Customer Service

         I loathe Pornography. It has gotten to the point where decent, morally uncorrupt, law-abiding smut users, such as me, can't patronize the sex industry without being ripped off or gouged by some greedy sex provider.
Consider the diabolical phone sex industry. They charge a gajillion dollars per minute to use their service, then deliberately send you into a murky labyrinth of automated phone selections. And when you finally reach the real woman with the vapid-drippy-vixen voice, she pads the meter with small talk about how your day went, or how old you are, or who Billy Bob Thornton will marry next -- until you finally have to howl into the earpiece, "Hey Lady, This ain't the Vacuous Chit-Chat Network! Get to the freaking filth!"
Christ - even my pot dealer gives better customer service than that.
When it's all over you've spent sixty-five bucks and all you have to show for it is an ominous dial tone and a soiled Red Sox towel.
So no, I don't use phone sex lines.
Strip clubs are worse. Admission is ten or twenty dollars, a Budweiser is five, it costs seven bucks to use the ATM, you throw about a hundred at the dancers, another fifty at the bartenders, you hand a dancer a fifty after a lap dance, and still, after all your good deeds, that slithery, slinking, stripper eel conveniently "forgets" to return with your change.
So, disgusted, nearly-broke, and thirsty for your medicine, you regroup at the bar.
There you sit, quietly sipping on a six-dollar vodka tonic, seeking shelter from this massive gouging machine -- and here they come . . . attack of the Stripper Zombies.
One by one they approach you - each stripper zombie repeating the same dreaded line, "Hey did you like my dance?" They address you with all the joie de vivre of the undead. She looks undead too. Her mascara running, hair tussled, eyes vacant, and her bony fingers snaking toward you -- sniffing the air curiously seeking payment for a set she just performed at Stage Bumfuk.
And her breath? Oh god. It reeks of something, something . . . ancient. And you gag as her stench spills over your eyes and mouth, and you give her a dollar just to make it go away.
So no, absolutely not -- I won't be going to Pacers anymore.
But of all the times in my life that I have been ripped off or gouged by the greedy purveyors of the smut industry, it was this recent incident with internet porn that was the last straw.
Now, I consider myself an old school porn guy. Give me the VHS box set of Busty College Girls on the Moon, and I'm good to go. But I kept hearing about all this horrifying, dangerous pornography that's flying around on the internet these days, like some sort of super-hyper-destructo-porn; shredding the moral fabric of society, destroying the minds of children, even causing terrorist attacks upon our fine nation.
"Hmmm" I thought. "I gotta try me some of this super-hyper-destructo-porn."
So to my computer I went. I typed the word "Lesbian" into a search engine, and before me she emerged - a spectacular blue and gold hyperlink, shimmering like a diamond in a swimming pool -- LesbianBordello.com
I knew that I had come home.
For $39.95/month, or a three day trial of $2.99, LesbianBordello.com promised, "Over 120,000 videos, thousands of explicit lesbian photos, live lesbian sex shows, and live chat."
Yea, did I feast in the Lesboseum - where topless hula-girls float on coconut boats down a Pina Colada River, and chocolate lesbians grow on trees, and nothing else matters, not work, not water, not feeding the cat, not the ringing phone. . .

Briiiiing! Briing!

I was violently ejected from my euphoric trance by the obnoxious clang of the telephone. Startled, I picked up the receiver.
"Hello," I mumbled.
"Where you been baby?" my girlfriend cried, "I haven't heard from you in three days"
"My God!" I answered, in horror. "Is it three days already??"

. . . With tears streaming down my face, I canceled the trial membership and said good bye to Labia-land, (where, <sniff> plaid skirted, pony-tailed cheerleaders teeter on candy cane see-saws) and managed to get on with my life.
As a matter of process, the billing company (Jet-Charge) emailed me a cancellation confirmation notice and I considered the matter closed; until the following month, when I noticed that Jet Charge had billed $39.95 to my Visa account. Then I had to go through the whole telephone labyrinth thing to get the charge removed.
         Such is the reason for this rant.
Of course, in the interest of equitable investigative journalism, just to see if it wasn't an oversight, I subscribed to the Bordelicacy trial membership one more time. . .
And those dirty whores did it again.
Because the sex industry is percolating with immoral, greedy, nauseating, mercenarians - and they give pornography a bad name.
Look people, just because your customers are dirty little perverts with sexual addiction problems, doesn't mean we deserve to be bamboozled. Customer service is universal. So I will not be using your services anymore. And to all my dirty little pervert readers . . . cancel that membership! Slam down that phone. Stiff that stripper. Stand and be counted.

EJD
8/02