Darryl Malone doesn't look like a man you'd find cooing into the ears of male callers on a romance line.

At 165 pounds, the ex-Marine has a booming voice that used to bark out military commands.But Malone also has a talent for mimicking.

For eight months, he took on the role of "Raven," a tall blonde with a silky come-hither voice who talked to hundreds of lonely callers to a local romance line.

But the company cut off his 8-month career as a darling of the phone lines in November. He has filed a complaint against Northwest Nevada Telco for sexual discrimination, saying the company repeatedly passed him over for promotion because he was a man.

"I've been there a lot longer than some of the employees that are there now and I've never gotten a promotion or raise," he said. "I was told by my employer that I would never be made a supervisor because I was a man."

Telco owner Jack Lawless could not be reached for comment.

Malone says he was wrongfully dismissed after he attempted for weeks to move up the professional phone romance ladder, repeatedly asking to be trained as a supervisor.

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Malone filed a complaint with the Nevada Equal Employment Opportunity Commission when he was fired last fall. He says his supervisor sent him home for a week to be with his dying father. His employer later claimed Malone was a "no-show."

A commission hearing on Malone's complaint is scheduled Jan. 22.

Malone, a 29-year-old husband and father, said he was nudged into applying with the phone sex line last March by his wife, Donna, who was a supervisor there at the time.

"I thought who would be better for the job than a man, since a man knows what a man wants," she said.

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