Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Phone Sex Story: Archive

Cut-and-pasted version of my phone-sex story, which is tragically unavailable online at my paper since it got victimized by our "let's take all the articles down after two months" policy. Luckily, I found the story in bootleg form on a sex-gazette site, next to photos which dishonestly suggest I'm a scantily-clad smoking-hot 18-year-old Asian chick. With truly enormous hooters.

For a Good Time, Call Jennifer
My Brief Career as a Phone-Sex Worker
April 5, 2007

By Jennifer Abel

"Oh yes," I sighed. "Yes. Right there. Please - oh! Oh, God. Harder. Please, oh God, Simon, don't stop. Oh yes Oh, yes ooooooh." My words melted into incoherent moans.

"You like that, don't you?" Simon's husky voice demanded.

"I love it," I gasped.

"You smell so good," he groaned. "Oh my God." He literally screamed upon reaching his finale, and I turned my head just enough to keep his loud cries out of my ear. "That was amazing," he finally said. "Thank you."

"No, thank you," I murmured.

"You have a great day, Jennifer," Simon said, and hung up the phone. I resumed normal breathing as I scrawled in my notebook: "Simon, hardcore sex call, came and went in eight minutes. Thanked me before hanging up, very nice of him." I would've written more but the phone rang again, so I picked up the receiver for another performance.

***

My phone sex career was (ahem) conceived the previous week, when I strolled into my boss's office and said "Good morning, Alistair. I saw a help-wanted ad for a phone sex line. No experience necessary! And I'm told I have a nice phone voice. Can I try it?"

Editors always smile when their writers say such things. "If you feel comfortable with that, go right ahead."

"I don't feel comfortable at all," I said cheerfully. "I expect I'll be quite awful. But won't it be fun to write about?"

With a fast Internet connection you can find a phone chat job in under a minute. I signed on with a company that runs psychic hotlines and straight and gay sex lines for men. After filling out the online application I got an e-mail telling me it was being processed, and meanwhile here's the pay scale, job requirements and password to a restricted Web site where I could print out an employee handbook.

Two words for anyone who wants to get rich giving phone sex: don't bother. In theory, you can make up to 40 cents a minute, but to get that you have to do at least 60 calls a week with an average call length of 10 minutes or more. If your calls average six minutes or less, you only make a nickel a minute and risk being fired. (And you're only paid for when you actually talk, not the time spent waiting for the phone to ring.)

But the deck's stacked so a high average is hard to get. For example, you have to hang up if you get a call from a minor, but that means a five-second call bringing down your average. There's no appeals process to say, "Yes, that was a short call but it doesn't count."

If, despite the low pay, you still want to work in phone sex, the other main requirements are a land-line phone connected by a wall cord (nothing cellular or cordless, lest a 10-year-old with a ham radio listen in) and a quiet place to work without interruptions.

The next morning Alistair looked quite interested as I explained how the pay scale worked, but when I mentioned the need for uninterrupted privacy he gave me an intent look.

"Are you sure you're up to this? Emotionally?"

"Oh, sure," I said airily. "It'll be -"

"Seriously," he said, so I changed tone too.

"Seriously? If I were looking for an actual second job, I wouldn't even consider this. But it'll be a funny story."

"All right. But you stop the minute you start feeling creepy. I'm serious."

"Of course I will," I promised.

***

Sex lines, psychics and other pay-per-call services started in 1980, when the FCC ruled that phone companies couldn't put limitations on the content or ownership of so-called Dial-It services, where customers could call phone numbers (usually in the 976 exchange) for weather forecasts, horoscopes and other oft-updated information and have a per-minute fee added to their phone bill.

Once businesses other than the phone company could run paid calls, there appeared almost immediately a service known as "dial-a-porn," where customers could hear recordings of women describing graphic sex acts. Naturally, dial-a-porn inspired laws to shut it down on obscenity grounds until 1983, when the Supreme Court deemed such content bans unconstitutional.

Now phone sex is a billion-dollar-a-year industry, and when the numbers come out for 2007 a couple hundred of those dollars will have been shelled out by guys talking to me.

***

While waiting for the chat line to process my application I implemented a half-assed training program: I watched the fake-orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally and read the sample scripts in my employee handbook.

Success in phone sex requires a good voice, salacious imagination and ability to talk drop-dead raunchy without embarrassment. The third one matters most in phone porn, where even Jenna Jameson's libido won't help you if superimposed over the vocabulary of a nun.

The third one worried me. I know how to flirt but that's all implication and innuendo - everything phone sex is not. Those sample scripts used nouns and verbs I don't even utter to the gentlemen who've applied them to me. However, English is a versatile language. Many of its rude words do double-time as syllables in terms so respectable even a nun can say them. So I practiced the full-length versions as a prelude to the vulgar abridgements.

"Cockamamie," I said. "Tittering pussy-willow dictator." I also bought a large bottle of chocolate liqueur.

On Sunday a woman from the chat line called to give me my extension, pass code and the toll-free number I'd call to log in.

To simplify matters I decided to use my real name and description (minus a few years off my age). The important part of the message dealt with my ideal man. The preferred answer was "breathing," but I had to be pickier. Though the handbook talked about many different types of callers I could expect, they basically fell into two categories: men who took the lead in calls, and men who expected the woman to.

A phone-sex call with me taking the lead? No. I needed an introduction that would enflame the take-charge guys while leaving the meek ones cold.

So I described myself as a hot 27-year-old and added "I like a strong man who knows what he wants and knows how to get it. If that's you then pick me so I can give you what you want."

***

Alistair agreed next morning when I suggested I take the afternoon off to sit alone in my empty apartment and wait for obscene phone calls.

I went home at noon. Of course I had to eat lunch first, and the coffee table needed clearing, and hey, here's that barrette I was looking for, better put it away so I don't lose it. . .By 1:30 p.m. I stopped procrastinating.

But I better use the bathroom before I start. And I should really -

The phone rang. I answered and heard a recording from the Dispatch Center, saying they needed agents to work the lines now so stay on if I could.

Oh, hell! I grabbed a notebook and pen and downed the shot I'd poured. After a few seconds I heard, "Thank you, agent 5380. Please enter your four-digit passcode followed by the pound sign." I did. "Thank you. You are now logged out. Press one to log in."

Two o'clock. The phone rang at 2:01 p.m. and a recorded male voice said "Hardcore sex call. Press one for hardcore sex call." Here goes.

"Hey, it's Jennifer," I said softly. Complete silence. "What's your name?" More silence. I pressed one again, and hung up after hearing more nothing. I got three more silent calls, and at 2:08 I hung up to log out and in again. The phone rang before I could.

"You're 18 or 19 and hold nothing back. Press one for 18 or 19 and hold nothing back."

What happened to 27? I pressed one and said, "Hey, it's Jennifer," for the fifth time in eight minutes, doubting anyone would actually answer.

But a man's voice said hello! It was Jay, my first phone sex partner.

Phone sex is like the real thing, in that no woman's good her first time and if she says she was she's lying. Jay expected my clueless virgin self to take command of the situation and I had no idea how, so I asked "What do you want me to do for you, Jay?"

He wanted to hear me have a good time. With no assistance from him.

The handbook says phone performers do better if they get into a fantasy. Okay: I'm in a diner eating lunch with Billy Crystal. Moan. Gasp. A few soft-core phrases from the manual. I sounded a little stilted but Jay got the happy ending he sought and hung up just after I heard the telltale gasping on his end of the line.

A successful call from Jay's perspective but a failure from the company's viewpoint, lasting only three minutes.

The next two callers were jokers; I actually heard the third guy's friends snickering on the line. And between those two I picked up the phone to hear, "You are a mistress with a strap-on dildo."

Like hell I am. I hung up.

Discouraged, I logged out after the third caller and e-mailed an update to my editor: "I am very very bad at this, here."

Good editors always respond with prompt encouragement and guidance. "I'm sure it takes practice."

I logged back in.

Alistair was right: it does take practice. After an hour I could stretch calls out for eight to 12 minutes, though my average was still pretty low: I hung up on one kid so young his voice hadn't changed yet, and 30 seconds into "press one for a 15-minute credit card call" I heard a beep and a metallic voice: "You have one minute left."

By 4:30 my routine, when sanitized, boiled down to: "Let me unzip you. Wow, that's impressive. I'm inspired to do things to it - My shirt is off. Behold the grandeur of the twins. Oh, it must be cold in here - I'll remove my underwear too. What, you'll do it for me? Forsooth, that feels nice."

And the Foley artistry. The first time a caller wanted to hear me being spanked, all I could think to do was draw my knee up next to the receiver and slap it. It worked until I started laughing and failed to disguise that as passionate gasps.

For imitating Clintonian acts I filled a small bowl with water, to wet my fingers when I needed to start sucking on them. This technique also conveys helpful voice-muffling qualities. Some guys even like the occasional gagging sound, which proved useful when I swallowed water down the wrong pipe and had a coughing fit.

"You chokin' on me, baby?" the caller asked.

"Yes - cough - you're so big I - cough - don't know if I can - cough handle it - cough oh God - ha hamf humf."

But I couldn't rise to all challenges (or get the caller to, which is the same thing). One call went well until the man said he'd just used my mouth as a toilet and wanted to know how that tasted.

"Hell on a biscuit, honey, how should I know?" I wanted to say, but that would be unprofessional. So I guessed. "Uh, salty?"

Must've guessed wrong. He hung up.

***

Not counting the disconnects and kid hang-ups, I took around 24 calls that day. Most of the guys wanted a quick phone roll in the hay, but a few had an emotional component to their fantasy. Simon, the one who told me to have a great day before he hung up, acted like his first time with a woman he'd long loved.

But they were rare. Most of the guys liked name calling, with dirty bitch, nasty slut and filthy whore punctuating their chats. I don't know if that's standard for phone sex or the result of my "strong man" message (why strength should mean abuse is another question). And I could hardly interview the guys about their motivations when they were paying by the minute to chat with me.

By quarter after six I felt pretty jaded. "Press one for hardcore sex call."

"Hello, Jennifer," my caller said pleasantly. "My name is Nikolai and I'm a dominator. I'm looking for a pretty woman to be a submissive. Would you like to do that, Jennifer?"

You know how sometimes you don't notice your refrigerator running until it shuts off? His voice struck me like that. All my calls, even minus their X-rated content, shared a quality I hadn't noticed until Nikolai spoke without it: a pay-by-the-minute rather than conversational tone. He spoke in complete sentences with clear enunciation. None of my other callers sounded like they'd willingly read a book in their lives.

This man sounded like the men I know.

As for his request, all I knew about S&M were its pop culture handcuffs-and-black-leather stereotypes. His familiar tone made me slip out of character, so I answered with my normal voice instead of my breathy oh-yes one: "I don't know. What would that entail?" I quickly amended, "I mean, I've never done that before."

"Really? You haven't?" He sounded genuinely surprised.

Oops! Go in for the save. And don't use words like entail. "Maybe you could show me how." I paused. "You'd be nice to me, wouldn't you, Nikolai? You wouldn't hurt me?"

Bingo. "Oh, I'll hurt you, you stupid little slut. You deserve it. But I won't hurt you as badly if you do what you're told."

He sounded angry and the abrupt change surprised me, but I figured it part of his game. Spanky-spanky, I thought. Middle-class suburban vanilla S&M play. I've seen it in skits on Comedy Central.

"I'll do what I'm told," I said. This at first entailed my repeating the statement along with his name and various affirmations. He made me describe my appearance and then said, "I'm going to put a lot of bruises on that pretty white skin."

All day I'd heard fantasies I found repulsive, but Nikolai's were the first that would cause actual damage if played out. He wants to bruise me? Even as a fake-out that bothered me, and my real voice re-appeared when I said "No, I don't want you to do that."

And from his next response crawled the slimy fantasy that slithered through the stinking wasteland of his libido: he said he'd rape me, strangle me, and cut off body parts I'd much rather keep.

I let out my night's only genuine gasp, and almost hung up. But no - I wanted to see what these calls were like, right? Hell of a story. Besides, it's only a phone call with some distant stranger.

So I stayed on, and faked neither bewilderment nor horror when I asked, "Why - why would you want to do such a thing to me?"

"Because you deserve it, you stupid little bitch."

All right, I can see where this is going. I'm supposed to beg him not to. I did.

The storyline got worse. Three minutes into it he started threatening my (imaginary) little sister, too. Again I almost hung up, but suggested he do things to me instead. He agreed.

"Get down on all fours, you dirty bitch. I just kicked you in your side. I just smashed your pretty little face. How does that feel?"

He called me pretty dozens of times in the context of destruction: bruise my pretty skin, rip out my pretty hair, smash my pretty face. If the beating were real I'd've been dead six minutes into the call.

I've long known sadists existed, but only in the abstract; I'd never actually talked to one. Doing so was like feeling pain after a lifetime of only reading about it.

And this sadist who daydreamed of torture and murder was the only man all day who sounded like the ones I know.

I think I lost it. At some point the call became almost real: this man wants to do horrible things and I have to talk him out of it!

Fifteen minutes later he started building up to the climax of his story: he wanted to hear me say, "I'm a stupid little slut who deserves to be raped and strangled and have my tits cut off."

That's what almost made me hang up at the start. I didn't hang up now, but I couldn't say that sentence. I'd spent the whole day in character uttering words I'd never said before, but I did. Not. Want to say that sentence. I spent several minutes trying to bargain out with less extreme variants. Finally, I managed to choke out the phrase and added, "But please, don't do that! Please?"

Silence. The air collapsed, somehow. I thought he'd hung up. Then he spoke again, in the same friendly, cultivated, every-man-I-know tone he'd introduced himself with 20 minutes before.

"Thanks for playing along with this, Jennifer. Bye-bye."

I logged out for good soon after. A few calls came through but none lasted more than two minutes - I'd lost whatever competence I'd gained.

I'd been had. The son of a bitch wanted a mind fuck, not a phone one.

***

The next night I thought I'd change my greeting and try one more shift to collect more data, but my password didn't work and I got a curt e-mail saying the company "is no longer purchasing your services." Too short a call average, I guess.

That's how you get fired from a phone sex line. At five cents per minute, I made around three or four dollars. I don't mind being a phone-porn failure, but it was damned annoying to sit in Alistair's office later and admit, "OK, you could maybe make the argument I was just a tad overconfident when I told you I could handle this."

But I would've been right, had I quit before that call from Nikolai. There's a warped lesson on the value of perseverance. And I learned another useless lesson from the night's events: a sense of ironic detachment strong enough to sustain you through spanking your knee and fellating your fingers won't do jack to prevent a sadistic murder fantasy from scaring the hell out of you.

Obvious in retrospect, isn't it?

There's a lot of paperwork required to claim your first and only paycheck from a sex chat line. But I won't cash it when it comes. No, I'll buy a dollar-store frame and keep it on my desk, and then someday - if God is good to me - an unsuspecting person walking through the office will say, "Why, Jennifer, whatever is that check?" And I'll flash a smile filled with sunshine and innocence, and say "That's the cumulative lifetime royalties from my career in phone porn."

Oh God, oh please, oh yes.

57 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ah!, a walk down memory lane.

It was good for me. In fact, if I smoked, I would be dragging of a non taxed reservation cigarette at this moment. I hope it was good for you too.

I will never know what sex with Jennifer is like, but at least I have an idea of how good phone sex with her is.

9:21 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey! Where's the smokin' hot Asian babe with the huge hooters?! RIP OFF!!! *







* ;-)

12:02 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

BTW - did you ever collect a check? If so, how much was it? (if you don't mind my asking.)

12:11 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

No problem, Smartass. Turns out I underestimated how long I'd worked in the story: I made 33 calls over two hours and change, thus qualifying me for the seven-cents-a-minute pay rate. I made a total of $9.33.

The check is framed and hanging on the wall of the Advocate office, over a sign I made which reads "THE WAGES OF SIN ARE LOW."

1:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The check is framed and hanging on the wall of the Advocate office...

Not even minimum wage? You should have cashed it - why let them have a bunch of free labor? You could have put a photo-copied version on the wall.

3:26 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

I'd thought about that, Smartass, but if I cashed it I'd suffer a lot more than $9.33 worth of aggravation adding that to my state and Federal tax forms. (The $9.33 was pre-tax.)

4:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

FWIW: Jennifer is sexier and more desireable than any smokin' hot asian babe with huge hooters.

4:23 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

FWIW: Jennifer is sexier and more desireable than any smokin' hot asian babe with huge hooters.

Ditto.

4:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ditto.

Then again, if you had any pictures of the smokin hot asian babe with large breasts, it might be a good idea to post them just so we can be sure.

5:44 PM  
Blogger Jason Sonenshein said...

Speaking of phone sex, check out the Lie Girls, from the people who brought you Pleasure Boat Captains for Truth.

7:56 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

Awww. Y'all are so sweet.

8:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

it might be a good idea to post them just so we can be sure.

Here ya go, Moose. Be sure and wipe the drool off your chin before you come back here. :-)

I've always found Asian women attractive - in fact, I once had a bad yin for a certain woman of Eurasian ancestry - but Jennifer has 'em all beat with her beautiful red hair. Stunning!*






*See? Even I can be "sweet" occasionally.

10:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Be sure and wipe the drool off your chin before you come back here. :-)

Appreciate it, but no drool. Woman looks like she has a bad fever to me.

Now the one on the right in the ad looks much more interesting. Where do I know her from?

3:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Where do I know her from?

I'm sure I don't know - your dreams perhaps? ;-)

5:49 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm sure I don't know - your dreams perhaps? ;-)

Don't know. She wants to be that woman that won the hair contest with her hair made into an american flag looking thing around her body, at least in my mind, but I can't find the pic of that woman now so I don't know.

Hey, Jennifer, just a point of order. If there's a way you can drop the articles into a separate section so we don't have to keep scanning down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and miss what we're looking for and down and down as it's buried in long articles and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down.

That'd be better.

6:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey, Jennifer, just a point of order. If there's a way you can drop the articles into a separate section so we don't have to keep scanning down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and miss what we're looking for and down and down as it's buried in long articles and down and down and down and down and down and down and down and down.
That'd be better.


For those that don't understand the previous visual aid illustrating the problem.

6:06 AM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

I don't think I can, Moose. If it were up to me I would have put the archived articles into a separate folder or something, but since this is a free program I can't complain about the lack of luxuries, I guess.

6:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't think I can, Moose. If it were up to me I would have put the archived articles into a separate folder or something, but since this is a free program I can't complain about the lack of luxuries, I guess.

Then I would suggest that The AntiJennifer start blogging. The AntiJennifer (AJ for short), has the mission to memorialize the writings of Jennifer, and exists simply as a holographic image dedicated for such. Like the Shaolin, reach, she cannot be touched, listen, she cannot be heard, but read, and you can see the writings of Jennifer....

Would be a good solution to the problem, then you could just reference a link.

7:40 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

...once had a bad yin for...

That should be yen; yin is the female principle in Chinese dualistic philosophy - the passive element.

8:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

That should be yen; yin is the female principle in Chinese dualistic philosophy - the passive element.

Actually, that's technically a grammer error, not a spelling error. Are you trying to move in on my turf?

9:41 AM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

THERE ARE TWO "A"S IN "GRAMMAR!" TWO!!

10:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually, that's technically a grammer error, not a spelling error. Are you trying to move in on my turf?

If he meant yen as in desire, inclination, urge, then it is simply mispelled.

BTW, it is grammar - not grammer. ;-)

10:08 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oops! Sorry for the cross-posting, Jennifer.

10:10 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"THERE ARE TWO "A"S IN "GRAMMAR!" TWO!!"

Try telling that to Kelsey Grammer.

2:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, for-crying-out-loud! I'll re-phrase the comment: I once had the hots for a certain woman of Eurasian ancestry. THERE! Everybody happy now? (fascists - fascists everywhere I go!)*







* ;-)

5:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I once had the hots for a certain woman of Eurasian ancestry.

Hey, isn't that supposed to be spelled with a "z" when used in this context?

1:53 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Isn't what supposed to be spelled with a "z" - "that"? I don't know; I don't think so.

5:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Isn't what supposed to be spelled with a "z" - "that"? I don't know; I don't think so.

Relax, I was just kidding with so many Nazis about. I suck at spelling, I'm an engineer. I suck at grammer, I'm an engineer. So, I don't worry much about it, though I do try to do as best I can.

12:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"I once had the hots for a certain woman of Eurasian ancestry."

Hey, isn't that supposed to be spelled with a "z" when used in this context?

Are you referring to "hotz" or "Eurazian"? Or possibly "zertain"?

8:12 PM  
Blogger Anne O'Neimaus said...

spelling nazi said...

...once had a bad yin for...

That should be yen; yin is the female principle in Chinese dualistic philosophy - the passive element.


-------------------------

This is a test.
This is only a test.
This is a test of a proposed solution to the ***VERY LONG POST*** issue, raised previously.

To see how it works, click on the female link (either here, or above).

Otherwise, this stuff between the dashed lines is just filler to make an appropriately-long test-post. Basically, I want the post to be so long that it doesn't all fit on the screen.

Of course, this is a difficult condit9ion to ensure, as I have no idea what resolution the viewer's monitor is set to...mine, alas, is a mere 1024x768.

Still, we try our best, until our fingers fall off from all this useless typing.

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This has been a test of the National Emergency Broadcast System.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled programming.


-------------------------
Or, to be truly atrocious in our AnneGrammatical misspelling:

"...That should be yang; yin is the female principle..."

10:20 PM  
Blogger Anne O'Neimaus said...

To End

OK, so here's my proposed solution for quick-navigation of long posts:

At the top of a long article (heck, get into the habit, and do it to every article), insert:

<a href="#End" name="Top">To End</a>

NOTE: There are no inserted-by-the-author linefeeds in the above. The column-layout imposed by Blogger may seem to add linefeeds, but it is critical that it all be typed as a single line of text. You can (and should) put a linefeed or two afterwards, though. (A linefeed is what you get when you press the "Enter" Key.)

Then, at the bottom of the article, append:

<a href="#Top" name="End">To Top</a>

This basically makes a Hyperlink at the top "To End" which jumps to the in-document Target "#End" at the bottom - which is nicely attached to the Hyperlink at the bottom "To Top". That, in turn, is Linked to the "#Top" Target, specifying the initial "To End" Hyperlink.

In the main Blogger section, the top of the "next" article should now be visible, along with its own "To End" Hyperlink, if the reader wants to keep skipping downwards (and more-or-less vice-versa, if the reader wants to quickly scan upwards).

It's actually not all that complicated to do, in practice. Just make a small file in your favorite text-editor with the two "Tag" lines. Then, when you make a post, copy-and-paste the contents of that file, first. Insert all your actual text-of-interest between these two lines. Voila! You're Golden (or gloriously Auburn, in Jennifer's case).

:)

To Top

10:48 PM  
Blogger Anne O'Neimaus said...


To End


Oops...

OK, not quite good-enough.
The problem is, that each "article" shares the same page (and thus, name-space) with all the other articles. This means that each "To End" might all jump to the very same "#End" Target, instead of the one immediately below the Hyperlink. In my limited testing, it has worked out OK so far, but that might just be the way my particular Browser is handling things.

To fix this, it is only a tiny bit more complicated. Your Target-Names have to be unique. This can be as simple as using href="#End01" name="Top01" in the top Hyperlink (and the reverse, href="#Top01" name="End01" in the bottom Hyperlink), changing that to ...02 next time, and so forth.

If you think you might lose track of what number you are "on", next, then use something unique about the article, instead:

<a href="End of ArticleName" name="Top of ArticleName">
<i>To End</i>
<a>
...
<a href="Top of ArticleName" name="End of ArticleName">
<i>To Top</i>
<a>

(Yes, I got fancy, and added <i>...</i> to the mix. You don't need it, I just think it makes the navigation-links stand out from the text a little better.)

Instead of ArticleName, you could use the current date-and-time, or whatever.



To Top

11:14 PM  
Blogger Anne O'Neimaus said...

Sorry to pollute your nice commentary with boring old HTML-coding stuff, Folks.

We'll return you to our regularly-scheduled incisive insightfulness.

Move along...
Nothing to see...

Just rambling too much 'cause its been an intense week at work, and this is the first chance I've had to check Jen's 'Blog (or my eMail, for that matter).

11:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Just rambling too much 'cause its been an intense week at work, and this is the first chance I've had to check Jen's 'Blog (or my eMail, for that matter).

Obviously, you're not as pathetic as Nostar, Smartass, or myself that check it multiple times daily in the ringing emptiness of nothing new.

I'm still for the separate site for the archives, I'd rather see the newer stuff here.

2:48 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

Moose, from now on when I write an Advocate story good enough to keep I'll post it directly here, but also include the link. This week I have an anti-gun-control piece coming out, and I'll be very hurt if all y'all gun nuts don't link to it on your own gun-rights forums. (Link to the original story, not my blog.)

3:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This week I have an anti-gun-control piece coming out, and I'll be very hurt if all y'all gun nuts don't link to it on your own gun-rights forums.

I shall see it done m'lady.

Since when did I become one of "y'all gun nuts" though?

5:04 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

I live in Connecticut, Moose. Everybody who owns a gun is a gun nut here.

I just realized, I have no idea what if any cuts my editor made. The piece is super-wussy by gun-rights-blog standards, but by the standards of an alternative weekly that usually runs editorials about why we need more gun control, it's almost as radical as "Every American should own nuclear weapons." At least my original version.

7:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nothing seen thus far, still the muslim article. Or, am I looking in the wrong place?

1:32 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I live in Connecticut, Moose. Everybody who owns a gun is a gun nut here.

Just curious, are you a...::ahem::..gun nut?

4:29 AM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

New stories don't come out until Wednesday. (I'm also psyched about my upcoming poker-laws story. Did you know that it's legal for friends, but not strangers, to play poker for money in this state? So I called various powers-that-be and asked questions like "If you meet a stranger and hit it off, how long before he becomes a legal friend for poker-playing purposes?" and "Does sex make people legal friends? If I meet a guy at six o'clock and boink him at six-fifteen, can we legally play poker in the afterglow?" [A certain official got super-annoyed with me when I asked him that last question. Hee!])

I'm a gun-nut supporter who's thinking of becoming an official Gun Nut. Considering how long the legal process takes in Connecticut (as I learned researching tomorrow's story), I'm trying to see if I can make THAT a story as well.

I can call it "Jenny's Got A Gun," to appeal to the five remaining Aerosmith fans around here.

5:28 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

If I meet a guy at six o'clock and boink him at six-fifteen, can we legally play poker in the afterglow?"

Ahem. Isn't one supposed to play that before the "afterglow"?

Sorry, I know how predictable a remark that was, but that joke just writes itself. ;-)

10:52 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Besides - if I hadn't made it, y'all would have thought I was slippin'.

10:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wonder if the law applies to strip poker. If you weren't close friends when the game started, you will be by the time the game ends.

Jen,
When you are legal to buy your gun, may I suggest the Russian designed 9mm Makarov. As the handgun of the STASI, the KGB, and Soviet Bloc military, they are accurate, reliable, and plentiful. The plentiful part means they can be bought for less than a song (if your singing is worth $200) and a box of 50 hollowpoints can be had for $11. The Makarov is small enough to carry in the back pocket of a Wal-mart fanny pack and light enough to carry every day.

And then there is the irony of protecting yourself, your friends, your property, and your rights with a gun made by Commies who wanted to take them away.

NS

11:14 AM  
Blogger Anj said...

Can't wait to read and link to your gun nut article.

Owning a gun in my state is the norm...if you don't own a gun in Texas you're considered a nut. I personally do and am licensed in quite a few states to carry it concealed. Wish I would have had it with me when that darn gang member shot at me a few months back! But, then again, I (unlike he) wouldn't have missed and would have to live with knowing I'd caused there to be one less "waste of human flesh" on the streets.

1:07 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

I (unlike he) wouldn't have missed and would have to live with knowing I'd caused there to be one less "waste of human flesh" on the streets.

That sounds, to me, about as difficult as living with the knowledge that you invented the polio vaccine.

The reason I was able to write the story is because a few weeks ago there was a horrific home invasion here in Connecticut. (You may have heard about it; it made international headlines, and even the cover of non-news magazines like "People.") Two thugs broke into a home, raped a mother and one of her two daughters, strangled mom, tied the daughters to their beds and then set the house on fire. The girls died of smoke inhalation. No guns involved. But as a result of that horror, gun sales in the state have been going up, and that's what my story is about.

1:47 PM  
Blogger Anj said...

"That sounds, to me, about as difficult as living with the knowledge that you invented the polio vaccine."

Yup, I agree. I just don't want to get a bigger purse as my .40 won't fit in my current one (how sad is that?).

Wow, I hadn't read about that home invasion. I hope y'all have the death penalty (it that's not deserving of it I don't know what is). If not, send the guys our way!

2:04 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

We do have the death penalty, Anj, and I'm pretty sure the prosecutors are going to ask for it. If not, I doubt those sick sons of bitches would last long in prison anyway.

If you check Google news with the words "Cheshire invasion" (not in quotes) you'll find all sorts of articles. Those two men were absolute monsters. I shudder to think of the terror those two girls -- ages 17 and 11 -- must have felt when those bastards POURED GASOLINE around their beds and lit a match. (It was the 11-year-old who was raped, by the way. Not that raping a 17-year-old would have been any better, but. . .)

My piece coming out tomorrow is pretty mellow, for me. Ordinarily I'd snark like hell about the stupidity of our state gun laws, but I can't do that when three people died. So I only snarked a little, and only to underscore a few stupid things about the law.

2:18 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

Damn. The gun story went up but all the good parts were cut out. Never mind.

3:29 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I can call it "Jenny's Got A Gun," to appeal to the five remaining Aerosmith fans around here.

As I've offered previously, I think I can work out something with the school I'm affiliated with in VA (www.tacticalshooting.com), let me know, you have the email address.

I shall resist the temptation to recommend any particular type of firarm to you. I will say a semi auto in 9mm is probably a great one for anyone, female in nature or not. Ballistically, most of what you read is bullshit, using a 45 or 40 might give you a 0.01 better chance of a one shot stop, so pull the trigger twice and hit with both using 9mm. CZ makes some very nice stuff of late, the RAMI is nice (comes in 40SW also..) but I tend to like a Kahr if you have the money.

Yup, I agree. I just don't want to get a bigger purse as my .40 won't fit in my current one (how sad is that?).

That's why I like the Kahrs, not that I have a concern with a purse. They're pretty slim as well as lightweight, fit well and have good reliability. They make it in 40 if you have to have that. I tend to subscribe to the theory that if you do your job, the bullet will do its job, and 9mm is plenty for the average person. However, when in backwoods of nasty bear country, I do carry a compact 10mm.

I'll pass on the article, I'd be curious as hell as to what the "good stuff" which was cut out was. Perhaps you can post it here without being in trouble?

4:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

WTF? TWO WEEKS FOR A SHOTGUN PURCHASE??!!

5:00 PM  
Blogger Jennifer Abel said...

Ooooh! Post that reaction on the Website, Moose! Elucidate it, even! Please? It gets a lot more readers than my blog here does.

5:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ooooh! Post that reaction on the Website, Moose! Elucidate it, even! Please? It gets a lot more readers than my blog here does.

I'll have to jump into a phonebooth and change clothes....

6:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

We need a thread freshener. Still wading through archives, thinking I need an auto bailer.

6:27 PM  
Blogger PSO_Sex_Addict said...

Jennifer,

I found your article very moving. As I read it, I could clearly see why I am not only very good at my PSO "fun-time" job, but why I love it--I am a sex addict.
I do not arbitrarily use that term to describe myself, but have been in professional treatment for the disorder for well over year now. I take no pride in this, and when I say I "love" it, I only "love" it to the extent that a any drug or alcohol addict loves his fix. I cry at night wishing I could feel your revulsion, but I only get a rush followed by the "walk of shame" low hours later. All I can rationalize it that my PSO fix keeps me at home and away from the constant stream of hook-ups that, quite honestly, could put me in
danger. Like you, I am an educated professional woman who is the LAST person in a room you would peg as the successful, gulp and tear, PSO. I suppose I am like the WOMEN you think you know. Sometimes the lesser of the 2 evils is all we have.
Again, thanks for your article.

8:47 PM  
Blogger Vanilla said...

wow. that was. that was....
sounds pretty scary to me.

i found this page by accident. i am
looking for a mystery book, i read a few years ago about a kid who hacks into a phone sex hotline and listens in, then kills a few of the girls.

i dont think i could ever do what you did, i would be worried that someone could track me somehow

but more power to you. it was a very interesting read. thanks

10:21 AM  
Anonymous gregg said...

ugh. i clicked this post thinking it would be funny... but instead another depressing affirmation of the existinence of the 'american psycho'.

kudos for your courage in adventures in journalism.

10:43 AM  
Blogger OtherDude said...

I would love to read the anti--common sense piece... has it been published?

4:24 PM  

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