Women Lend Voice to Adult Phone Line

‘A lot of people aren’t open minded when it comes to this sort of thing. But we aren’t hurting a soul.’

Tiffany is not her real name. It is her nom de telephone , the one she gives the many men who call.

And 500 to 1,000 men call her each day.

Tiffany is paid to describe sex acts over the telephone. The 26-year-old Studio City woman works as a program director and “voice” for Lusty Lady Productions, which offers two-minute, sexually explicit messages to anyone with a telephone and $2 to pay for the toll call.

She and the other women who work for Lusty Lady agreed to be interviewed on the condition that their real names not be disclosed. Tiffany, Liz and Rose said they fear harassment from perverts and religious groups.

“There are a lot of weirdos out there,” Tiffany said. “We have to be careful. We have to protect ourselves.”

Lusty Lady began offering its recordings three months ago, joining 61 other “adult entertainment” messages that can be dialed in the state of California.

Pacific Bell first offered 976, or Dial-a-Message, lines in November, 1983. The numbers are rented to independent companies that pick the messages they offer. There are 976 lines for everything from horoscopes and stock market figures to movie reviews and sports scores.

But it is the adult entertainment lines that have proved most popular. They represent one quarter of all existing message lines, said Larry Mobbs, a Pacific Bell spokesman. Last year, there were 12 million calls to sex lines, almost 50% of all the calls made to 976 numbers. As of Sept. 1, 1985, adult messages have drawn only 27% of the calls, but still come in a close second to the horoscope lines.

Pacific Bell is one of many telephone systems across the country that have filed suit in federal court to stop telephone sex services.

“I think it’s sad and rather pathetic that this sort of thing goes on,” said Rosemarie Pegueros-Lev, a Sunland woman who is vice president of the National Organization for Women in California. “I think it furthers the exploitation of women as objects. The women who are doing this wouldn’t be doing it if they could earn decent wages at decent jobs.”

Said Jess Moody, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Van Nuys: “This is just awful what they are doing. I could say it is sinful and wicked. . . .It is a really degrading thing to a city. How can we allow the youth to be ravaged by the avalanche of pornography?”

Tiffany talks with the sound engineer as the actresses walk in from a dry, still October afternoon, into the cool, red-light darkness of a West Los Angeles sound studio where Lusty Lady records its messages twice a month.

Liz, from Sherman Oaks, wears all black: a low-cut top, leather miniskirt, lace hose and spiked heels. Liz, 28, is a former Miss Florida and third runner-up in the Miss America Pageant. She has acted in several NBC series and appeared in “Friday the 13th, Part III in 3-D.” With styled brunette hair and a perfectly made-up face, Liz is strikingly attractive. She is also nervous. This is her first recording session. She sits in the corner, anxiously smoking long, thin cigarettes.

Rose is a veteran at this game, having worked at it for almost a year and a half, mostly for a service in New York. The 27-year-old Venice woman sings in a rock ‘n’ roll band. Dressed in a rumpled, sleeveless undershirt and cut-off jeans, she kneels barefoot on the carpet and sips fruit juice.

Tiffany emerges from the sound booth.

“I think we’re going to do the menage ,” she said.

The women reach for their scripts and move toward a bank of microphones at the center of the black-walled studio.

“Remember,” Tiffany said, “the energy level . . . just like in rehearsals . . . keep that energy level up. Those men are out there listening, give it to them.”

The three stand before the microphones awaiting the engineer’s cue. Rose licks her lips. Liz tugs on her skirt. Tiffany stares intently at a stopwatch she holds. With the cue, the stopwatch clicks and Tiffany speaks.

“The message you are about to hear is sexually explicit in nature. If you are under the age of 18 or if you would be offended by sexually explicit material, please hang up now.”

Rose leans toward the microphones.

“Liz, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you. . . . Oh! I didn’t realize there was a man here. Would you like to join us?”

Like many women who are paid to talk dirty, Tiffany was a struggling actress when she took her first telephone sex job.

“I thought, gosh, this is kind of weird,” she recalled. “But it was all on the up and up. And I could create a sexy lady and be anonymous. That was exciting.”

In the two years since, Tiffany has had other vocal jobs: speaking the part of the unseen receptionist in a dog food commercial and cooing in the high-pitched tones of a female chipmunk for the animated cartoon show “Alvin and the Chipmunks.”

After some prodding, she breaks into various cartoon voices, moving from the slightly mousy sound of her normal speaking voice into a high-toned pitch of a small girl, then down the scale to a throaty, sexy voice.

It is that tone that Tiffany has turned into a career of sorts, rising in the ranks from just a “voice.” As a program director, she is responsible for auditioning and casting, script-writing and directing the vocal mini-dramas.

“There are certain ways to do an ‘oooooh’ and an ‘ahhhhhh,’ ” she said.

Lusty Lady’s two-minute messages are, to say the least, sexually explicit and border on raunchy. Tiffany--an ebullient woman given to energetic, staccato talk and sudden bouts of laughter--is quick to point out that what she does is a professional acting job.

“Sometimes when I record, I picture in my head. . . .I wonder who’s listening to me,” Tiffany said. “I know there are a lot of sleazy old men who call. But there are also professional people, attorneys. I kind of picture a lot of lonely men who want to hear a sexy woman talk.”

Tiffany pulls ideas for her scripts from everyday life--a stroll on the beach, a country picnic or a sex trio in a Jacuzzi. The writing, she asserts, demands realism. It is not work for the timid.

What does her mother think about Tiffany’s line of work?

“We happen to know her. She’s a lovely human being,” said her mother, Marcia, in a telephone interview from the family’s home in North Miami Beach, Fla. “What she’s doing right now has nothing to do with what she’s like.”

In fact, Marcia, who calls her daughter every day, has given Tiffany several ideas for vignettes.

“My parents are not old fuddy-duddies,” Tiffany said.

Tiffany coaches Liz and Rose through the menage a trois recording, keeping a careful eye on the stopwatch, swaying to the rhythm of the dialogue, at times waving her hands like an orchestra conductor.

As the plot unfolds, Liz talks excitedly into the microphones. Rose, the veteran, remains relaxed, with arms crossed. At the end of the scene, she twists her body and wrings her hands.

Word comes from the booth that the recording is a good one. Liz giggles and lets loose a sigh, her first message completed.

Out in the lobby, smoking another cigarette as Rose records solo, Liz explains why a former beauty queen got involved with telephone sex. First, there is the money. The actresses--at Lusty Lady, the women who read scripts are always referred to as actresses--earn $100 for a two-hour recording session.

“It’s good, recreational fun,” she added. “If you talked this way to any other boy, you’d scare him to death, at least the ones I hang around with. This is an opportunity to do it without anyone knowing.

“After all, there are two sides to everyone, aren’t there?”

“I don’t think it’s a question of morals,” Rose said after the recording session was finished. “It’s a matter of ethics. You can do whatever you want as long as you don’t hurt anybody.”

Said S. L. Tyree, president of the company, “It’s like anything in the entertainment industry. There are those who like it and those who don’t. We don’t want people who would be offended to call us.”

All three women dismissed the suggestion that they are being exploited.

“I don’t feel like I’m getting exploited,” Rose said. “I’m getting paid really well for what I’m doing. I’m doing it consciously, because I want to. I don’t call that exploitative.”

The program director has the last word.

“We don’t make the woman a victim in any way,” she said. “A lot of people aren’t open minded when it comes to this sort of thing. But we aren’t hurting a soul. It’s OK for women to feel sexual. Too many woman are afraid of their sexuality.

“And these are words that people use in the bedroom. I’m sure of it.”