Review: E.T., Don't Phone Home Until You've Read This
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 17, 2012
I remember the phone call well.It was the summer of 1988. I was a skinny, self-conscious teenager with raging hormones, no girlfriend to speak of, proud owner of a part-time job in a local stationery store, and horny as hell. (Hey, I'm honest!)I happened to be sitting in the living room, thumbing through the local newspaper, my attention riveted to the baseball box scores, when a small, innocuous advertisement situated in the lower-right-hand corner, just below an AP blurb about a California Angels-Montreal Expos trade, caught my eye.I took a closer look and saw that it was one of those 1-900 numbers that featured hot, explicit phone chat with a beautiful lady. I was incredibly tempted to make a call right then and there, but I also was cognizant of my parents' habit of scrutinizing every bill that arrived in the mail. I figured that having an adults-only number prominently displayed on next month's phone statement wouldn't put me in very good stead with either of my folks, and so I surreptitiously hid the sports section in my room until it could be put to use later that night.I determined that, if I made the call after midnight, excess charges wouldn't apply, and, as such, wouldn't even show up on next month's bill. (Keep in mind that this was eighteen-year-old logic and reasoning being applied here.)I ended up waiting until about one in the morning. I tiptoed downstairs and retrieved the cordless phone (!) from its kitchen cradle and snuck back upstairs into my room, which was a refurbished attic floor.My hands shaking, I punched the digits and waited for what seemed to be an interminable length of time.Then a woman's voice answered. "Phone sex," she stated, in about the most monotone, matter-of-fact, decidedly un-sexy voice I had ever heard.I immediately hung up without even responding. The whole affair had lasted approximately eight seconds.Looking back upon my youthful indiscretion, I was definitely more scared than aroused. I also wrestled with conflicting feelings of innate curiosity and self-loathing: after all, what sort of mental defective would stoop so low as to place a call to some anonymous woman who, in reality, was probably old and fat and wrinkled and sagging?As Dierks Bentley would sing: what was I thinking?Turns out that more men---and a few women---did such so-called stooping than I realized, which put me in the category of "Curiosity Didn't Kill the Cat, But Came Very Close to Maiming It."I never called back, and had no desire to do so. Eventually I was able to come to some sort of internal resolution, and that was thus: chalk it up to an unpleasant experience, and stick to self-improvement by chatting it up with girls at the high school dances. Oh, and don't sneak around your parents' collective backs, either. Not too cool. (I attended an all-boys' Catholic school, so the fair sex was at a premium.)My fumbling experiment with phone sex in the pre-Internet age was, in retrospect, fairly standard fare. Nowadays, a person can simply download free porn and store it in their iPhone in a matter of seconds. (Perhaps it's a good thing that my cell phone is pre-paid and lacks Internet access.)This trip down memory lane is a segue into Sandra Ross's book "Phone Sex: Erotic Fantasies and Sexual Fetishes." The protagonist, Sydney, is certainly far more attractive and alluring than the unknown maven at the other end of my awkward phone call from over two decades previous.Of course, Ross has a tremendous talent for creating characters that cater to most mens' fantasies. Her physical description of Sydney and her wardrobe evokes images that bring forth mental comparisons to the ubiquitous centerfold: "(Sydney) walked into her bedroom and picked up (her) royal purple teddy. . .(i)t was trimmed in black with black front lace ups. She chose black silk thigh-high stockings to top off the outfit. . .(Sydney) stood at 5'8" with long, toned legs, rounded ass, cinched in waist and D cup breasts." (ch. 1)Sydney's bountiful assets are both a prequel to, and a prerequisite for, her job as a phone sex operator (PSO). Despite the lurid, unsavory reputation such an occupation entails (similar to that of a stripper or a prostitute), she is a rarity in the world of work: she loves what she does and she is very good at it.Although working as a PSO certainly isn't a conventional, nine-to-five career, it's fairly obvious that she has been able to carve out a lucrative career simply by utilizing a speaker phone and her dulcet tones. For what she is charging (and I'm guessing it's a fairly large sum, based upon Ross's vivid descriptions), it's her dream job. Not many people can honestly say that their occupation is something for which they eagerly hop out of bed in the morning.I admire Sydney for doing something she loves, and for making informed choices that have directly benefitted her and her customers: by making her clientele feel emotionally and sexually satiated, she in turn derives happiness and satisfaction for doing her job well. This is demonstrated when Sydney engages in a hot tete-a-tete with Steven, one of her favorite clients whose sultry words turn her on as much as her conversation does the same for him."Phone Sex" provides some well-written, highly erotic dialogue that is a Ross forte. She delivers a fast-paced story that is eminently readable and satisfying.