Page 24 of 13 Rules For Fantastic Phone Sex

“Oh? I was going to help you, but my beautiful patent leather thigh-high boots with red soles are getting dirty.” If I’m wearing imaginary shoes, I’m wearing the expensive ones.

“But it’s up to my waist. I’m in so deep!”

I tease him for an eternity, telling him inch by inch what part of his body has submerged and threatening to leave him alone to sink until he’s feral, and the gloop gloop gloop sounds are getting faster and louder. When he’s down to the last few minutes on his call package, I use my sexiest bossy voice. “Randy, you’re my helpless quicksand bitch!” Predictably, he comes his brains out.

“Oh my god, ohmygod, oh my god, I’m coming.” He moans. “In quicksand!” So melodramatic. So freaking loud.

I let his breathing slow before speaking. “Tell me your neighbors aren’t like five feet away.” That makes him laugh.

“I’m a few football fields and lots of trees away from my neighbors, thank god. Holy shit, that was good.” He sighs, content. “Thank you.”

“My pleasure. We’ll do it again tomorrow. It’ll be cooler, like real quicksand.” Thanks to him, I know a lot about quicksand: where to find it, how to get out of it, the recipe to fake it. Weird life skills, for sure.

“Tomorrow? Will you be around?”

“Yes.” My smile grows three sizes, shades of the Grinch stealing presents, when I say, “Miss Hunter will be too.”

“Miss Hunter.” He groans, as though he’s tasting her name. “She’ll make me lick her boots clean.”

I paint the rest of the afternoon away, taking overflow and request calls. I’m pleased with the ocean schooner. It looks like Key West and a pirate ship had a baby. I put the canvas aside to dry, and I’m getting ready to head into the office when the phone rings.

“Kaitlin? It’s Ana. How are you?” She must be helping answer the phones today.

“Great! I feel like I haven’t seen you in weeks. How goes the baby baking? How are my favorite honorary nephews?”

“We should meet them by Thanksgiving, which may explain why I feel like a turducken.” Her happiness is contagious, charming me into a grin as I imagine her patting her belly with affection. “I’m officially Punxatawny Phil. Six more weeks!”

“I can’t wait for your baby shower. I already placed an order for my favorite cookies,” I say with a laugh. She loves macarons as much as I do.

“It may be the first phone sex baby shower in history,” she laughs.

I thought it best to keep the phone sex women away from Ana’s very uptight family, who do not know what kind of business we’re in.

She’s heavily pregnant, her hand welded to the small of her back when she moves around the office. Last week, she was lamenting that her vintage corduroy pants no longer fit. It makes me sad too. Sometimes she runs around the office to make the swishing sound. She’s a nut. We adore her. Even though she’s past morning sickness, she’s continued to start her workday later, and we’ve been seeing her more during the first hour or two of our shifts.

“I have a request for you. Would you be willing to take another call?”

“For you, I can take a call,” I say. “No rest for the wicked.”

“Okay, I’ll get back to you in a couple of minutes.”

When Jessica, Ana, and I started this madness, Jessica and I did calls, and Ana did the financial bits. She tried doing calls, but she didn’t have the, errrr, tolerance for the nonsense, which is a nice way of saying it totally creeped her out. We were the entire company back then. Now there are twelve—sometimes more—women on a busy shift. Everything has changed. We celebrated surviving the first six months in business with a pizza because that was all we could afford.

“Kaitlin, his name is Henry Sterling. He can talk as long as he wants,” Ana says. “Have you thought about getting a private phone for him? It looks like he averages a solid four or five hours a week.”

A private line. A boundary breach with a pretty bow on it.

A “private line” is a garden-variety cell phone, but only he gets the number—direct access for the big spender.

It’s a perk for him. For me, it’s the crumbling of defenses. I like to keep my walls nice and high, me on this side, callers way the fuck over there on their side.

I’ve been resisting because I’m in that weird crush state where you’re totally enamored and preoccupied by someone. It’s the opposite of she’s not that into you; it’s she’s freaking obsessed and can’t stop pondering the minutiae of you, and none of that is a good thing. He’s a caller. Crushes don’t get you fired. Blurry boundaries do.

“Well,” I say, hedging. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Okay, no pressure. I know you like to keep things separate. He’s ready to go if you are?”

As a sex worker, I’m a toy you play with when no one is looking. You stick me in the back of the closet so your friends don’t see me when they come over. The private line is the opposite of the closet—it’s me walking into his real life with muddy shoes. What if he prefers me at arm’s length while I’m doing everything I can to resist him?