Phone Whore

Twenty five years ago, or something like that- it was in what certainly feels like another lifetime now, I made the acquaintance of a woman who was a phone sex operator and a fetish model. The interesting thing about her, well actually there were a few interesting things, but the one which stuck in my mind is that she only modeled shoes and most of her phone clientele had a shoe or foot fetish. She was a very large woman with small, exquisite feet. Yes, of course I made her show them to me. Wouldn't you? Today we have nicer adjectives for women of her size, but back then I just thought she was huge. Except for her feet. She was maybe a size 6 and she had perfectly shaped ankles.  Nothing else about her physical presence appealed to me personally, but I had to admit she was perfect for this particular job, except for the fact that she had a strong Brooklyn accent which I found funnier than hell and not at all sexy. Every now and again I would get her to tell me stories about the men she made her living off of and I would insist she tell me these stories in her "phone voice." The whole idea that men would actually call her and pay good money to have her describe her shoes and how she would walk all over them in her 5 inch feels was hilarious to me. At least until I met a professional dominatrix about a year later and then the whole shoe thing just seemed silly.

Whatever.

It was probably these fond memories of the times long past that made me want to see Cameryn Moore's Phone Whore at the Fringe Festival. I'd seen Moore earlier last weekend pitching the show and she kind of reminded me of the shoe model- large and at least in my mind, not exactly the woman I would want to picture on the other end of the line. Moore knows this- she gives a funny alternative description about what she tells her clients she actually looks like. Kind of like Kim Kardashian with a HH cup. It's all a fantasy, right?

Phone Whore is an hour with Moore as she talks about her job and details her specialties, which include BBC- an acronym I have no idea about the actual meaning of, but it seems to be about straight men who want to be gang-raped by other men, especially large African American men in a locker room, and incest and pedophilia fans. Yuck. Moore's take on this is "don't judge"- at least this is all going on in a fanstasy phone world and not in real life, but at the end it just gets icky. Too icky- probably because Moore's good enough at the gig to make the audience believe this is the way down the rabbit hole that in so many ways destroys actual lives when it no longer stays a "fantasy."

The program has a disclaimer which states "The activities depicted in Phone Whore are contained in fantasy scenarios created by mutually consenting adults. The depiction of any illegal activites should not be construed as advocating for real-life enactment of such activities." It's not as bad as what happens in "A Serbian Film," but it's not far from it. Did I say "ick"? You've been warned. It's billed as a comedy/drama- but once it gets to the incest/pedophile fantasies the comedy has been left far behind.

There are three remaining shows, but I think you could find something better to watch:
TUES SEPT 14 7:00 PM
WED SEPT 15 10:30 PM
FRI SEPT 17 7:00 PM