. When our mouths were unoccupied, Taylor told me wild stories about mixing tracks for a nationally popular band and teaching drug dealers how to properly cook crack. One night we ended up outside a trap house with a bedsheet for a front door. Taylor instructed me to stay in the car but leave the door unlocked; she repeated, Leave the goddamn door unlocked if you know what’s good for you. I always nodded, always responded, Yeah, Oh, wow, or with a throaty hum of assent. I was eighteen, and it seemed easier to agree, tacitly or otherwise, than to push back, no matter how unbelievable the story. Though I would like to say this has changed, that this is a story of overcoming and redemption, it still seems easier to be silent. I am often a coward hiding behind a guise of manners and propriety.
When Taylor said she’d take me in for an interview at the phone sex company where she worked, I only half-believed the offer until we were standing together in the featureless lobby of the call center. I’d immediately agreed, though. The job paid better than minimum wage, and I was a year out of high school with poor social skills and no college prospects. I had ideas, too, about what it meant to be a phone sex operator, about what, perhaps, the job could do for me as a person. The beige-gray carpeting shimmered with the promise of confidence and sensuality.
The building was one of many offices with tinted windows and venetian blinds in a strip mall on a major road. To all appearances, it could have been a car insurance company with an all-women staff. I’d imagined these women would be like Taylor: sultry, outspoken, comfortable with insincerity. This was the image I’d hoped I, too, could mold myself into after working there for a time, an unfortunate answer to What do you see this job doing for you? But my illusions barely had time to take shape before they were challenged. As Taylor and I stood in the lobby, a short, obese woman who looked about fifty limped past us, leaning heavily on a black metal cane.
“She’s one of the best,” Taylor said.
“Really?”
I am now pleased this woman was probably not what the callers envisioned either. Her unexpected appearance made her acquiescence to others’ desires more empowering, like her body was a secret, what she held on to so she would not be swallowed. But I did not have words like that then.
I interviewed for the position, but I wasn’t drug-tested. Taylor mentioned on the drive over, shouting, high-pitched over the bass of her stereo, that the bathroom was smack-friendly. A job perk. I nodded in assent. It was early in the morning, her cell phone rang and rang and rang, and she turned the stereo’s volume even higher.
The woman who interviewed me, who would later become my trainer, was interested in only three things: my lack of criminal record, my unflappability, and my voice’s flexibility.
“Can you do a Valley Girl accent?” she asked.
“I think so.”
She looked at me, expectantly.
“What do you want me to say?” I said.
“Let’s start with normal conversation. Sometimes you don’t jump into the sex right away.”
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