Working on an Adult Chatline Made Me More Suspicious of Men

I'm a writer by profession and at one point, I looked at how much work I’d done for the content mill I was working at and how little I had been paid. I know this seems like a big leap, but it made me consider the idea of working on an adult chatline.

Originally, I started out on the company’s tarot reader line to make extra money, but found that the cards cluttered my desk, making it impossible to work between calls. I’d heard that adult chatlines were easier because I would be able to work on my writing in between and even during calls, and just tell the caller I was doing whatever they had asked me to do. Most people do housework during their calls. There was no reason I couldn’t work both jobs at once. So I asked if I could switch from the tarot line to the adult chatline.

At first, the new job wasn’t too bad. My calls lasted a few minutes, and there were some longer calls from men who became regulars. Those men seemed to like talking to the same person every time. Some would ask for my personal phone number or express an interest in meeting in person, but that was against the rules, and I didn’t want to meet them, anyway. So I would just say it wasn’t allowed, and sound a bit regretful about it. That was enough to get them to change the topic.

There were certain subjects we weren’t allowed to talk about, too. This included things that would be illegal in real life, or gray areas like fantasies involving schoolgirls or breastmilk. 

I wondered if the man sitting behind me had the same fantasies as the men on the chatline.

Eventually, half of my calls seemed to be things I couldn’t talk about. I would get the same caller who would ask me to join in with “raping his girlfriend.” I never heard anyone else in the background, so I hope it was just a fantasy. Still, it didn’t feel right, and it wasn’t allowed. Another guy would ask me to treat him like a baby and let him drink milk from my breast. While it would have been easy to play along over the phone, it still felt extremely weird.

These were just two of the callers to whom I had to politely explain that these subjects weren’t allowed and give them the opportunity to switch to a more appropriate fantasy. If they didn’t, I would explain I was ending the call, then report them through an online form, logging the time of the call so that managers could work out which caller I was reporting. There were never any responses to these reports; I just hoped those callers would be blocked.

There were some things I could work around, like when men wanted to hear me urinate. I would have a jug filled with water in the bathroom. I would take the phone in there and let them listen to me slowly pouring the water into the toilet, letting them believe I was doing as they had asked. I just couldn’t bring myself to help them fantasize about rape or other violent or underage acts.

Working on the phone line made me more wary of the men I passed in my everyday life. When I was walking home from the bus stop after an evening out, or even just sitting on the bus in the daytime, I wondered if the man walking on the other side of the road or sitting behind me had the same thoughts and fantasies as the men on the chatline. I got dozens of inappropriate calls from men, and some of these men had to be someone’s partner or family member. They spent their days doing all the usual things that everyone else did. I’d always been careful before, and would have described myself as sensibly cautious. I didn’t jump to the conclusion that every man was a predator, just because he was a man. I knew that often you can’t tell until it’s too late. 

The same men I reported kept calling, so it was clear that the managers didn’t want to block them. I got several warnings for hanging up, even when I explained to the callers first. I knew I was close to getting thrown off the line, and it felt like there was an unspoken message to just go along with whatever the men wanted to talk about, despite the official rules, which just seemed to be there for show.

I figured some men were acting out their fantasies and would be satisfied with just talking. By having a place to talk about these things, they wouldn’t need to act them out. However, I guessed there could also be men who would someday decide that talking wasn’t enough, and they wanted to try these things for real. I didn’t want to do anything to encourage them. I didn’t like to think that some woman might be raped or hurt by a man I had talked to, and I might be partially responsible. (After all, women are great at self-blame, and not so good at placing the blame on the perpetrator, where it belongs.)

I quit the chatline. Although it meant less money, my mental health instantly improved. I hadn’t even realized how the job had affected me mentally. It had cut into my sleep, made me miserable during the day, and made me more distrustful of strangers than was healthy. Instead, I focused my time on more positive activities to improve my finances and worked harder than ever. Investing time in my own professional future was better than the alternative of working on the adult chatline.