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A Story by fapi1974

A quadriplegic phone sex worker sends her lover on a series of increasingly challenging quests before he can meet her.

You know, no one has ever even asked me whether I enjoy being a quad. Everyone who meets me for the first time gets a bit embarrassed, with that quailing, avoiding way about them. And if they are forced to talk with me they make a point of either ignoring the most obvious thing about me or trying to show how brave and forthright they are by asking about it right away. But it is never the right question. Usually it’s something like “how did it happen?” or “I can’t imagine how tough it is.” It’s never “wow, what a cushy life!”

But here’s the thing. I’m a lazy b***h, always have been, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I have the best excuse to do nothing ever invented, everyone would make fun of me not doing more, being more. Because when you are a genius with a 190 IQ you’re supposed to make something useful out of your life. But I really just didn’t care before, and I certainly care less since that one day my eyes lingered a little to long in the wrong direction on that crosswalk. God, he had a nice a*s though.

See, I can just sit here. I’m seldom uncomfortable, and I get to do what I do best, which is come up with ideas for stories. Well, that makes it sound like I’m some sort of a writer. I suppose I am, in the sense of story. But really I get paid to jerk people off on the phone. I’m a phone sex worker.

No, it’s not bad at all. Or at least, it didn’t used to be. You definitely get a lot of regulars in my line of work, but I can hardly say I had ever made friends with any of them. That all changed last summer, when I chewed on the Answer button only to have a sniffling, tragic, beautiful voice fill my ears. “Hel-lo?” he asked. A greeting can be a question, the first intimate contact a tentative grasp at tendrils of reassurance " even with a stranger. Usually I answer the line with a “Hey baby, I’m Sasha,” my stage name…but something in the quaver of his voice made me say “Are you ok?”

Life, man. You think you’ve figured it out. I certainly thought I had figured mine out. I mean " when you’re paralyzed from the neck down, there pretty much isn’t anything that can happen to make your life any worse, so if can come to terms with that then you actually can have a pretty good attitude. Or at least I thought so.

“I’m sorry, I’ve never really done this before. I’m just so alone.” Indeed. “Well, honey, there’s a first time for everything. What are you in the mood for?” I couldn’t help myself. Even the most helpless of us have defenses. Mine, in case you haven’t figured it out, is sarcasm.

“Oh, no, I don’t need sex or anything. My girlfriend just dumped me and I think my friends are pretty much sick of hearing about my love life. Is it ok just to talk?” Needy. “Well I’m happen to listen if that’s what you’re up for. Start at the beginning.”

“God where do I start. My name’s Duncan. I live in Baton Rouge. I’m a firefighter. I grew up in Mississippi but came here when I was 18. I met Molly pretty much the first week I got here. God it hurts…”

You definitely get weird s**t when you working the sex lines. It isn’t the weirdos that freak you out, it’s the ones that bare their souls. Duncan wasn’t exactly saying anything so far that put him in truly weird territory " but he was definitely heading there.

“Ummm…how long were you with her?” I ask, not because I’m that interested, but you always want to keep them talking. “Five years. Five of my best years, and all she could leave was a note.”

So that’s how it started. Innocent enough. I’ve had the mopes tell me about their real lives before, so that part wasn’t new. Here’s what was new. You know when you walk into a room " because I don’t " ha! Cripple humor. Anyway, you walk into a room and you see someone across the crowd and somehow the air sizzles and there’s something different, and you both know it. Well it had never happened to me.

It turns out that can happen with sound. The air in the phone line sizzles. You get the same knot in your stomach. And all you want to do is listen to the person.

Duncan had dated Molly with an intensity that sounded fake to me. Rushing home from work, flowers, plans from the future. To be honest, Molly sounds like she was a party girl and not good enough for him. But any woman would fall for that kind of attention, and even she could tell that Duncan was a keeper. Even if she wasn’t really the keeping type.

I, on the other hand, am a shining, pearlescent butterfly, a perfect catch. So over the next couple of weeks during our nightly chat I said exactly what you would expect. “Duncan, I feel like we’ve shared a lot. You know more about me than most people. But there are some things about me that some people know that you actually probably would prefer not to know.” That’s honest, right? Along with “Surfing? I LOVE it! I don’t have really good balance, but I love just floating in the water.”

You can see what happened next. He insisted on meeting me and I told him that I would only meet him if he climbed Mount Everest to prove his love for me. Oh, wait " you didn’t see that coming. Yeah " I asked him that. Really, it was my way of just trying to end something that I knew would get too complicated. So when he asked, as one does, “Are you serious?” I said “Look, Duncan, I’ve been burned before, in ways that you wouldn’t relate to very well. I’m not trying to be evil or anything, but this is just my way of saying we should probably not keep going with this.”

“Everest, huh?” He had this I’m-actually-considering-this tone in his voice which made me nervous. “Wait, wait " don’t.” I said “I’d need proof, it would be a pain. I was just kidding. I’m just saying we should end it.” But d****t if I didn’t see what was coming next. His firefighting romantic chevalier notions were what endeared me to him, after all. “Alex, I will climb Mount Everest and I will bring you proof. I am in love with you and I want to meet you.” And that was that.

Did I mention that Duncan is a romantic? For f**k’s sake. Like a trickle of water, the one, solitary, insignificant little thing that can penetrate years of hardened, calcified cynicism is earnest belief. Unfortunately my accident didn’t paralyze my tearducts.