About a month and a half after I started working at phone sex, I turned twenty-two. I didn’t work on my birthday, but a few days after, a supervisor called me into the conference room at around two in the morning. I followed her in, and the trainers, supervisors, and receptionist presented me with balloons, a card, and a box of chocolates for my birthday. The card was signed by multiple talkers, most of whom I didn’t even know. I was surprised, because I’d mostly kept to myself and hadn’t made friends yet. I thanked them all and went back to the phones. During my lunch break at around 4 a.m., I went into the break room to read my book. Terrifying Tales by Edgar Allan Poe. The supervisor who’d called me in for the surprise birthday moment saw me reading and asked if I read a lot. Then she asked what I did for my birthday. I told her, and she asked me a few more questions about myself. After I answered them, she remarked that I was smart and went back to her desk. I remember thinking that if I was as smart as she and my therapist said I was, I would’ve been able to find a job where I didn’t have to hear the word cock a hundred times a day. The next day the same supervisor called me into the conference room again. I expected more balloons, but the room was empty. She sat me down and informed me that one of the receptionists was leaving the company and said that if I wanted the position it was mine. I’d been working for less than two months and already I was being given a promotion! Receptionists made twelve dollars an hour. Technically speaking, I had the potential to make more money as a talker, but as a receptionist I didn’t have to pretend to blow anyone, so it was a better job. I was off the talker floor. (Maybe I am smart?) My receptionist training began that same day. The rumors that I was a lesbian who’d slept my way to the promotion also started the next day.
Things can sometimes work out if you’re smart, but my greatest virtue is patience. I had a demeaning job that required me to pretend I was sucking a dick over the phone every day. Even after my promotion to receptionist, if the phones were busy, I had to leave my desk and go back to the talker floor and pretend to be an empty-headed girl for some creep to jerk off to. It wasn’t ideal, but I was eventually promoted again and again and again until I began training to be the person who interviewed hopeful applicants. I was becoming Gina. I was with the company for three years. I was patient enough to turn the degradation into something positive. I took what I learned on the phones about secrets, shame, and pleasure, and applied it to the real world around me. I learned how to talk to people. I learned how to flirt with everyone and everything. I learned to lead with my personality. I learned to deal with rumors. (If the girls on the talker floor thought I got a promotion by being a lesbian, I let them. All the lesbians I know are dope and get shit done. I’ve certainly been called worse!) I learned to boldly ask for what I wanted. I learned that your average businessman works hard and carries plenty of shame as well as self-entitlement. (Also, he might be wearing panties under his suit and that’s his business.) I’m not afraid to say anything to anyone. I’m not afraid to be anyone. I’ve already experienced the worst of people, and I’ve learned that we’re all still human. My patience taught me to survive as 1266, and my intelligence helped me say yes to acting when the opportunity was presented to me.
I’ve had acting roles that I felt demeaned me as much if not more than the phone sex calls. I took those roles because it was my job to take them and because the relationships and experience I’ve gained will eventually allow me to create and play my own characters. I want to tell my own stories, and someday soon I will.
13
Is This a Date?
“If you’re looking at me, I’m your type!”
—Dizzy Moore (BFF)
FULL DISCLOSURE, I DON’T KNOW dick about dating. I started doing it pretty late in life. Nineteen. I was basically a grandmother. I know that you’re probably thinking, Oh, right! You didn’t date before you were nineteen because of the . . . “fat thing,” huh? First of all, there’s no need to whisper. Yes, I was a fat child and then a fat teenager, but boys liked me. Probably not as many as liked the thin girls, but I was really funny, and I was cool. I knew every rap song on the radio and every lyric DMX ever wrote (this was very sexy and solidified me as a catch . . . in my own mind). I could sing; I always had my own money, so I never begged for some boy to buy me a Snickers or anything; and I was generous and fun to be around. I’m not saying I was beating boys off with a stick, but I had admirers.
In the seventh grade, a boy sent me a note one Friday asking me out. (It’s important to know that in junior high a guy “asking you out” means asking you to be his girlfriend. There is no actual going out required.) After school, I had a friend send a note back to him saying yes. We didn’t have each other’s phone numbers and didn’t know where the other lived so we didn’t speak over the weekend. On Monday morning, I sent my new boyfriend a note that said, “It’s dead.” We never spoke again.
When I was in the eighth grade, a ninth grader asked me to be his date to the prom. This was a big deal because it meant that I’d be the only one of my friends who’d get to go to prom a year early. That’s some Kelly Kapowski shit right there. I said, “Yeah! Cool.” About a week later, my date asked me if I’d bought my dress yet and what color it was so that he could get me a corsage that matched. At this point I realized I was afraid of prom. PROM! Do you even know what goes on there? You have to put on a dress and makeup. MAKEUP! And you have to dance. Not just by yourself but with the dude who brought you there. IN FRONT OF EVERYONE! Also, since you’d be there with that dude, he probably liked you, and you probably liked him, so everyone would know you had FEELINGS for that guy! ICK! And then at the end of the night you’d probably have to let him kiss you! Your ample bosom would heave up and down in anticipation; it would be like all of a sudden you’re in a romance novel. And then you’d have to meet his family, and he’d have to meet yours, and then you’d settle for him and get married, and then you’d be just as unhappy as your mom when she was married.
This was all happening too fast. BAIL. ABORT MISSION. I looked down at my feet, and said, “I don’t really have time to find a dress. Go with someone else.” Then I walked away bravely. Okay. Maybe not bravely. I was scared. Not of prom, but of boys. I was scared of relationships in general. I’m not sure what boys and relationships represented for me back then, but I didn’t want any part of it. Meanwhile, my junior high crew of black girls my age with first names ending with the letter a were all boning boys. My best friend was only technically a virgin, and my other friends already had a designated room in the school’s basement where they’d go get it on. But for me, even the idea of dancing with a boy was enough to make me shut down.
My fear of boys, however, did nothing to stop me from being completely boy crazy. I was always desperate to grab the attention of some boy, usually the kid with the worst grades and the most behavioral problems. Any boy who’d curse out the teacher, throw a chair, get suspended, and then still show up to school at three o’clock smoking a cigarette to meet up with his boys—be still my slow-beating heart. But even when one of those kinds of boys asked me out or told me to meet him in the basement, I’d pretend I hadn’t heard and I’d never show up. I only talked a pretty good game. I was flirty, I made goo-goo eyes and giggled, but I couldn’t handle anything more.