Synchronicity
By Tonya Jone Miller | May 15, 2012
Oh Alanta, I hardly knew you. My shows at the Atlanta fringe went very well, although the festival as a whole was lightly attended, being the first year and all. If I’d been expecting to make a lot of money, I’d be depressed and disappointed. But I only applied after I got accepted to Orlando, because I figured it would be a good warm up. Orlando Fringe is the oldest in the States, and when I did the CAFF tour with Inviting Desire, I remember all the touring artists waxing ecstatic about what a killer festival it is. Anyway, I am actually quite happy I did Atlanta and am feeling really confident about this new version of the show.
Touring as a solo artist is a whole different beast than touring an ensemble show. Each has it’s pros and cons, as I’m learning.
So last night I arrive at the home where I’m staying in Orlando, and it’s just lovely. My hosts are longtime fringe supporters and one of them is even in a different fringe show this year. They have an adorable black lab puppy, two affectionate lap cats, a cockatiel, and a macaw! Honestly, missing my kitties is one of the hardest things about touring. You talk to the people you miss, but you can’t pet a furry friend over Skype.
Anyway, my room is the library. They have a huge book collection, and piles of National Geographics on their bookcases. I reach for the magazine on top of the pile closest to me. It’s a cover story on Vietnam, dated December 1968. The year my mom was there. The year that figures most prominently in my play.
I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. Synchronicity is awesome.
Topics: Acting, My Life, Threads | No Comments »
A Saturday Hike in Forest Park
By Tonya Jone Miller | April 29, 2012
Lone Flower
Can you spot the secret spider web?
Nature's Glory Holes
Fiddlehead Seahorses
Is it just me or does this look like a...?
Tenacious Droplets
Holding Up the Hill
Roots
Topics: My Life | No Comments »
Artgasm
By Tonya Jone Miller | April 28, 2012
I leave for Atlanta in 9 days. It’s funny, because I knew when I sat down to write Threads that I was writing the show for the express purpose of touring it on the fringe festival circuit, but I still can’t believe it’s really happening. I’ve been freaking out on a constant basis for the last month, and then a couple of days ago I saw this phrase in an email newsletter I rarely do more than glance at…
Worry is negative prayer.
It just hit me that I don’t want to practice negative prayer. I don’t like what I put myself through when I do it. This strange calm came over me. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay. I know my show, I know the story, and I am about to have the chance to share it with complete strangers across the continent. This is everything am. This is what I work for and what I live for: wonderful adventures and fleeting encounters with random people. Little joys and huge discoveries. In fact, in a larger sense this is what the play is about.
I think I’m having an artgasm in anticipation. 
Topics: Acting, My Life, Threads, Writing | 1 Comment »
Busy Tonight?
By Tonya Jone Miller | April 10, 2012
Crap. I am seriously slacking on my BCB Trivia Night promotion duties, and quite frankly I don’t see it getting better until after the my Threads tour. Ah well, on the off chance you don’t already have plans for this evening, drop by the Chat Room at 7pm (Pacific) tonight. Match wits with the smart phone sex girls of Bay City Blues, and you could win a 10- or 15-minute free phone sex call! Hope to “see” you there…
Tonya
Topics: My Life, Phone Sex | No Comments »
Size Matters
By Tonya Jone Miller | April 6, 2012
This is the most difficult post I have ever written. And I cannot even begin without first saying:
1. If you still cling to any “ultimate fantasy” notions about me and wish to keep them intact, stop reading now. I’m about to talk about something you’re not ever supposed to admit to anyone you want to be interested in you, romantically or sexually.
2. I know I’m sexy and desirable. I may be carrying a few extra pounds at the moment, but I know many people of various gender identities and sexual orientations find me attractive. I know I am a good person and that my presence on the planet makes this world a better place in some small way. I know the important people in my life love me for who I am inside.
And yet.
My last post was about accountability, and in it I mentioned another word that’s important to me, integrity. It’s something I’m working extremely hard at right now: being honest with myself and others, and making changes in my actions so that that honesty is less challenging day by day. Do not mistake me to mean I am or have been an inherently dishonest person. I am often the person who speaks the hard truth when it needs to be said and nobody wants to be the one to say it. Integrity is something different.
I could spend days trying to define it properly and not quite get it. Instead I want to share how I am attempting to apply integrity in one aspect of my everyday life. You see, I have spent more than 20 years hating myself. Specifically, hating my body. Hating my body even though I could only partially admit how much- I was curvy, voluptuous, Rubenesque, even chubby. But never fat. I never wanted to think of myself as the f-word. I don’t remember when exactly it started, but I remember…
…Sneaking food when and wherever I could find it. We were poor growing up, and while I don’t remember ever starving, I learned at an early age to eat as much as possible of anything I liked, because it might be a long time before I had it again.
…Stealing money from my mom’s wallet in the morning, taking the early bus into town, buying junk food at the store, re-selling it to my sixth-grade classmates, and making enough money to fund my forbidden snack habit and replace the money when I got home.
…Going to Nutri-System meetings during my 8th grade year. The place was right across the street from the mall in Boulder, Colorado, so I’d always stop by the food court and get an order of french fries with gravy on my way to the meetings.
…Going to the pantry late one night for a snack, only to be confronted with the empty king-sized Skittles wrapper I’d so carefully hidden at the bottom of my bedroom trashcan. There it was, taped to the cupboard door like a sign reading “you really want to eat again, Fatty McChubsalot?” (I have long since forgiven my mother for unwittingly enforcing some pretty awful messages, so please don’t hate her.)
…That solicitous Catlin Gabel art teacher who cornered me in the lunch room to ask if “you know you eat a lot, right?” Believe me, Lady, I am acutely aware of exactly how much I eat. (More on that later.)
…My step-mother taking me shopping with her daughters, making a big show of buying them cute clothes, and then turning around and getting me a watch and some perfume because “at least we know they will fit.”
There are more memories, but I think these illustrate my point. The message was that I wasn’t loved or wanted if I was fat, that I should be ashamed of eating, and that (in regards to this post, most importantly) everybody judged me primarily on the basis of my weight and appearance. It was a lesson I took to heart. Twenty-some years later, and I’ve finally realized that these assumptions have not served me.
I had no idea how those three possibilities-disguised-as-facts have shaped me, literally and figuratively, until a couple months ago. I caught sight of my reflection in a store window while I was out walking one day, and my thought was, “ugh I look so bloated!” Two minutes later, a young woman jogged by me and I said to myself, “God, she has such a tight, skinny body!” followed almost immediately by “I’ll never look like that, I’m so fat and disgusting.” I stopped in my tracks and looked around and realized I was acutely aware of exactly where I ranked in body size compared to every female I could see on the street.
I was subsequently rather stunned to realize that I am never not aware of where I rank on the Skinny Meter at any given time or place. Now mind you, I don’t care where other people fall in this ridiculous judging pattern, just where I am. I won’t treat you any differently if you are thin or obese. But if you’re a woman skinnier than me, know that I have imagined your body with my head on top. And if you’re larger than me, I will admit I am more comfortable eating in front of you than I am eating in front of someone slim.
I am not proud of what this says about me. I’m actually kind of appalled. As I walked home that day, I decided I was going to try something. I know myself better than to think I can break two decades of habitual behavior overnight, so instead I issued myself a challenge: to be aware of EVERY time I am unkind to myself around my body image, weight, and eating. Not to beat myself up about it, but simply to acknowledge each and every instance of self-hatred (here on out referred to as an ISH) as I realize it’s happening. And you want to know what I found out?
It’s exhausting. This kind of awareness requires a constant vigilance, which in my case affords me very little rest, because I would say on average, I have an ISH every five minutes or so. I am not kidding. Stop and think about that. It’s a GREAT day when I go 15 minutes without…
…pointing out my physical imperfections to myself. Cellulite, stretch marks, and fat rolls- I have them. On some level, I believe this makes me unlovable even though I have concrete proof (amazing people in my life) of the opposite.
…thinking, “I should _____.” Eat less, exercise more, not wear this skirt it makes me look like a sausage, suck in my gut, stand up taller, basically do or be anything other than what I am.
…telling myself I’m not hungry, even if I am. There is NEVER a time when I put food in my mouth that I’m not thinking “I shouldn’t be eating this” or wondering if anyone who sees me eating is thinking to themselves “she wouldn’t be so fat if she didn’t stuff her face.” Yes, I am a foodie, so imagine the awesome power of my love-food-hate-self spiral. If you see me eating, no matter how much I am enjoying the food, company, and environs, there is a voice in my head telling me I’m bad, disgusting, and unworthy.
…assuming that the first word everyone would use to describe me is fat. Not kind, caring, generous, talented, nurturing, intelligent, entrepreneurial, resourceful, resilient, sensual, strong, sexy, or loving. Fat. Now mind you, it doesn’t matter how big or small I actually am. My weight has fluctuated by as much as 50 pounds in my adult life. But what I see in the mirror is never good enough.
So what do I do? This is not how I want to treat any human being. I would never allow another person to speak to me the way I speak to myself, to constantly berate me and put me down. I would interfere if I saw someone treating another person this way. So why do I punish myself so brutally? Why do I not let myself have one moment of peace?
I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out. I’m hoping that by acknowledging my ISHes, they will start to come fewer and further between. Right now I’m simply trying to actively question whether I want to be reinforcing these messages to myself or if I deserve a little leniency and kindness. The answer is ever-changing, and it is constant work, learning how to be nicer to myself.
I am someone people look to for sexual inspiration and gratification. I am the sensual muse, the aural courtesan, the ultimate fantasy…It is very difficult to be that for so many others yet have recurring moments of not believing it myself. I cannot pretend those moments do not occur, I can only acknowledge them and choose to dismiss them individually as inaccurate.
To me, that is integrity…Staying as honest and current as you can with yourself and as many people in your life as possible. It is hard to admit my perceived imperfections and even harder to admit how much they bother me and how much them bothering me bothers me. It feels like…a weakness. But I offer my weakness up to you in the hopes that from it, you will find the strength to question the stories you tell yourself.
I write about my self-image issues here with a great deal of fear, shame, and trepidation in my heart. After all, I make a living off my desirability. Saying this “out loud” is scary, but I am choosing to share it with you because you might never guess from outward appearances and my gregarious personality. Because maybe knowing you’re not alone in your fear, guilt, shame, whatever- no matter its genesis- will help you be kinder to yourself. And because if you love me after I admit how shallow and self-absorbed I am, maybe you love me no matter what size is on my jeans.
Topics: Food & Drink, My Life | 5 Comments »
The Lesson of Accountability
By Tonya Jone Miller | March 26, 2012
I was chatting with a lovely caller on IM today and was reminded of something I learned long ago: the lesson of accountability. It goes like this…
Pay attention to how often you say and/or hear the words “I have to _____” or “it’s not my fault, I didn’t have a choice” or “it’s out of my control” in your day-to-day life and think about what that means. When you are not accountable for your actions, when you do not take responsibility for who and where you are in life, you have no control. The previous statement is truth, but that lack of control/responsibility is a fallacy, pure and simple. Ask yourself how it serves you to not be in charge of your own life.
Are you ready?
There are two things you MUST do, and only two:
1. At some point, you must die.
2. Until that time, you must live.
You don’t have to do anything else. I repeat: you do not have to do anything in this life except die, and live until you die.
“B-b-but Tonya, I have to go to work.” No, you choose to go to work because if you don’t, you lose your job and cannot pay your bills. You don’t wish to starve or be homeless, so you make a decision to go to work knowing (or believing you know) the consequences of choosing not to go to work. Just because the alternative to going to work (unemployment, starvation, homelessness) might be unacceptable to you, doesn’t mean you didn’t have a choice.
“B-b-but Tonya, I have to do what my parents (or spouse or boss or government or whatever) tell me to do.” No, you choose to follow those rules, requests, laws, etc. because you do not wish to endure the consequences for failing to adhere, agree, or submit. You wish to avoid the social, family, or self-inflicted pressure, so you choose to study medicine, or stay under the speed limit, or be nice to drunk cousin Ronny even though he’s a sexist asshole, or whatever.
“B-b-but Tonya, I have to believe in God and attend church, or I’ll go to Hell!” No, you believe you will go to Hell if you don’t, so you choose to attend church. You do not HAVE to believe in God; it is possible to NOT believe in God, or there would be no such thing as Atheists. Religion and spirituality help us make sense of life, death, and the world around us. I don’t particularly care whether someone is religious or not- I truly view it as a personal preference. As such, the intensity of a person’s faith does not change the fact that it is a choice.
“B-b-but Tonya, I have to breathe, don’t I? Hah!” Well, yes. Technically you have to breathe. Or you’ll die. There’s still an either-or. Your body makes the unconscious decision to control your breathing, but if you were to counter that impulse and hold your breath, you would die. You choose to breathe, or rather, you choose to let your subconscious control that bodily function most of the time, because you probably don’t want to actually die at this very moment.
Are you getting the picture yet? Go ahead, try and stump me on this. I can argue it for hours on end and never lose, because it is the truth. All you MUST do in this life is die, and live until you die. Why is this so important to me? Why do I belabor the point? Because I think the general lack of accountability in society is what is wrong with the world. And the subsequent perceived lack of control keeps us caged behind bars of our own design.
When you fully accept that you, and only you, are in control of your life, you own your power as a unique human being on this planet. You become responsible for your past, present, and future decisions. You can CHOOSE to live mindfully, awake and aware of your effect on the people and world around you, and vice versa. Once you get the lesson of accountability, you must then face the lesson of integrity, so I’m not surprised most of us opt to live in a world of “musts” and “have-to’s.” It’s much easier than accepting the only person to blame- or to celebrate- for everything in your life is you.
Accountability is harder than it looks. But oh the freedom of realizing how much power and control I have over my own life! I choose to be accountable for who, what, and where I am. How about you?
Topics: My Life | 6 Comments »
Castle Does Phone Sex (Mostly) Right
By Tonya Jone Miller | March 1, 2012
Everybody who knows me knows that I am a huge Joss Whedon fan. I got turned on to Angel first, introduced to the show by a former flame midway through Season Four. I discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer retroactively, and fell in love with Firefly as the cancellation heartbreak was unfolding. Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, Dollhouse, and Serenity were but brief respites from the mind-numbing lack of interesting characters, plots, and universes on television. Over the years, I’ve followed many of my favorite Whedonverse actors as they shed their much-beloved personas and moved on to other work. I always root for them and their shows/movies to succeed.
For the longest time, I thought that Angel was my favorite of Whedon’s shows, but over time the Firefly/Serenity world has stolen my favor. Pretty much everything set in the 90′s seems obviously outdated to me, what with all the technology that has come around in the past 20 years, but Firefly’s imagined future only seems more and more possible as times goes on. Anyway, it’s hard not to love ALL the Firefly characters, but what girl with Daddy issues wouldn’t have a thing for Nathan Fillion’s rough, wounded, quietly (and sometimes, not-so-quietly) heroic Captain Malcolm Reynolds? Hell, even his nickname “Mal” is hot.
I have followed Fillion’s career, with just a trace of bittersweet nostalgia for all the Firefly episodes that never were. I enjoy his current show, NBC’s Castle, as a fun, lighter twist on the ubiquitous police procedurals dotting prime time. So I felt both great excitement and massive trepidation when I realized a recent Castle episode included a character who was a phone sex operator. I’m always curious (and, unfortunately, usually disappointed) by how the media portrays this industry. Without further ado, here is my evaluation of what they got right and what they got wrong…
The murder victim turns out to be a phone sex operator. The cops trace her paychecks to an address which is at the end of a cluttered hallway that looks like it’s under construction. Lo and behold, it’s the call center of Dial-A-Goddess, complete with glass-enclosed and not-quite-soundproof cubicles.
Where do I start? I’m sure that call centers still exist, but with technology today, it’s unnecessary overhead. Why pay for an office, phone lines, electricity, etcetera, if instead you can route all the calls to an operator’s home or cell? I guess it makes sense for financial reasons to put a call center in a cheap, run-down building, but the inside of the office looked fairly new and clean, so the insinuation is really that a business of this type needs to be hidden away. The only pso’s I know who have worked in call centers did so 15-20 years ago. Though I’m sure they still exist, they are certainly not the norm any longer.
None of the women were actually masturbating and getting off. I realize the general presumption is that we phone sex operators don’t actually enjoy our work, but putting the women in glass boxes certainly ensures it. Only one of the operators, a Domme type, seemed to be getting into and enjoying her call. And of course, all of the operators were shown doing other things while talking to paying customers: knitting, playing solitaire, surfing the web, reading, doing crossword puzzles, twisting a Rubik’s cube. I realize this is the concept the general public has of what I do, but do you really think I could have supported myself for over eight years if I didn’t give my clients their money’s worth? Hell no.
Would you like to know what phone sex can be like from the operator’s side? Let my try and explain by putting it into a non-sexual context. We’re going to talk for fifteen minutes about…Making perfect poached eggs annnnnd GO! I might not say anything from here on out, but just know that poached eggs are my thing. So if you get it wrong, you might be babbling for at least a good five minutes to someone who knows better. And oh yeah, I’m paying $3 per minute to talk to you on your boss’s recommendation. Why aren’t you saying anything? Why aren’t you giving me PERFECT poached eggs?
Assuming you actually want to give the person perfectly poached eggs, would you really be able to do it while trying to do anything else? Phone sex is essentially an erotic improvisation- how many professional actors do you see on SNL knitting and reading (if it’s not a part of the actual skit) in the middle of a scene? When was the last time you went to see a play, and the star was texting during his big monologue? It doesn’t happen because they are professionals, and when they are working they are expected to focus 100% on their job. It doesn’t bother me that most people assume phone sex operators are the opposite- indeed, I’ve known my fair share who prove the stereotype. However it is somewhat ignorant and insulting to assume that NO pso gives her clients the time and attention they pay for.
One thing the Castle show did get right? They had all types of operators- young, granny, attractive, plain, skinny, and overweight- and not a single one would you think “oh yeah she’s obviously a phone sex operator” if you walked by her on the street. In fact, at one point the manager of the phone sex company is asked why the victim would have left a promising career as a professor to become a phone sex operator. Her response: “maybe she liked it. We get all types, students, actresses, moms. I had an accountant who liked the challenge. And it turned her on. It’s a powerful thing to make a client lust for you.”
Of course, after the pso is murdered, the police assume it has to do with her job. Which it sort of does, though most people would jump to the same false conclusion that the detectives on the show do: that she was murdered by a deranged or obsessed caller who somehow discovered her identity. It never ceases to amaze me how many people ask me about this, especially because I use my real identity as my phone sex persona. The simple truth is that most of my callers have much more to lose by being “outed” than I do. I don’t worry about obsessed callers, because I’m not greedy and I don’t lead clients on or fuel their desires with false hopes. I choose not to live in fear of the small percentage of whackjobs out there who could find me if they wanted to, regardless of whether I do phone sex or not. But I will say the assumption that I should expect that kind of negative attention and danger because of my work gets tiresome.
To be fair, the victim on the show was killed because of something she heard on a call- turns out a drunk, remorseful caller spilled secrets of a conspiracy to bring down NYC’s mayor. While I don’t think anything I’ve heard would be worth killing for, I have certainly been privy to information that was none of my business. Family secrets, infidelities, financial schemes, you name it. For a long time, I had a guy who called me from inside the Pentagon. (Though his fantasies in no way compromised national security, I assure you.) On Castle, the detectives scouring the call logs mention calls coming from “the Met, banks, and several high-profile brokerage houses.” I will also add international law firms, Hollywood studios, and the locker rooms of major sports arenas to that list. Just to name a few.
The two phone sex callers they depicted on the show were actually not the stereotypes I expected and feared. The first was a good-looking, slightly ethnic, nervous, tattooed computer geek who picked up his hacking skills in prison. The jumpy ex-con thing, not so much. The cute and geeksmart part, more on target. The second caller (and the one indirectly responsible for her death) was a handsome, clean cut aide in the mayor’s office. Both intelligent and attractive, surprisingly neither the stereotypical media image (sloppy, slobby child molester/dirty old man) of a phone sex patron.
The cops track the first caller by calls billed to his 89 year-old grandmother. No way a guy using a card with a woman’s name wouldn’t get hassled by any company keeping an eye on fraud. It’s a huge problem in this industry, and if you can’t take credit cards you have no business, so (smart) phone sex companies are very protective of their merchant processing accounts. Sure there are sketchy, sleazy, greedy places out there. But if I know a guy is using someone else’s card, I cut him off, end of story. I don’t want to be a party to credit card fraud and/or identity theft. No amount of money or length of call is worth losing my business.
The phone sex company on the Castle episode recorded all of its calls. Ugh. There are places out there that do this, or so I’ve been told. I could never work for one. Part of what allows me to provide the service I do is knowing that what I talk about stays private. If I knew someone might be listening, that there might be a recording of what I say, I wouldn’t feel as free to explore and be creative. I certainly don’t think my callers would be able to articulate their desires as openly if they thought there might be lasting proof. After all, most of them gravitate to phone sex because for whatever reason, they cannot vocalize their fantasies in real life.
I found the character of the Dial-A-Goddess dispatcher provided the most honest, realistic perspective. When asked “it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon, is it always this busy?” she replied, “some guys need a morning jolt, some guys need an afternoon pick-me-up.” Contrary to popular belief, my busiest times are usually mid-mornings, not the middle of the night, but calls come in at all hours. When talking about the victim, the dispatcher said that phone sex isn’t just about the sexy talk, that the victim was a successful operator because she was a good listener. And in perhaps my favorite exchange of the entire episode…
Dispatcher: “It’s not just about the sex. Guys call, girls call. They’re looking for release. Sometimes that release is sexual, but sometimes-”
Castle: “-it’s therapy!”
Or so he’s been told. *smirk* I admit I enjoy this episode just for the sheer volume of times I get to hear Nathan Fillion say “phone sex.” But really, I like it because they managed to get it mostly right. They treated phone sex with about as much respect as they could, given the context, and didn’t stoop to making fun of it in the easy and obvious ways. There were some jokes and double entendres, but that’s indicative of the show in general- every episode of Castle has a few silly moments. I made Chaps and Cindy watch the episode with me when we were in Vegas, and they both agreed it was refreshing to see our industry depicted with at least some level of accuracy.
So watch the episode and let me know what you think. There were plenty of other details I could have dissected, but this post doesn’t need to be any longer.
Topics: My Life, Phone Sex, Sex Work | 2 Comments »
It Starts
By Tonya Jone Miller | February 22, 2012
I finally have all my fringe festival lottery results, and Threads: The True Story of an Indiana Farm Girl in Vietnam is going to appear in five (holyfuckingshitfive!) festivals this year…Atlanta, Orlando, Winnipeg, Minnesota, and Edmonton. There is minimal info on my Events Page, and if you visit my Threads Page, you’ll see there isn’t much there either. Because…I’ve finally gotten around to building a proper website for the play! I figured it wasn’t kosher to send unsuspecting audience members to this here sometimes-pornorific blog, and you have to work the social media these days if you’re an artist, or you starve. There’s no shame in either, but I’d rather play to packed houses than empty ones. Anyway, I have a shiny new official site for Threads now, and that’s where you can find dates, times, and ticket purchase information for all upcoming festivals and shows. Also, I have a wee favor to ask- if you happened to see the show last year, please visit the Audience Guestbook and leave a review? Much obliged! Now I just have to finish my script revisions, start rehearsing, compile sound cues, make tech notes in scripts for fringe technicians, gather new props/costumes, send press releases, make travel arrangements, design a poster and flyers, get them printed, etc. etc. etc. Lol! Get the picture?
Moving on…I haven’t written in a while, because I knew what I needed/wanted to write about, and it makes for a sizable post (which now that I’m writing I’ve decided to split into two different ones). There was also some heartbreak in my world. A potentially huge deal I stumbled across at AVN/AEE and put a whole lot of time and energy into fell through. In a crappy way. In a way that reminded me that though I do a good job of surrounding myself with the kind of people who appreciate me for who I am and don’t judge me for my kinkiness or my sex work, as far as the rest of the world is concerned I’m still dirty and perverted. And yes, I am talking about people I met at the PORN convention. Sigh. Fuck ‘em. But not before they managed to fuck me a little on this deal. *shrug* It sent me into a bit of a depression actually (couple with the next paragraph), but in the end it’s just motivation. Idiots pissed off the wrong woman. Heh.
There’s another, more personal heartbreak I’m dealing with too. The downfall of being so open with my life is that I don’t really feel comfortable talking about it in too much detail here, out of respect for those involved. And sometimes I have to wait until I’m out of the hole before I can write about being stuck in it. What it boils down to is that I am losing one of my soul mates, dearest friends, greatest champions…Not a permanent situation like my other recent loss, but a very real separation of distance and lack of time together, and the natural ebbing of intimacy that will surely ensue. It feels worse than a death, and I have been grieving for a few weeks in an intensely emotional way that verges on visceral. (You ever feel sick to your stomach when you get upset? That. For weeks.) I love this person profoundly, but for now at least, we don’t get to be in each other’s lives on a daily basis. It brings to mind the first line from one of my favorite books, Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson:
“Why is the measure of love loss?”
I guess the good news is that fringe deadlines (promo materials, tech info, etc.) are fast approaching, and I don’t have time to wallow in nostalgia. There is work to be done…
Topics: Acting, My Life, Sex Work, Threads | No Comments »
Tell Me What I Want
By Tonya Jone Miller | January 12, 2012
I had this conversation with a long-time client on IM today. In the interest of discretion, I’m using the guy’s initials to protect his identity. (No, it wasn’t actually a conversation with Jesus Christ.)
JC
I had some wonderful food in chicago the other week
Tonya
oh yeah? where did you go?
JC
The publican
Tonya
hmmm can’t say i’m up on chicago eats
gastropub type place?
JC
yup
piggie-flesh heaven
had some head cheese and sweetbreads as well
Tonya
oooooh
i like funky meats
but i’m always
DON’T TELL ME WHAT IT IS
heheh
someday somebody’s going to feed me escargot without telling me what it is
i’m sure i’ll like it
those damn French know them some food
but uh
no fucking way am i putting that in my mouth willingly
(this has the makings of an interesting D/s scene…)
And it really does beg the question, just how orally submissive am I? I love food, especially trying new things, but sometimes I just can’t get my head (mouth) around it. Take escargot, for example. Everybody tells me they’re delicious, and I believe them. Put enough butter on anything and it’s edible, the French pioneered that. And I love crab and lobster, which are basically just grossly huge sea bugs, but I don’t want to put a snail in my mouth. I’m quite sure I’ll eventually be tricked into eating them, but even if I like the actual taste of them, I may never get over the psychological distaste. See sweatbreads- I’ve had them at least a half a dozen times and they were delicious each and every time. I will still never order them for myself.
I get a thrill out of omakase and tasting menus, the surrendering of my will to that of the chef’s and not knowing if I’ll be challenged to eat something I might otherwise avoid. It’s scary and exciting, and I like being pushed out of my comfort zone. A precarious D/s scene- in theory I am surrendering, but the reality is I could walk out at anytime, not that I can remember ever having done so. Anybody who knows me, knows I’m not a mindless pushover with no personal opinions. But sometimes? Sometimes in food, as in sex, I guess I need somebody to tell me what I want…
Topics: Food & Drink, Kink, My Life | 2 Comments »
Thanks, Beavis and Butthead!
By Tonya Jone Miller | January 7, 2012
Dispatch wankers. Believe it or not, there are guys who call the toll-free Bay City Blues phone sex number to try and wank to dispatchers for free. Some of them will go as far as giving false info right up until we ask for a credit card number before hanging up. I’ve also had cases of rival companies sending people to call and fuck with us. Or someone posting our number on inappropriate forums so we’ll be inundated with a bunch of calls that have nothing to do with phone sex, or from people who don’t want to pay for it. God knows why anyone would think this is a good use of their time, but it still manages to waste some of ours. Over the past week, I’ve gotten repeated calls from a couple different obviously overseas dispatch wankers. One of them was a verbally abusive Indian man who was very rude and persistent at 3am. I had to actually sign all the dispatchers out for 10 or 15 minutes to get rid of him.
The problem with international calls is that they come through on lines which generate dynamic phone numbers. So I can block each number that calls in, but there is kind of no point to that, since when they call back it just pops up as a new number by one or two digits.
So anyway. Today I had what sounded like a group of teenage boys, one of whom said they were calling from Saudi Arabia, call back over ten times. I tried ignoring them, bitching them out, even handing the phone to a guy to see if that might freak them out. Didn’t seem like anything would stop them from calling back until…
http://www.realmofdarkness.net/pc/sb/bb/cornholio/1
I just held the phone up to my computer speaker and played a bunch of clips at full volume over and over.
*listens to the sound of the dispatch line NOT ringing*
Topics: My Life, Phone Sex, Sex Work | No Comments »