Summer Fling Phones It In Summer Fling Phones It ...

I worked as a phone sex operator a few years ago when I was between jobs and needed a quick way to make rent. It's hardly the "hot" job people like to think it is?long hours talking trash to men who wouldn't necessarily look twice at you in the real world but will fork out $2.99 a minute to hear a porn star description and a pack of romance-novel lies. However, the hours are flexible, the money almost enough to get by on in the short term, and, I admit it, I was curious about the whole thing. I'd seen Girl 6, I'd read Vox and I was intrigued by who the callers were, at first. Once the novelty wore off, I saw it for what it was?another telemarketing job, except you get to improvise your own script.

During the winter months, I got a lot of "regular" callers?guys for whom phone sex was more than a habit, it was a relationship. A lot of the recidivists were fetishists?panty sniffers, crossdressers, water sports fans?whose wives or girlfriends couldn't or wouldn't indulge their appetites. For them, the call was a "date," and they would make it last with a little friendly how-was-your-day-dear chitchat, a little flirting, and then, after the fantasy, a little pillow talk, almost like cuddling verbally.

In the fall it was back to school: a lot of college guys away from home, lonely, shy, missing their girlfriends, or at a frat party and doing it as a prank (known as a gangbang in the biz). They would ask questions. "Why do you do this?" "What do you really look like?" They would be given a fantasy within the fantasy, that I was working my way through school, that my boyfriend sometimes listened to my calls, stuff like that. The intrigue would keep them interested long after the actual phone sex.

Springtime brought a flurry of lesbians. I have no idea why. Maybe it was the promise of rebirth, the need to break free of winter blahs... Who am I kidding? It was probably the ads in the Advocate and Out.

But the summer, the summer...something about these hot, sticky New York City nights, where women walk the streets in tanktops and shorts, glistening with perspiration, moistening their lips on phallic Evian bottles, the scent of their perfume mingling with musk. Men who never considered it before will try phone sex in July or August, late at night, after a long day of air-conditioned nipples hardening at the office and a long steamy soak on the 6 train brushing up against a Bronx babe with a J-Lo ass and a halter top.

According to the phone sex company I worked for, their first-time caller numbers spike between July 4 and Labor Day, with the Christmas season a close second. Summer phone sex "virgins" made sense to me?they were average guys who would check out the thong bikinis and belly shirts on the beach while their own oiled flesh was exposed to the sun, sand and surf. Add a few beers and a couple of flirty looks from long-legged jailbait and it's perfectly clear how Summer Fling guy fumbles for his cellphone and a number ripped from an old Penthouse Forum.

I always pictured Summer Fling in his studio apartment, sitting in front of Channel 35's countless escort service ads, stripped down to his Fruit of the Looms, a beer wet with condensation in one hand, his member in the other, a fan buzzing white noise and barely moving the air trained on him. He needed a vanilla call?a pretty young thing going down on him, basically. He pictured me blonde, blue-eyed, 110 pounds of tanned legs and firm boobs, sitting in a cool, air-conditioned room, just out of the shower after a day of beach volleyball with my equally perky girlfriends. Summer Fling guys all wanted the Porky's scenario, all us babes soaping the sand off one another in the communal shower, and then he walks in, and we all...you get the idea.

The funny thing was, after Summer Fling shot and scored, he always sounded surprised that I was still on the line. He had no idea how to end the call. He didn't want to be rude, usually, but he was finished, and he just wanted to wash his hands and go to bed. Sometimes he'd hang up very quietly while I was in mid-sentence, so as not to be insulting. More often, they made up elaborate excuses. "I have to run, I have to, uh, walk the dog, she's been whining and she needs to go." It gave me a bit of insight into how a Summer Fling might excuse himself after an actual flesh-and-blood encounter. Although I appreciated the direct approach?a simple "Thank you" and hang up?I was amazed by how few Summer Flings actually ended the call that way.

Summer Flings were my favorite calls. They were easy, they were straightforward and they were fun. There was no drama, no "I need to meet you in person" stalker-like threats and promises, no whines of "Don't you remember me?" when I first picked up the phone and barely said hello. There's no reason to keep track of the lies and intrigues with a Summer Fling, because chances are it's a one-off experience for him and he doesn't want to be remembered. After he pays the bill, he doesn't want to be reminded of it. Sometimes a Summer Fling will evolve into a regular, but for the most part, he is a telecommunications one-night stand.

On a sultry night in New York City, it was nice to know that neither of us would have to sleep in the wet spot.