Interesting ways to earn money

I've worked just about every job a person can, doing everything from picking up trash to pushing paper at the office to waiting tables to writing professionally.

However, one of my shortest gigs gets the most questions.

There was a time in my early 20s that I was a phone sex operator (PSO). Yes, there is actually an acronym for this. We were also called phone actresses for the politically correct.

You're probably picturing this.

Image: Flickr | Illusive Photography

The reality is more like this.

Image: Flickr |  Jerry Bunkers

 

Interestingly enough, I got the idea from my mom. She did a stint on the phones, too. She had office hours at home, with a notice posted on her door stating she was not to be disturbed. Apparently she was just that popular! So one day when I was bitching about needing a little extra cash for school, mommy dearest suggested I give PSOing the old college try.

I promise, we only sound like a super creepy family. We're the motherfucking Waltons at home, except with more attitude and a veritable herd of dogs. I digress.

Working as a PSO was appealing for a few reasons. You could work whenever you want, for as little or as long as you wanted. Basically you'd sign in when you were available and as calls came in they would be routed to you. Earnings were based on a sliding scale, which was determined by how many calls you took and how long you could keep clients on the phone. Also, STDs aren't transferable via phone. Yet.

There were some drawbacks, though.

You had to have a corded home phone, because calls connected via cell or cordless could be intercepted and overheard by a third party. If you weren't signed in and they had a heavy volume of calls, they'd start calling operators at home to get someone to sign in and take calls. There were times where if I wanted to sleep, I'd have to turn the phone off.

I had fun with it while it lasted, which was all of a month and a half. I'd get home from my evening classes, make some dinner, sign in to the call line and wait for calls to come in.

Believe it or not, roughly 75% of the calls were not sexual. Most callers simply wanted someone to talk to.

90% of the time, I was speaking to males. However, I would get the occasional female. And once I'm fairly sure I got a prepubescent boy. When I asked him about his age and quickly asked his birth year, they matched. I had no way of checking ID, so I had to talk dirty to this 12 year old kid.

For that 25% of the time where the conversation did turn dirty, I had little tricks up my sleeve for making it sound like I was getting off on this type of conversation. A trusty mayonnaise jar. A porno cued up in the background while I worked on my laptop.

It's sad - I'm really good at faking orgasms on the phone.

I had to be, though. Some of these people really wanted to get off in less than two minutes to keep the charges low. If I couldn't talk fast enough they'd hang up on me, which affected my take home pay.

I was a good sport and thought of it as just another job. Then I started getting the weird calls. Or at least, they were weird to me at the time, being relatively inexperienced in the kink arena.

Men who wanted me to be two women.

Men who wanted me to be tall, black, and wearing hot pink fishnets (yes, the fantasies got that specific!).

Men who wanted me to tell them about my leather pants-wearing, hot football-playing boyfriend with a monster cock who liked to humiliate effeminate men while I violated them with a giant dildo.

FYI, I never had a football player boyfriend with a penchant for sadism and wearing painted-on leather pants. Dude made that up all on his own and I had to play along.

That last phone call was the end of the PSO line for me.

Funny, when I started I had this vision of myself being this cool, sexy chick who could convince strangers to get off on the phone, all from the comfort of home. I quickly figured out I couldn't share that part of myself with strangers, and faking it was affecting my own confidence and ability to get turned on.

I guess some of us just weren't made to be phone sex pros.