I have been going back to FMTY Twitter. There's a sense of summer there. Some of the FMTY Girls are taking a summer hiatus and relaxing on beaches or next to rooftop pools. Some are accompanying patrons or clients to island villas. I do wish them all well.
I'll never be able to afford an FMTY Girl. Genteel poverty doesn't allow for that. But I have been thinking about what I would try very hard to afford.
Long ago, when I was first in Vienna, I lived not far from the Freud Museum. I made a point of visiting, of course. Freud has always been one of my intellectual heroes. I remember standing in the little museum at Berggasse 19 on a rainy afternoon and looking at the replica of Freud's office-- looking especially at the famous Couch. Probably not the original Couch, but something I'd waited to see for a long time. I thought about all the stories told by patients there on the couch and all the long conversations analysands would've had with Dr, Freud there at his desk.
The FMTY Girls are beyond my reach, but there's something else I want, and it has more to do with that Couch than with Michelin-star restaurants or hotel bedrooms.
I do know someone who works for one of the few remaining phone sex services out there. Phone sex is a dying art, and the services that have survived are niche services. The woman I know is turning forty soon, and she's worked off and on for the particular service for a few years. She's smart, funny, and she's gifted with empathy. I've sat and listened to her talk about her job and just...sighed.
She does have a perfect WFH job. She has a laptop and a headset, and calls get routed to her wherever she might be. I liked that image. She takes her job seriously, she told me. She keeps notes on what clients tell her and tries to make sure she knows the details they like, or the settings they prefer...or just the things that they enjoy in their lives (a city, a restaurant, a movie, a favorite kind of decor).
She markets herself as a partner in fantasies, and she makes it clear that she believes in NSNL-- No Shame, No Limits. She tells me she's been made uncomfortable a few times by clients' fantasies, but she's never been horrified or appalled. What she's good at is building connections, at getting clients to just talk about their fantasies and about what they'd want their lives to be like. I suspect she's very much worth her fees.
We sat over drinks and talked and I began to think about the FMTY Girls and what they offer. I told my friend about FMTY Twitter and told her that she-- my friend --would have more to offer me. They'd both be Companions, but my friend would be better at being the mix of things I'd want-- some combination of life coach, coffee shop interlocutor, and classical Freudian analyst. There might not be midnight sex in rooftop pools overlooking Dubai or Manhattan, but there would be a chance to talk to someone lovely. A chance to talk and talk and, yes, listen to what she has to say.
"Coffee shop interlocutor"... Would it be interlocutrix for the lovely girl? I do like the thing that happens in coffee shops sometimes, where strangers end up talking about their lives-- exchanging stories, analyzing one another, sharing likes and dislikes, talking about the things (books, music, experiences, places) that have meant a lot to them. I've always liked that. And I told my friend that she could very well for herself as a life coach if ever the phone sex company failed. She laughed at that. She'd worked in banking and real estate, she said, so life coach might be a next step.
I remember that we talked about Peychaud's-- a classic New Orleans brand of bitters --and about how so many of her clients' fantasies were about going back in life and just doing the things they wished they'd done. For some it was, yes, having sex with cheerleaders or some particular long-lost girl. For some it was having the nerve to come out of the closet. Or having the nerve to admit that they liked something and didn't want to be ashamed of it. She tried, she said, not just to help them get off inside their fantasies, but to let them know that they had someone to talk to, that their fantasies and hopes weren't as awful as they feared.
Phone sex, she said, is another world. I do agree with that. It's always been something I liked because it plays to my strengths: storytelling, world-building, creating details. I'm sad that it seems to be dying away. Sexting can never replace long stories told late at night, can never replace late-night voices. Sexting can't replace conversations that loop and swerve from erotica to memories of films and places you've lived.
I would pay to have someone like her as a Companion out some night. I think I could sit and talk to her and feel like I was inside a world where fantasies could be NSNL, where conversations could go on across a table late into the night. She did very much have the gift of empathy. We exchanged business cards, mind you. She wrote No Shame, No Limits on the back of hers.
The conversation was one I enjoyed rather a lot. She let me walk her back to her hotel and told she that she hoped I'd call and arrange a session sometime. I think we could be creative together, she said. Her fees are nowhere near what FMTY Girls get for a dinner date, and I've certainly spent more just taking myself to dinner and wine on solitary Friday nights. Maybe I will call sometime. I suspect we'd both spend more time talking than doing phone sex itself.
Someone like her would be what I what these days. Life coach, interlocutrix, classical Freudian analyst-- someone with whom I can talk and not have to be afraid, someone who'd listen and not judge, someone who could suggest what my thoughts mean...and share her own.
Surely, now...there must already be services like that already in Japan, right?
