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“What a lot of people don’t realize is that the brain is the biggest sexual organ in the body. When you talk, breathe heavy, or moan, you’re doing this through a direct line to the brain,” says professional phone-sex operator Jenny Ainslie-Turner. Think about it, in many ways, sex is not just sex. Sex, often substituted with the word ‘intimacy’ is exactly about that— physical, emotional and mental intimacy. The aspect of touch involved in consensual sexual activity is a lot about finding and providing comfort and fulfilling the need that is there for humans to feel loved. “To touch can be to give life,” said Michelangelo. While this is not to impose touch on people who don’t approach it with as much affection as some others do, in many ways, he was absolutely right. It has scientifically been found to influence the immune system and mental and physical growth.
About a year from now, as we were cosily enraptured in a cuddle or deeply intertwined in a kiss, we couldn’t have possibly imagined that the human touch that one craves so dearly would end up becoming the nemesis of their lives.
The current situation has us all craving intimacy, particularly, those of us who are either in a long-distance relationship or are now finding themselves in one. Even those who just had things starting to brew for them until they got locked down on two different ends of the country! So utterly grateful we are to Alendander Graham Bell, and of course, to the Internet gods who have made sure that even when we are not physically able to get intimate with each other, we remain intimate to each other. Yes, we’re talking about phone sex! In times like these, phone sex has become our sweet escape. In order to capture this steamy shift in our lives, we at Homegrown wanted to provide our readers with a safe space to talk about their experience with phone/video sex/sexting and how they’re using it to navigate their sex life.
Who took the survey and how?
The Wireless Lifeline
Of course, our first question to them was about the role phone sex is playing in their lives these days. While a little less than 20% of our readers said that it was not playing that big a role in their lives, there were responses like (and we’re not lying), “ [It is their] lifeline”, “keeping me sane”, and “God”. Quite a few people reflected on how sexting and video calling, even watching porn together was helping them keep their relationship stable and making them feel less lonely in these alienating times. In fact, they also came clear on how phone sex was filling the chasm that porn could also not fill. For instance, one of our respondents wrote, “I feel less lonely. It is extremely difficult to masturbate using porn because the time is too stressful to go in on it solo. I rather have an experience with my long-distance boyfriend.” Most magazines that seem to have two cents to give about phone sex 101 would say that it essentially about building a comfort level with your partner and just letting it go and having fun. One of our respondents confided in us saying, “ I’m not much of a sexting or phone sex kind of person but my boyfriend and I shower together over video call and do silly stuff like shake our bums at the camera, we do turn each other occasionally and I like to flash him unexpectedly because I think it’s funny, but I prefer not to take it further than that. I don’t know why, I haven’t put much thought into it. I guess I just prefer the real thing and the real touch over video stuff. But the showering helps me feel connected to him at times like these when I miss feeling connected over the sexual stuff way more. I guess I’m just very old school like that!” Some, however, do enjoy single-handedness. “I prefer going solo, I have a tiny vibrator that’s shaped like a lipstick so no one knows what it is and it fits into my handbag super easily.”
The Razzmatazz
For this particular project of ours, we went all out and asked our readers about anything and everything that keeps things sizzling for them, and to tell you honestly, the response was overwhelmingly positive. Our readers chose to confide in us with the steamiest of details, including confessing that dirty talk, nudes and sexy Snapchats did the trick for them. Some employed roleplay, sometimes even including incest-themed action and fetish. As
Jenny Ainslie-Turner pointed out above, all stimulation is intellectual stimulation, and for Indians, words seem to work like magic in creating sensual imagery for their partners. For another, it was dressing up and feeling sexy that did the trick. Quite interestingly, two new debutants into the sexting game-room are GIFs and emojis. Whether it’s steamy ‘love’ GIFs on WhatsApp on Instagram or just the regular aubergine and peach emojis, a lot can be conveyed without even using a single word. In another instance, one of our readers said that in order to pump things up, they “randomly put on some sexy clothes and heels before either teasing my partner with GIFS/ having a full-fledged call.”
As we said above, phone sex is essentially about building and keeping up intimacy and filling each other with love. No, we’re dropping the L-word here in a deeper context. What we just mean by ‘love’ is comforting affection in its simplest and its complicated form. It must be remembered that phone sex or any other platform is nothing more than a medium. “Some of the important things are intimacy, open-mindedness, comfort and then letting the sexual tension build. We’ve explored different channels to communicate this tension. Whether it be through plain simple erotic words, to sensual pictures, or video sex. Interestingly, we hit it off over a Netflix Party as well!”
A seemingly shy person who describes their naïveté as “vanilla” but is surely interested in exploring the kinky side says, “I’m pretty vanilla so it’s mainly about words. We are getting into more details these days to really set up a realistic scene mentally and telling each other what we would precisely like. We do have some interest in exploring something kink at some point but that’s only going to happen in person, if at all.”
Locked Down In Love
A few answers also reminded us of the unexpected gap the sudden lockdown created for us. Phone sex, to a lot of people, perhaps those who have been in more committed relationships, has been more than just sex, in all its ways. Take a look here at someone whose long-drawn plans of a couple’s trip were shoved under due to the pandemic. Video sex, for them, became a way of dealing with life as it is and finding happiness even in travesty. “My boyfriend masturbated in front of me and it was the best feeling ever. He sort of found it weird that I sat there staring and giving my “sweet smile” because I was turned on. In reality, I was also so, so, so upset at how I had to cancel the trip we were going to.”
Talking about ‘easing yourself into it’, one of the readers actually starts with talking about something as mundane as household chores! “ We start texting about hot household work and talk about old sex times and start teasing each other of the flaws then and show our move of improvement and then we begin!” [We start texting out household work we find hot and move our conversation to the old times when we had sex and start teasing each other on the slips and misses we might have committed. We then move on to show each other how we would have done better and then we begin!]
The Dial Tone?
Lastly, we asked people about the factors they usually consider while initiating phone sex. Numero uno, as you might have guessed was comfort level of and with the partner, as was reported by 80% of the respondents. Let’s face it, intimacy is a lot easier when touch guides it. Closely following was what some of you were hoping numero uno would be: privacy. Indians are not very private people, are we? Social distancing, we have accepted, is a concept emerging out of great privilege. That coupled with sex being a taboo word, also coupled with how most Indian parents don’t keep privy to their children’s love life and/or are ‘not okay’ with it because, amongst other reasons, sanskaar! Quite amusingly, the absence or presence of sex toys didn’t really matter to our respondents.
Safe Sex
It’s very important to remember that phone sex, whilst thrilling and even cathartic to some extent can be dangerous, particularly when it comes to exchanging nude photos and videos or chatting over a seemingly fishy platform. One of the concerns rightly raised by one of the respondents was the possibility of VPN hack—something that has the potential of putting the privacy of the involved parties at risk.
Key Out Of The Lockdown?
One of the respondents did put us in a fix, however. They asked, “I’m a little concerned about how to go about things after the lockdown is over. In general, I know not to really expect business as always as far as daily life is concerned. Coming to the issue of intimacy, right now we can’t meet but when we have that option, I’m not sure if it would be a good idea (as much as I’d like to). So I guess I’ve got an obvious question - how do you know if and when it’s okay to go back to the IRL (in real life) way of doing things?”
Quite honestly, despite digging deeper, we didn’t find much. The situation is so unpredictable that not much can be said at the moment. Perhaps we could turn to history books and read how intimacy returned into people’s lives after the Spanish flu or any of the pandemics the world has dealt with in the past, but that answer is probably for another time.
For now, our only suggestion is to take the day as it comes and have some fun and you go along!
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