TELEPHONE SEX
WHO'S THAT MAN ON THE PHONE?
After Zoe Ball, The Chippendales, and raucous reports of 'ladies' nights' emerging even from South Wales, we all know that the urban female is now as beery, brash and bawdy as the male. So perhaps I should not have been surprised to come across Barry.

Barry is a telephone sex worker, specialising in servicing heterosexual females. And if you are one, you can meet him any time on a London chat line, at a cost of 50p per minute - providing, that is, you have a touch-tone phone, and the patience of the profane to log onto a tedious recorded message that links every new caller to the 'X-change'.  

Once in, various men will present themselves by voice mail and can then be dialled directly. I was offered David, Jack and Ed. But Barry's voice - even heard just introducing himself as 'Barry' - was so deep and darkly suggestive that I pressed my star button enthusiastically.

'Hello,' said Barry, on the line and in the flesh, if you know what I mean.

'Hello,' I replied, with some originality, as I struggled to control the quaver in my voice, a quaver that could have been caused by unfocused sexual desire, or the need to giggle.

'Well, how are you?' he said with lusty innuendo.

Silence from me. A quavering silence.

'Tell me about yourself. Are you from London?'

This, I thought, must be the telephonic equivalent of foreplay. We were getting to know each other; I was supposed to be relaxing and getting ready to go for the nitty-gritty. Luckily, this procrastination didn't last long. 

'Are you alone tonight?' he said finally. 'Don't be shy...'  

'Yes,' I lied, 'I'm alone tonight.' (My boyfriend was busy working in the study.)  

'Where are you?' Barry purred. 'Are you in the bath? Lying on your bed? What are you wearing?'

I was slouching on a sofa, keeping warm in woolly tights and mothy jumper, this autumn weather being as severe as a dressing down from Ann Widdecombe. But there was no need to spoil things before we'd even started, so I came over all sultry. 'I'm stretched out on a rug in front of a real log fire. And I'm not wearing very much at all, actually.' Barry liked this:

'That's nice, that's exciting... are you wearing panties?'  

'Would you like me to...' You get the idea. I was about £7.50 into the X-change (including logging-in time) and we were about to get sticky. But what I really wanted to know was who is Barry and why do he and his like choose to be Barry, working out of some Acton industrial site, plugged into a grimy headset in a cubicle, helping lonely women to - how shall I put this? - ease the pain in the early hours.

After some persuasion, and even then insisting on keeping a telephone between us and remaining anonymous, another male sexophonist - let's call him Barry, too - agreed to reveal almost all. Why the anonymity? Well, his friends and family don't know that he gives phone sex, and he doesn't want them to know. But he also wants to keep his identity secret so that he can continue to re-invent himself on line, according to his own desire and the caller's fantasy.

Masked by a telephone, his voice can assume the statistics of a six-foot-three gene machine with wavy black hair and scintillating blue eyes. He can claim to be a wizard in bed who has travelled the globe and speaks seven languages, even though I suspect that in real life he may be short and stocky with a little paunch and a tendency to sweat under the influence of alcohol. But who cares? On the telephone, Barry is a star.

The real Barry admits he's in this job not for the money - £5 an hour - but for the buzz: 'At first I got into it because I was bored, my relationship with my then girlfriend was breaking down and I couldn't sleep. Then it became exciting Ð a little tingle - and I realised, "You're good at this!" I mean, there's something really, really sexy about talking about sex with complete strangers. On the end of a phone I can be anything or anyone.'

'Well, who are you?'

He replies by describing where he works. 

He is, he says, the only male in an old typing pool in a converted warehouse full of other cubicles in which women are answering telephone sex lines. 'They're wearing very little,' he confides. 'I can overhear what they're saying and they can hear me. Sometimes we do three-way phone calls. Sometimes I do couples. Usually, I'm off my head.'

Drugs help, he says, like cocaine to keep up his enthusiasm for taking 'wild side' calls from women all night. 'Sometimes I get calls from women who say they've been out on dates but got no action, so they're horny and can't get to sleep. I help them sleep.' What a nice chap! It almost sounds altruistic, the way he works a four-hour session to help these lonely frustrated, insomniacs into their dreams, with calls lasting from five to 25 minutes. And there's a pattern to his patter.  

'They usually give me a quick potted history - thirties, single mum, that kind of thing - then I might ask where they are, what they are wearing, what they'd like me to do to them.' 

'Do they ask you how big it is?'

'All the time.'

'And how big is it?'

'Ooh, well...'

'Right, and what else do they ask you?'

He says they like him to describe a bit of action and I get a vivid description of a Pornographic scenario with Barry in the foreground pleasuring himself and then in flagrante with a co-worker. He says the callers like to 'hear it like it is and as it happens'. 

'And does "it" happen?'

Barry admits that sometimes the excitement does get too much for him and that he, too, has to seek solace, preferably - very preferably - with a girl from a nearby cubicle.

'Surely that spoils the evening for the rest of your callers?'

'Well, it might take 20 minutes to recover.' Clearly, Barry is not easily distracted from his work. 'They' keep him far too busy for that. But are his customers always satisfied?

'Well, they often say they are - and there are certainly times when they sound as though they are. But then, anyone can do a Harry meets Sally, can't they?'

But Barry's not just a pretty voice. He says that he studied erotic art at Middlesex University, writes short stories (unpublished) and does 'other things' (undisclosed) in the real world as well as being a sex worker. He's genuinely interested in his clients and says that he's even dated a few. But real flesh and blood can be disappointing. 

'I met one caller  but nothing sexual happened, we just had a nice evening. The fantasy was gone. You know, I'd met her over the phone at 2am, feeling really randy and she could be anyone; then suddenly it's 7.30 the next evening and there's no mystery. I'd told her to meet me at Embankment Tube station, that I'd be wearing a leather jacket and carrying a copy of the Evening Standard and she could talk to me if she liked the look of me, and she did.' He pauses, then says, almost poignantly, 'and she looked plain, brown hairÉ I mean, she was very nice...'

But Barry is not easily discouraged: 'I'm meeting another woman tonight. We had great phone sex and she said, "You sound lovely" and we agreed to meet. She says she's a   Five-foot-eleven-inch Danish blonde - but you never know.' He'll be at Westminster Tube this time, recognisable by the same jacket and accessory. 'Wish me luck,' he says.

But if luck fails him and reality is too hard to stomach, Barry's phone will still be ringing. He tells me how he describes to callers in vivid detail the things he imagines doing to them and I realise, as he did himself, that he really is quite good at this.

'You're really good at this, Barry,' I sigh. 'Go on, tell me, you'll know: why is the telephone such an essential sex toy?'

'It's because telephone sex involves the excitement of the forbidden,' he says, 'and it's the safest sex I know. It's the most honest sex, because people can ask for exactly what they want without any inhibitions, and it's the most deceitful because you can lie about yourself and conceal the truth.'

Honest and deceitful. Is that the real Barry? I wonder if even those closest to Barry know the man behind the mike. He says he has a girlfriend, so what does she think about his life as a phone sex worker? 'I never tell my girlfriends what I'm up to - this is my secret.'

© Associated Newspapers Ltd.