FEATURE Sex talk Speaking of Phone Sex Simon Sheppard, QSyndicate.com "What are you wearing?" It's the classic question of phone sex, though there's no way to check if the answer is true. But then, talking dirty on the phone can be an odd mixture of truth and stimulating fiction, of contrived role-playing and unfiltered desire. "I love phone sex," says one carnal conversationalist, "because it gives my imagination full rein, but I'm still masturbating with someone, kind of, not just jacking off alone." In pre-Internet days, the main way of meeting strangers for abstract sex was the commercial phone-chat line, where, for a fee, you could be connected to a series of faceless, horny guys. Those of us with online access now tend to meet in cyberspace. Computerized carnality has some of the same pluses as phone sex: the safety of anonymity; the ability to play let's-pretend; the opportunity to try out fantasies. But there are still many men who want to talk on the telephone, even after an online introduction. "Cybering back and forth," says one guy, "only goes so far. I prefer the phone; I love to actually hear someone's voice. The feedback is more immediate, and there's not all that typing." (And there's the added benefit of knowing that the "dominant leatherman" you're flirting with isn't really a teenage girl with a vivid imagination.) Certainly, fucking on the phone can be amazingly hot, a rapid escalation of improvised lust, embellished, for those into it, with the sounds of kink – slapping, pissing, or the like – and climaxed by moans of orgasm, faked or real. Even so, phone sex can have its downside. One guy who does a lot of phone play has some gripes: "I'm a dominant top, but I hate talking with bottoms who let me do all the work, just repeating, 'Yes, sir,' over and over, or saying nothing at all. I want feedback, damn it. And then there are the guys who arrange online to talk on the phone, call you, but suddenly hang up just when things are getting good. They're wankers, and not in the good sense of the word." Still, when things click, telephone trysts can be amazingly hot. They can even be sonic foreplay. Our phone-sex top recalls, "I met this local bottomboy online. He had elaborate fantasies but not much experience. We started talking on the phone, once or twice a week or more. I loved his voice; he sounded so innocent and vulnerable and horny. And he loved how perverted I was. He finally got his courage up and agreed to meet in person. We ended up seeing each other for a few years. Boy, could he take a spanking!" Even in the flesh, the hottest sex is about the brain as well as the dick. But phone sex is all about the mind. Even people who've been dating or have long-term partners can find phone fun hot and horny-making. And strangers can reach out across continents and oceans and, as the ads used to say, "touch someone." Or grope, fuck, or fist someone – a disembodied someone, maybe, but no less hot for being just a voice. Hotter, maybe, since the object of your affection is a more-or-less blank screen on the other end of an electronic link; you can project your desires onto him unbound by physical reality. "When someone asks what I'm wearing, I usually say I'm naked," says a phone-sex veteran, "regardless of whether it's true. But sometimes I say 'leather chaps' or 'a dirty jockstrap,' even if I'm just in a T-shirt and sweatpants. I aim to please." And that's one big extra plus for phone sex: It's a date you don't have to dress up for. Simon Sheppard is the author of Kinkorama: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Perversion Sex Talk: Other Subjects G-Men dating