My smell became muskier. My nipples responded all too easily to stimuli that had never aroused me before - a woman sitting cross-legged in a short skirt for example. Suddenly dirty words and descriptions of sexual situations were turning me on and I couldn't get off without them. I couldn't wait to go to work because I knew I would get off almost every time. And even though I've calmed down a bit since those first few weeks, it still doesn't take much to get me going.

Before I started my job as a phone sex operator, I thought all I had to do was talk mindlessly about vanilla sex. I should have done my research. Not only do I talk about vanilla sex, but about scat, urine, BDSM, bestiality, tattoos/piercings, wrestling, enemas, pegging, even rape (usually they want to be forced to take it up the ass). The only acts that the FCC forbids me to describe are pedophilia, blood sports, mutilation, and necrophilia - thank fuck! I quickly learned that there are as many fetishes as there are people, that the distinctions between erotic, sexy, kinky and nasty are blurry, and that we all tend to assume that other people's ideas of said "distinctions" are the same as our own, even when we feel alienated by those ideas. It amazes me that the men who call can share with me - a total stranger - fantasies they feel they can't share with their wives/girlfriends; and I no longer feel guilty and alienated by my comic book fetish - I'm not alone, YAY! I've learned more about human sexuality in the short time I've been an operator than I have in my entire life. I talk to so many men about sex so often that I think I finally understand why men seem so skeevy to women, and why visual stimuli is so important to a man's libido, gay or straight.

In contemplating all of this, there are two very important things I've come to understand. Firstly, sex is about power for many people- either taking it or relenting it. So many fantasies are just variations of domination/bondage. Secondly, sex is mental. The idea of a sexy object is more important that the existence of a sexy object; otherwise, how can shoes, diapers, smelly underpants, feces, stuffed animals, whips and chains, or comic books elicit such a highly charged response, a response whose origins are unknown and unknowable? So don't bother asking yourself, "Why does (X) make me feel this way?" Just go with it.

C.B. Webb