Care and Feeding of Galiana

Too much want

In the probably-forgettable movie Made In Heaven, seen in my impressionable youth, a new soul falls in love with a guy named Mike in heaven, and then, after she's born and grows up, although she doesn't remember him directly, she writes a children's book called "The Care and Feeding of Mike". The sweet little phrase stuck with me, and now when I think of care, I think "The Care and Feeding of..."

Urg. I have so much want.

I want to continue the dialog I entered into with my celebration of male submissives post, reading others' spectacular writings and leaving comments that make me seem like I know what I'm talking about. I want to keep engaging with Fizz and Chaos of Lab Coats & Lingerie, lose myself in the archives of KittyStryker's recently-Janes-Guide-approved PurrVersatility, help Alisa research to fill in the blanks of her archiving efforts at KinkInExile, encourage Tomio to keep writing, and pathetically attempt to keep up with all the insights and research spread by the inspirational maymay, knowledge worker extraordinaire, the one who drew me into this particular dizzying world of rhetoric and ideas to begin with by the brilliantly evocative MaleSubmissionArt...

Maymay, by the way, is also the one who helped me realize the value of contextual linking. I recognize the irony of having no links in that sentence. (trivia: I am always certain I have used the word "irony" incorrectly)

But back to my insatiable want... I want to write more about fairness and negotiation and respect in relationships, BDSM and vanilla. I want to share my observations about community-building from years of church and BDSM groups and playing MMORPGs. I want to start podcasting. I want to release more videos that are like visual podcasts. I want to open an Ask Galiana blog so I can pretend to legitimize my compulsive need to share my perspective.

I want to take series of pictures enjoying my body as I strip out of constrictive clothing to show that I can still celebrate my physicality even though my medicines packed on an extra 15 pounds I didn't intend to gain.

I want to spend every moment with my family for these last couple of weeks while I still live in Houston with them. After 21 years away, it has been soul-nourishing to live in the same town again for 6 months, just barely long enough to develop habits of including each other. I will miss the casual ability to help, and to feel feel caught up.

I want to be spending enough time over the phone with my husband, who is away from our current home, working in the place where I'm moving at the end of the month, to stay emotionally connected to him during this busy time, so we don't get too snappy or resentful.

I want to sort through the crap in my home that we didn't have time to sort through when we moved here in March, and I want to recycle, donate, sell, and throw away as much as possible before we pay by the pound to move it cross-country. I am disturbed by how many belongings we have moved multiple times and never used.

And I want to keep feeding off the energy of my callers, take luscious escapes of fantasy and pleasure, lose myself in the delicious focus of luxuriating in the erotic rhythms of wants and needs and secrets and lusts. I feel useful and sexy and empowered and strong and capable when I spend time having phone sex.

And on the days of the move, I want to be at the top of my game, ready to do whatever needs to be done, strong and willing and able.

Days? What do you mean day? The next 3 weeks include these separate days: hub's last 4-day trip where he has to finish packing everything that is his and sorting everything that is ours, 4 days of paying an underemployed friend to help me pack, movers taking our stuff, my hub driving away with the car and the dogs, my flying up to *static* and him driving me to our new home several hours from there, our stuff arriving at our new place, and a great friend from college arriving to help me unpack for a few days.

Oh, and I'd like to do all that without having any vertigo crashes, please. Because having massive physical limitations is completely inconvenient right now. Could I just not have vertigo for a bit?

Dear Galiana,

Please read The Care and Feeding of Galiana. It goes something like this: Galiana needs, at a minimum: water, food, down-time to let her brain rest, and, separately from the rest, sleep. If you could also work in "having reasonable expectations for herself," that would be peachy.

Love, Galiana

I feel like I'm considering dropping out of a bunch of stuff that just finally got rolling, and I don't want to let any of it go. But that is the thought pattern of people who drive themselves crazy from inexperience, and, for better or worse, I know better.

So I will put my activist urges on a shelf, carefully schedule blocks of time with family, resign myself to still having clutter after we move, watch my days-between-blog-posts climb again, savor the escape with the callers who catch me on the phone, email the ones who let me know they missed me, and do the best I can to get through this as productively as possible.

The List

mmmmwuh!

When we moved to Houston, we managed to sort/categorize/cull about half our stuff (which is fucking miraculous considering we had two weeks' notice), and I've been slowly sorting through the rest since the move, including prepping old computers for donation / recycling.

I found The List.

You know, THE List! Of course you know which one I mean ... /grin. Sure you do. THE LIST: the names of all the people I've ever had physical sexual contact with!

Ohhhhh THAT List.

My version of The List is ridiculously overcategorized. The rows are numbered, then there's name, Location, Year(s), Base (as in: 1st base is kissing, 2nd base is clothes off but no orgasms, 3rd base is orgasms but no penetration, 4th base is penetration, and then 5 means anal sex so I could categorize that separately), and then a column for each of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th to let me quickly figure out what my total is for that "base" (although with five, I should call it something else, but it's my spreadsheet, so shut up).

It's possible that thinking about the people I kissed in high school makes me juvenile. Sure. I'll blame that.

I started The List when I got to 3, in the back of my diary, and I've kept it in one form or another since then. I thought I had lost it, but the spreadsheet version was on a computer I hadn't used since 2006. Whew! I never would have remembered half of it, but the memories are too fun to have lost.

My List includes such first-base-only gems as "Dean (Crawfish Festival)", "Mike (U of H)", and "Jim (from Numbers)". Numbers was an all-ages dance club in Houston I frequented in the late 80s. I never learned their last names. But hey, at least they were only kissing, right? So I don't claim too much slut cred with those.

But "Random Guy (Galveston)" was third base. I find it amusing I had to qualify beyond just "Random Guy", but apparently that's because the very next entry is "Random Guy (Shane's party)", and there are two more later.

I went to a very fun high school, where taking someone as a date to a formal was free license to make out with them with no expectations for a relationship. I was in a limo for prom with six couples, and we realized between dinner and the dance that not only had I kissed all six of the guys there, five of us girls had kissed all six of the guys. The other girl was only a sophomore, and one of the guys was her first boyfriend, but I'm sure by the time she got to her prom, the same was true for her as well. We were a smoochy crowd.

So when I left for college, I had kissed 36 people (35 males, 1 female), and had sex with 4, and only a few of those numbers would have been considered questionable by my peers. But at college, late one girl talk in the dorm, the other girls were shocked! Stunned! Dismayed! by my numbers. I called my sister and asked, "Why didn't you tell me I was a slut in high school? That seems like something I should have known!" I think she laughed at me. No frikkin help whatsoever.

Then things slowed down dramatically for a while: when I got married at age 25, I had only kissed another 12 guys, and had sex with 3, including my husband. We don't like to talk about those long, boring, dry years...

But then there was The Rampage -- after my separation at age 31, where I rebuilt my bruised ego through the healing power of sexual attention. I kissed 21 people (18 guys, 3 girls), had sex with 12 of them, and tried anal sex... with four guys. I have many happy stories about that period, and thankfully, they end with, "And I was very careful and very lucky, and I never caught an STD."

I met my husband in 2003, and we both assumed we'd be fuck buddies for a while, because it was the period we were both in. We ended up never breaking up, then he talked me into marrying him by telling me he would stay with me even if I didn't marry him (I should be able to see through reverse psychology, but apparently, I can't). Since then I've had 7 lovers.

That brings my totals to ... drumroll please...

77 1st base: at least kissed
46 2nd base: at least clothing removed
39 3rd base: at least orgasms exchanged
25 4th base: at least fucked
5 my silly designation as 5th base: fucked in the ass, in addition to 1st-4th bases

At my current rate, I'm going to be in my late fifties when I hit 100 smooch partners. I just decided: I'm going to throw a Century Slut party and kiss everyone present. Lemme know if you want an invite!

Anniversaries

In the five months since blogging about being a phone sex operator, I have...

In the six months since becoming a phone sex operator, I have...

In the twenty-two months since inexplicably developing a mysterious neurological vertigo, I have...

In the eighteen years since my father had his fatal heart attack, I have...

Where do I start with how my life has changed because of the anniversaries I am experiencing today?

In the five months since blogging about being a phone sex operator, I have... rediscovered the joy of writing for an appreciative audience, reaffirmed my creative nature, and remembered how much richer my life feels when I am examining it through written words.

In the six months since becoming a phone sex operator, I have... changed from a slut to a sex worker, from an adventuresome and promiscuous hotwife in a non-monogamous relationship to a phone whore, from someone with opinions about sex to someone whose experience of sex is worth enough money to pay most of our bills.

In the twenty-two months since inexplicably developing a mysterious neurological vertigo, I have... faced my limitations in sometimes torturous ways, and found an abundance of strength in myself, which I had always hoped would be there if I needed it.

In the eighteen years since my father had his fatal heart attack, I have... grown from a temporarily self-restrained, religiously conservative woman-child into a confident, sensual woman who was deeply influenced by the freedom of his open relationships, and deeply motivated to avoid the pitfalls he repeatedly stumbled into.

Where do I start with how my communities have changed since the anniversaries I am experiencing today?

In the five months since blogging about being a phone sex operator, I have... rediscovered the joy of mentoring others along my path, because this blog has turned into a magnet for new PSOs seeking friendly advice, some of whom I now gratefully count among my friends and support network.

In the six months since becoming a phone sex operator, I have... interacted sexually with an astonishing variety of men, a few of whom I now gratefully count among my friends and support network, which has widened my understanding of the world, driven my already-high libido to the point of requiring daily masturbation, and involved me in a community of sex-positive sex workers which I am honored to join and support.

In the twenty-two months since inexplicably developing a mysterious neurological vertigo, I have... shifted how I fill my tank socially from friendly interactions with colleagues during and after work, to online chats and emails and phone calls with friends and family far and wide who I was often too busy to reconnect with when I was working as an IT professional, supplemented by tossing around my opinions on online forums for fun.

In the eighteen years since my father had his fatal heart attack, I have... lost all my grandparents, but gained a brother-in-law and nieces and my husband's parents, so the dynamics of the group called "family" have continued to change, but the love and support has never wavered at all.

Where do I start with how I feel about the anniversaries I am experiencing today? 

In the five months since blogging about being a phone sex operator, I have... felt intensely grateful for the creative outlet, amused myself, annoyed myself, entertained myself, and loved the feeling of having a fantastic treasure chest of memories to sift through on rainy days.

In the six months since becoming a phone sex operator, I have... felt sexy, dead sexy, ridiculously sexy, outrageously sexy, powerfully sexy, submissively sexy, domineeringly sexy, creatively sexy, intelligently sexy, playfully sexy, intensely grateful, and sometimes, when I've been very fortunate, I have felt helpful.

In the twenty-two months since inexplicably developing a mysterious neurological vertigo, I have... felt anger, sorrow, pride, relief, frustration, joy, gratitude, and peace with my disorder, my care, the medical profession, the insurance industry, the loving people who have helped me, and myself: all those feelings toward all those things.

In the eighteen years since my father had his fatal heart attack, I have... felt so sad every January 16 that I cannot call him and yell at him for being a selfish sonofabitch for leaving so soon, and I have felt the loss of his perspective on my careers, my relationships, and the wonders of our electronically social age that I know he would have loved.

Where do I start with today? 

The same way I start every day: grateful to be enjoying a life worth living, but today, probably, with a little extra space.

I Know Why

As my caller reloaded his account, I thought about how I felt when I was first learning about being submissive in a BDSM sense, nine years ago.

I had worked so hard in therapy to take responsibility for my feelings and my actions. I had worked so hard professionally to teach myself technically and be in a position of leadership. I had worked so hard socially to choose friends who gave as much as they took, and treated me with respect. And I had worked so hard personally to admit to myself that I needed to leave the man I thought I'd be with for the rest of my life.

I was tired of working hard. I was tired of being strong. I was tired of standing up for myself. I wanted so badly to find a place I could relax.

I found stories, erotica, of people handing themselves to one another. I envied the submissives, with their hands and legs bound and mouth gagged. I envied their time off from having to make decisions.

I flew a long distance to meet a man who wrote such stories, to let him tie me up, gag me, beat me, use me, teach me. We had written a thousand emails and spoken over the phone dozens of times. I knew he cared for me, and I knew I trusted him, and I knew that I could never explain to anyone exactly why.

For four days, I decided nothing, but I felt everything. I felt every inch of my skin, kissed by floggers and crops and paddles. I felt every curve of my body, explored by his hands and mouth. I felt every muscle, stretched and pushed and twisted in ways I would never have imagined.

The caller came back from reloading his account, holding his breath, wondering what his Mistress had in store for him.

Me: I know why you come to Me
Pet: (barely above a whisper) You do?
Me: You're so strong all the time, aren't you? For everyone else?
Pet: yes
Me: They all need you to be strong, don't they?
Pet: yes... yes
Me: Not with me, pet. You can be weak with Me.
Pet: (crying) yes
Me: I'll take care of you, pet. Let me take it from you. Give it to Me, all of it. Let it go.

... and he did, choking through a release that felt like it loosened a knot in his stomach that had been a lifetime in the making.

Sometimes what I do on the phone is help someone follow a strong biological urge to drain their testicles of sperm.

And sometimes what I do on the phone is help someone feel safe, by hurting them, to let them know they don't have to be in charge.

Thank you, pet. Well done.

Becoming Hypnotist Galiana

Four months into doing phone sex, I have opened up a Hypnotism listing: http://www.niteflirt.com/listings/show/9471435 The one lone piece of feedback on there so far was from the listing's start as a regular Mistress listing, but my Fetish - Fem Dommes listing is where I'm getting those calls, not in BDSM - Mistresses. 

As I explained in an early blog post here, being hypnotized erotically was new to me when I started this job. But being hypnotized was not new to me: I successfully quit smoking via hypnosis in the 1990s.

What I did not reveal in that blog post is that I had extensive childhood experience performing hypnotism. For about three years in grade school and middle school, a group of friends spent many late-night hours at camp-outs and lock-ins and sleep-overs "playing" with hypnotism.

It started with the "light as a feather, stiff as a board" game: one girl laid down, other girls knelt around her in a circle, and each girl had one finger from each hand under the girl, pressing lightly upward. We calmly said, "light as a feather, stiff as a board" over and over. At some point, the girl on the ground would float upward, carried on the weight of our fingers. Inevitably, someone would giggle or "Wow!" at that point and the floating girl would drop back an inch or two to the ground. We put pillows under them to soften the fall, and thought it was neat.

Then the idea of hypnotizing someone entered into the group. The girl being hypnotized would lie down with her head in the hypnotist's lap. The hypnotist would rub the temples of the girl going under and do a classic relaxation-type induction. When she passed an "I can't open my eyelids" check, we'd do all kinds of harmless things: extract information about who she liked (almost never a surprise), make her feel ticklish without touching her, or give her a post-hypnotic suggestion to do a handstand or to flap her arms and cluck like a chicken. Silly things.

Nobody else could get me all the way under, I always remembered everything, and post-hypnotic suggestions never worked on me, so other girls gave up trying to hypnotize me. At the same time, consensus built that I could get people under the deepest, and I had the best ideas of goofy stuff to have them do, so I became the designated hypnotist unless someone else wanted to try. Other girls would talk to me mid-session if they had an idea or a question, but the girl in a trance would usually only be able to hear my voice. 

The idea of age regression came to us somehow, so we started regressing people back to their toddler years, and asking about early memories. The rare times when older sisters were with us, or girls asked their parents about it later, memories were confirmed. It was a little creepy, but incredibly fun. The tone of the sessions changed - they felt less silly - and although I don't remember discussing it, I think we understood that we were doing something more serious, and we needed to be cautious. We only asked questions when people were regressed, and we never made suggestions to regressed people.

Then we started trying past-life regressions. The first few were uneventful, weakly constructed, sometimes obviously faked (giggles give you away), or seemed to be springing from the imagination of the person being hypnotized. Or in one case, when she crossed the bridge from this life to the former, she just popped herself out of the trance. Boring.

Then came the past-life regression that shut us down. "Laura" was as normal as anyone ever is, unremarkable in her background, unremarkable in her speech patterns among her peers, had never traveled outside the US, and had never done acting or taken dialect coaching. When Laura stepped over the bridge and went back to her previous 20-year-old self, she instantly developed a thick brogue (Irish? Scotch? Welsh?), an antiquated speech pattern, and used words that sounded like local slang that none of us had heard.

Eyes grew wide. Girls backed away. Fear hit all of us, I think. It didn't feel faked. Laura wasn't the type to be able to pull that off. I remember holding up my hands in a calming motion and making a "shhhhh" face - in fact, that may have been the moment when I learned that it only takes one calm leader to stop a stampede. I knew instinctively that we needed to stay calm and quiet to get Laura back safely. The other girls settled back in around Laura, silent but freaked out, and watched while I casually asked a few questions, so it wouldn't seem odd to her that we had come here.

For about five minutes, she told us of her life: she was raised as a farm girl, married a farmer, and had two children. She had brothers and sisters, including a sister lost to a coughing illness. Everyone had names. Everyone was specific. Every answer was startling in its mundane truthfulness.

I walked her slowly back across the bridge, taking my time, asking for confirmations, covering every base I could think of to ensure that Laura came back to us safe and sound and... well... that she came back to us as Laura. When she got back to her actual age, sounding like herself again, I emerged her.

She didn't remember anything. She felt relaxed and calm. She had no idea why we were all spazzing our little heads off. If she had created that, I believe she would have pulled a "Gotcha!" on us as we talked about it ad nauseum for the next hour, because she wasn't a subtle, manipulative, plotting girl like that. She was an easygoing goofball who followed others' lead, not the type to perpetrate and reinforce fraud on a group of her panic-stricken best friends.

We agreed never to touch it again. We agreed never to talk about it again. I am deeply grateful that we were a group of basically well-meaning kids who simply walked away when we got in over our heads. And I wonder how the heck we got our ideas and techniques... I remember coming up with a few things myself, but I have no idea how we got all the way to past-life regression. That's heavy-duty stuff.

And then when I was 39, a new phone sex worker, browsing other listings, I found myself fascinated by hypno offerings, hypno blogs, and hypno theory. I started soaking up benevolent training on the internet (no "how to hypnotize people without their knowledge"). I feel confident in my research skills, and in my bullshit detection. Over the course of about a month, I soaked knowledge from respectable resources who offer state-accepted hypnotherapy certification training.

(side note: I love people who understand that by giving away some of their expertise, they become seen as experts, and attract more people asking for their expertise. Yay for super-smart marketing)

(side side note: I know some hypnotherapists would claim that whatever training I participated in over the internet was quackery, but every sub-culture has hobbyists, experts, academics, researchers, practitioners, and in-fighting... and every body of knowledge is now available on at least a surface level to curious folks with good research skills. I'd love recommendations for safe, competent, training, but I can't yet afford Big Bucks to go to live training.)

Then, since the Law of Attraction seems to work sometimes, I had someone call on my Mistress line (which does not mention hypnotism) asking to be hypnotized. And another. And then the first one called back. So I wrote out my preferred method of induction (a script? reminders? something like that), so I don't forget stuff. I would never use someone else's script - I'm waaay too picky about my rhythm to do that. And it's really just induction and emergence where I want to be consistent - the stuff in the middle is just as improv as regular phone sex.


I understand that hypnotism can be extraordinarily powerful, and I will be treading very lightly. I don't have the urge to drain someone's bank account or have them roll around naked on their front lawn or anything like that. Nothing illegal, nothing abusive, and hopefully nothing harmful. I'm going for a helpful, sensual, fun vibe with this. If I want to go deeper into more therapeutic behavior / cognitive modification, I'll get training. For now, it's just for feel-good.

My listing emphasizes: Intelligent (I'll let that one stand without further observation), Interactive (I'm not following a script except for induction and emergence - the rest of it we're creating together), Erotic (I can do non-erotic, but at the moment, erotic is more interesting to me), and Beneficial (hypno-slaves putting themselves in harm's way for me is just as unappealing as BDSM slaves putting themselves in harm's way - I'm here to help, not damage).

Hopefully that will attract people who will want what I'm offering!

Playing With My Food

In my off-phone sex life, I have a few great memories of mixing food and sex, which is not surprising, given my strong oral fixation. I'm plenty hedonistic enough to appreciate multiple layers of taste and smell and texture.

By far the best ever was the night my husband and I ... ummm... /blush... met in person for the first time? slept together for the first time? Oh, hmm, mmaaaayyyybe those were the same night... Anyway (/innocent whistle), we had been fucking like bunnies for a couple of hours, and I felt snacky, so we ventured to the kitchen, naked, to discover our culinary choices. I opened the fridge, saw the whipped cream can, shook it, opened it, leaned my head back, filled my mouth (without touching the nozzle with my lips or tongue, of course, because although I am clearly trashy and presumptuous and greedy, I'm not germy), and then I had the good graces to be mortifyingly embarrassed that I'd just done that. He looked stunned. Like, eyes wide, blink, blink, blink stunned. I managed to swallow it all, which is tricky to do when you're trying to apologize and not laugh with a mouth full of whipped cream. He finally caught his snap and said, "I think I just fell in love with you a little bit. That was awesome."

The most creative was the sensation game: I was blindfolded while a lover fed me different food and drink, or traced different sensations over my body. When I guessed correctly, I got rewarded with kisses or stimulation or flesh in my mouth or, eventually, permission to have orgasms. When I guessed incorrectly, I got spanked, clamped, or restricted. By the end of it, my hands were clamped to my collar, my feet were cuffed to the spreader bar, the spreader bar was leashed to my collar, and I had clamps everywhere sensitive. As we were cooling down, after he freed everything but my hands, he fed me samples of flavored chocolates and kissed the flavors off my tongue. Not only was the experience wonderful and unforgettable, the set-up he had to do was damn impressive indeed.

In my on-phone sex life, I've enjoyed some super sexy food play, without any annoying logistical concerns of cleanup or hygiene.

The most amusing was the guy who asked if I were on my knees with his cock in one hand and chocolate in the other, what would I choose? Those of you who guessed "melt the chocolate on your dick and let me clean it off with my tongue" are the ones who know my greedy little self the best.

The most surprising was the man who started describing his homemade turtle cheesecake, then how he would feed it to me, then shifted to focus on how much weight I would gain. The more I described fat packing itself onto my flesh, the more aroused he became. After the call, I referred him to SS BBW Angie Kimber (who I've had the pleasure to meet in person), and the weigh-in videos she told me about (search her studio for "weight gain combo"). Since I haven't heard from him since then, I assume Angie's taking great care of him!

The biggest divide between "fun to imagine" and "probably not fun to clean up in real life" was the gentleman with the combo fetish: sploshing and silky panties. Sploshing, in case you don't want to wander to potentially frightening new places on the internet, is the fetishistic use of wet, but solid, food, like getting a pie in the face, or having a food fight with spaghetti and meatballs in tomato sauce. This particular gent wanted me to fill my silky undies with chocolate pie or banana pie and describe it oozing out onto my thighs and soaking through the soft fabric so he could lick and suck it off me.

Man. Now I'm hungry.

Orgasmic Greediness and Insecurity

During some cuddly, chatty afterglow, a caller said, "At one point, I was coaching you to come, really pushing for your orgasm, so much so that I was momentarily distracted from my own stroking, and I thought for a second, 'Wait, who is the phone sex operator here?'"

No kidding.

Somewhat similar to sex-free phone sex, sometimes I've had entire conversations consisting of me having a climax or two, with no reciprocal male orgasm at all. If you've read this blog entry, you can probably understand why I always feel a little imbalanced after those calls. Why did you get your blessing and deny me mine? Did I use up too much time? Too much energy? Did I do something wrong? Was my orgasm not stimulating for you? I have to reassure myself that it's okay, and trust that my partner knows what pleases him.

I love playing with the power dynamic of wanting to have an orgasm, but waiting for permission before I pop. It lends itself to variety: shall I earn the right to come, or just beg for it? And even if we're sharing control with nobody designated as the top, the concept works nicely because it is paid phone sex: it's your call, so maybe I should ask before I hijack the call with my pleasure (not, of course, if I'm obviously in charge - if you've asked me to dominate you or seduce you or teach you, then I'll let my waves rise and crest at whatever speed and frequency I desire).

I am intensely aware that my climax could be distracting for you, and maybe I'm just being greedy. Old issues can pop up, remnants from a time when I questioned if my higher-than-average sex drive meant something was wrong with me, an idea planted during arguments as a relationship dissolved unpleasantly. I  went so far as to have my hormones tested - all normal - and explore with a therapist whether or not I am a sex addict - I'm not. I mean, honestly, almost every day, someone calls to guide me as I masturbate, so if that's not what is happening on this call, shouldn't I be able to hold off until I'm sure you have the enjoyment you're seeking? How much pleasure should one girl need in a day?

Inner Protective Samurai (appearing suddenly but silently, as if materialized from the air): Well, hello there, old voices of shame. You feel familiar, and full of lies. I shall take this opportunity to slice you to ribbons with the sword I spend my days sharpening. (whooshing noises) And now I shall have tea. (disappears)

The rest of the Inner Cast loves Inner Protective Samurai a lot. We think everyone should have one. Her sword is sharpened by the knowledge that "female copulatory vocalization" is common in primates, and has been scientifically proven to arouse the interest of males. It's the way of nature, Galiana, let it flow.

Okay. I will. I'll try. I mean... Could you do me a favor? If you call and we spend a lot of time with me having orgasms, especially if you don't have one, could you let me know that you enjoyed yourself? Thanks.

Empathic Metamorph: Then and Now

I only have the urge to write in times of great upheaval in my life. When my first marriage was drawing to a close, I wrote two stories: one that would convince anyone sane that we should be break up immediately, and one that would convince anyone sane that we should be together forever. Both stories were absolutely true. 

The happy romantic story was, essentially, my sexual history. I've started drafting this blog entry three times now, but can't describe the Empathic Metamorph more clearly than I did for that story, so I'm going to excerpt it instead. The narrative voice is purposefully a little disorganized and flighty and young-sounding. Here it is: 

The Empathic Metamorph was a single-episode Star Trek: The Next Generation character ("The Perfect Mate"), born once every seven generations to this alien race. She was highly desired as a mate because she adapted completely and perfectly to the desires of every male she came in contact with, as if she had an internal radio tuned to their desire alone. If he was a Klingon and craved danger, she sensed it and growled at him. If he was the Captain who craved a smart woman, she discussed the finer points of philosophy and literature while calmly playing her lute. 

So there I was watching TV in my living room my senior year of college, surrounded by my best friends, my current lover and a couple of exes. And I realized that I was the freaking Empathic Metamorph. And that nobody in that living room had any idea that we were all watching me, because I was so damn good at looking like I enjoyed playing the lute. It depressed the hell out of me.

Later, I described for my therapist how, even when I barely knew my lovers or didn't like them much, I could still feel them -- their desires, their needs, but I could never feel myself. Maybe my blood rushed to the right places, and maybe my juices rose at the right times, but I was so focused on what they wanted, on what they felt, that I just didn't notice my body enough to tell whether or not it gave me pleasure.

The story goes on to describe how I finally learned to get in touch with what I enjoy enough to masturbate, and then have a deeply sexually satisfying wedding night, both of which are true.


I used to be depressed that I resembled the Empathic Metamorph, but now it seems like a source of power. The difference is control. I used to feel assaulted by the desires of others, bandied about on waves of lust I could feel rolling in to me. Since I didn't know what I wanted, I didn't know how to use that energy to feed any pleasure of mine.

Oh, the difference a couple of decades makes. Thank goodness.

Now that I know what I like (my "lust landscape", as I like to call it), I can use my empathic metamorph tendencies to identify where the desires of a lover intersect my desires, and then lose myself for a while, fully inhabiting the playground built on the overlapping lands.

The clearest, happiest example was with "Well Traveled", who explained that he liked to take smart girls and, in his words, "Barbie-ify" them so they become mindless fuck bunnies for his pleasure alone. My initial impulse was amusement at the term Barbie-ify, of course, but also confusion: how could I get to that place? We discussed the concept of the playground built at the intersection of lust landscapes, and he agreed it was the right idea.

So he suggested a hypno role play where I walked down stairs to shed years of world-weary concerns, then walked back up a different staircase to add worry-free years back on. He created a lust playground indeed with his words: rolling meadows and babbling streams, an idyllic, worry-free, frolic-aholic's dream. By the time we arrived there, my voice was higher and bouncier, my heart was lighter, my breath was shallower, my eyes were wider, and I felt awesome. The resulting play was a relaxing delight to both of us.

I'm not a bimbo. I'm not a Barbie. I'm not a ditz. But apparently, given a stream of focused desire at just the right dingbat frequency, I can get there. Or, as it turns out, I can get to dozens of other places upon request as well.

The difference 20 years makes? Now, I enjoy the transformations. I understand them. I choose to participate in them. I don't feel powerless or out of control; in fact, I feel the exact opposite. Now I feel like a bit like a goddess, creating and moving between worlds and characters and dreamscapes, gathering energy and gaining strength as I go. Far from feeling depleted or assaulted, now I feel celebrated and exalted instead.

P.S.: And now and forever, I would absolutely do anything that Famke Janssen ever wanted of me. Perfect Mate indeed!

My Real Name

My "Real Name"... well, that depends of your definition of reality, doesn't it?

I have always believed in Santa Claus, the Velveteen Rabbit, and Snoopy. Honestly. Santa may be fiction, but there have been poems, songs, movies, books, dolls, and decorations by the millions made of him, and we know, in our gut, what Santa would and wouldn't do in any situation, as much as we know what our own parents would do. Just because he's fiction doesn't mean he isn't real.

I spent this weekend talking and thinking about why I chose the name Galiana Chance for myself. Why I named myself that, nine years ago. I blogged about it here, about what it meant when I chose it, and what it has come to mean to me now.

Then earlier today, musing about what I love hearing, I realized that my favorite thing to hear on the phone is my name. Last night, a caller was fucking the hell out of me, and he kept saying, "Galiana...?" and I kept pausing, enjoying the feeling of tension, my heart skipping a beat, before I replied "Yes?" We replayed it, over and over, like a choral call and response, and I loved it to my core. It felt like we were celebrating everything I had chosen to be. It was affirming, and powerful, and beautiful.

I should have known what was coming, shouldn't I?

Today, someone asked me "my real name." Of course he did. Instead of just giving him a name, which would have been the smart thing to do, instead I tried to explain that Galiana is the name that suits me best, the one I chose for myself, the name that feels the most like me, the name that seems the most true. He interrupted to ask if I'd gotten off - as if that's all I want from him - and ended the call.

I have a list I could have given him, names which all mean something to me: Leah, Jenna, Megan, Rachel, Angela, Gretha, Jane, Cecilia, Patti, Reagan, Eve, Elizabeth, Leena, Katherine, Lynn, Mary, and if I were to be really honest: Bucky. My legal birth name is in that list, but it doesn't mean more to me than the others. Certainly not more than Galiana. It means something different, but not more.

I didn't choose the name I was given at birth. My sister chose it, but if I had been a boy, she wanted to name me "Sunflower Boat", so it's been difficult to put too much stock in that name, y'know?

Each of those names are a part of me. A flavor. A slice. A piece. But Galiana... Galiana is who I choose to be, as whole and real and true as I can be, right here, right now, as present to every moment as I've ever been in my life. You want my real name? My true name? My honest name? The name that means the most to me?

Galiana. My name is Galiana.

Happy Birthday, Galiana

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Like Calls To Like

The religious tradition of my upbringing discussed the phrase "Deep calls unto deep" not only in context of the relationship between human and divine, but also between humans. I was encouraged to share my most personal thoughts and struggles with whole groups of people, both so they would be encouraged to share just as deeply, and so they would know how to help care for me as a community. I know it's not true for all communities like that, but I was fortunate: ours was genuine, loving, and safe.

So I shared. Deeply. At almost 40, still, some of best friends came from that era. And I have an enduring belief, for better or worse, that calling out to someone by sharing of yourself can be richly worth any risk. Sure, you may be giving someone the key to hurting your feelings, but most people won't. Or that's the hope anyway.

I don't know that I'm approaching phone sex as deep calling unto deep, necessarily, but I think I'm operating at least under "Like calls to like." I emphasize that I'm smart in hopes of attracting intelligent company. I show my real pictures to draw the emotionally honest. I seem "sex-positive" because I want to play in sexual spaces. I repeat the word fun to fill my hours with laughter.

And I write this blog, letting all my fascination spill out, not only as a chronicle to help me savor the succulent details, but also in hopes of bringing in wordy, thoughtful, creative people who are a little curious to peek behind the curtains on both sides themselves.

It's horrifically selfish, really. By sharing what I enjoy, I hope to create more of it. Greedy, greedy me.

Galiana's Inner Dialogue

I'm probably overdue to explain my inner dialogue, and my Inner Cast of characters.

First, I have been psychiatrically evaluated enough times to assure you that I do not have any real-life split personality disorders. It's a literary convention for me, but it's a darn handy one.

In college acting class, we listed our life roles: daughter, sister, friend, dancer, lover, student, teacher, writer, voice of reason, voice of temptation... All our lists kept growing as we shared them and recognized, "Oh yeah, I play that role too."

I was chosen to play "daughter" with a big burly guy as "father," and I was explaining my classes to him, all clever and guarded and unappreciative, as 20-year-old daughters can be. Then she said "now you're boyfriend and girlfriend" and the instant switch was shocking. Observations flew during post-exercise analysis: we  stood closer, our bodies opened up, I touched him more, he looked at my breasts, and I laughed more freely. Both conversations were me, just me in different roles.

So I started referring to my "Inner Cast". I have an Inner Editor, an Inner Therapist, an Inner Brat, Inner Adventurer, and of course, our favorite girl, my Inner Slut. And dozens more.

How I behave depends on who is driving the bus. When Inner Worry Wart is driving, I choose cautiously. With Inner Perfectionist at the wheel, tasks rarely complete. And with Inner Hedonist in charge, I savor textures and sounds and tastes and scents, and clocks cease to exist.

The Inner Cast never fully agrees on anything. Sometimes, the disagreements get heated. My Inner Chief of Operations sometimes has to tie up Inner Slut and Adventurer to get any work done at all (between you and me, they kinda like that -- it gives them time to plot).

I differentiate "myself" from the cast by calling "me" my Chooser. Chooser decides who is driving, so therefore, Chooser is really always, silently in the background, in charge.

This simplifies conflicting interests for me. Inner Socialite wants everyone to like us and think we're sane, and responsible, and cheerful, and polite, especially in public. Inner Hedonist wants to open that can of whipped cream in the grocery store, toss my head back, and suck half of it down, right here, right now, let's go. Chooser lets Socialite win that little spat. Well, usually...

Look for more Inner Dialogue in posts to come!

Welcome To My Birthday Season!

I turn 40 this month! I'm so excited!

Chunktastic
turquoise & coral

I've never minded getting older. When I was in college, working hard both in acting class and therapy, I did a visualization exercise of "the person I want to be". And the image that stuck with me is a 50-year-old woman, outdoors, enjoying the land and the sun and the day, at peace with herself. And she was wearing unnecessarily chunky jewelry, probably turquoise. I have always found self-possessed 50-year-old women fascinating company.

So for 20 years now, I have thought that my 50th year will be the best of my life. It's probably setting me up for a huge nervous breakdown the day I turn 51, but oh well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

In the meantime, I'm another year closer - only ten years away now! It's time to start preparing in earnest, because the day I turn 50, I plan to wear unnecessarily chunky jewelry every day for the rest of my life. There is no good reason for this plan, and yet, I've been certain that I would do exactly that for years now. Maybe it just feels too self-aggrandizing to be full-on eccentric before 50, but after 50, it seems perfectly appropriate.

Dangly is an acceptable
substitute for chunky 

Growing up as a divorced kid, all holidays were seasons - celebrated at least twice (once with Mom, once with Dad, and sometimes again with grandparents or cousins). So my birthDAY isn't really as important to me as my birthday SEASON, which is very clearly: all of September. Obviously, September is mine. Which makes my birthstone sapphire. How can sapphires be chunky, you ask? Like this awesome dangly set right here, of course.

An important disclaimer: expensive jewelry freaks me out - I lose and break stuff too easily to spend a lot of money on wearable decorative art. I'm not freaked out by jewelry under $40, though. That seems about right for an indulgence.

Now you're asking yourself, "Galiana, how can I help you celebrate the kickoff to your birthday season?" ... aren't you? No? Well, I'm not surprised. After all, I haven't known any of you very long at all. And the whole gifts part of the phone sex culture still confuses me a little. But I'll tell you anyway, just in case you're so inclined.

You can:

• Leave me feedback. If you've made calls or bought pics and haven't left feedback, go do it! I read them for fun. It's truly a gift I will love.  
• Leave a comment here on my blog. It's irrationally gratifying to me. 
• Send me a happy birthday email and tell me nice things about myself (Hmmm, a theme has emerged: I love nice written words about me...)
• If you feel compelled to send something physical (which would be surprising and a little baffling, but I admit, it would also be fun), email me at galiana at ymail dot com (not yahoo.com, ymail.com) with three choices and let me pick! It'll be like shopping together, which is another family tradition - shopping together means usable gifts plus pleasant company! Then send me an Amazon gift card for that amount, I'll buy the thing with the card, and I'll send you pictures of me opening/wearing/using it. (I don't do an Amazon wish list because of this)
• CALL ME! This is honestly what I want most  :) 

I expect this temporary and caveat-laden foray into the "spoiled princess mistress" type of phone sex worker to fail miserably, but it amuses me, and I don't think anyone will be hurt. Therefore, given my value structure (1. Do No Harm 2. Have Fun), I must. 

Weight, Weight, I Got This

Since I gorged on fondue tonight celebrating a friend's upcoming wedding, it's a good time to write about my weight.

I was always thin - flat tummy and all - until I was 22. I got told I was cute a lot. I'll let you judge for yourself - this is my passport picture taken a few months after I turned 18, when I was home from college for Thanksgiving my freshman year. That is how I still picture myself in my head, a size 6 or 8, about 65 pounds lighter than I am now.

Between the ages of 22 and 25, I: took a desk job instead of jobs that kept me on my feet, stopped going dancing weekly, went on birth control, and quit smoking. Unsurprisingly, I gained about a pound per month.

I also stopped putting on makeup regularly because I'm lazy, and started wearing my glasses daily instead of contacts, because Chicago is not kind to contacts, and I scratched my corneas one time too many from letting my eyes dry out (please see: "I'm lazy"). It didn't start as a conscious decision to conform less to societal standards of beauty, but that's essentially what I did.

And a funny thing happened: random sexual attention stopped being hurled at me from men I didn't know. I realized one day when a stranger expressed interest in me on the train that (a) it had been weeks or months since anyone had done that and (b) the guy expressing interest seemed smarter, more thoughtful, and generally more attractive than the ass hats who normally wolf-whistled and one-lined at me.

By 24, I was conscious enough of what was happening that I was explaining to friends and family that I had figured out how to successfully avoid the attention of any guy stupid enough to use the term "fat chicks" -- by becoming one.

Honestly, it was kind of a relief. I didn't feel as bombarded by the world. I didn't need to be constantly on guard. I didn't need to stifle smiles or avoid eye contact to sidestep confrontations with jerks who insisted, "You gotta give me your number, cuz you're so hot!" (ummm, what exactly is in that for me?) Thirty pounds and a pair of glasses and no makeup, and I was suddenly the female version of Clark Kent, unmemorable for any but the most astute observer.

I plateaued at size 16-18 (XL) at about age 26, where I have been ever since. That size is statistically average for the United States, but considered "large" in the dating / swinger world. So I figured I should put my listing in BBW when I started doing phone sex work six weeks ago.

Two things have happened since then: (1) I've learned that BBW is larger than just XL in the adult entertainment industry, so I don't really belong in BBW, and (2) I've been dropping weight... ten pounds in the past six weeks. Hilarious! So I moved my main listing from "BBW" to "Sex", where it's probably more at home.

I'm not dieting. I'm naturally dropping the weight in a basically healthy way: when I'm logged in for phone sex, I don't go out to eat as often, and I eat by snacking between calls. So I basically have ten handful-sized meals per day, across the basic food groups, plus vitamins to make sure I don't get leg cramps or rickets if I accidentally don't balance my diet. And I'm elevating my heart rate by masturbating multiple times a day. Seriously. I dunno if it helps, but it couldn't hurt, right?

I'm happy about the weight coming off naturally because I would love to be a little healthier. I would like to be able to go a steady mile at a very fast walk or a slow jog, but I'm not quite there yet. Having less weight is less long-term strain on my back, which I care about now after I injured my back in April.

But I really don't care what my body looks like in terms of being attractive. Everybody is somebody's fetish, and I think sexy is much more about attitude than shape. And at every size, once I say, "I love fucking," I can get plenty of male sexual attention and affirmation. Yay for being a woman!

Well, except... except for one thing. There's one reason I'm hesitant to lose weight. I... I... I don't wanna lose my boobs. My boobs now are boobs I would love on another woman, and I don't want them to shrink. That makes me shallow, doesn't it?

Phone Sex Experience

I had a long-distance lover for two years. Another continent long-distance. We only met in person twice, but we played a few times a week over the phone.

I've always had an active visual imagination. In middle school, if I was reading a book, my siblings amused themselves by yelling at me (things like "the house is on fire!") until I heard them - and sometimes they would give up before I noticed. To this day, I can't converse at restaurants where televisions are playing unless I'm facing away from them.

Madeline L'Engle wrote a book about being an artist, and said something like this, although I can't find the exact quote: If I'm writing or praying, and I'm interrupted, the world I'm dragged into seems temporarily less real than the one I was just inhabiting.

That's me - I often visualize and engage so thoroughly in stories and visualizations that the fantasy playing in my mind seems more real to me than my physical space.

So with my long-distance lover, I practiced visualizing our bodies together for two years. I even learned to climax at his verbal command. Hell, it's possible that if I talked to him today, years later, I might not be able to stop myself if he told me to cum in that certain voice.

Natural inclination to lose myself in visualizations? Check. Experience exchanging sexual energy with long-distance lovers? Check. Wow. Now that I think about it that way, I might actually be qualified for this job after all.

Yes I'm Married - Yes He Knows - No He's Not Listening

Yep, I'm married - to a wonderful, geeky guy I met in 2003 at a now-defunct online dating site.

Yep, he knows I'm a PSO (phone sex operator).

No, he's not listening in on calls. I'm in the guest bedroom, which has my computer and all our sex toys in it. If he's home, he's in his office, where he runs two noisy fans for heat dispersal (the office is full of computers and sits over the garage, so temperature control is a problem). He can't hear anything - I've tested it. He's happy to let me do my work while he does his thing.

Yes, I tell him about some calls. I have nicknames for clients (clients? callers? I can't figure out what to call people who call me) like "Butt Slut" (how the caller referred to himself) and "Inception Guy". Sometimes he gives me empathic insight to turn them on more next time they call. Sometimes he just listens wide-eyed and slack-jawed, amazed. And sometimes I'll describe something in such a way as to start him off on a string of increasingly absurd what-if scenarios until we're both giggling like morons... but he does that with everything we talk about. Just like Jessica Rabbit, I'm a sucker for a guy who makes me laugh.

He's proud of me for having done better than we expected so quickly. He's taking pictures of me tomorrow (when the reddening effects of today's waxing hopefully will have subsided some) to list in picture packs for sale.

He loves that I'm enjoying myself, that I'm meeting interesting people, and that I'm having a few really satisfying orgasms along the way. Long before PSO work started, we were not monogamous. He's seen other people give me orgasms before in person, so knowing that it's happening over the phone is absolutely fine. 

I like to describe our arrangement as a "French Marriage" - he's my life partner, roommate, co-decision maker, partner in family matters, and supporter when rough times come... and yes, my lover as well. But since sex can be overshadowed by life-concerns with your life partner, it's prudent to have a lover or two on the side, protected from the concerns of life, whose only requirements are to be sexually compatible, and not irritating to spend leisure time with. But your lover doesn't have to agree with how you raise the kids (or in our case, dogs but no kids), how you spend money, what kind of house you live in, or how often you travel to visit whose family members. S/He just has to take you away to fuck-bliss often enough to energize you. 

I'm fortunate enough to have a real-life male lover who fills my sexual energy tank quite nicely, and a long-distance "girlfriend" who I talk with at least once a month, but I've only been with in person 5 times in the past 8 years. 

So, that's the deal on my real-life situation. Maybe I'm supposed to keep it a big mystery, but I prefer honesty in life, and lying only in role-plays... 

Galiana Chance, Ex-Techie

From 1995 to 2009, I was a technical professional with "progressively increasing responsibilities" to use the HR phrase for my happy career progress. I started as a programmer and data analyst, then learned business analysis because I could talk to both the business people and the techies. That led to me managing technical professionals and also managing software development lifecycle processes.

The unsexy reason I changed professions: March 15, 2009, I suddenly developed  mysterious neurological vertigo (it feels like I'm drunk all the time), which leaves me well-equipped to do phone sex work on my own schedule (so I can rest when I hit a 3-drink dizzy until it subsides to a 1- or 2-drink dizzy), but not well-equipped to do anything that requires motion (like traveling to work), reading that involves scrolling (like emails or resumes or data), extensive writing or editing (like performance reviews or presentations or articles), or concentrating on intellectually complex tasks (like... everything I did as a data analyst & tech manager).

The sexy reasons I changed professions: I really love sex. I have a vivid and active imagination, so it's easy for me to participate in a shared fantasy over the phone. I'd had non-professional phone sex and loved it. I enjoy  meeting new people and bouncing myself off them to find out which pieces of me bounce back to get to know myself better - and sex is a great way to bounce! That self-awareness from new partners is why I wasn't  monogamous even before I was a PSO.

So for me, phone sex is a very safe way to play with other people's erotic fantasies and sexual energy... and get paid for it! Sweet!

Galiana Chance, Ex-Smuttress

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Hello, World!

I'm Galiana Chance.

A month ago, July 15, 2010, I started a new career as a phone sex operator (PSO).

Now that I've done it a month, it's official: I'm going to keep doing it.

So now it's time to blog about it.

Hello, world! I'm Galiana, and I'm a Phone Sex Operator.

(Go ahead and say it: Hellooooo Galiana!)