Be honest: “For A Good Time, Call …” has made you just a tiny bit curious about what it’s like to work a phone sex line. Is it just pervs who call up and pant into the phone before hanging up?  Are all the women who do it just paying their way through grad school?

We went to Sabrina Morgan, a 28-year-old phone sex operator in San Diego, for the real story. She got involved in phone sex back in 2005 and was kind enough to answer some questions over email. Everything you want to know about dirty talk, stocking fetishes and melon humping, after the jump!

Why did you start working a phone sex line?

I’d been teased before about having a phone sex voice, and when I was looking for part-time work in college a close friend jokingly suggested phone sex. A friend of mine I knew through volunteering was actually a stripper; she told me where to find out more about the work, and it proved to be such a good fit for the weird hours I was keeping in college as well as for me personally.

So what are your hours like? What’s a typical shift?

Typically full-time phone sex operators are logged in for more hours than we think of as full-time to make a full-time income, because you’re usually on calls the entire time you’re logged in. When I’m not on the road I’m logged in, ready to take calls and working on promotion, contact with clients between calls, updating advertisements, and during the slow hours, cooking! A typical shift is office and home life interrupted by calls, which tend to run the gamut from lunch break quickies to multi-hour marathons. When the phone rings, you never know what you’re getting. It’s a mental adventure — it keeps you sharp!

How is the pay? 

I’m paid by the minute. As an independent, most billing processors for phone sex take around 30 percent before we even dip into our business expenses, so while overhead is fairly low, our billing costs are higher than just about any other industry. I charge $2.50 a minute, with the industry standard being between $1.99 and $2.50  a minute. Phone sex operators who don’t do their own promotion are called dispatch workers and get closer to .30-.50 cents a minute, while spending more of their login time actually talking. I like the more intimate feel and relaxed pace of the indie life, personally, but for operators with a busy family life dispatch is a great fit.

Is there a “typical” client? How would you describe him?

There is no typical phone sex client for the industry as a whole, but individual operators will often have “typical” personality types that are attracted to their marketing. Phone sex clients in general tend to be very imaginative; they’re often sexually oriented toward words or attuned to sound, and they tend to enjoy the participatory nature of phone sex. It’s very collaborative: you’re building a sexual experience, just as you do with one or more partners in person. I’ve been delighted by how smart, funny, and kind my clients have been.

Oh, and kinky. Very kinky. The truly imaginative fetishists often flock to phone sex.

What are the commons misconceptions about working on a phone sex line? I would imagine that people just ignorantly assume phone sex operators automatically do other sex work as well.

That’s very true and I run into that often. Personally I do practice other disciplines of sex work, but for many years I was a phone-only girl. A lot of people assume we’re either horny all the time and masturbating on every call, or that we’re doing dishes in our sweatpants while rolling our eyes. Neither is professional in the end and while some phone sex operators fall to either extreme, most of us focus closely on our callers, getting pleasure as well as heightened insight into their fantasies through mirroring the state of arousal they’re in.

Many people feel that sex work — phone sex line work especially — isn’t real work. Phone sex is a game of constant calculation, analysis, decision-making, creativity, and it requires tremendous amounts of empathy toward people contacting you in a state of intense sexual need. It’s enjoyable work for many, but it is mentally and physically  taxing.

You said you worked as a trainer for a phone sex company. What kinds of skills do you teach in the training?

Personally I specialized in fetishes, sexual techniques, and the psychology of domination and submission, but the program covered everything from customer service to Tantra. Any kind of ongoing industry training like that is a wonderful resource for the operators.

Have you ever actually been turned on by any of your conversations?

Oh, yes! When I went independent, I built my marketing around my personal kinks (stockings and tease and denial) and that genuine enjoyment was evident to my callers.  There’s a thrill that comes from hearing the catch in someone’s voice, from thousands of miles away, when you press their personal hot buttons just right. That precise
moment is what keeps me in phone sex.

What’s the funniest and/or grossest call you’ve ever been on?

The best was the melon humper! He was an exhibitionist into erotic humiliation who liked to scoop out a hole in a melon, then be instructed to “have relations” with it on camera for my viewing amusement. He was so much fun and obviously had a great time hamming it up for me.

Do you have any fun tips for Frisky readers on how to talk dirty on the phone?

Absolutely! I actually teach workshops on talking dirty around the country. One of the best ways to start is to become more vocal when you masturbate; once you get in the habit of making noise, it’s easier to transition to using words. Plus, sex noises are hot and will really spur your partner on.

If you’re already at that level, the best way to get started is to say out loud what you’re thinking, feeling, or doing — or ask questions about what your partner is feeling Use the language that feels most natural to you at first. You can always turn up the heat; you can be descriptive instead of raunchy and get a lot of intensity across through tone of voice and innuendo. Use details in the scene you’re setting that make it feel real to you both. Throwing in the bite of the seatbelt buckle against their hip while you’re grinding down on them in the back seat puts them right there, in that back seat, with you straddling them and your hair curtaining their face!

Original by Jessica Wakeman