Never-Ending Story

Ring Ring!

Me: Hello?
Caller: Uh, hi, my name's Jim, and I have a question.
Me: Okay, go ahead.
Caller: So, I used to see this girl named X a while back – you know, she's an escort.

I know exactly who he means, she's a friend of mine. But I don't know where this is going so I just say….

Me: Go on.
Caller: Well, her old number doesn't work anymore and I want to see her again. She told me she knew you. Do you have her new number?

Now, I have a general policy: I don't give out other people's phone numbers without asking them. And I most especially don't give out people's numbers to strangers. For one thing, the fact that this guy doesn't have her contact info says to me that she may not really want him to have it. It also indicates that he ain't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, because a half-decent Google search would turn up a website for this girl.

But frankly, none of this is my dog. She's my friend, but we're not business partners, and I don't want to be involved in any of her dealings with her clients. I find it sort of gauche for him to even ask.
Rather than explain all of this to him, however, I try to take the shortest distance between two points.

Me: No, I don't have a number for her, sorry.
Caller: Oh - that's weird, because she told me you two were good friends.

Damn. I gotta speak to her about telling people that.

Caller: Are you going to see her around, do you think? Can I give you my number and have you give it to her and ask her call me?
Me: Look, I don't know when I'll be seeing her, I don't want to be in the middle of this.
Caller: Well, I just really want to see her and she doesn't have an ad in the paper anymore. Is she still working?
Me: Okay - stop. I don't know where she is, I don't know what she's doing, and I don't want to be a go-between. If you can't find her, I can't help you.
Caller: But isn't she a friend of yours? I think you wrote about her in your column once.

He's not going to let me be polite about this.

Me: Listen to me: this conversation is inappropriate. I am not going to give you any information, and I am not going to carry any information for you. Goodbye.

Click. I hang up.

Several months go by. In the interim, I speak to the woman in question about this call, and she responds by saying, "Oh, that guy? Hell no, I don't want him calling me, that's why I didn't give him my new number."
"Do you owe him money or something? Because he sure was hot to find you."
"No, he's just a total pest. Everyone else in town has probably cut him off, too."
I thank her for confirming my decision and dismiss the matter from my mind.
Until…

Ring ring!

Me: Hello?
Caller: Uh, hi, my name is Jim, I talked to you a couple of months ago, I'm the guy looking for X.

Oh, fuck.

Me: Jim, I told you, I don't have any information for you.
Caller: But I thought you might have seen her by now. Are you sure you don't have her number?

Oh, I do not like people who won't take no for an answer, and this guy also has the sort of whiny, nasal voice that's like fingernails on a blackboard to me. I have a vivid memory of my college drama professor railing at all of us to "speak from your diaphragm, not through your nose!" So while I have a lot of patience - that's a lot of patience to lose. I'm losing it with this guy.

Me: Get this in your head: I am not going to give you her number. If you can’t find her, you'll just have to call someone else. But I am not a fucking pimp, so do not call me again looking for other girls, do you understand?

Caller: But I really want to –

Click. I hang up.

It's been several months. He hasn't called back. I'm hoping I can score one for brutal clarity. But I'm not assuming.

"Oh, I am so blogging about that!" That's become a phrase in my vocabulary, and if you tell me a really good story, don't be surprised to hear it.

For example, Miss K and I were having our usual dinner at Hana this week, along with Lynn, another local luminary in the fantasy-fulfillment trade, and of course we got into weird-ass phone calls discussion.
Miss K said, "Oh, I got one. Crazy!"
"Tell, tell," I said.
"It wasn't an irate spouse, exactly," she began. "It took me a while to figure out just what this woman wanted, because she was so indirect. But what we eventually got to was: she wanted me to call her if her boyfriend ever called me."
"Wait," I said, clutching my head. "Some woman called you. She says she has a boyfriend. And she wants you to notify her if said boyfriend contacts you about a session."
"That's right."
"You would of course be able to identify this man using the sophisticated voiceprint technology on your cell phone."
She laughed. "Apparently she thinks so."
"And you would do this…why, pray tell?"
"Damned if I know."
"Oh. I thought maybe she offered you a high-ranking political position in her imaginary kingdom or something."
Miss K shook her head. "But it gets weirder."
"Oh, god. What?"
"Well, then she started asking a bunch of other questions and it turns out she's always wondered about being an escort herself. So she wanted me to tell her all about how to do that."
"Which, naturally, you refused to do."
"Hell, yes, I refused, I'm not about to talk about that with some whacko. But she kept asking, and I kept saying I wasn't going to talk about that. You keep thinking they'll hang up, you know, but she kept coming up with questions."
"Yep – that's pretty fucking weird." I then told Miss K and Lynn about the "Secretary Man," star of this week's Stranger column. "But your call is so charmingly bizarre, do you mind if I write about it?"
"Go right ahead," said Miss K.
So I did…

PostScript: A big "Happy Birthday" goes out to T. - along with my thanks, for being so extremely cool.

In the comments on the video clip yesterday, Tantalized told me I seemed kind, and then asked me:

"Now, can that kindness and engagement carry over into your professional role? Or do clients expect the Bitch Goddess?...Are you an actress who disappears into her role or one whose spirit comes through no matter what part she is playing?"

I'm a good performer. But I'm not a good actress. It's rather like the difference between Tim Robbins and Jack Nicholson. Tim Robbins has played dozens of different types of roles - he's a great actor. Now, Jack Nicholson is great, too, but whatever role he plays - he's always Jack. He's a performer, not an actor.
I'm like that. I can play me really well - but I can't make myself disappear and be someone else. The persona of "Mistress Matisse" is a facet of who I truly am - so it's very genuine. But it's not divorced from the rest of me, and so in my sessions, I'm also (sometimes) kind, and I'm usually engaged. I don't play the angry bitch with my clients, that's not my style. Doesn't mean I'm not sometimes severe and strict, if I wish to be, and it certainly doesn't mean I'm not sadistic. I always tell people I'm the sweetest sadist you'll ever meet. I've had a number of boys look at me in bewilderment, as they writhe around in pain - pain I'm happily inflicting - and say "But you look so nice!" Protective coloration, I always say. Lets me sneak up on you, and then even afterwards, you won't quite be able to wrap your head around the fact that this smiling, sweet-looking girl just beat your ass bloody. (Mwah hah hah hah haaaaa! My evil plan is working!)
Hope that answers your question, Tantalized...

Okay, people - I'm going to try introducing something new here: video clips. I've been playing with my DV camera lately, and I think it would be cool to have some "vlog" entries here occasionally. I found a place to host them - a site called OnFuego.com, which, so far, seems very cool.

We'll start with a pair of clips from the night Roman and I drank absinthe together. We shot a lot of video that night, but these clips are from late in the evening, after much of that licorice-flavored liquor had been consumed, and we're both a mite tiddly. We decided we'd interview each other, and we thought it would be best if we did that naked. (Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time.)

These clips are basically of me talking, although you do hear Roman's voice here and there. Intoxication did lend itself to a certain lack of inhibition on my part, although it also led to a slight tendency for me to slur my words (more than I normally do). So you'll have to balance those two things.

Also, the picture quality isn't stellar, because these clips were too dark and so I turned the brightness up, which of course messes with the sharpness and color balance. And bear in mind, I'm using a painfully basic video editor, Windows Movie Maker.

But, those caveats aside, you may find them entertaining...

Go here to watch "Naked Public Life I & II"