erotic listening

^ the poster for Spike Lee’s 1996 film Girl 6.

The trailer for 1996’s Girl 6 begins with the quintessential deep voiced narrator of the era: “In She’s Gotta Have It, Jungle Fever, and Malcom X, director Spike Lee got in your face…now, he’s gonna get in your ear!” What follows are comedic sketches from the film that elucidate themes of performance—be they sexuality via film and phone sex operators, or the hyper-performance of race in neo-Blaxploitation cinema. As bell hooks writes about in her seminal feminist film studies collection, Reel to Real, critics almost universally missed the film’s critiques of misogyny when they wondered why it did not deliver on the trailer’s erotic enticement. What I would suggest is missing too is an investigation of the auditory and the ocular as they relate to mediated ideas of sex and the pornographic. Even though she was on the clock (thus, exploited labor as a phone sex operator), the character Girl 6 tempted to play with identities divorced from skin tone. She was able to bypass ocular expectations, or heighten them: she could don her “white voice,” or a “Foxy Brown” one, to her benefit. In the cacophony of her headset, darting from all forms of mens’ fantasies, Girl 6 becomes confused between “reality” and “fantasy.”

While the film is not really about phone sex per se, the iconographies of “phone sex” have been enduring aesthetic curiosities for me, of which Girl 6 is a marker on the journey. Another obligatory stop is The Village People’s song “Sex Over the Phone,” interspersed with humorous critiques of the popular practice: “It’s me your fantasy” the operator whispers. “What’s your name?” the caller asks. “Who cares! I just care about my money!”

Very few people are calling 1-900 hotlines today; but in the late 1980s and into the ‘90s, they were a cash cow. Ranging from romantic personals, to phone sex hotlines, to ones marketed towards children to speak to their favorite cartoon character, the 1-900 Premium Line could often rack up hundred-dollar bills while exploiting what Sherry Turkle has theorized is a seductive aspect of modern technologies: they meet us where we are vulnerable. Because one could argue the Premium line was a particular condition of loneliness born out of a suburban form that devalued density: living rooms spread out seemingly infinitely with individuals inside desperate for a connection. And as a proto-internet—with its specialized niches and experiences—users also started to practice interacting with technologically mediated forms of performance: Is this sensual voice on the other line real? Is Santa Claus or Miss Cleo really listening?

^ in 2012, I initiated a project in which queer friends invented 1-900 personas and created an installation where interested strangers could call them. Here, Zemora stars as Pansy Narcissus.

The phone sex 1-900 hotline, when recalled as an antiquated technology, gets a contemporary audience to wonder why exactly this practice has been rendered so ridiculous. On the flip side: what erotic experiences of the now might be deemed pastiche in the near future?

The AOL chatroom and Martch.com might have initially replaced the phone sex hotline, but it was quickly overtaken by the sex and dating service one could carry on them: the smartphone app, be it Tinder, Grindr, Lex, FEELD, or Raya, marketed as an exclusive app for industry professionals or celebrities. What these apps all have in common, however, is their nature as ocular-centric technologies designed primarily around physical attraction; well, in actuality they are designed around the curated digital presentation of photographs. Would you date this man holding up a newly-caught fish? Would you like to have sex with this person exposing their rock-hard torso? None of these apps begin with engaging sound. Can you imagine an app that was all voice, like the old telephone personal? We could go father into the senses, imagine an app that was smell, all pheromone?

Yes, there is a distinction to be made on location and culture. In travels to Mexico, I have noticed it is not uncommon to receive a voice-note as an introductory message on Grindr; though, I have never received this kind of message from an anonymous photo-less profile. In that context, it seems simply like a convenient way to communicate, as I often heard the hurried sounds of the metro or street life in the background; one cannot navigate the swarms of CDMX while constantly looking down at their screen. Interesting, 1-900 hotlines were not popular throughout Mexico.

Of course there is also the sensual fetish of sound satisfied by an ASMR experience; but this discreet event has not entered into any form of social technology. It is more akin to standard pornography: a form of durational media that satisfies a given need, often from audio file to individual. In a similar vane, I started to experiment with the erotic hypnosis, both as a personal pleasure and a creator of digitized audio files for others, selling some as a minor form of sex work.

Simultaneously, I was falling in love with someone I met very briefly in-person, as we traded daily voice messages from across an ocean. I got to know the texture of his voice profoundly as I believed a disembodied falling-in-love had a very palpable intimacy. Sometimes, I would take his satirical messages, and remix them into short techno-joke songs. Through audio, we initiated forms of prank-flirting that were truly riveting. Is the fact that our intimacy in-person could not match the arousal of our audio-connection proof that the ocular and the textual are more effective forms of expression? No, relationships are not so statistical; and it was satisfying for what it was. Like Girl 6, we created forms of play that surprised us, and liberated us beyond what we thought was possible in a long-distance romance.

see also talent is a vampire, eyes for an audience, suburban sexualities