Wednesday, August 25, 2010

The Kindness Of Strangers

In Streetcar Named Desire, a battered Blanche DuBois comments as she is being escorted to the looney bin, "I have always relied on the kindness of strangers." The audience weeps for her, remembering her abuse at the hands of a non-stranger, and her illustrious history as a glamorous sex worker, and thinks, "Well, ain't that the truth."

So now in my job as a phone sex operator (PSO), I also rely on the kindness of strangers. Someone who does not know me in real life needs to listen to my voice for 15 seconds, or read 7000 characters or less of HTML, and decide they are willing to pay to talk with me in order for me to succeed.

The kindness of my phone partners (some of whom no longer feel like strangers at all) has been fantastic, in many of the ways I had hoped to find when I started this adventure.

But the really surprisingly kind strangers have been other PSOs. After a couple of weeks on the job, "Buttery Bellina" welcomed me to her category... because I had just slipped ahead of her in the listing rankings. Yikes. It's a lot easier to be happy about moving up when you don't know who you just passed... Bellina shared her experiences as an office-based PSO (sooooooo fascinating!!), and about experimenting with her rates. I'm significantly older than she is, but I feel like I gained a big sister!

Then "JungleFeverForever" dropped me an email out of the blue to let me know that one of my pics would break the Terms of Service (TOS) because it showed bare ass. You can show a thong-clad ass, just not a bare one. If your listing gets pulled, after you fix it, it goes to "pending" and has to be reviewed, which it can take 2-5 days!! Yikes! Thanks!

Then yesterday, "BBWbarelylegalAngie" dropped me a note and asked about my photographer, and also let me know that one of my new pictures also violated the TOS because it had sex toys in it. I wasn't touching any of them, mind you (which is what I thought would be a problem), they were just spread out in front of me. Really? That's a problem? She also shared some of her experiences as a BBW video goddess in case I ever want to head down that path. Thanks tons, Angie - you're a life saver! And grats on breaking 1400 on your main listing! You go girl!

So now, as I browse listings by other women, I've sent TOS-violation emails to three others, hoping to keep my karma balance high, and happy to save others from the dreaded pending limbo.

Truth be told, I have never relied much on the kindness of strangers much in my life. I've always been a bit stubbornly independent. It's hard enough for me to ask for help from people I love, much less to expect help from people I've never met in person. And yet, here I am, and strangers are showing up and being kind. And I love it. A lot.

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for your kind mention. That's great that you are playing it forward. The kindness of strangers can go a long way toward keeping your good karma. I hope your good karma stays with you a life time. JFJ

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  2. Speaking of Mr. Williams work, his beloved poet Hart Crane once wrote about the isolation of the "normal" life. To this day this work remains one of my favorites.

    From "My Grandmother's Love Letters"

    "Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
    Through much of what she would not understand;
    And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
    With such a sound of gently pitying laughter."

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