Dear Caller,
Allow me to quickly thank you, on behalf of all the team members here at Hidden Agenda, for the piles of money you have spent over the years on cam girl sessions through our platform. You were one of the originals. In fact, you’ve been here almost as long as us. I remember the day we switched the site from off to on and sat watching, waiting, hoping for a call to come through. And then, there you were, Caller #1, placing the first of many calls which, collectively, would change our lives forever. You, dear caller, have single handedly put both of my children through college and also helped Randy, my minority partner, buy a boat. For these gifts, we will be forever grateful. But, unfortunately, gratitude is not the reason for this email.
I know it’s deeply unusual for a platform admin to reach out to a caller – even more unusual for a founder – but I thought it only fair considering how many of my wife’s boob jobs you’ve paid for and what I’m about to say next. The thing is, Caller, we have just had too many cam girls complaining about your utter incompetence at human interaction to allow you to continue utilizing our services.
This must come as a shock, especially considering how often you call and how much you tip, but your patronage simply cannot go on. No amount of money could possibly compensate for how dreary a conversationalist you are. It’s not even just that you’re boring, although believe me, that’s a huge part of it. Most of the time, you’re not even talking about sex! On more than one occasion recently, we have found our girls asleep on the job – literally slumped over their cam desks with eyelids fluttering and drool dripping down their chins while you, still visible in their cam window, blather on and on about subjects such as whether small compost bins should be left on the counter or stowed away in the fridge, the best way to clean cast-iron skillets without compromising delicate seasoning, and whether or not anybody actually likes the tapioca balls in bubble tea or if everyone drinking them is part of some mass hysteria where we’re all just pretending to like them because we’re afraid to be the only one who doesn’t like them. Caller, you simply cannot be putting our girls to sleep! Even their lingerie looks limp after a call with you and, well, in our world, limp is bad for business.
If you find yourself scratching your chin and furrowing your brow and thinking that surely this can’t be the only reason I am being banned from Hidden Agenda, then you would be correct. The log of complaints is as long as Santa’s naughty list, but we did you the kindness of selecting the most egregious complaints in order to illustrate exactly why we have decided to close your current account and reject any future attempts at creating new ones. Below is a highlights reel of sorts – an incomplete compendium of your worst offenses, as provided by our girls and verified by our team. You will notice that it’s not always the subjects you’re drawn to which slow our pulses; it’s also the style of conversation. Simply put, you don’t have any. Style, that is. You’re just plain blah. Worse, even, than Colin Robinson. Wait, you’re probably too mundane to know who that is, but suffice it to say that he’s a genuine energy vampire, feasting on vibes instead of blood, leaving his victims empty, shell-like versions of their once curious and vital selves. More on that, later, but here are a few of the complaints we’ve compiled to show you exactly why we are rejecting your business henceforth.
Cam-Girl Complaints About Caller #1
[Complaint – #0002970 – Heather Leather] I hate to do this, but after lots of thought, I have finally decided to block Caller #1. I consider myself a pretty good actress, but even I can’t pretend to be engaged, for hours on end, while he lists out all the different types of panties that exist. I mean, it would be one thing if the panties were interesting. Like, for example, maybe a crotchless pair from time to time, or a pair made from rubber, or even chain maille, but this guy … he just names the most basic pairs, each time asking if I would ever wear a pair like that. He doesn’t even want to see me in panties. He just wants to list them off and ask if I’ve worn them before. Huh? I’m thinking to myself, because, of course I’ve worn a cheeky pair of cotton panties in my life; of course I’ve worn a seamless thong; of course I’ve worn a lacey front, plain back high-waisted, full-cheek, french-cut panty before. Like, WTF!? lol. I know this probably doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but it goes on for HOURS! He talks in detail about the waistbands, the product tags, the little cotton rectangle in the crotch. It’s like he’s reading from a panty manufacturer’s a la carte menu or something and, last time I tried to endure it, I got so bored that I think I blacked out because when the call finally ended, I had plucked every single one of my pubic hairs by hand and didn’t even remember doing it. I mean, hey, less money to spend on waxing, amiright, but for real!!!! I’d literally rather pluck every single hair from my body, for the rest of my life, than ever talk to Caller #1 again. I am sorry but I just can’t do it.
[Complaint – #0002147 – Riley Rides] When I answer the phone and ask what’s on Caller #1’s mind, he says, I’m horny. See how he refuses to answer the question? Then, when I say, “Yes you are, baby, but what’s on your mind? What’s turning you on?” he simply says, you. See how he gives me absolutely nothing to go on!? A girl can’t work this way! Then when I say, “Of course you are, baby, you called me, but what got you so horny that you decided to call me, the person on your mind?” And he then just grunts a response back like JOI. Who is this guy, Tarzan???? He’s all, me Tarzan, you Jane, JOI! LOL! This guy is worse than the guy who used to bark espresso! back at me when I worked at the coffee shop. I would say, “Hi, how are you today?” and he wouldn’t even say good! He never said, fine thanks, and you? Just espresso! Can you fucking believe it? I’m feeling triggered by this caller – reminded too often of the slog of counter service work I left behind and I’m starting to have nightmares about bad communication. This is almost worse than when he calls to talk about his bird-watching escapades. I’d almost rather him talk for hours about how to identify the difference between a robin’s mating call and a blue jay’s warning song than grunt acronyms at me, but also, fuck that. Fuck all of that. This is why I’m blocking Caller #1.
[Complaint – #0001032 – Patty Pleasure] Caller #1 is really bad at chatting. Just the other day, Tuesday, he sent me a message that read, Hey babe, what are you doing? And I immediately wrote back, “Hey babe! Just sitting here waiting to hear from you 😉 what’s on your mind today?” And then he didn’t write back for three days! Finally, on Friday, I hear back, and he says, just thinking about my health insurance benefits AS IF NO TIME AT ALL HAD PASSED. Apparently, he had received a notification that his benefits had changed and sent me this long paragraph outlining the pros and cons of his new coverage and asking my opinion. Un-fucking-believable!!!! I mean, he didn’t even send the message in chunks so I could respond periodically and make money off the message. He just expected me to spend 10 minutes with my eyes glued to the screen, not logging time with other callers, to read about his health plan. I was wet and ready to GO until he started talking co-pays and dental coverage and telehealth vs. office visits. And, like, it didn’t end! I could barely bang out a, “Oh that’s frustrating,” before I’d receive another big-ass block of text about his policy! This reminds me wayyyyyy too much of my ex boyfriend. Notice the word EX!!!!! ROFL! He would drop the conversation in the middle of a text exchange and then I wouldn’t hear from him again until days later when he had some bullshit to vent about that he expected me to just listen to for hours without ceasing. Ugh!! To his credit, Caller #1 did end up tipping me afterward, but it barely covered the cost of the massage I had to get to erase all the extra health insurance fluff clogging my brain and to forget how fucking annoyed I was. I even considered training an A.I. chat bot to handle the interaction for me but that just felt like way too much work. Yucky! BLOCKED!
You see, dear caller, we all have an obligation to be at least vaguely compelling when we go out into the world with plans of conversing with other human beings. Not even compelling, just … appropriate. Yes, even when you’re paying. For example, I hired a financial advisor and call her – this person I’m paying – periodically to talk through money decisions. I don’t call her to talk about bubble tea or health insurance, or the many different kinds of elastic waistbands available to leggings manufacturers or whatever. I talk, briefly, about interest rates and IRAs. In your case, when you call a phone sex line, you should be prepared to talk about x-rated kinks, the taste and smell of body parts, and all the bad things you want to do behind your wife’s back, like visit glory holes, hire escorts, or jerk off in fitting rooms. These are the kinds of conversations our girls have come to expect and they just won’t accept anything less.
Don’t get me, or our girls, wrong – we’re not judging you – we just hope we never have to meet you in real life because we would surely fall into such a deep sleep that we’d never be able to wake up again. Bored to death I think they call it. But all that said, I, and we, really do wish you the best. I hope you will take this as an opportunity to improve yourself and, subsequently, the lives of all you choose to interact with moving forward.
Good day and goodbye,
Dick Rodney, CEO & Founder, Hidden Agenda
P.S. Please do not respond to this email. If you do, I won’t read it. I just can’t take the risk.
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Ryan-Ashley (Anderson) Maloney, a conceptual artist and writer from the rural South currently living in the Pacific Northwest, has published with X-R-A-Y, Icebreakers, and Farewell Transmission, among others. Anderson takes an autoethnographic approach when excavating her personal narrative as a chronically ill queer, female, autistic, sex worker to explore ideas of temporality, grief, and precarity within our current cultural situation. She is currently writing a memoir about girlhood, illness, and belonging.
You can learn more about her at ryanashleyanderson.com.
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image: Claire Hopple
Rejection Letters 