Shut The Fuck Up: Crime And Punishment With Principal Ramona

Oftentimes, when you see ads looking for phone sex operators, you will see listings referring to “phone actress” jobs. If ever there was an attempt at a euphemism, that has to be it.

Anyways, acting is a big part of the phone sex operator job…mostly because you have to pretend that you want to be there (haha, I’m kidding. If you have serious issues, this job is a real hoot). 

Clients can’t see you, obviously, and you can’t see them, thankfully. It’s all about the fantasy. I’ve been every race and age. I’ve been a black female bodybuilder (I pulled that one off beautifully, I must say), I’ve been someones 80 year old great aunt (it’s good that it was me and not her, because her knees would likely not have withstood that pounding). 

I’ve been bad babysitters, stern bosses who care not for the HR departments guidelines on sexual harassment, barely legal blow job givers, naughty moms, frisky next door neighbours, cruel wives…you name it, I have used my vocal chords to embody it. 

I was once an actress for real. Growing up, I thought that that was what I wanted to be. I took intensive classes for years. Then, I became a grown up, and realized how hideous it is to be an actor. I live in Canada, so, being an actor here is much different than being one in the US. Here, there are far, far less jobs. People toil for years here and see very little for their efforts. The same can of course be said for actors in the U.S, but, the opportunities are greater. Hunger can really pay off in the States. Hunger here can just lead to a greater hole burned inside of yourself. 

I didn’t get much out of my so called acting career..a lot of embarrassing gigs, and very little money or advancement. 

Last year, I went to a casting party and decided that that was that, in terms of acting. Sure, I like the craft of acting, but, I don’t like the business. And, at this party, “the business” entailed trying to have a conversation with a directer who was furiously sucking his gums in some sort of cocaine induced war with his own mouth.  I realized that I was getting too old to hope that second rate directors would want to fuck me badly enough to cast me in their shitty movies that few people would see, and no one would like. After all, can’t I make my own shitty movies and be a predatory second rate director on my own? Isn’t that what feminism is all about, girrrllll?  

So now I write, primarily, as an artistic outlet. I know, I know, isn’t writing what all rapidly aging failed actresses claim that they always wanted to do anyways? When no one wants to fuck you anymore, pretend to be an intellectual. 

My most lucrative and least embarrassing acting gig has been as a phone sex operator. That is the truth. Most actors look for that juicy reoccurring gig…the one that keeps them in the spotlight and in peoples homes and keeps the bank account stellar. In the land of phone sex, you can also end up with reoccurring gigs…. one of my most prolific was a creation by the name of Principal Ramona.

Some clients are so so specific that talking to them is like collaborating on a specially commissioned erotic novel. An epic one, at that. Think multiple volumes. Like “Game Of Thrones” but dirtier and weirder.

Principal Ramona was the requested creation of a man named Rodney. Rodney was a 40 something year old man. About once a week he would call, and the games would begin.

In this fantasy, Rodney was in high school. Because we don’t do underage, we had to say he was 18. I say this is because he failed a grade, which gave me an excuse to call him a retard. Phone sex cares not for political correctness. PC culture is a desert for boners. 

The scene began with Principal Ramona requesting that Rodney make his way down to my office. The other students oohed and ahhhed at Rodney’s humiliation. 

He arrives in my office. I tell him to please take a seat. On my desk are some items. 

I say, “Rodney, we recently conducted a random locker search, and when we searched your locker, specifically, we discovered…contraband” 

The items on my desk include beer, and…..porno magazines. 

“What do you have to say for yourself?”

“They…they, aren’t mine…they belong to…Mark.”

“Rodney! I know you are lying!” I holler. “I can practically smell you all over this issue of Juggs!” (I’m not even sure if Juggs is still published. I always envisioned that this was a time travel sexual fantasy, where we were in the 80’s)

Rodney stammers, and stutters, and makes more excuses. I won’t have it. Contraband? In my school? You have to be joking. Principal Ramona did not become an educator to put up with this sort of tomfoolery.

With that, I remove a tazer from my desk. I don’t like it when it comes to this…but, hey, just because the courts did away with corporal punishment in schools doesn’t mean that they made the right choice. 

I hit Rodney with the tazer. He falls to the ground and flails like a motherfucker. I hit him again. I take a roll of duct tape from my desk and tape his wrists and ankles together. I leave his mouth untaped. I want his screams to be heard!

I drag Rodney into the hallway. Teachers and students come out of the classrooms and stare in disbelief as I drag Rodney down the hallway. 

“Principal Ramona! What are you doing!

“Shut the fuck up!” I yell back. I will teach the children. They best know that contraband will not stand in this hallowed place of knowledge!

I get Rodney to the parking lot and throw his ass in the trunk my car. I have no idea what the make of this car is. It’s silver though.

I get behind the wheel and start driving. We drive and drive….I can hear Rodney banging around in the backseat. 

“Shut the fuck up!” I shout. 

We have a close call when I get pulled over for speeding by a cop. I get out of it with charm…and maybe a blow job (a lady like Principal Ramona never reveals her secrets). We drive and we drive. The hours chug by. The roads become rural. 

We drive and we drive. I don’t have a licence, so, this is a fantasy for me too. Finally, the car stops. We have arrived at my very secluded cabin deep in the woods. 

This is no ordinary cabin though. This is the tricked out psycho cabin of a total lunatic. The insides gleam with chrome, like the Ice Truck killers room he uses for dismemberment on the show “Dexter”. There is a dungeon.

Perhaps now would be a good time to reveal something important about Principal Ramona. She's actually a man. Not a transsexual, exactly. More like a drag queen. She has thighs like a shaved grizzly bear and eyebrows that go up into her hairline. She is all woman, with the meatiest dick tuck you have never seen.

I drag Rodney out of the trunk. I take him into my lair. All bets are off, motherfucker. I drag him into the dungeon. I have a gigantic wardrobe with many frilly outfits. I dress him up. I dress him up like Shirley Temple. He looks so fucking stupid. I smear lipstick on his face, and call hims pretty girl. I strap him to a chair. 

On the walls, I project pornography that I force him to watch. It isn’t just any porn. It’s porn that I have directed. It stars his virginal girlfriend, Rosemary, and none other than porn legend Peter North. 

If you don’t know who he is…look him up. I’m getting so old and have watched porn for so long that I consider myself an amateur porn historian. He’s been around a long, long time. His cum shots have been likened to opening up a beer can that has been well shaken. 

After this revelation, Rodney yells in horror while I laugh. And then he abruptly hangs up. He did this every single week.

Maybe you think that this guy is weak. This guy isn’t weak. He’s strong because he can be vulnerable. That’s not cliche, that's a fact. I have no idea why he needs this. I have no idea of his history. I only see this one part of him. But in this one part, I can see all of him. It’s like how one piece of the human body, one drop of blood, a sample of saliva, a cluster of skin cells, can, if you look closely enough, and with the right tools, tell you much of what you need to know about the entire organism that it came from. I don’t know what Rodney does for a living. I don’t know what kind of shows he enjoys watching. I don’t know what his favourite ice cream is….I only know that once a week he needs to live through this fantasy, that he calls me up and surrenders to something that is absurd to everyone else, maybe even to him as well, but he is compelled to do it because it gives him something…it feeds a need inside. It makes total sense to him.

That’s all I need to know, really. 

Evolution Is A Process Too Slow To Save My Soul

“Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.”

-Philippians 2:12

I haven’t written in a while…I haven’t worked on the phone sex lines in a while either. 

This blog is about my life as a phone sex operator, but, I can’t really talk about being a phone sex operator without discussing why I made the choice to be a PSO in the first place. I have always written from a personal place, and, although being a phone sex operator makes me money, I’m in the game for another reason as well.  

I became a phone sex operator because I am an agoraphobic. Which means that I deeply afraid of crowds and open spaces….basically, the world. Working at home afforded me freedom and independence. 

When I was 12, I was diagnosed with depression….I had no way of knowing then that it would become the absolute scourge of my life. 

Whole years of my life have been blacked out because of depression, like a redacted document. 

Just a few weeks ago, I was so depressed that I became suicidal. I didn’t make any real attempts, although there were some shady nights with sleeping pills. But, my thoughts became blacker than they had in a very long time. The lights had been flickering for a while, and they pretty much went out. It was a despair that felt dangerous. I was at the edge, and all I could see was down. 

It wasn’t any one thing, it was a bunch of things, it was nothing. It was my whole life, it was every moment that couldn’t be reversed, that I wanted to take back but couldn’t. It was all that things I wanted but had slipped away, or that I had squandered, that had been taken without my permission, it was all that I lost and couldn’t get back, it was all I never had and convinced myself I could get. 

All those horrible feelings,and yet a total void. 

I just knew that I had been struggling against this roiling tide for so long, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was so sick of being fucked up, but I had no idea how not to be fucked up. I feared that being fucked up was my permanent state of being. Who the hell wants to live like that? Who wants to be THAT person? 

I don’t know what I thought my life would look like by now, at the age of almost 32, but, I thought I would be better…I’d be more stable, more financially well off…happier, more together. I certainly thought that this whole “mental illness” thing that I’ve been grappling with most of my life would be a thing of the past. 

But, it’s still here. And somehow, I am too. 

I chose not to go through with killing myself for a couple of reasons…the first, was that I didn’t like the idea of my mom finding my corpse. I haven’t always been the best person, and, I have always wanted to get better. I knew if I killed myself, that redemption would be totally lost, and what would be even worse, is that I knew I would ruin my moms life forever. She didn’t deserve that. 

With this in mind, another realization formed in my head. I was like bird that had been shot through with an arrow, and I had to flap my wings with all my strength to keep from plummeting to Earth. 

I don’t believe in god, nor do I believe in an after life. I believe that there is nothing after we die. I started to think about what it would feel like to dive headlong into that nothing. On the one hand, it seemed peaceful and free of pain. On the other hand, it seemed terrifying to simply not exist. Being alive was painful as hell, but, the cessation of any feelings at all didn’t feel like a great alternative. In fact, it seemed like its own type of hell, one where I had left everything behind, everything unfinished and unknown , and yet had no way back. Any love that anyone felt for me wouldn’t stretch into that terrible permanent blackness, and my love would never be able to get out again and reach those I had left behind. 

There’s nothing worse than losing a connection with another person, especially if you loved them deeply. But, if I killed myself, I would be severing all those connections that I had, and ending any possibilities of future connections. Who was I to make that choice for myself and the people closest to me? 

So, my life isn’t what I expected it to be at this age. I doubt anyones is. I have had a difficult life. I have made it more difficult sometimes by being ashamed of who I am, which is a person who struggles with severe mental illness. I am ashamed of this because I am afraid that if people know this about me they will think that I am somehow not worthy of a place in their lives, or they will think less of me.

But…they shouldn’t. What kind of shitheel thinks someone is unworthy of friendship or love because they have something wrong with their brain that they have a difficult time controlling? That person sounds like a monster. That person sounds like what I tell myself, and it’s high time I knocked that shit off, because living with these ideas isn’t doing me any favours. 

There are billions of people on this planet, and who are any of us to decide how anyone should live their lives, or what success or failure is or looks like, or what makes a great life? It’s absurd to set any kind of standard when we have so many souls running around the planet having all kinds of different experiences and realities at any given time. 

It’s strange that in a world so vast, we get myopic. I can recall feeling jealous of people for what they posted on their social media.  I thought other people were better looking, more successful, happier…and then I realized that being jealous of the image people choose to show you is its own kind of personal hell. How can I feel envious of people I don’t know who show me the edited version of their life? Of course that is supposed to make people jealous, that's the point of social media, to brag and bolster yourself using a narrative you design. 

One of the basic principles of martial arts is that if you want to avoid being struck, don’t put yourself in a position to be struck. 

When I was really little, my grandmother and I watched classic movies. She had a big collection of photo books featuring pictures of old movie stars. I would sit looking at them for hours, and my grandmother would tell me all about the lives of the various beautiful people staring back at us. With very few exceptions, all of their lives were garbage. Sure, they were famous, beautiful, rich, beloved, immortalized on celluloid…and most of them drank or drugged themselves either to death, or close to it. Almost all had multiple failed marriages, many had serious mental illnesses, and all were subject to numerous tragedies. I used to marvel at how horrible their lives were. How beautiful the projections on the screen, how ugly their realities were. How could the bloom be so resplendent when the roots were so twisted and rotted?

I’ve been living with my parents these last few months, in the basement, depressed, and feeling like a total failure. I’ve never felt as alone as I have these past few weeks though. 

One night, as I was trying to stay afloat mentally, my mom revealed something to me I had never known about myself. Three days after I was born, I started having seizures and was put in intensive care. I had been having seizures in the womb.The doctors were very concerned and said that I would likely have brain damage. My mother dismissed these claims, saying, “she’ll be fine.” I was. 

My mom has a picture of me when I was about 6 years old in her bedroom that I recently discovered. It’s in a heart shaped pewter frame. I was so struck when I saw it. I couldn’t believe it was me. I remembered being that age, fragments of it, anyways. I feel so old sometimes, so worn, that I forget I was a child once, with everything ahead of me. 

I’ve been trying to remember myself, the many incarnations I have had. The free spirit who moved to Toronto a decade ago to be a circus performer, who just wanted as much experience as possible….is the same person who lived through a rape and near death experience…who survived the death of a parent at 11…who was diagnosed with depression at 12……who went to ballet class at 6….who had several seizures at 3 days old….who is here now, at 32, starting over, coming back to Toronto, very different, but somehow the same. 

On a clear day, I can see myself for miles…the many, many directions my life has taken me. I see myself strong, I see myself weak, I see myself surviving, I see myself crushed under the weight of all life has given me. All that I am or have ever been is contained inside of me, still. Recovery is about accessing it. I can live through anything. I can be free spirited and carefree and happy again. I was once before, so, I know I can get it back. 

This version that I am currently concocting is different, of course. I have tried to make the most of this seriously hellish period by letting it learn me a thing or two. I want more than ever to be a good person, and to show love and gratitude to those around me. 

And, I’m back working.  I am a proud pro dirty talker once more. My name is Andi. I named myself after the main character in “The Shawshank Redemption”. Something about watching Tim Robbins crawl through several football fields worth of shit and coming out clean on the other side struck a cord with me. Aspirations, man, we all need them. 

And, I’m getting over this whole “shame” thing. So, my life is different from other peoples. I’ve had different experiences than them, so, yeah, we’re different. But, I probably have more in common with others than I realize. When I’m crying alone at 3am, I think about all the other people who are doing the same thing. I don’t know who they are. They could be anyone. But, I know they exist. 

I feel pretty scared still. I don’t want to die anymore, but, I know that I still have a way to go on the recovery front. There are lonely nights…there are nights I am terrified of what will happen to me. There are nights I cry and cry and don’t know what to do with myself. And then there are nights where I am granted a merciful moment, and all of that clears away…and the unknown doesn’t feel as scary, and I feel like…maybe everything is gonna be okay. 

As someone who knows me all too well once said about me..”she’ll be fine”.

Evolution is a process

Too slow to save my soul

I've got this creature on my back

It just won't let go

Ha ha ha

If I am only an animal

Then I can do no wrong

But they say something better

So I've got to hang on

-“Manimal” The Germs