As dumb as you like

Phone sex operators are incapable of bending their minds around anything more complex than a keypad covered in cum.

That’s what they want you to think, and of course it’s true — but only if you have the money.

I just came back from a strip club where a dancer pretended not to know what song he was fumbling through, brilliantly out of step with the beat. I have to say, his feigned ignorance was charming, and it almost bled me of a 10-dollar bill.

Shocker: There are people out there who’ll pay a little more or play a little longer to feel intellectually superior, and lo, there are financially savvy sex workers who have clued in and cashed out on this dumb-for-pay template.

This practice is great entrepreneurial kindling for those who use it well. Think about the repeat business that sex workers could generate by pretending to get ripped off, by giving wrong change for a hundred in the client’s favour, or by playing victim to the old daylight savings shim-sham. Whose free hour was that, anyway? It takes a lot of brains to be dumb these days.

I still remember the day when I learned that I was supposed to be stupid. I went to a porn video casting, breezed through the audition and asked about my retirement plan.

“How much does it pay?”

“Oh, it’s a touch-baser.”

I literally felt brain cells flake off onto the sofa.

“Which means?”

“We’re just shooting this scene to touch base. We’ll pay you next time.”

High school is the apex of my academic career, but I was smart enough to realize that there wouldn’t be a next time.

Let’s throw this train into reverse: Not everyone needs the company of an IQ meltdown in order to cum. Some want a brilliant conversationalist to talk them into the ground, a scholarly slut to outwit them and to satisfy a masochistic streak. They want future accountants, psychologists, video game champions and Wikipedia hackers with pants temporarily around their ankles, putting themselves through school, through life, spinning topics more worldly than a genital-centric brain can handle. Or some may seek an idealized equality, particularly if they’ve hard-wired their orgasms to a meeting of the minds.

There are intellectual terrorists among us, though, who eschew dumb-for-pay tactics for a more pleasurable pursuit: proving their smarts to smarmy clients, committing acts of social justice that are so tiny, but feel so good. Here are some slash-and-burn techniques to equal out the playing field:

“Don’t worry if you lose your Saab on the NASDAQ. We can always fuck behind the Parliament Buildings!”

“You can pay me, but we won’t shoot this time. It’s a touch-baser.”

“I know more about your frenulum than you’ll ever know about sex.”

My friend Stephanie, a former dancer and webcam model, could have found this last one quite handy: “Many of my webcam clients had never been with a live, naked woman before and didn’t know the first thing about human physiology. They’d be like ‘Can you bend over and lick your ass for me?’ and I’d say ‘Sure, but first let me break a few of my vertebrae.'”

I started producing a similar venom the day when I proved, resoundingly and irrevocably, the worthlessness of my high school diploma when it comes to the porn industry.

The photographer offered me a drink of apple juice, and then had me stick my cock in the empty glass. Snap, click, whirrr. With the images re-arranged on the Web a few weeks later, I was chugging my own piss, and toasting to boot. It was hot, but I was the only chump in New York City who didn’t know I did watersports.

I will forever be seeking revenge.