The one where reality lives up to expectations...

A short post, and an odd one, but I need to do it.

(Is it terrible to be terrible?)

(Yes.)

Following Sammy's death, an internet troll decided to separate me from the herd, decided to be lioness to my nervous, flighty, incompetent gazelle.

We both visit a certain website dedicated to... well, a fetish. Not a fetish that would cause you to gasp or make milk go up your nose, no... more of a common fixation turned art project, if you will.

A minor, not major, fetish.

And that's minor as in "inferior in importance," not "underage child."

Why, look! I am sweating bullets.

As always happens on sites dedicated to x, y, or a minor fetish, an actual community has evolved midst the serious virtual business of reviewing videos and talking shop. It's not a warm and fuzzy nuclear family; No, it's more of a dysfunctional and fuzzy one.

Holiday gatherings are just a scream.

The gentleman who runs the site established the usual area in the back (behind the stacks of cardboard boxes and piles of mostly empty paint cans and ancient twined-together newspapers), where regulars and irregulars, alike, can vent about almost anything. And so we do.

And so I did. I began a thread about Sam-I-Am and as time passed and he became so ill, I revived the thread to share the sad news of his final illness. It helped, in a small way, because as diverse a crowd as it is over there, people are dependable. Folks love their pets, and such simple commonalities transcend politics and all our other contrived differences.

(Are you still with me?)

The pointy-nosed skank of a troll just couldn't stand it.

She suggested that I donate Sam-I-Am's body to a vet school, ridiculed my grief for a pet, and asserted her image of me as a dried up old lady prune presiding over dreary afternoon salons.

To her friendly comments, she attached, for my viewing pleasure, a video of a feline necropsy.

Truth be told, my only response was a fairly clean-burning anger and a clarified vision of what she must be like. I have managed to hold that anger in check while "in public." In private, I have longed for a few minutes alone with her, a meeting that she would not leave unscathed. (Okay, so maybe she could beat me to a pulp with just the tip of her long, forked, wicked tongue... On the other hand, I have no compunction about running over her flabby ass with my wheelchair.)

In high school, I dissected a cat, and while I wish there had been a fetal pig option, at least I cannot be shocked by the sight.

I said something terminally witty, something along the lines of how she needed psychiatric help. So original! So scathing! (And yet, so true...)

Then I decided the SheTroll could serve as helpful antidote to the poison of our loss. When my sorrow reaches the Point of Emotional Silliness, I only have to imagine her fetid breath, her previously-referenced flabby ass, and her sociopathy to bring me back to Sufficiently Grounded Reality.

Then, too, I thought to employ some of the maturity and smarts people keep insisting I have on hand, and try to let it go. (No, not "let go and let God..." -- just "let it the hell go...")

It turns out, of course, that people, especially fetishists, are just lovely. Yes, you are right -- I've been tackled by that punchline before and doubtless will again.

When I checked my box at the hoodoo voodoo site yesterday, I was heartened and touched by the expressions of juju sympathy over Sammy's death from the gathered brethren and sistren.

There was universal disdain for the necropsy-nattering troll, and I felt much better about things.
Not about Sammy, about *things*. Fred and I both burst into unexpected tears, mostly as we witness the grief of the remaining cats -- and no, it is not our anthropomorphism in play. All three are greatly altered in their behavior and are clearly bringing forth their curiosity, sadness, and confusion.

Anyway, as to the reason I am writing, and you are reading... THIS? I just opened another bit of mail over at this site, from a member I don't know well, but who has always been very nice, and often funny. She enclosed a link to a 2008 news article published in the UK's Independent, saying that she just wanted to share in the great gulping laughter she experienced when she initially discovered the article -- which features none other than our own beloved troll.

Troll extols herself as an academic, perhaps a researcher, touts having "worked with" Margaret Mead and other tossable names -- most recently, while analyzing moi-même, she pronounced herself a therapist. She's a swirling dervish of an expert in everything.

(Funny, in what proved to be a not-far-off impulse, it went through my mind that she was more likely a Dominatrix for Droopy-Diapered Adult Babies... that seemed both more her speed, and definitely more her crowd.)

It turns out she's a Phone-Sex Operator*, recasting herself as Scheherazade.

Oh, my heart is light, my laugh is gay, and Sammy, somewhere, is chirping himself into a good, long purr.

THE TROLL, PICTURED ABOVE, DESCRIBES HERSELF:
I'm 60 years old, have a BA in cultural anthropology from Columbia University, and I've been married for 25 years. I have a son in his last year of college who lives at home. He's a double major in English Literature and Religion. Men call me for an infinity of reasons – but mostly for what I call 'Executive Stress Relief'. It's not sex; it's a cocktail of testosterone, fuelled by addiction to pornography, loneliness, and the need to hear a woman's voice. I make twice the money I made in the corporate world. I work from home, the money transfers into my bank account daily. I'm Scheherazade: if I don't tell stories that fascinate the Pasha, he will kill me in the morning.

From the news article's introduction by Catherine Townsend:
When I see the late-night ads for premium-rate phone sex lines featuring nubile, tanned young women, I get curious about who is actually on the other end of the phone. Like many people, I sometimes imagine that she's a bored housewife, moaning and calling herself a "naughty girl" while smoking a fag and doing the ironing.

But whether they are working in a packed call centre wearing headsets or from home wearing lingerie, phone-sex operators (or PSOs) are as diverse as the callers. I can definitely see the appeal of wanting to make money from talking dirty, like the Americans pictured here in Phillip Toledano's compelling portraits. But these women (and men, some very successful PSOs have been boys with high-pitched voices!) have to do so much more: they have to morph into a role that is part therapist, part sexual surrogate. They also have to improvise and create multiple personae in order to play the submissive secretary, the naughty nurse, the adult baby, the porn star or the barely legal teen girl.

Our Vaunted Troll was also noticed by some of her fellow Columbia alums, over at the Columbia Bwog (the 24/7 blog incarnation of The Blue and White, Columbia University’s monthly undergraduate magazine). In the comment section after the blog entry entitled, "You, too, could be a phone sex operator," a few salient points were raised, as in: Is there even a major available at Columbia in cultural anthropology? Given the Vaunted Troll's age, might not her Columbia have been GS or Barnard? (I'm sure Barnard collegians everywhere are delighted by the suggestion.)

The most repeated comment, though, was a request for "eye bleach, stat!"


* Some of my best friends are Phone Sex Operators.
** Unfortunately, just a few weeks after this post was written, I had to leave PTZ for good... driven off, not by a skanky PSO, but by something even worse, a skanky moralist -- a woman prone to fits of pique and fixated on "hating" me (her verb choice -- and we honor her verbal decisions because she is a... writer. Mwa ha ha! Snort!). 

The photography that accompanies the article is exceptional, and was published in book form by the artist, Phillip Toledano, in 2009.