“Friday Goldman might have been a singer or an actress. Even on the phone, her silky voice has a way of drawing you in. She’s smooth, intelligent, winning. You want to keep talking with her. Which explains why she is such a spectacularly successful phone sex operator. She keeps her average customer on the line for 32 minutes. At $2.99 a minute, that adds up. But it’s not just talent. Goldman, 23, says there’s a formula for good dirty talk, an algorithm of desire that she’s documented in her electronic guide, Phonesexatron…. Phonesexatron, also known as the Phone Sex Matrix, includes a treatise on the art of telephonic titillation. (’Just take something in your everyday life and pervert it.’) The guide also enumerates tips on breaking the ice, pacing calls, and providing convincing moans and other sound effects. And there’s a lengthy thesaurus to help operators avoid repetition and cliché… But all that is a warm-up for Phone-sexatron’s main attraction — the keywords, phrases, scenarios, and scripts that operators can search midcall. The basic formula involves picking an item from each of three columns — Setting, Sex Act, Character — and putting them together into an arousing narrative. As the guide puts it: ‘car wash + hot blow job + muscle-bound hunk = hot car wash blow job story!’ Goldman has also written detailed crib sheets for 60 sexual proclivities — from standard-issue bondage and discipline to specialties like ‘female giant’ and ‘human ashtray.’ Each category comes with suggested vocabulary, ’story starters,’ and links to related Web sites. Using these guides, operators can give demanding fetishists — the most consistent and lucrative return customers — what they desire…” —Wired (US)

The first time you read this story, it’s hard not to find yourself being impressed with Friday Goldman (which is the pseudonym of a girl who, by day, is earning a women’s studies degree at Cleveland State University). She’s like Gregor Mendel, the “father of genetics,” or Carolus Linnaeus, who developed the taxonomic groups you learn in high-school biology. Ms. Goldman has taken a sort of wilderness and discovered the structures that give it order and form. Setting + Sex Act + Character = Hot Phone Sex. Amazing!

However, once you get over this first flush of awe at the enterprising Ms. Goldman, a rather disturbing truth settles in. That’s right: your sexual desires are astonishingly formulaic. You can be spoonfed preconcocted narratives from a sort of cookbook for dirty talk — and you’ll love it. If you ever thought you felt a thrill of discovery in exploring sexuality, you have to remind yourself that researching the libido, unlike climbing Mount Everest or exploring space, really takes you nowhere new. Others have been there before and done that already. Every bed has used sheets.

To recognize this is to find yourself in a weird position. You have lusts and urges and these are like bulls rushing a matador’s cape. They have no thought for anything, just a sort of unstoppable forward momentum. On the other hand, somewhere in the wake of this bull run your brain comes struggling along, knowing full well that it is the job of any sex worker to make you feel special, unique, desirable, excited. You know that the sex worker, whether it’s a phone sex operator or a prostitute, doesn’t really think anything more of you than your wallet. But still you have to fall for the fantasy or else you won’t get off. Does the knowledge that s/he might be feeding you a formula from a book undercut your ability to suspend disbelief, to fall for the fantasy? (”I know she’s a hooker but I think she really liked me.”) Or should you just accept how entirely trivial your fantasies are? Just sit back, relax, enjoy the ride, take it in like a good Hollywood adventure movie?

VideoBox

It's like the iTunes Music Store for Porn. Download unlimited high-quality video for only $9.95/month.