Customer Service Voice

"Hello! Thank you for calling ___. This is ___. May I start by asking your name?"

Act I

All I remember is what I heard. It began with that line of yours. I recall a gurgle of sounds from my throat. A clack-clacking of keys - mine and yours. My coworker in the adjoining office being yelled at by his problem client. On speaker phone! The hard plastic wheels of my office chair scootch on the carpet. My pen as it hits the desk: ta-DA!

But then there is silence.

My colleague's client fades into nothingness. My fingers have stopped typing. It is one of those silences where you hear your eardrums expanding and contracting in the slight ringing way they do, adjusting like little satellite dishes for anything in the distance.

The distance. Like that between my ear and the headset. Or my eyes and the computer screen. Or me and you.

But whish! that distance has been closed.

You whisper into my ear: "Let me look that up for you!" But that's just the coded language we all use. What you really meant is, "I'm not wearing anything at all right now." And then a duh-duh-duh as of fingers lightly tapping my shoulder. My nude shoulder with lean muscles close to the surface that add depth to the sound. A little zing! of saliva in my ear as you continue whispering, whispering what you'd like to do to me. The intensifying thud-Thud-THud-THUd-THUD of my heartbeat, felt first in my chest but now bumping out of control in my temples, neck, wrists.

Next a clatter, like the chair falling after you pull me out of it, and a ruffling of papers into the air as my bare ass hits the desk cradled in your knuckles. The soft rustle of two pieces of fabric sliding over each other: the cuffs you fastened being pulled tighter. The shoop! of the blindfold being lowered. My last glimpse of you: blurry for lack of glasses yet a cacophonous echo in my ears. My heart, poor bitch, nearly drowning out all other sounds in excitement.

The smack-slobber-clap of your lips meeting mine. Ears have filled with blood, the blood-pumping of our hearts. Only the occasional note slips through the blood barrier. A moan - mine or yours? You call my name. A suctioning. A slurping. A fart - a giggle! Breath. Breath. And more breath until...

What's this? A neighbor yelling? A door knocking - no wait, a person knocking on a door. Delivery next door? A silence that feels awkward.

I am back. My colleague is still being berated. Perspiration has filled the delicate curves of the keys and adds a gentle sloshing to the clackety-clack. My boss raps the glass of my window now - she's been trying to get my attention for some time, her face tells me. The headset remains in use but inoperative: no sound. You must have hung up.

Act II

Language, which not a second earlier was a vector for sound, now wafts your smell through the receiver. It began as all pleasantries do. You greeted me, I gave you the claim number, and you asked what I was calling about.

Now, what was it exactly that I was calling about?

Something has filled the air and clouded my mind. I take a breath to steady myself but all I can smell is an expensive bourbon. A little honeyed sweetness. The slightest pungency, as of horseradish. I keep inhaling. The plant in the corner of the restaurant where we're seated. A snug little romantic corner - just the two of us. Someone must have just watered that plant, and you are amazed that it's real and not fake.

Your breath smells of raw fish (it was wasabi all along, not horseradish!). Tuna perhaps, maybe salmon. I'm sweating, and I smell my cheap floral-inspired deodorant. I'm hoping you can't smell it, but you probably can.

I speak my next bit. You chew on it as you do your soy-soaked piece of unagi. You speak at me again. But the fragrance has changed.

It is the mushroomy acidity of precum. The lavender of laundry detergent. Your hand must have grazed my face on its way down my chest, for I caught a whiff of your strong metallic watch. Like spare change but with a bit of a library for good measure. Your hair falls on my forehead, tickling it softly but also imparting its aroma: vanilla mixed with grass. I didn't even know such a combination existed.

And then I smell something new: the stench of saliva. Yours or mine? On me or on you? It hardly matters. It is engorging in its repulsiveness. I want to be covered in it, smell it on me for days, unable to wash it out of every pore and orifice.

Slowly I notice you have stopped talking. I open my eyes. An oppressive odor invades my nostrils: the portion of my lunch I didn't eat sitting at the corner of my desk. I am back in the office. I perceive the smell of electronics working hard, discs spinning, data being pushed and pulled in every direction.

I smell my own breath as I finally exhale. I need some gum! I realize you've been waiting open-mouthed for my response to whatever question you asked, so I quickly say something to get things restarted. We hang up. We've used each other for all that we're worth to the other. Time to wash that tupperware!

Act III

I can picture you. All it takes is one sentence to ignite the imagination. Your office looks similar to mine only bigger. It must be a call center, with little desks smooshed together, and your coworkers' conversations bleeding into your own thoughts. I at least can shut my door. For some privacy.

What began as an interaction between two professionally dressed parties with opposing interests has quickly turned into something more. Sure, we spit out our cold, lifeless, blue-and-lilac and pale-yellow words: policy limits, indexing information, hold harmless, liability.

But suddenly your flat shoes have morphed into heels. Black as your shoulder-length hair, freed from its tight bun. It falls like a curtain on your back, which on closer inspection has no other covering. Your calf muscles flex, and your toes dig into the friction mat on the floor. Your words reveal the color of the lace you're wearing and how lustily it clings to your skin. The picture of the family vacation you took to Esmeraldas becomes the background to a scene that now looms larger than life.

Color fills the scene and saturates the poorly equipped rods and cones in my eyes. Tears bubble up, but I wipe them away.

Just in time to see you rise. Legs drawn taut and tightly together, the dark outlines where they meet glowing as if in a negative image. Slowly remove your headset, arms moving in their precise, coordinated choreography. Place your keyboard back on its rest, fingers knowing instinctively where everything belongs. You step to the left to push your chair in, and I see your entire nude body from behind. Green and orange and scarlet and cerulean become beige as the brown of your skin and the white of your lingerie fill my eyes as far as I can see.

And then you turn around.

Your whole body, all at once.

No sooner do I see you, reach out toward you with every body part capable of protruding outward, than you begin to fade. The harsh scientific light of my office pokes through the idyllic sky. The beach erodes into the sterile carpet of my office. My own shivering forearms and thighs are clothed once more. The computer screen returns with its hideous flat blue.

You hung up. The call is over. I have three emails to respond to.

Act IV

I feel your words.

First they tickle as they materialize in my ear. Then the pressure builds, and my stereocilia cannot withstand the cascade of syllables as they gush down my ear canal. My own pauses become longer and my breath shorter as your words tumble into my skull, syrup down my throat, and finally pool at my heart. There, each new sentence you pronounce falls into place like a Tetris game, and two warm hands form that gently cushion my throbbing cardiac muscle. They effortlessly match the excited rhythm of my heartbeat quickening with each agonizing second you pause to type away on your keyboard.

Soon my fingers are touching nothing at all. I lose the sensation of my clothing against my slightly sweaty skin. My feet, once resting giddily on the ground, now float in midair. All I can feel is the clunky plastic of the office phone wedged into my neck as tenderly as your own lips that I'll never see. I draw out my responses as much as possible just to feel the anticipation build in your voice like an avalanche quaking the snow-laden trees accumulating more and more pressure.

Now I know you've really got me.

A fuzziness creeps onto my scrotum. I feel the subtle moisture in my ears as if you're standing here whispering, teasing. Each ball begins to squirm as your words loosen my sac ever more, welcoming a hot surge of blood into every capillary.

Is this really happening? At the office no less!

Someone is talking. It is me! Apparently I extracted all the information I needed from you, for you tell me "bye-bye." The moment has passed. I finally exhale.

Act V

Sometimes, if I've been on hold for too long, I'll lick the phone receiver. Just out of curiosity, just to remind my body I'm still alive and agentic. It doesn't taste very good: warm sweat and plastic.

But then you appear. A sharp, anticipatory inhale as the meal is brought out from the kitchen. My mouth hangs open slightly, waiting to respond, but you just keep on talking. Filling my mouth with your sour-stale introductory words, your lukewarm disclaimers that the call is being recorded, etc. Soon my mouth is overflowing - you don't stop talking! The saliva has dried up on the tongue and lips.

But now for the main course: dialogue, the back-and-forth, the exchanging of information. We both have something the other wants. And we're going to get it.

Hungry, I sink my teeth into your "Tell me a little bit about what happened."

Aroused, your response is like a gush of stout or a heaping fork of Caesar salad.

My taste piqued, I try out a sultrier line I've been chewing on like rare steak. My teeth are still stained red after all this chewing - is it from the meat or the body paint on your back?

They really ought to make it edible, or at least fruity, like the condom I wiggled onto you. The sensation in my mouth was jarring: a popsicley strawberry guava taste on a meaty, full-bodied dick. But like pork and chutney, the two went together surprisingly well.

You come back with your honeyed "The claim number will be ___," the waxy words dripping from your bottom lip into my gaping mouth. The distance between our mouths, your standing and mine kneeling, renders the light prismatic through the oozey, gloopey, gooey strings of soy-and-maple dribbling from your mouth to mine. A scintillating combination of tastes so banal and exotic that my skin electrifies with each bite.

I can't get enough.

No sooner do I glance down at the plate than the server comes to clear it. Even the utensils have disappeared. A tiny shape blinking out of the corner of my eye comes into focus: the cursor obediently waiting for the next entry. But there will be none. You are gone. You ate me up and left me breathless.