Use Once And Destroy

“You have a secret deep down inside…and I know

A horror to tell

A nightmare to hide”

-“Blood In Gutters”, Brody Dalle

“Hello Fuckpig”

I’m gonna go out on a big fat limb here and say that most people don’t start off their work day by hearing these words. I do so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

“Hi!” I say back to my caller. “Good morning Starshine, the Earth says hello…”

“What?!” he snarls back at me.

“Not a musical fan?” 

“WHAT ARE YOU WEARING, FUCKPIG?” 

“My pyjamas!” I answer, with all the cheeriness I can muster.

He made a sound at this point that I can only describe as a sort of grunt. It sounded like “Mmmph!” He made this sound fairly often throughout the conversation.

“ Do you think you deserve to wear clothes, fuckpig?!”

“Yeah, sure. I wouldn’t wear them otherwise.”

“Mmmph! Well you don’t! Tear that shit off your disgusting body!”

“Okay. Done.”

“ Mmmph! That was fast”

“Well they were flimsy jammies, I tell you what.”

“Mmmph! Do you have any sex toys, fuckpig?”

“Yes. I have a bunch of dildos, all different sizes.” 

Alas, my bunch of dildos is a fabrication, a fabulist machination of silicone buggery. If I did own a bunch of dildos, I would arrange them in a dainty wicker basket, like a real lady. They would be all different colours and sizes and types, from the conveniently cheap to the decadently expensive. It would be like a dream Easter basket for gapers. 

“Take the biggest dildo you have and shove it in your ass, with no lube.”

“Okay. AhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHH!!!!!”

“Yeah, take it, fuckpig”

“You sound really weird, like you’re calling me from inside a tin can. where are you calling from?”

“Mmmph! NEVERMIND!”

“Okay, jeez. I just wanted to hear you better.”

“Get on your knees and suck my dick, fuckpig!”

“Alright. I’m sucking it.”

“Choke on it!”

“Sure. Oh man, I’m choking. I’m really choking on this dick."

“Mmmph! You ever been raped, fuckpig?”

“Nope.”

“ Mmmph! What about when you lost your virginity?”

“Oh, that was really nice, actually. It was in my bed, with my first love. There were candles and everything. “Blue Velvet” was playing on the tv. It was romantic.”

“Mmmph!”

“Why do you keep making that sound? You sound like a pig rooting around for truffles.”

“Mmmph! When did you first know you were a disgusting slut?”

“Um….right now, when you told me.”

“You never thought you were a nasty, disgusting slut before now?”

“No, not really. Thanks so much for letting me know.” 

And then he hung up. I’m surprised that the call lasted that long.

Why’d I fuck around with that guy so hardcore? Isn’t that detrimental to me earning coin from callers?

By now, I am a worn out old battle-axe. I’m a phone sex cyborg who can analyze pretty quick just what a caller is all about and what his intentions are. 

Senor Fuckpig is a poser. A liar, a fake, a phony, a fraud a fugazi. He wants to be dominant because it makes him feel like a badass, but he’s really just mad and misguided. Why is he mad? Well, he probably has struck out a lot with women and rather than improve himself and his communication skills, he has decided that women are now all shit and he has to sexually dominate them rather than risk rejection. I’m not even sure he actually has any real interest in BDSM, or if it just seems exotic and interesting to him, so he’s co opted what he thinks is cool so he can be more interesting in his own mind. 

Talking to this guy is a waste of time. He won’t communicate in any real way, he just thinks domination is only about yelling at women and insulting them and making them do sexually humiliating things. So, I fuck around, because he’s just fucking around anyways. 

I used to play along with these guys, but, I quickly realized that they have no real control or understanding of what they are doing. They aren’t in touch with themselves, so, you can’t really please them in any way. They’re miserable, and nothing alleviates it. Fake BDSM is just a crutch, and it splinters under them with the weight of their own self deception. 

So, I was lying to Fuckpig when I told him that I hadn’t been raped. I have. A number of years ago, I was raped, beaten and almost killed by my then boyfriend. It happened more than once. 

When Fuckpig asked me if I had been raped, I admit, I flinched. I wish I could say that I didn’t. I wish I could say that I was steely and unflappable and unfazed. I wasn’t. It by no means broke me, but it by no means had no impact. 

You may think it’s foolish or weird or messed up that someone who has been raped would be a sex worker. You might think it’s terribly cliched, and, I’m sure it is. You may think that because of what happened to me, I would never ever want to go anywhere near sex ever again. 

But, that would be so easy, wouldn’t it? To either be the damaged lost girl who runs to sex work because she thinks it’s the only thing she has to offer, now that she’s been objectified to such horrific extremes,  or the victim prude who shuts off her sexuality entirely because some vital part has been ripped out of her by trauma. 

For a long time after I was assaulted, I was so shattered I couldn’t function. I became a hard core agoraphobic and my cat was my best friend. I wanted out so badly. I knew that this wasn’t my life. I knew that even though I looked like a total waste on the outside, inside, I still held something of value. I knew I was smart. I knew I could do things. I knew that there was something inside worth salvaging. 

I needed a job, something that could jive with how messed up I was. I had tried  to get other jobs, but was too fucked up to hold on to them. To complicate things, I have polycystic ovarian syndrome, and its flare ups can sometimes leave me physically incapacitated. 

I once had a fairly lucrative gig as a model, but, modelling requires you to take your clothes off often, and, I just couldn’t really do it at that particular time. 

So, one night, I watched Spike Lee’s "Girl 6", and everything changed. It’s a movie about a phone sex operator. It’s a movie I used to sneak downstairs and watch late at night when I was younger (as well as “Welcome to the Dollhouse”, “Gummo”, “Buffalo 66”, “Kids”, and “Ladies and Gentleman, the Fabulous Stains”) 

I wasn’t sure phone sex operators still existed at the time. I thought I maybe wouldn’t qualify for the job since I wasn’t a single mom from the 80’s. 

As I found out, it existed. It very much existed. I worked, and it gave me purpose and a chance to earn my own money. It was a major stepping stone back into life.

I can’t say that phone sex work gave me back my sexuality. I wear a pretty thick shield when I work, I very purposely don’t let my own sexuality get affected by calls. It’s a job, and I treat it as such. 

But, I will say that it gave me a glimpse back into something I was missing. I love sex and sexuality. I’m endlessly fascinated by all things fucking. It thrills and captivates me, not just the having of it, but the way in which it can be experienced in so many ways. It’s such an important part of who I am ,and it always has been. I got it back because I wanted it back. I needed it back in order to fully function and be myself.

Phone sex allowed me to be creative, and be good at something and earn a pay cheque while doing it. I was safe in my home, but I’m still engaging in life in some way. I know you have to be pretty fucked up to be saved by phone sex, but, I am fucked up. I’m okay with that. 

The thing I realized is that nothing died when I was assaulted. Parts of my spirit were shut off, rearranged, displaced and altered, but nothing outright stopped existing. I just needed to find them again, resurrect them, breathe life back into the fragile parts that needed it. It took massive leaps across huge chasms inside me to get back all that was damaged, but, I discovered it wasn’t impossible. 

I used to fantasize for a very long time that there was a magical, special road to recovery. If I just followed it, I’d be fine again, better than ever maybe. I would vanquish the past, and never look back or be affected by it ever again.

I’m still affected by what happened to me. I always will be. I know that now. I still struggle with agoraphobia, and I am in fact just now pulling myself out of a lengthy bout of depression and PTSD related anxiety. This by no means signals that my life will be some sort of horror show. It’s complicated, I recognize that. I’m grateful that I always have phone sex to come back to to earn money and have these wild experiences after I come out of these bouts. 

I have noticed that we live in a culture very much obsessed with reduction. Nuance and context gets bled out in order to fit the soundbite.  Rape survivors are treated, like every other group, as a monolith. We require trigger warnings and are vulnerable in extreme ways to, apparently everything. We need slut marches to “raise awareness” of….I think what we’ve gone through? I’m not entirely sure…those events especially confuse me (thanks for twerking in your underwear down the street, but I’m not sure how it opens a dialogue about rape).

The first phone sex job I had allowed for everything except kids. Very rarely, I would get calls that requested a rape fantasy. I didn’t like these calls, as you can probably imagine, but, in truth, I doubt I would ever like them. I didn’t let them bother me too much because I knew that they were fake. Just like watching a movie with a rape scene or hearing a rape joke doesn’t really bother me, because it’s fake and I can very much distinguish reality from fantasy. I also know that people use the word, like Señor Fuckpig, in an attempt to get a rise out of me. It's pretty sophomoric. 

I’m sure there are some rape survivors who have a difficult time with these sorts of things. Perhaps they are just in a different place in their life than I am.

There’s so much talk now about consent and rape culture and slut shaming…and it’s all so meaningless. It’s language made of vapour. It’s sound and fury signifying dick all. 

That’s the thing about surviving rape. It’s a fairly lonely thing because even though people pay a lot of lip service to the idea of preventing rape or talking about it, it really feels like no one is really getting it and understanding the dimensions of what it truly means to sally forth after monumental trauma. We all ultimately have to find our own way out of the hell we have been tossed into. 

You may notice that I say the word “survivor” and not “victim” when talking about my rape. That’s a very conscious choice of mine. I feel like the word “victim” connotes a death of some sort. I didn’t die when I was assaulted. I almost did, and I felt dead inside afterwards, but, I wasn't. 

I realized at some point after that I was very lucky to have lived because so many don’t.  I think of people who were raped and murdered, and I know the terror that they died with. I know the fear that surged through them when their lives were snuffed out. The last thing that they saw was humanity at its absolute worst. They were denied the journey that I have been allowed to take…the one that restores your soul. There’s nothing fair about that. There’s nothing right about that. There is nothing that takes the sting away from that. 

I think about these people who died, who didn’t live through their terrible night,  and it fills me with such expansive sorrow.  I wish I could save all of them. I wish I could bring them all back to life. But, I can’t. I can only save myself.

"It won't begin until you make it end
Until you know the how the where and the when
With a new face you might surprise yourself."

- Faith No More "Last Cup of Sorrow"