Saving You, Saving Me by Kailin Gow

but it’s the only line listed.”
    “Were you in need of talking to someone in administration?” I asked, trying to sound professional. “They’ve left for the day. The only line open is this one.”
    “No, that’s alright. I have to talk to someone or I’ll go crazy. And your voice, it’s so soothing, calming, and sweet. You’ve got a beautiful voice, one I can listen to for hours.”
    “Thank you,” I smiled. “No one in admin is here right now, but you can talk to me. Maybe I can help.”
    “Susan, this is going to be hard for me to admit, but I think I have a problem with women.”
    “How so?” I asked, intrigued. Lola leaned in closer.
    “Well, Susan, when I was a baby, I lived with my mother. She was seventeen when she had me. Gave birth right in the homeless shelter she stayed in after running away from home. When I was born, the first thing she called me was, ‘Shit baby’. I was born to shit all over her plans in life. She called me other names, too, which I won’t repeat.  And she never held me, only enough to beat me. Other than feed me when she remembered, the only contact I had with my mother was when she called me names or beat me. ‘There you go again, dumb ass kid, shitting all over my life. I should have flushed you down the toilet when I could.’”
    I closed my eyes, feeling horrified with what I was hearing. This poor man, this boy. I wanted to reach out to him, to hug him. No human should come into life to such hate, especially from their own mother. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I let out.
    “Don’t be,” the caller said. “I ran away from home when I was 13 years old. After being abused physically and verbally. I couldn’t take it any longer. My mom, she thought it was amusing too when she would bring home women who would play with me, um, you know, have sex with me. I was popular with them because I was a pretty boy, and these sick women would pay my mother for me to do all kinds of things with them. Don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot about pleasuring a woman, but I felt used and cheap. It’s been several years, and I can’t get over the shame. All my mom has shown me was hate, so I reciprocated hate back at her.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said again, then clapped my hand over my mouth.
    “I wasn’t,” he said. “I hated myself and wanted to kill myself a few times growing up because of it. She made me feel like a worthless piece of trash.”
    I had to ask. “How are you now?”
    The caller laughed, a beautiful hearty laugh that sent shivers up my spine. Even with a voice scrambler, he had a voice that could have passed for Erik from the musical Phantom of the Opera. “I got over myself, if that’s what you’re wondering. It took years, and I’m  still trying to find a way to accept who I am. I was pretty messed up.”
    I wanted to ask where he went to school, had he graduated, and where did he find the courage to overcome a childhood like that, but I couldn’t.
    “That’s not why I’m calling, Susan. Here’s the deal:  my first girlfriend was the first person to make me feel like a human being.”
    “How?” I asked.
    “She made love to me, made me feel valued, put up with me, and then she would talk dirty to me, call me things just to get me mad, and then we would make hot passionate love all over  again. It drove me wild. The more she verbally abused me, the more I wanted her.
    “For some reason it turned me on. I know it isn’t healthy, but that’s how I am. She would call me to talk dirty, and from then on, I was addicted. It was a routine she had with me before we made love, and that’s how I associate lovemaking with dirty talk.” He paused, then said in wonder. “That’s all that I know about being in a relationship with a woman.”
    I waited for him to continue, but he paused all of a sudden so I asked, “Have you tried forming loving relationships without having to hear your lover talk to you that way?”
    There was a pause before the