In an era of DVDs and Web cams, phone sex is regarded by some as an endangered species of erotica. Now, a new book looks at the faces and forms behind the disembodied voices at the other end of the line
November 30, 2008 | RYAN BIGGE | Toronto Star
PHILLIP TOLEDANO PHOTO, COURTESY OF TWIN PALMS PUBLISHERS (WWW.TWINPALMS.COM)
This is Emma. Or perhaps Jean, Stephanie, Trixie, Ashley, Lindsey or Victoria. It depends on her mood – or more realistically, the mood Emma's gentleman caller is in.
If this were a movie review, here is where the Spoiler Alert would appear. Because this woman is a phone-sex operator, one of 30 or so men and women documented in photographer Phillip Toledano's new book, Phonesex. Some are zaftig like Emma, others thin; some are men who talk dirty to women, or lesbians who hot-talk to straight men. They might differ in shape or age or sexual orientation, but they all earn a living one breathy minute at a time.
Toledano's choice of subject matter requires the viewer to confront the disjunction between fantasy and reality, or what he calls "a contract of mutual self-delusion." At the same time, Phonesex preserves what many would consider an endangered species of erotica. Radio used to be described as "the theatre of the mind," back before television and the talking picture came along and ruined everything. Today we live in an explicit era in which gaining access to an X-rated theatre requires neither mind nor imagination, thanks to triple-X DVDs and peek-a-boo webcams.
Yet phone sex persists, with numerous ads populating another antiquarian medium, the porno mag. And its successful deployment still relies on techniques from the old radio dramas of yesteryear. A gentleman in Toledano's book explains the art of phone-sex SFX, including "knocking a chair against the table" (to simulate a bed rocking) and eating a peach (to simulate, um, well, you get the idea).
Emma, in the brief statement that accompanies her portrait, echoes this sense of artistry, calling her work "painting that picture in their mind for them."
Related to the tension between fantasy and reality is the barrier between public and private. In a recent article in The New York Times about Manhattan's Hustler Club, Alan Feuer observes that, "In any act of fantasy – from a feature film to a political campaign – there is a hidden place where the dirty work gets done, where the make-believe is made." While gaining behind-the-scenes access to anything magical or mysterious will invariably tarnish it, our curiosity still overwhelms and compels us.
The irony around the demystification of phone sex is that although these men and women talk constantly, we know almost nothing about them. Spouting very hot air on command requires a mixture of empathy ("You have to be an all-around counsellor"), altruism ("I try to heal the wounds that our closed-minded society inflicts") and pedagogy ("I feel like I teach them how to please themselves").
One woman compares her first few sessions to dating jitters: "Fixing my clothes whenever I got a call, spraying perfume on myself and applying lip gloss every five minutes."
A phone-sex operator wearing lip gloss might sound strange, but that's plain vanilla ice-cream in a drab white bowl in comparison to the fantasies they are asked to fulfill.
"There was a guy who wanted to be my puppy," notes one woman, who complains that creating an hour's worth of dog-related mind theatre is even more difficult than it sounds.
Perhaps such requests help explain why phone sex persists. Despite the nichification of pornography, it is somewhat exciting (and horrifying) to realize that there are still fetishes so rare as to be unremunerative in visual formats. It's a tidy inversion of the classic Penthouse Forum letter cliché. Instead of, "I couldn't believe it was happening to me," puppy guy prompts the response, "I can't believe you would want that to happen to you."
But rather than focus on the contents of our twisted desires, we should instead consider why our capacity for fantasy exists at all. For his recent book Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head?, British psychotherapist Brett Kahr oversaw 23,000 anonymous questionnaires and conducted a significant number of one-on-one interview sessions as part of his seminal Sexual Fantasy Research Project. His conclusion? "I cannot identify a so-called `normal' fantasy."
Or, as one of his anonymous respondents put it, when commenting on their own favourite scenario, "It's a pretty sick one, but I'm sure you've had worse."
Kahr's most intriguing explanation for the existence of sexual fantasies is that they are "extensions of our capacity for creativity, the very imaginal creativity that assists novelists in developing convoluted plots, painters in conceiving new art works, composers in crafting new melodies and harmonies."
A 60-year-old woman captured in Phonesex would no doubt agree. "I'm Scheherazade," she explains. "If I don't tell stories that fascinate the pasha, he will kill me in the morning."
Normality and creativity aside, certain fantasies in Kahr's book are so perverse and discomfiting that their owners are tempted to seek professional help. But after reading case studies in which Kahr details the numbing psychoanalytic detective work required to uncover the unconscious roots of our repressed desires, most would be forgiven for choosing a 976 number over 50 minutes on the couch. Talking cure indeed.
But the 976 solution, alas, is a temporary one, and hundreds of years of human history suggest that fantasies more often control us than vice-versa. (See, for example, Messrs. Spitzer and Clinton.) In the introduction to his book The Plague of Fantasies, critical theorist Slavoj Žižek refers to 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch (from whom the book's title is derived), as he describes "images which blur one's clear reasoning."
For Emma, at least, the reasons for enabling the fantasies of others is that she is able to augment not only her bank account but also her self-esteem. Adds another woman, "Let's just say I have found myself and my sexuality through this."
If the standard critique of pornography is that it objectifies women, then phone sex serves to disembody the operator altogether. In putting a face to the voice, Toledano provides glimpses into the personalities of men and women who are constantly asked to be someone they are not.
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