Men who call, and the women who?answer Men who call, and the women who?answer A slender blonde holds a Mickey Mouse doll at her naked hip and stares steadily into the camera in an advertisement in the back pages of The Village Voice. In an ad below her, a woman wearing a bra made out of chains bares her teeth, her dark eyes sparkling. She is holding a whip. "She wants to beat YOU," the ad states. "To find out how much she wants to beat you, simply call a toll-free number and have your credit card ready." Although there is no question many men might find the women depicted in these ads alluring, why they would spend so much money to hear a voice describe sexual acts remains a mystery to others. What level of desperation must a man reach before he gives away his savings for the services of not even a prostitute, but the illusion of a prostitute? And what sort of woman makes her living off of these desperate callers' fantasies? A talk with individuals on both ends of the line reveals they are much more complicated than the stereotypes and magazine ads might suggest. T hroaty "Lady Lynnette," a handicapped, 47 year-old phone-sex operator with a Las Vegas area code, considers herself a "woman's libber." After all, at the age of 16, she became the first female licensed truck driver in Indiana, the state of her birth. Lady Lynnette also was the first woman in Indiana to become a licensed bartender. So what is this pioneering, self-proclaimed feminist from the Bible Belt doing in lusty Las Vegas, purring "mmm...hello" so fetchingly into the telephone receiver before she asks you in a sultry voice, "Visa or Mastercard?" "I have an aggressive personality," explained Lady Lynnette, who operates a dominance and submission line. "So it's the easiest thing for me to do." Her own personal experience with dominant and submissive sexual acts gives her a better understanding of her customers, she said. She added that the typical caller who fantasizes about being beaten and urinated on is a "guy who has a lot of pressure on him at work and a demanding wife." "At the end of the day, they just want to be submissive to someone else, to be told what to do," Lady Lynnette said. Lady Lynnette often has to "discipline" callers who over-charge their credit cards. "It's like disciplining a child," she said. But Lady Lynnette has become "friends" with many of her callers by supplying them with "counseling" as well as sexual fantasies. After firmly advising one caller from West Virginia to "never raise his voice to his girl," the caller promptly obeyed her, she said. Lady Lynnette said she is flying out to West Virginia in June to attend the caller's wedding. "And his girl won't even know who I am," she laughed. "He'll know who I am, but she sure won't!" In a more serious tone, she said that her West Virginia caller is "a darling, like a son to me." Such a loving relationship between a phone-sex operator and a caller is not altogether uncommon. College senior Endre Markos is writing a book about a relationship he developed with a phone-sex operator from Brooklyn named "Tara." Markos said first became acquainted with Tara in November of his freshman year. He said he and his roommate were watching television late one night when they saw an ad for a phone-sex line appear on the screen. Markos said his roommate persuaded him to call the line because he was "just really drunk." He said when he spoke to Tara on the phone-sex line, he was enchanted by her "beautiful voice." In a draft of his book, "1-900-USA-4LUV," Markos wrote that "her magical voice pulled me to the telephone, just like the sailors were mesmerized by the whispering, quiet songs of the mermaids." "I became a regular caller," he continues. "Every time I was pleading with her. I wanted her home phone number so I would escape the giant bill." After the first month of his habitual phone calls to Tara, Markos said he had a phone bill of $1,067. He said he never asked her to talk about sexual fantasies. Markos said he kept trying "to get her to stop moaning, and talk to me like a normal person." In his book, Markos writes that people who do use the phone-sex service as a masturbation aid are "sad and alone [to be] clinging on to an audio device for fulfillment." Eventually, Markos said, Tara gave him her home telephone number, and he was able to continue his platonic friendship with her. He even travelled into Brooklyn to meet her in person and take her to an expensive Manhattan dance club. "I suddenly felt like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman," Markos writes in his book. "Did I have the need to feel admired or to be looked upon as a savior?" After his voyage to New York, though, he said he never saw Tara again, and they began speaking on the telephone much less frequently. But, Markos said, he has taken several trips to Brooklyn since their last encounter to interview people who knew Tara as a child for his book. Not all callers of phone-sex lines are as intrigued by their operators as Markos, however. "Ron," a thirty-five year-old construction worker who asked that his true name not be revealed, said he has called phone-sex lines up to three times a week. He said most of the operators are "bullshitters" who "do it for the money." And 23 year-old "Drew," who also asked not to be identified, is a recent community college graduate who said he only calls phone-sex lines as a masturbation aid. He said that while he thinks phone-sex operators are "real flirty," he is sure that they are "only doing their nails when they're making all of that noise." "I guess they're just people trying to make a living," Drew added. But "Kathy," who asked that her real name not be used, is a domination and submission phone sex operator from California who says she "never has to fake anything." She started working as a phone sex operator for a "976" line ten years ago, when she was an "out-of-work secretary." At the "976" lines, Kathy said a lot of the phone sex operators were "really phone actresses." Now that she works for a domination and submission line, though, her job has become more "reality-based," as she participates in bondage and discipline acts in her own bedroom. But "Amy," who also asked that a pseudonym be used to identify her, is a phone-sex operator who says she used to be "an executive in a large advertising agency in a large, northeastern city" until she was confined to her bed by an "organ disease." She admits that she creates, rather than lives out, her customers' fantasies. "You'd be amazed at what you can bring yourself to say to someone when you're on the phone," she said. Nancy Ava Miller, the owner of a phone fantasy line and sado-masochist support group called People Exchanging Power, said that although she does occasionally masturbate during phone calls, she "very rarely has an orgasm" because she is telling the callers "how to come, if I let them come." ''A lot of lawyers have foot fetishes," gushed "Jennifer," a 27 year-old phone-sex operator and owner of the Venus Club, a phone-sex line operating out of Milwaukee which caters to wealthy businessmen. "Oh, yeah, it's true," said Jennifer, who asked not to be identified. "A lot of judges and doctors like to be dominated. They want the woman to boss them around." Jennifer said that while many of her wealthy customers like to fantasize about being urinated on or whipped, men with less money "just want regular sex fantasies." "You know the saying," she said. "The richer you get, the more eccentric you get." "People with less money can't afford the luxury of fetishes," Jennifer added. ''Victoria," a phone-sex operator and part-time student at Temple University who hails from London, has what some may consider an unusual part-time job -- but doesn't find anything her customers request "strange." The only time she was offended by a caller was when one asked her to pretend to be "really young." "He asked me to call him 'Daddy' and I asked him if he had children," said Victoria, who asked that her real name not be used. "He said he had a 14 year-old daughter and I hung up on him." Victoria, like Lady Lynnette, considers herself a feminist. "The conditions that make phone sex viable are anti-feminist -- not the phone sex itself," she said. She added that because she is not a native American, she has noticed that American women "aren't taught to appreciate or understand their own sexuality in this country." Jennifer felt similarly. "I think a lot of women and men have sexual hang-ups," she said. "They don't have a European attitude about sex at all."
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