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Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth's many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more, and float upward in our heedlessness, singing Gratia Dei sum quod sum. - Johm Updike


Thanks be to God that I am what I am

Sunday, June 3, 2012

Shut Up And Let Me Tell You A Story

I know I have been singing the praises of the new hosing company I work for.  I am not planning to stop anytime in the near future.  There are a few worms in the apples, though.  There is a guy who is a Dom into tickling and prefers that the women he tickles have really big, sweaty feet.  I have already spoken to him twice and, as far as I am concerned, I am done.  I suspect that like a few other callers from the first hosting company, his fantasy doesn't change or evolve in any way.  Something that I find excruciatingly boring.  In fact, that is the really unfortunate truth about a lot of regular callers.  Their fantasies are always exactly the same.  These men have literally conditioned themselves through regular masturbation to only get turned on by a handful of often repeated phrases and don't really or can't enjoy onanism without hearing those words.  Isn't that a frightening concept?

There are a couple of other repeat callers on the new hosting company's line who are already wearing my patience thin.  One is called the Make-up Man.  Ultimately, what he wants is to fall asleep to the sound of a woman speaking to him.  The details he wants for his fantasy are very limited in range, so is his feedback but, that doesn't mean I get to be lazy about it.  Just sound effects will not work with this caller.  I made that mistake once and he hung up on me.  I discovered that the key with him is to slow the fuck down and describe my character's appearance and actions in irksome detail.  Most other callers would be telling me to hurry up or just hang up at me at the speed he likes.  I think that he is a very lonely man and misses the sound of a woman's voice late at night.

And then there is the Twerp.  A caller who says he is 18 but, I suspect he is lying and is slightly older. Most very young callers are easily overwhelmed, verbally, and can be lead through just about any fantasy a PSO chooses.  I tend to stay really Vanilla with these callers because they tend to prefer really Vanilla fantasies.  There have been notable exceptions.  I spoke with a very young caller who is well on his way to becoming a sadistic Dom.  I had a great time talking to this kid because he is into the same goth shit I still love. It was very obvious that he was a kid.  I controlled the fantasy completely and when he tried to direct it toward subjects I find distasteful, like incest, I shut him down.  Hard.  I explained that it was the power dynamic of incest he enjoyed and if he was really looking for the cute, little psychotic partner of his dreams, he's going to have to set that taboo aside.  I described incest as constant, sexual bullying where the victim is not safe in her own home.  Remember, this kid thinks that we are the same age so I have to explain the whole concept in a way that he can understand.  I ask him if what I just described is an experience he would enjoy and he admits he would not.  I go onto explain that most of the girls I know who are into goth have had to endure this kind of bullying and it is not going to be part of a sexual fantasy that turns them on.  I know I oversimplified this one, just bear with me.  I asked him how much porn he consumes and, bloody hell, it is an epic amount.  Several hours a night and he admits that he prefers written sadomasochism and taboo over visual images.  I suspected that from talking to him.  I didn't advise him to lay off the porn.  If I had, he most likely would have hung up on me.  Porn, and phone sex are the only outlets this kid had for a phenomenal amount of rage.  More on him some other time.

Let's talk about the Twerp.  Not as young as says he is but, still very young.  I am guessing very early twenties and lacking basic socialization skills.  I think this kid is very smart and used to talking circles around his peers.  He just hasn't come to the realization that there are people smarter than he is who share his interests and have been playing with those concepts longer than he has been alive.  I suspect he also is a closeted gay submissive.  That doesn't mean he is gay.  It means his sexual fantasies revolve around the concept of being forced to suck cock.  He just doesn't want to admit that.  Instead, he sets up a scenario for one of the dumbest sexual fantasies I have ever heard and then won't stop interrupting me to try to lead me to what he really wants to hear me talk about but, is too shy to admit.

What is the fantasy?  A group of teenage girls hire a professional Domme to teach a group of teenage boys a lesson.  It seems those boys have been assholes to the girls for several months, talking endlessly about how much they enjoy watching women fuck each other and harassing the girls to 'put on a show for them'.  Already, I have outdone the Twerp in description with two bloody sentences.  The girls tell the boys to meet them at the requisite spooky, haunted mansion where the Domme is waiting.  Shades of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Scoobie Doo are now leaking into his fantasy and I have to bite my lip to keep from laughing at him.  The Domme overpowers the boys by methods unknown and now he asks me what I would do if I were that Domme.  I start talking and he interrupts.  He doesn't like any story build up so I can't explain how I would keep them physically isolated from each other, naked, in darkened cells, listening to what they think is people being tortured but, is really just a recording being played to confuse and frighten them.  No, the Twerp likes to jump forward.  But, what would I do to them, he asks over and over again as he tries to hurry me along before finally getting so frustrated he hangs up.

I have said it before and I'll say it again.  I hate fantasies that don't make sense.  I am not just talking about sexual fantasies, either.  I am a voracious reader and if an author constructs a fantasy world with an unworkable culture at the heart of it, that's it.  I'm done.  I set the book aside and find something else to read.  That's why I love writers with a solid back round in history and think most fantasy published today is garbage.  There are a couple of really bad books I hang onto because of Sheri S. Tepper, an author I have a love/hate relationship with.  One of the finest fantasy novels I have read, right up there with Barbara Hambly's Dragonsbane, was written by Tepper.  Another one of her novels I consider one of the worst books ever published.  She comes up with fascinating concepts but, often sets them in unworkable societies.  The small collection of awful books I hang onto are the same. That was this kid is offering me, an unworkable scenario that he is too impatient to let me flesh out into a workable one because he really only wants to hear about boys being forced to suck each other's cocks.

Sigh, a potentially great fantasy and an asshole caller with no respect for the art of storytelling.

2 comments:

  1. Oh, so you mean it was bad smut fan-fiction night?

    As an author, I hate that shit. Really. I don't know how you put up with it. Having said that, there is a difference between having good description and building the framework and going on too much/making it boring. I'm sure you weren't the latter and that this kid was just impatient. This is one of the things that really irks me as a writer -- both the bad fantasy/fiction and the forcing (you) the storyteller into a niche that isn't how your stories work.

    Anecdote time.

    I know a group of authors who critique one another. They all try to make each other sound the same. Elaborate and lavish description, specific keywords to appeal the THEIR tastes. They tried to do it to me and at first, I thought okay, maybe this makes sense. Then I realized that no, I have my own voice, I will write my way, not in your overwrought bullshit Tolkien-wannabe style. I'm sorry, it doesn't work. 300 pages of description with no story is boring.

    Anyway, sorry you had to succumb to his fantasies and compromise your art.

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  2. I'm okay with delicious remixes and cleaver reimaginings, but ya, boring bites. I'm working on an old project just unearthed (I'm new at writing fiction, so it will probably suck LOL) and my biggest problem is finding that heart of the 'world'. Its all plot and no heart...not so good. I read a post somewhere that encourages writer to write the feeling and not just the plot. Maybe that's what I should do. =D

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