Amy Flowers delves into one of the growth areas of the sex industry. Phone sex is a $1 Billion/year industry here in the US. And yet, despite its size, it is generally given no more thought than as the punch line of a Monica Lewinsky joke.
Flowers reveals just what a difficult job it is to deal with the gomers, the goobers, the candymen, the turners and the psychos (her amusing and accurate segmentation of the different kinds of callers). Gomers are the lonely, who call "just to talk" - they don't even want "hot chat" from their favorite phone sex operator, they are craving contact since they have so much difficulty connecting with people in other venues. Gomers are the most lucrative clients because their calls are *long*. Once these fellows want hot chat however - some gomers get jealous, knowing that other guys are getting erotic conversation from the same woman that the gomer has been speaking to for hours on end, so some gomers start to want that same treatment - the gomer becomes a goober. Candymen want the phone sex equivalent of a quickie - they're fast and cheap, and not particularly lucrative. Turners are guys who could have been boyfriends or buddies under other circumstances, and are usually charming, with high status jobs. Psychos, however, are the misogynistic freaks who harass the operators and who comprise 15% of all the callers.
Flowers describes how the operators deal with each of these groups, and she describes how performing this kind of an intimate, emotional service can impact the operator.
Her interviews with various operators are insightful and fascinating. And should someone read this book thinking it will be a how-to manual regarding how to succeed in the phone sex industry, they will be sadly mistaken. Instead, it's a startling and accurate depiction of a very difficult business.
