Reading online diaries is rather painful to me at the moment. I feel dull, ordinary, shallow. I want people to feel they are getting to know me, and yet I avoid writing extremely personal things on the theory that one shouldn't upload anything one wouldn't want to discuss in court. For that matter, one really shouldn't talk about things in any public forum which one wouldn't want to discuss in court. It's hugely embarrassing, it has the potential to be genuinely damaging, and it will totally amuse the paralegals. I know this from personal experience.
I once had to transcribe a series of depositions in which the foolish witnesses had claimed losing their jobs had affected their sex lives. Whoa, Nelly, what a field day for the lawyers. They had a ball asking how many orgasms each defendent used to have prior to losing their job, how many they had afterwards, and how often they had sex, among other things. It was wholly admissable evidence, the lawyers were completely within their rights to ask lots of embarrassing questions, and these poor schmucks had to tell strangers about their sexual activity in detail. I could tell as I typed up the transcriptions the clients were deeply regretting having chosen to bring it up. The paralegals quoted choice bits to each other when we met for case reviews, too. That experience has always stuck with me, and it keeps me from specifying what I do with my free time if you know what I mean.
Still, I'd like to think my diary is as interesting as the next. I don't want to be coy and end up unreadable. On the other hand, I'm not quite ready to post photos of my personal bits like certain people who are very thin and attractive have been known to do in their journals. Oh, you're thinking back to the entry with Svetlana, right? But that was Photoshop magic. This is the real thing. I'm going to fling open the closet door of my past and reveal a genuine secret. Ready?
I once worked for a phone sex line.
That is, I once worked for a software company who supplied the programming for a 900 number. You see, I have this voice. A very, very sexy voice. On the phone, anyway; in person, I may sound like Minnie Mouse, I don't know. But on the phone, oh baby. It's been remarked on at every job I've ever had where I did a lot of phone work. Men have been ready to sign over their paychecks just to listen to me read them the connecting flights between O'Hare and Dallas. Anyway, a friend of mine asked me to help her computer software company prep their newest bulletin board with messages since she thought I had a nice voice. Not actual phone sex, just voiceover work, pretending to be someone who'd placed a personals ad. At 40 smackers an hour I was delighted to give it a try.
We did the taping in her office downtown along the waterfront (which is not sleazy but rather chic). It was an ordinary office except they had a sound studio. I got a script, I got one read-through, and then we turned on the mike. I was Kiki, athletic and outgoing and looking for hard bodies. I was Janine, a little shy but interested in guys who liked eating out and foreign movies. I was Laura, just out of my teens and crazy about nightclubs. There were quite a few more. Each character got a different accent, a different pitch of voice, and different delivery. I was rather proud of my acting. Of course, I never found out if any of those personal ads got any calls. I assume they were replaced as real subscribers turned up and made their own phone recordings. Those 900 numbers make beaucoup money from people trying to get lucky but I, mad romantic that I am, hope there were at least a few genuine ads which were answered by genuine people.
That's not the end of it, though. A few weeks later I was asked to attempt a British accent for a Men's Club phoneline destined for the U.K.. This is when I discovered I cannot enunciate crisply enough to ever be taken for a Brit, at least on the phone. I must have done 25 takes to get one paragraph just right. "If you want to be part of this very special club, please leave your name and credit card number. Remember to include the expiration date, or you'll miss out on Jasmine, Minx, and Dolly!" Art, eh?
You're not impressed, are you? I guess I'd better go rustle up that arty shot of my left nipple for you, then. I can't think of any other salacious information to help pump up my readership, so to speak. Perhaps I'll just have to stick to writing amusingly and well. We all have our crosses to bear.
