A look back at old posts in the much-beloved silly-phone-calls archive, 2004: A Near-Goddess Experience.

(Follow and read the linked posted first, or this won't make sense.)

The amusing thing is that sex workers and their clients using spiritual mumbo-jumbo as a code for sexual behavior certainly isn’t new. Long before I was ever a pro domme, I worked at some places where we did “spiritual healing” and “chakra alignment and release” etc. Uh-huh. We called ourselves priestesses - I'm serious - and we all had names like Astra and Moon and Gaia. The men who came to us were referred to seekers.

They were okay places to work, but the hardcore Tantra/spiritual-sexuality stuff is really not my thing. I know some people resonate with it. But it just felt silly to me, and frankly, it was a often a struggle for me to keep a straight face during the initial conversations with new clients, when one was required by the management to use that lexicon.

Fortunately, at least half the time, once the guy and I had established to each other that I’m cool/you’re cool, I would confess that I wasn’t really all that woo-woo, and he would give a big sigh of relief and say, “Oh thank god, I’m not either, but I thought I had to pretend to be.”

Honesty. It’s such a lovely thing, and it makes life – and certainly sex - so much easier. Is that a spiritual belief? Namaste.

I'm still getting caught up with Real Life. So, a look back at some of Mistress Matisse's Greatest Blog Hits.

From the last few years:
Nazi Play
S/he's A Lady
The Bank Job
Bad Approach
The Bra-Fitter
D/s And Relationships
Must One Bottom Before Topping?
My Wedding Photos
Getting Your Partner Into Kink
Getting Started In Life As A Kinkster
And, my favorite: What Not To Say - The "Puffy" Man.

And, from the dusty vaults: Older Greatest Hits (Hint: Lots of Silly Phone Calls in this list.)

Fresh material soon!

Today, a selection from the dusty vaults: a blog post from this date (more or less) five years ago. It’s not exactly a phone calls post, but rather one of my humorous takes on the voice-mails I used to get.

Since I no longer have a public phone line, I no longer get to experience the mingled amusement/exasperation of listening to such things. Like many mingled things, it’s less exasperation and more amusement when it's all firmly in the past. But occasionally - very occasionally - I miss the controlled but raw feed of utterly random input from anyone with pocket change and a copy of The Stranger.

I amused myself by going into the blog archives to see what I was writing about on January 20th in 2005. It turned out to be one of the Silly Phone Calls posts. You can read that here, if you like: link opens in a new window.

The Silly Phone Calls posts were always a big hit - with certain people. I flatter myself that some of them are very funny stories. But still, I officially stopped doing Silly Phone Calls some time back for two reasons.

Firstly, I had mined a lot of my best material. Monk and I have often observed that many of our best early blog posts were the stories we’d told before. Even a writer can hone a story out loud, get the best turns of phrase, gauge the audience's reaction, and tune up the tale based on that. Many of the most popular early Silly Phone Calls posts were written versions of anecdotes I’d regaled my friends with already.

Granted, I had many years of talking to weird strangers on the phone to draw from, so I had plenty of well-polished stories. But eventually, every well runs dry. Since I no longer have a public phone number – and oh, how I do not miss that – I have no fresh material.

But the deeper reason was: I found that sometimes those posts hurt people’s feelings – not the random callers, but people that I know and like in real life. That surprised me. See, I know I’m a dominatrix and all, but inside my own head, I don’t think of myself as a scary badass. I think I’m a pussy-cat. And not even a particularly sharp-tongued one, at that. I just thought I was being cute with those posts. But mere text on a page robs one’s words of certain nuances, so people interpret it differently than intended.

When sex workers talk about our dealings with clients, we tend to position ourselves as the potentially vulnerable ones, and our clients as the ones who must prove themselves to be not dangerous, not disrespectful, not unkind. And certainly there’s plenty of evidence to back up the wisdom of that. I’m not suggesting otherwise.

But – I decided that I wanted to be more sensitive to their vulnerability, too. It’s easy – and often satisfying - to crack jokes at a population we often see as having more power than we do. But when I heard about some of my guys being hurt by things I said, I realized - they actually don’t feel as powerful as an outside observer might assume.

It was one of those moments when something you already know crystallizes into a new form. I’m a dominatrix - I put people into vulnerable positions when they are in my dungeon. That part is obvious. But it sharpened my understanding of how, even in a professional situation, my emotional power over my clients doesn’t end when they leave my house.

I have power, and it’s not necessarily the type of power I set out to get - but I have it. So I have to use it carefully, and not leave bloody weals on boys I like. Unless of course I mean to.

***

EDIT: True, I occasionally sharpen my claws on people who write me letters and ask for advice. But that's different - they generally say, "You can write about this." That's consent, in my book.

Occasionally people tell me they miss the "stupid phone calls" posts. They were easy to write, god knows. But I don't miss actually having to answer those phone calls.

But here's an oldie-goldie from the vaults. Faithful long-term readers may remember the one and only Ryker Blackstar! Wonder how that House of Blackstar thing worked out?

Scheduling note to my friends: I'm doing family duty today. But I am available to slip away for an hour here and there Wednesday and Thursday, and I'm back to being available Friday.

***

To amuse you: just for fun, I went back through the archives to see what I wrote about around this date in previous years. So enjoy the blasts from the past.
July 2004: Strange Emails
July 2005: Silly Phone calls
July 2006: Drugs and Music
July 2007: More Phone Oddness

Hot Or Not?

I am very bad about listening to voicemail on the 329- number. I let it stack up for days. But eventually I get to it….

BEEP: Uh, so like, if I was in Seattle I’d come see you. You’re really hot. But I’m in California. Do you know any mistresses in California? Who are like, really hot? Could you call me and tell me about them? Like, how to find them, and what they’d do to me? And if they’re hot? Hotness is really important to me. END OF MESSAGE

You have got to be kidding. What am I, Google? No, I will not call you and tell you how to find all the many, many pro dommes located in the very large state of California. That is not my job.

I wonder how this man found me. Occasionally, even now, I get calls from people in all kinds of distant places who somehow got my number, and who say they don’t have internet, and thus cannot find BDSM resources online, and want me to do it for them. I feel sorry for people who are limited in this way, but I really can’t spend tons of time searching for local phone numbers for folks like this. They just need to brave the public library and get online.

So it's unlikely enough when someone wants me to find them a phone number for a munch coordinator in Deer Creek, Minnesota, or Bartow, Florida, or Gardiner, Maine. But this guy wants me to find him a pro domme? Oh, please.

If he’s not in Seattle, then I assume he’s not looking at my ad in a paper copy of The Stranger or The Weekly. Thus, he must be able to get online. So the question is: why is he asking me to do his searching for him? Answer: he just wants me to call him back and talk dirty about pro dommes to him. There are girls who do that professionally, and it’s pretty cheap these days, too. I would not be one of them.

So you’ll have to find the hotness by yourself, buddy.

I was in a cranky mood for the early part of the day yesterday. A session with Jae and one of our favorite guys improved my outlook considerably, but if you didn’t call me yesterday, you’re a lucky man, because I was feeling bitchy.

Not everyone was lucky.

I was sitting in traffic when my public line rang. I never answer that phone anymore, as I’m sure of you have noticed. Sorry, I just let it go to voicemail and deal with it when I’m in the mood. Which I admit often takes a couple of days. Sometimes I don't get it for longer than that, and then the message is two weeks old, and it seems silly to answer it. Yes, I am that busy.

But there I was, crawling along in traffic, bored and bitchy, so I looked at the phone, and I recognized the number as someone who had called me multiple times over the last 48 hours. Now, calling and calling and calling, when I haven’t called you back, is most often a bad idea. Two, maybe three time is the max. True, occasionally the phone misbehaves and eats the messages, or the message gets scrambled and is unintelligible. But in general, multiple calls = weirdo.

(I know there are guys who can't leave a callback number. I suggest you get a private email account and go that route instead. It just makes us ladies less nervous than seeing the same number popping up on the caller id.

And if I know you, and I haven’t called you back, then it’s not you, I’m just insanely busy. Email would be better for that, too. I’m really shifting over to email, it’s just much easier to track everything, and I can read and answer to a hundred emails faster than I can even listen to - let alone respond to - thirty-plus voicemails a day.

So I looked at the phone and thought, He’s probably a whack-job. But then I answered the call. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was looking for someone to be bitchy to.

I got my wish.

Me: hello?

Caller: Did you get my message?

Oh, were you calling Mistress Marvolo The Mind Reader? Or did you think you were on a video-phone? I pause lengthily and then say:

Me: (in an acidly-sweet drawl that could eat through steel) Well, I don’t know if I did, since I don’t know who I’m talking to, now do I? Who is this?

Caller: Joe.

I wait for him to add some other identifying information. He doesn’t. He just says:

Caller: I left you a message.

In a manner that implies he’s the only person in the world who could have left me a message, ever, and thus, nothing more need be said about that. However, even over the phone, I can tell that he is just quivering with the need to say something. I have no idea what it’s going to be, but I know this: it’s going to be odd. He just has that sort of whacko cadence to his voice.

So I open up the door for him, since he’s clearly not going to stop calling me until he asks me for whatever it is.

Me: What is it you want, Joe?

Caller: Will you take a swim with me?

For a moment I think he has said, “Take a swing at me”, which would be a sort of gauche way of asking for a scene, but which would be comprehensible coming from someone who didn’t have any BDSM vocabulary.

But no, he said swim. Which, I have to say, is the first time I’ve been asked for that. Points to Joe for originality. Some kind of bathing suit fetish? I have met lyrca/spandex fetishists who liked swimsuits before, although none of them felt the need to actually get into a body of water. Or maybe “take a swim” is some obscure slang that I don’t know about, for something kinky/sexual. Golden showers? I don’t know.

But when it comes down to “Do I want to be in a room with Joe”, I know the answer, and the answer is…

Me: No. Goodbye.

I hang up, and program him into the phone. SWIMGUY. Sorry, Joe, it’s not wet enough around here for that.

Ring ring!

I look at the phone. I shouldn’t answer it. Frankly, I almost never answer the phone anymore. I’m debating taking the number out of the ads in The Stranger and The Weekly, and just leaving the URL. Because I can’t recall the last time I booked a session with an unknown person who just saw my number in an ad, picked up the phone and called me, without doing any research or thinking about what might be involved. And most of the time when I answer the phone, it’s clear that’s exactly what’s happened. It’s my hope that having to punch up my website and look through a couple of pages to get to my number would make people understand that you’re not going to call me up and get in a room with me within the hour, because that is obviously what a lot of them think. I can’t truly blame them – there are definitely ladies who work that way. I don’t, however.

Ring ring!

Okay, well, as it happens, I’m stuck in slow-moving traffic and I'm bored. (Yes, yes, I talk on the phone in the car. I know that makes me the Anti-Christ. Frankly, if I didn’t talk while I was driving I doubt I’d talk on the phone much at all. But I do not text while driving, so there.)

Me: hello?

Caller: Yeah, hi.

(Silence…)

Me: Can I help you?

Caller: Yeah, you sure can. You can definitely help me, heh.

(Silence…)

Why do people do this? What do they think am I, Mistress Marvolo the Mind Reader? You called me, Mr. Fake-Sexy-Voice, you know who I am. Talk! Say something! We’re burning my minutes here.

Me: Excuse me, are you there?

Caller: Yeah, yeah, I’m just, you know, saying hey.

Obviously I’m going to have to ask the questions that he needs to ask, and then answer them, and then get him off the phone, because all this guy can do is throw out what he thinks are sexy lines. So nice to have to supply both halves of the conversation. Gee, if he came to see me, would he want me to be both the top and the bottom for the scene while he just sat there?

I’m not feeling particularly sweet today. Let’s get blunt.

Me: Why did you call me?

Caller: I want to see you.

Me: What are you looking for in a professional dominance session?

Not that I would see this guy even if he said his fetish was stuffing hundred-dollar bills between my toes with his tongue. Well - all right, I suppose that might get me. But he sounds like a teenage boy, frankly, and what I bet he’s going to say is something like…

Caller: I dunno, just curious.

Thank you for saying the perfectly wrong thing. I take his trick and say nothing.

Caller: So, you gonna see me or what?

A line from a very old movie pops into my head.

Me: I think you fall into the "or what" category*. Goodbye.

Click. I hang up.

*Name the movie/actor! No fair Googling it.

Ring Ring!

Me: Hello?

Caller: Hey, where are you located?

Gotta love a guy who calls up strange women and demands to know where they are before he even says hello.

Me: Who is this?

Caller: Bob.

Me: Do I know you, Bob?

Caller: I think so. Where are you located?

Me: No, clarify for me. Do-I-know-you?

Caller: I think so.

There's a silence while I pause to see if Bob is going to explain why he’s twice stated that he thinks I know him. He doesn’t. This doesn't seem like a question that's open to vague interpretation, but apparently Bob sees it differently. Let's try to sharpen his understanding.

Me: Bob, yes or no – have I met you before or not?

Caller: I’m not sure, but tell me your address I’ll know.

Oh, wow, that’s special. Bob is asking me to believe that he doesn’t remember people he’s played with, but he remembers their addresses. Mmm, no, I don’t think so. I was less choosy when I first began my career as the Mistress, but even way back in the beginning I don’t believe I would have dealt with someone so abrupt and pushy. I would bet any amount of money I have never met this guy. And I sure as hell don’t want to now.

Me: No, I’m not telling you my address. Why don’t you think it over and see if you can come up with some other way of remembering if you know me.

Click. He hangs up. The song If You Don’t Know Me By Now runs through my head. This guy will definitely not be knowing me…

Ring ring!

Me: Hello?

Caller: Um, yeah, hi…I read your articles, and you’re talking about these femdom parties you go to. I was wondering if these are like private parties, or can anyone go to them, or what?

Mmmm…What we have here is someone who's reading me through the wishful-thinking filter in his head. I’ve never written about a femdom party, for the simple reason that I’ve never been to one. What he means by femdom party is an event at which all the female attendees are dominant and all the male attendees are submissive.

(Although I suppose I’ve been to parties where all the dominants were female. But then, all the submissives were, too. They were all-female gatherings. There was one at my house on Sunday, come to think of it. I doubt it looked like he imagines it would, though. Especially since one of the ladies present was only six months old.)

But that’s not the way my social life works. I choose friends based on liking them as people, not for what role they play in their kink. And a good thing, too, since many of my friends do their kink a very different way than I do mine. Heck, I don’t even pick lovers based strictly on gender/bdsm role. My way of thinking is: If I like you, whoever you are and whatever you’re into, we’ll work something out.

I have a feeling I know how this conversation is going to go, but let’s give him the party line and see if I’m wrong.

Me: Well, yes, I do write about private parties, but there are a lot of social events at places like the Wet Spot, if you’re looking to get into the kink scene.

Caller: Are there femdom parties at the Wet Spot?

Me: There are parties with female dominants there, yes.

Caller: No, but are they femdom-only parties? I don’t want to go to parties where there are…other kinds of people.

Me: You know what, they might have something like that. But I don’t know. All the parties I go to are with all kinds of people, and I like that better.

Caller: You see I’m a male submissive, and I only want to be around…you know.

Yes, I do know. He wants to be around people exactly like him. Exactly. I sometimes call this the “kinky country club” mentality.

Now, I try to be patient with people like this. I tell myself they’re just intimidated and that they can learn and grow. I tell myself that yes, Matisse, you have a little button about this, but, really, there is nothing inherently evil about wanting to socialize with people who share your precise BDSM taste. If that’s really something you need in order to feel okay.

But it’s difficult for me not to mentally translate this into: “My kink is the only acceptable kink, and furthermore, my head will burst into flame if I have to look at people engaging in erotic behavior that does not, personally, make my dick hard.” If that’s really how you feel, your kinky social life is going to be extremely limited, and my feeling is that you should probably just stick to your own bedroom.

This mentality is by no means limited to male submissives. I have heard kinky people of all genders and every possible pervy permutation express similar sentiments at some point in my life. My favorite was a person who called me looking for public parties attended only by female-to-male transgender guys and gay men who were attracted to them. Oh, and ideally the gay men should all be dominants and the trans guys should all be submissives. My suggestion that such a highly specific gathering could probably be held in the caller's own living room was not well received by the (transgendered) young man on the other end of the line.

So I guess I’m not all that patient, am I? At least not in my own head. But I’ll be polite.

Me: I see. Well, that’s not the way I socialize. All the parties I know about are a mix of all different kinds of people. So I’m afraid I can’t help you.

Caller: Oh. So you don’t go to any femdom-only parties?

Me: No.

Caller: Oh. Okay. Goodbye.

Good luck finding that country club.

Ring ring!

Me: hello?

Caller: Are you a transsexual?

It’s nice when I know right away that an interaction is not going to go anywhere. It’s not like OMG, I’m so horrified, how could you even imagine I’m a tranny-girl? I have seen some incredibly lovely transsexual women, and lusted after one or two of them, although I have never actually been sexual with a tranny girl. A hole in my otherwise comprehensive sexual resume.

I’ve gotten sexy with lots of cross-dressed bio-boys, but that’s almost always a different matter. I say almost always because I suspect some of them were a bit mutable in their gender.

I note in passing that this guy is using the word “transsexual” as a synonym for “male-to-female transsexual”, as if there were no other kind. Tell that to my ex-husband, who was a woman when I first met him – at least on the outside – and who then transitioned into a handsome man. (At least on the outside.)

But I’m guessing this guy isn’t asking me if I shoot testosterone and bind my boobs. He’s asking if I’m a chick with a dick, as the parlance goes. Which tells me that he has no idea who he’s talking to, because if Mistress Matisse had a dick, I’m thinking word would have gotten around about that. You can do a lot with duct tape, as any drag queen can tell you, but if you’re prancing around the dungeon in outfits like this, well, that's going to be a problem.

So the tenor of my reply to him is not outrage about his perceptions of my gender status as it is displeasure with his rude and abrupt phone manner, and his obvious lack of preparedness for talking to me. I count to seven, slowly, before answering in a slow, biting drawl.

Me: No.

There’s a pause while he waits for me to say something else. I don’t.

Caller: But your ad is in the transsexuals section.

No, actually, it’s not. The Stranger does put the “Fetish” section right next to the “Transsexual” section, so he’s not a complete idiot. But last time I checked, the tranny girls all had the word transsexual or TS in their actual ad, which the bio-girls like me don’t.

But that's beside the point, because I don’t like the challenging tone of his voice. What, does he think I’m lying to him about this? “Whoops, you caught me, I actually do have a penis. Just kidding!” Not likely. The tranny sex workers I know are all pretty invested in making sure their customers know that they’re tranny. You don’t want to deal with a guy who gets an unexpected surprise there. It tends not to go well.

Me: I am not a transsexual. So if that’s what you’re looking for, you will have to look elsewhere. Goodbye.

I hang up. I’m pretty sure that he was not, in fact, looking to meet a tranny Mistress. But I’m also pretty sure that I didn’t want to meet him.

Ring Ring!

Me: hello?

Caller: Yeah, hey, hello - are you a dominatrix? Is that what you are?

The caller has a heavy East Coast accent – it’s not quite pure Noo Yawk, but it’s something like it. He’s also talking really fast. And sweetie, if I think you're talking fast, you're really talking fast.

I’m willing to accept that his manner of address is a regional-cultural thing, but to my ears, it sounds rude and abrupt. I get a mental picture of a big guy who looks like he should play a minor role on The Sopranos, a low-level mobster-type.

And I have a feeling this guy and I are not going to click together, but let’s see if he can salvage the conversation.

Me: Yes, this is Mistress Matisse, and -

Caller: Yeah, because I was looking at your ad here? So you’re like, what, you do like slave stuff? You like beat people and stuff? Is that what you do?

Me: No, I -

Caller: Do you like beat people hard and stuff like that? Or do you do like massage or whatever, or what? Hey, do you do half hour sessions? How much for a half hour?

Me: Actually, I -

Caller: Or, hey, what about, like, do you ever do slave stuff yourself? Like you be the slave and somebody else be the master? Like that? So where are you, exactly? Are you in Seattle? Where are you located? Or do you come to me?

Me: Stop! Stop talking.

Caller: What? Wha’d you say?

Me: Stop. Talking. You’re asking me all these questions and then interrupting me when I try to answer. Be quiet and listen to me and I will answer them for you.

Caller: Oh, yeah, okay, go ahead, yeah, like, tell me where -

Me: Be quiet. No, I don’t do half hour sessions. In fact, I am not taking new clients at all without a reference.

This is mostly true, although if I really think I’ll like you, then I make exceptions. However, that does not apply here, since I hate this guy. I don’t know if he’s on drugs, or if he always talks this much, this fast, and this unceasingly. Frankly, I hope for his sake he’s smoking meth, because at least then, when he comes down, he’ll stop talking.

And he must not be a mobster, because if he was hanging around other mobsters, someone would have whacked him by now just for being so annoying.

Caller: A reference? Like what? What do you mean a reference? Like somebody else to tell you I’m like a good slave or, what, like you mean –

Me: Stop talking and let me answer. I mean I need another mistress, or maybe even an established escort or sensual touch practioner, to say she’s met you and you’re a nice guy.

Caller: What about a half hour appointment? Can you come to my hotel? Just half an hour? Do I need a reference for that? You don’t put people in jail, do you?

Me: What? What do you –

Caller: You know, like jail, like arresting people? You’re not like that, are you? Like a cop?

He asks me that as if being a cop was some unfortunate moral failing that someone might fall prey to, a bad habit. Perhaps he is still subscribing the ancient and completely false idea that if you ask an undercover cop if they are a cop, they have to say yes. That’s not true and never has been. Cops can deny being cops until the cows come home, and still arrest you if you do something illegal. Not only is this guy not a mobster, he’s obviously never even seen any movies about mobsters where they get infiltrated by undercover agents.

But whatever. I am so done with this conversation.

Me: I’m not taking new clients, so I suggest you look elsewhere –

Caller: No, hey, what about –

Me: Goodbye.

I hang up and then put the phone down on my desk. It’s in vibrate mode, and it immediately begins to buzz again, the clip rattling against my desktop. I don’t answer. There’s a pause, and then it starts buzzing yet again. My cat, sleeping on the desk next to it, wakes up and bats at it slightly with one paw as it jitterbugs around in a half-circle. Next time the buzzing stops, I turn it off completely. I haven’t bothered to clear messages from that line today, but I have no doubt that when I do, the fast-talking Yankee will have left me any number of long messages where he talks and talks and talks, asking questions that he will not be hearing the answers to.

It's new-column day, but first, a note: if you read the paper copy of The Stranger, they are undergoing a re-design process right now. For the time being, my column will appear online every week as usual, and I'll link to it here as I always do.

But I will only be in the dead-tree version every other week.

I've already gotten some plaintive "hey, what happened to your column?" calls and emails. And I'm glad you're reading me! However, this is not within my control, so I'm just being patient while the higher-ups shift things around. Any suggestions you might have about it should be addressed to the good people at The Stranger.

And thus, here is the new column...

Recent phone oddness….

I’ve been getting a spate of dirty phone messages lately from one particular person. That’s not distressing to me – I generally just fast-forward/delete such things, unless they sound unusual enough to be interesting. They’re generally pretty predictable, though.

The odd thing about these recent messages is that, if I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a woman. I suppose I don’t know better, actually. But the caller is certainly representing themselves as male, referring to his dick and how he wants to fuck me with it. It’s very standard vanilla dirty-talk, no reference to anything kinky.

But wow, this person’s voice? Very high. Very effeminate. It’s either a female-bodied person, or a very young boy whose voice has not changed yet. Or it’s a grown man I feel sorry for, because he’s got a voice about one shade more masculine than Marilyn Monroe.

It doesn’t sound forced, either. I’ve had crossdressers call me- in their female persona - with their voices pitched up high, and I know what that sounds like. This sounds like a child, frankly - so that's probably what it is. I’m not disturbed by it – boys will be boys – but it’s just a trifle weird to hear this sweet little voice talking about his cock and what he’d like to do with it when he could still be singing soprano in a choir.

I'm a busy girl today, so, for the benefit of the newer readers, here's a list of some oldie-goldie favorites from the archive.
Sadly, most of the original comments were lost when I had to switch to Haloscan. That's a shame, because some good points were made.
But anyway, read and enjoy...

***

If you're not familiar with the ways of kink, here's a good place to start: The Ethics of BDSM

My opinions, experiences, and general musings on life
Human Interest Story
BDSM Word Of The Day
Mr. Defensive
Open Secret
The Sixty Four Thousand Dollar Question
and the follow-up post: Comments On Female Clients
What I'm Not
Word Whores: The "Not My Dog" post
Poly Stars In Alignment
Public Encounter
You Dirty...
French Farce Weekend
Sex Positive? I Don't Think So!
Sex Index
Looking at Women
Demeaning To Women (And Men, Too.)
Gym Guy, Part One
Gym Guy, Part Two

About Monk (aka "Roman")
The Naked Truth
He's Just A...

Playing with my boys:
Flying High Again
My Idea of a Good Time

Conversations about the biz:
Advice on Clients
More Advice
Dinner with Miss K: Furniture Fantasy
Conversation with Miss K: Her Weird Phone Calls
Tips For New Sex Workers
Feminism and Sex Work

And, everyone's favorite category: Strange Communiqués From People: The phone calls, the emails, and the voicemails.

The Thirty Seconds Rule
Near Goddess Experience
Sexual Darwinism
And This Would Be My Problem Why?
Legend In His Own Mind
New Cell Phone - Old Memories
New York State Of Mind
Master and Commander
Weirdass Email Of The Week
Phone Messages
I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up (I know everyone likes Ryker Blackstar, but this guy is actually my personal favorite.)
From The Malebag
More Email Silliness
Freakazoids
By Rights He Should Be Taken Out And Hung
Barbie Reborn
Mentoring
Don't Worry, Be Happy
Sex Machine

Warning: Cranky Mistress

Between various snafus with parking meters, dry cleaners and the gas company, I had a rather annoying day yesterday. My two very sweet clients were the high points, I assure you. Oh, and getting my hair done, although I had to be there at nine o’clock in the bloody morning, because my boy was so booked it was the only time I could get with him.

(And spare me any condescending remarks about how you get up at six am every day. I don’t, okay. I do not have kids. I’m a sex worker and a writer. One of the reasons I passed on the joys of parenting and steady paychecks was so I could go to bed at 3am and get up at 11am. Thus, I dislike having to alter my circadian rhythm to match the morning people.)

But after I left the salon, things went swiftly downhill, in ways too banal to detail. Suffice it to say that by late afternoon, I was in no mood to suffer fools gladly.

Enter fool, stage left.

Ring ring!

Me: Hello?

Caller: Mistress?

Me: Yes?

Caller: I need to feel…special. I don’t feel special.

I pause and look around me. It seems to be the same day and same time it was before I answered the phone. I am thus reassured that I have not, in fact, fallen into some kind of time warp wherein I’ve conducted an entire relationship – an unsatisfying relationship, apparently – with the whiney-voiced person on the other end of the phone.

Which leads to me to ask why the hell this yabbo is calling me up to initiate Breakup Conversation #46 with me? And he’s starting in the middle, too. You have to lead up to this line with something like, “I need to talk to you about our relationship…” But these two statements make absolutely no sense to me.

That’s not true, though. I know why he’s saying them. I know exactly what kind of conversation he’s trying to lead me into, and I’m not interested in having it. So I say nothing, hoping he’ll revert to a more appropriate conversational style, and I can get him off the phone.

He doesn’t. Okay, we’re gonna have to play this one through.

Me: Who is this?

Caller: Bob, Mistress.

Me: Bob, have we ever met?

Caller: No, Mistress.

I pause lengthily again. But Bob’s a stubborn fellow and he doesn’t crack.

Me: How’d you get this number, Bob?

He pauses, trying to think of a way of answering that will keep us out of the real world and in Bob’s Non-Sequiter World. Bob has figured out that the longer he can keep a professional girl confused and off-balance conversationally, the longer she’ll stay on the phone with him, trying to sort him out, because he might be money. This is a very common game. Unfortunately for Bob, I don’t care if he’s Bill Gates. I don’t deal with game-players.

Caller: I want to feel…special. My other Mistress…She didn’t make me feel special.

I’m supposed to say, “What would make you feel special?”

I don’t.

Me: How did you get this number, Bob?

Caller: Um… a website.

Me: Okay, so you’re calling about my professional dominance services….

I give him the standard rate/hours/appointments spiel, including the “I’m not really taking very many new clients these days” part. (That happens to be quite true. However, if I think I’d like you, then exceptions will be made.)

Me: If you like, you can leave me your number and I’ll call you if my schedule opens up.

I’m pulling this completely out of thin air, as I don’t ever do that. But it seems like a non-confrontational way of saying don’t call me, I’ll call you.

Caller: Can we… talk?

Me: If you want, Bob, you can leave me your number and I’ll call you if I get room in my schedule. Or if hell freezes over.

Caller: Could I be your slave? Your special slave?

Me: Goodbye.

I hang up, and program him into my phone: NOANSWER17

He calls back about three times in the next twenty minutes. I don’t answer. He didn’t leave a number for me then, either. Which is okay, because I've already got it.