I stalk the apartment -- back and forth, back and forth like a caged animal, talking to myself, snarling and gnashing my teeth and uttering empty profanities and half-hearted blasphemies, but at least I say them with feeling. I page through meaningless porno mags, searching for the pose which will finally turn my crank. I turn on the television and flip from channel to channel, searching for the faintest hint of frontal nudity -- perhaps an episode of Baywatch, a lurid 90210 rerun, maybe an old Silk Stalkings, the old ones with the cute detectives. I feel like going out to rent a porn video but fear I would have a nervous breakdown in a little back room surrounded by grinning bimbos laughing at me from the shelves. Instead, I lay there very quiet hoping my downstairs neighbors will start fucking. I look out the window hoping to see someone changing. I page through a tattered copy of Vanity Fair searching desperately for perfume ads.
It's been weeks. It has been fucking weeks. Long hours at work; deadlines; stress; cocktail parties; the obligations of a young, slightly hep and vaguely... um... upwardly mobile social butterfly. I'm beginning to realize why the media seems to think all sex occurs before 20: because it does.
I feel that ache through my body that spells the exquisite pain of arousal. The ache doesn't just reside in my loins; matter of fact, it's barely there at all. It's a trembling in the arms, a quivering in the chest, a tenseness in the throat and neck, a tendency for my hands to resolve themselves into claws and scratch desperately at the carpet while I wail my despair unto creation. I have begun to resemble the unfortunate main character in a Hammer werewolf movie.
When it gets to this point, self-pleasuring isn't enough. It seems that just hauling the damn thing out and having at would almost be an insult to the agonizing quality of the desire flooding my helpless body. It would be like playing ping-pong in the Bahamas when I want to be skiing in the High Sierra.
As a matter of fact, in order to dispell this attack of erotic lycanthropy, I must bring myself up the ski lift of lust to a torrid, thundering pinnacle of arousal, hit the slopes doing 45 mph, and slam myself headlong into the stone wall of orgasm. This is not a sport for teenagers.
But none of the usual methods are doing it. "Ass-Eating Scumsuckers" seems a tawdry, disinterested nightmare of VHS and bad tracking, and its bastard sisters "Cunt Lapping Sluts" and "Whoa! That's Pretty Big!" serve only to nauseate me. I squirm on the couch, conjuring elaborate fantasies in my mind. Then I spy the weeks-old copy of the Guardian under the coffee table.
Phone sex. What I need is a little phone sex.
That's right. Yeah. Give it to me, baby. Make me take it, hot stuff.
Phone sex. Fuck yeah. Hell yeah. Phone sex.
I tear off my clothes and cast them unto the wind like a discarded chrysalis. Wearing only my threadbare Calvin Kleins, I page through the weekly newspaper seeking sustenance. Yeah, this seems like a great idea.
Except for the fact that my credit cards are all maxed out, as per usual, so I've got to pick through the many pages of ads to find a 900 number. They seem to be in relatively short supply -- most of them want V/MC, sometimes V/MC/D/Amex. But the pictures alone, fascinating and repulsive at the same time, are already giving me a hard-on. I squirm and whimper, searching for the right one. Then I spot it. "Bitch Dominatrixes Want to Dominate You, Wimp!" Yeah. Fuck yeah. Hell motherfucking yeah. That sounds like a GREAT idea. I WANT bitch dominatrixes to dominate me.
I dial the number and wait through the interminable warning about how I better hang up if I'm under eighteen. I wonder to myself if any self-respecting twelve-year-old would really hang up upon hearing that.
Well, that's their problem. It seems like I sit on hold forever. Finally the line is answered with a sultry "Hello."
I can't for the life of me imagine what I should say. Finally, "Uh, Hi. I saw your ad," I blurt out.
"Oh," comes the voice, a porn-star voice, a phone-sex voice, inviting and seductive. "Do I have an ad?" "Uh. . . in the Guardian?"
She sounds incredibly pissed off. "Well you seem to think I have an ad. All right, asshole. Why don't you tell me what that ad says, since you seem to think I'm a phone sex operator, asshole."
"Uh. . . .excuse me?"
"Tell me what the fucking ad says, asshole, since you seem to think I work for this company! Tell me, asshole!"
I am so floored I almost can't make sense out of it, and my hard-on is gone.
Despite myself, I manage a nervous laugh. "I think there's been some mistake," I say.
"Yeah, you bet there has," and she hangs up on me.
It's too funny to laugh at, it even kinda hurts. I imagine the 900-number must have patched me through to some housewife in Dubuque. Either that or the operator was possessed of multiple personality disorder.
Well, she was definitely a bitch, all right, as promised.
Shit, that was unpleasant. But I'm still horny as hell.
Do I really want to try this again? My hard-on is long gone. But looking through the lurid ads of bored-looking porn queens and sneering dominas brings it back again.
I dial another number, this one promising "Bitchy Mistresses Will Make You Suck Their Cocks!" Yeah. Yeah. That's it. This is a GREAT idea. I WANT bitchy mistresses to make me suck their cocks. The phone is answered right away by a woman with a heavy East Coast accent.
"Uh. . . .excuse me, what line have I reached?"
"Da Hottest Goils in Town," she tells me. "At least, I sure hope so!" She laughs.
"OK" I say nervously. "Do you do domination?"
Domination. Yeah. Uh, Just a minute." It sounds like she's covered the phone with her hand, and I hear her shouting to someone. "Maxie! Do we do domination? Oh, sorry, you're on the phone. Shit. Dammit. Well, yeah, it depends on what you want."
I can't hold it back any more. My deepest, darkest secret blurts itself out to this anonymous Pennsylvania phone whore. "I want you and your friends to dominate me and slap me around and fuck me up the ass with your strap-on dildos! And tell me what a slut I am!" It's not actually my deepest darkest secret, but at the time it's the best one I can think of.
My face is turning red even as I stroke my hard cock up and down slowly.
I'm painfully aroused, about to come already.
There's a long silence on the other end of the line. "So you want to be dominated," she says matter-of-factly. "Are you into penetration? Do you want to be penetrated?"
I wonder if she heard what I just said. But I can't bring myself to repeat it. "Uh, that would be a yes," I say.
"OK," she says. "I'll tell you what I want you to do. Do you have some supplies there?"
"Supplies?"
"I want you to get some clothespins, string, clothesline, two candles, and matches. OK? Do you have them?"
I don't know how to answer that one. So I say: "Uh. . . sure. I got 'em right here."
"OK, now I want you to take your balls in your hand and wrap the clothesline around them. Wrap them good and tight. Wrap them so tight your balls hurt. Then tie the rope off, sweetie. OK, now I want you to take the clothespins and put them on your nipples. Then thread the string through them and tie the string to the rope around your balls. OK? OK, now I want you to light one of the candles and hold it over your chest. Drip wax all over your chest. Make it hurt, honey. Now hold the candle over your cock and drip wax all over your cock and balls. Drip it all over until your cock and balls are covered with wax, baby. OK, now get the other candle and lick it all over, get it all wet. Now I want you to reach back behind your balls and put the candle up your butt. Shove it into your asshole, sugar. OK, now start stroking your cock. Are you stroking it real good? Beat it off. Whip up that cream. Whip up some of that cream. You love it in the butt. You're a slut. In your butt. You're a butt slut. Whip that cream for me, hot stuff. Whip up that cream for me. Make it all frothy for me. Whip up that cream. Are you whipping up that cream for me, cutie?"
My cock hangs limp in my hand, leaking unhappy pre-cum onto my Calvin Kleins.
The whole thing has taken about fifteen seconds.
"Are you whipping up that cream?" "Uh. . . .sure."
"Are you whipping up that cream?"
"Yeah, yeah. I'm whiping up that cream."
"All right. Whip it up for me. Whip up that cream. Beat that cock. Make yourself come. Make yourself shoot that cream for me. Milk that cock. Are you going to come, baby?"
"Yeah -- uhhhhhnnnhhhnnnh! Uh!" I mutter, disinterested, hopelessly flogging my flaccid dick. "Yeah! Uh! Oh baby!"
"All right, doll. I want you to lap up that cream. Lap it up, now. Did that feel good? Does that mean you're going to call me back real soon?"
"Uh-huh," I yawn.
"All right. You call me back real soon," she says, and hangs up.
Stunned, I sit on the bed and smell the rank odor of my own fleeting
arousal. Still holding my soft cock, I snuggle into the flannel
sheets. Part of me hopes that my cock will get hard again, but most of
me feels a curious peace in my seemly irrevocable release from that
painful arousal. I yawn again, tuck my drizzling cock back into my
Calvin Kleins, and roll over. Descending into a warm and luscious
dream, I realize I have a smile on my face for the first time in
weeks. Eros is a fucking inconsiderate bitch-queen with a sick sense
of humor, no doubt about it, but at least s/he's going to let me get
some sleep for once.
Thomas S. Roche is a San Francisco writer and editor whose fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such anthologies as Best American Erotica 1996 and 1997 and The Mammoth Book of Pulp Fiction. He has edited the anthologies Noirotica and Noirotica 2: Pulp Fiction; a third volume in is forthcoming. He co-edited the anthology Sons of Darkness, which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. Some of his short stories are collected in Dark Matter from Masquerade Books.
This story first appeared in Black
Sheets #7, the "Whore Moan" issue on sex work.
Thomas S. Roche is a writer, performer and editor, and a member of the training staff of San Francisco Sex Information. His books include Dark Matter, Noirotica, Sons of Darkness, Brothers of the Night, and Gargoyles.