Sometimes, I didn't feel like working very hard at all. My company required that you work at least four hours a week, but these hours could be whenever you pleased and broken up into as many chunks as you wanted. As long as you clocked the hours, you could stay on the payroll. You only got paid if you took calls, of course, but that suited me just fine. If I wasn't in the mood to work that week, I'd log in at 2 p.m. on a weekday and spend some quality time surfing the Internet. Once, I had the bright idea to do that on Easter, because well, who calls a phone-sex line on the day of Christ's resurrection?

As it turned out, only two or three guys will, but they will keep you on the phone forever. I ended up clocking more than six hours in a row that day, and it all passed by in a haze of fake whimpers, squelching noises I made with my hand and a bit of lotion, and a whole lot of men telling me how much they hated the holidays. Later that year, I elected to not work on Thanksgiving. Long calls pay the best, but holiday bitterness, I decided, was a line I was going to have to draw.

I was good at phone-sex because I'm pretty good at giving people what they want. Sometimes, this was a lot of fun, like in the case of the macho guy who called in on one of the standard lines. He wanted a nice and submissive girl who would "take it any way he gave it," but something about his voice told me that that wasn't all he wanted, if he even wanted it at all. By the end of an hour-long session, he was writhing around on my strap-on and whimpering whenever I called him a nasty little girl. I'm still pretty proud of that one.

Sometimes, however, I got this little tickle at the back of my head, especially when one of my customers would hang around after they were done. I can't even remember what this man called in for, but there was a catch to his breath after we finished up, and for some reason, I put down my sewing project.

"Honey?" I asked gently. "Are you okay?"

"I miss him," he said, his voice flat as a board. "I miss him so goddamn much."

In fits and starts, he told me about his best friend and how they had grown up together. His friend saw him off when he shipped out, and during the course of his tour, his friend only got more and more unstable. His voice broke just once when he told me about how he got back to the States right after his friend killed himself, and when I asked him when that was, he hesitated.

"Seven, maybe eight days ago?"

What do you do when that gets dropped in your lap? I was never trained for this. I knew how to sip water in the middle of a moan and how to troubleshoot a faulty Internet connection. But when someone's doing that badly, you just have to do your best, no matter what.

I ended up talking with him for more than an hour. I curled up in my chair and told him that it was going to be tough, and that none of it was fair, and that he wasn't alone. He cried, and I made shushing noises at him. Telling someone that you're stroking their hair isn't that different from telling them you're stroking their cock, after all. When he calmed down a little bit, I asked him if he had a place to go and people to talk to, and he said yes. I asked him if he was safe, and he told me he was.

"Can I talk to you again?" he asked shyly, and I winced to myself. There's no way to be sure that you're going to get the same operator even if you call in on the same line, and I never worked regular hours in the first place.

"Maybe, sweetie," I said. "But you make sure that you talk to those other people too, okay?"

He promised me he would, and now, more than five years later, I still wonder about him. I hope he got the help  he needed, and that he's having a better night than the one he was having when I met him.

Being a phone-sex operator was a lot like sitting in a confessional when the priest is away. You hear private things that should probably be told to someone else, but they need to be told to someone, so it might as well be you.

As it turned out, the late nights and the tech support job turned me into a crazy person, and not in the good way. When I got a chance to move, I grabbed it, and unfortunately, my company didn't do business in the state where I was headed. I packed it in with a little bit of relief, a little more regret, and a real understanding that as long as I had a landline, I'd always have groceries and a source of really awkward stories to tell my friends.

I absolutely do not regret my year on the phones. After all, it was odd, often hilarious, and once in while, just a little tragic. Considering that every job has its fair share of quiet tragedy, and that most aren't blessed with as many singular moments as this one was, I'd have to say it was one of my favorites.