November 20: Call 1-900-Ret-icula

You are reading published post #300, and wouldn't you know it? It's about phone sex.

My granddaughter Coraline spends Tuesday evenings with me most weeks. We hang out, read books, go for walks, and eat dinner together; sometimes she takes a bath. She's 16 months old.

Tonight we'd been upstairs folding some laundry, and we were playing on my bed. It's about 4 feet off the ground, king-sized -- a pretty nice playground. I was playing 1...2....3... toss the baby on the bed when the phone rang.

It was Elvira, letting me know she'd be over sooner than expected. I put her on speaker phone so she could talk to Coraline too -- as if they don't spend every other hour of the day together. When my cell phone rang, I answered it and left Coraline talking to Elvira on the land phone.

Eventually I realized she was punching more buttons than she was talking, and all she was saying was "mmmmmaaaa ma" anyway, so I hung up her phone but let her play with it. When I got off my cell, I took the land phone and put it back on the charger.

We were still playing on the bed -- this time taking off the lid of a Cookie Monster tin and putting it back on -- when we both heard a long, low tone coming from somewhere. We looked around for the sound.

"Ga gah," Coraline said. She says that every time I get a text. But it wasn't a text.

I noticed the land phone was flashing, so I picked up the handset. Somehow Coraline had pushed a button that put the person on the other end on hold.

Hmmmm. I wasn't even sure where that button was .... I hit the off button, but nothing happened. So I pushed the speaker phone button and suddenly we were listening to the following conversation:

Anonymous woman: ....so you think you'd like that? Because that's what I'm going to do to you. I'm going to clean your whistle.

Anonymous man: Oh, yes, I'd like that. Is that what that's called?

Anonymous woman: That's what the older girls call it. That's what they tell me it's called. (This woman didn't sound like a girl.) Cleeaaannnn your whistle. Oh, you're going to love that.

Anonymous man:  I will. I will love that. You're going to clean my whistle.

I could not figure out what was going on. The voices were coming from the phone, but they were having a conversation independent of me. Coraline yelled, "Mmmmmaaaaa ma!" but they didn't seem to hear her.

"What did you do?" I whispered to her. "And what does clean your whistle mean?" She just banged the Cookie Monster tin and the lid together and didn't answer.

Anonymous woman: So you say you've got big balls, huh?

Anonymous man:  That's right, baby. Great big balls. Do you like big balls?

Anonymous woman: Oh, I like big balls. I love big balls. Do you want me to play with your big balls?

Anonymous man:   Yes, please. Please play with my big balls. Touch my big balls.

Anonymous woman: I'm going to touch your big balls.

"Coraline!" I hissed. "Cover your ears. You don't need to hear about this man's big balls. Who are these people? How did I get into their conversation?"

She wasn't listening to me or to the phone call because I had taken the phone off speaker mode and was listening all by myself.


Anonymous man:  Will you suck on them? Will you suck on my big balls?

Anonymous woman: I will suck on them and I will ......

Fade to .....

2nd Anonymous woman: You too can have a conversation just like this one. All you have to do is .....

"Oh my god, Coraline. You called a phone sex hotline!"

"Ma ma?"

"No, that's definitely not Mommy. And if it is, I don't want to know about it. Please tell me you didn't give them my credit card number."

I have no idea how that happened. My best guess is that she pushed random numbers, got the phone sex hotline, and then put the recording on hold when she realized they were talking about big balls. It must have been playing on a loop over there on my bed table for at least 5 minutes, waiting for somebody to decide to enter a credit card number.

What are the odds?

And what the hell does "clean your whistle" mean? Is this something a single woman should know? Or is it a code used only by phone sex operators? Is that what they're even called, or is that term no longer PC?

Anybody? Hello? Hello? Are you there?