Submissive girl: Talker is willing to do everything her master, the caller, asks of her. You’re not going to believe this, but she’s horny.
Horny housewife: Talker is any age twenty-five and up, and also married. Also, super horny.
Mature: Talker is age forty and up. Coincidentally, she’s hella horny.
Trans girl: Talker is a sexy lady with a huge penis. The bigger the better because the white male caller will want to suck it. That makes her so fucking horny.
Latina girl: YES! Guess who doesn’t have to pretend to be white for once?! You’re a sexy Latina from any country you choose! Maybe you’re American born, maybe you moved to America from Argentina to pursue modeling because you’re so pretty! Maybe you have an accent? Maybe you’re in America because you’re too horny for the men in your own country! Have fun with it! I almost always said I was Brazilian!
And last, but also least in popularity.
Ebony girl: GIRL! You made it! Are you horny? Yes? Then get yo black ass in here and tell this white male caller that he better not think about touching your hair! It hurt my heart to cut my words and suck my teeth in an effort to sound more “black” for the caller. I used to think maybe a caller who wanted an ebony girl was a shy businessman who worked at a firm for a black woman and had a crush on her but couldn’t cross the professional line and ask her out. Maybe he thought she wouldn’t be interested in dating a white boy. So he called chat lines to talk to black women to help boost his confidence so that one day he’d gain the nerve to actually ask her on a date. Fantasy works for everyone. Not just the callers.
But hold on! I didn’t have the job yet! We were still at the interview/training workshop. Now it was time for the audition. We three talker candidates moved to a room set up with some desks obviously belonging to the women who worked in the training department, and across from those desks were what I would learn were “talking stations”—about four cubicles lined up one by one, each with a computer on a desk with headsets plugged into them. No receivers in telephone booths as I had suspected. The computer showed us how many talkers were on phone calls and how many talkers were available and waiting for callers. Gina was now joined by two more trainers, also plus-size black women, who would also be listening in and monitoring each of us on our calls. The older ladies and I were given names to use with the callers based on the sound of our voices. My twenty-one-year-old voice sounded about fifteen years old. Gina remarked, “Ooh, yeah, you sound really young and you got that high voice! They’ll love you. Tell them your name is Becky.” (Yes. Becky was my audition name.) The other women had deeper voices and therefore were given more mature names like Diane and Kathleen. We all sat at our stations and waited for our calls.
I was so pumped! I was nervous but mostly excited to put into practice all the tricks I had just learned in the training session. I was ready to listen and ready to be sexy! After about a minute, my phone rang and I picked up.
“Hello? This is Becky! Who’s this?”
“My hand is on my cock and it’s so hard!!!”
“Oh . . .”
My forty-five minutes of training left my brain in .045 seconds. I had no idea what to say! I was twenty-one years old! I wasn’t a virgin, but I certainly wasn’t some hot and horny temptress who knew exactly what to do with that hard cock. I didn’t know what to do with it in person, and I didn’t yet know what to do with it in a white-male fantasy. I mean, damn! Where was the romance? I didn’t think I’d have to just get in there and start pretending to . . . wait. It flashed into my brain that Gina had given us very clear instructions that every call should start by getting the caller’s name, location, and age. I was already behind on all of that. I overheard both the older ladies on their own calls and I panicked. I had to catch up. I started all over again.
“Hi! I’m Becky. What’s your name?”
Click.
I lost him. He hung up on me. My very first caller wasn’t having any of my “Hi! I’m Becky” bullshit. The trainers all looked at me and shrugged. Three more calls came through for Becky. Neither of them lasted more than a minute. I wasn’t sexy and I couldn’t even pretend to be. One of the older ladies who had been on a call for twelve minutes was told that she got the job. I knew that I would not be hearing that. Finally, Gina said to me, “Okay, you’re done.” I took the headset off so that I could hear that I wasn’t getting the job, but just as it touched the desk, Becky got another call. I looked at Gina, and she said, “It’s okay. Take it.”
“Hello? This is Becky! Who’s this?”
“Hi, Becky. This is Connie.”