The Blowfish Blog

OTAKU MAnKO: Unlimited Minutes

For the last few years I’ve had a day job where I write oodles and oodles of articles about porn, fetish and adults-only events. I almost never see the sun; I drink more coffee than the nation of Turkey and when I get home after a 10 or 11 hour day, I often respond to my significant other’s “How was your day?” with a crazed owl-like stare for a few minutes until I remember that this language I type in can, occasionally, also be spoken.

Since I pretty rarely talk on the phone, I’ve spent some years now as a mobile-impaired American — that is to say, I’ve had one of those cheap pay-per-minute cell phone plans for which “Unlimited minutes” means “Limited only by your rapidly-dwindling bank balance.”

I’m switching jobs, though, and there will be a lot of phone calls in my immediate future. Soon I’ll be one of those schmoes you see walking down the street with a Borg headset saying things like “You tell Antonio we’ll need documentation on PX4 migration and a twenty RSV, maybe a CTTA with vio markers and a TS4″ or, more probably, “Let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes.” “Unlimited minutes” for me is pretty soon going to mean “Limited only by the hours in the day and the number of people you can keep on hold at one time.”

What does this have to do with my sex life? Plenty. Because, you see, pay-per-minute plans are a really crappy way to have phone sex.

In this case, I’m not talking about the pay-per-minute corporate butt-reaming advertised in the back of Hustler, where you pay $4.99 for sixty seconds chatting with a bored Florida college student or an Indiana single mother who probably doesn’t even know the meaning of the word “supplicant,” let alone “St. Andrew’s cross” or “cattle prod.” In those cases, the additional 18 cents per minute barely rates as a surcharge. Sure, there are some commercial phone sex workers who know their way around every perverted sexual act you could think about — hey, some of ‘em could even beat the pants off me a filthy-talk contest — but that’s not my primary concern here.

No, no, I’m talking about free phone sex, the kind you have with a boyfriend, girlfriend, otherfriend, fuckbuddy or distant acquaintance, or whatever. It’s hot, it’s taboo, it’s sleazy and it’s wrong, which makes it overridingly awesome, especially if you have it while rollerblading in the park, sitting in traffic or pretending to take an important sales call in the hallway in the corridor outside the corporate boardroom while your boss laserpoints a flow chart and says things like “Maximize the supply chain lead conversion ratio through product development interdynamics” and “Focus on center-specific IT protocols while codifying network goals” — and you stand outside saying “Sure, we can get you those documents by EOB Tuesday” (then whispering) “Yeah, slut, work that fuckin’ egg beater, you sick little spank monkey!“

I mean, what could be dirtier? The unlimited-minute cell phone plan, like the white collar job, carries with it as a God(dess)-given fringe benefit the right to a conversational reacharound in the most inappropriate possible situations. How the hell else is a self-respecting secret pervert supposed to make it through the day, let alone anything resembling a commute?

Problem is, in many ways I’m shy as all fuck, a fact lamented in thes hallowed pages just last week. My own phone sex experiences are few and far between, and tend to be rather famously unsuccessful. which is why despite my ability to disgorge 75,000 words of profligate sexual debauchery in what amounts to a weeklong almost unbroken cafe-table fuckfest of Yergacheffe-fueled delirium, when faced with the possibility of phone sex with a steamy goddess of love, stern bitch in combat boots, college girl in a bunny suit or other willing participant, I tend to tremble uncontrollably and burble things like “Stick your finger up my butt!” and “Boobs!!”

It’s really quite embarrassing. I might make boastful proclamations of Wagnerian coprolalia in my immediate future, but to be honest I wonder if I can even cut the mustard when it comes to the Bluetooth-enabled filthy talk. Successful phone sex, for me, has always been LOLWTF of human sexuality: I love it (the “LOL”) but I can never seem to do it properly (”WTF!?!?”)

Will that change, like my phone number? Soon we will be Borg, zombiewalking down the street with blinking electronics crammed into our right ear (and maybe elsewhere). Pass us on Market and you might hear us crooning “Just be sure to let Mike in accounting know we need a check to GD Contracting cut first thing Tuesday morning” or whispering furtively while our face reddens with every hissed “whack!” or murmured “yeah? you like that Tiger Balm on your—” [furtive look, clears throat] “thingie?“

Will unfettered access to mobile technology render me a skilled coprolaliac? Tune in next time when the author, walking down Mission Street past an accordion-playing frightwigged street musician in a fuschia catsuit and fuck-me-pumps, may or may not blurt inexplicably: “Panties!” and walk into a telephone pole. Cue the organ music.

Thomas Roche recently left online sex and culture site Eros Zine for an as-yet unspecified job in corporate America. He also blogs at www.thomasroche.com.

Share This

This entry was posted on Tuesday, 19 February 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.