I am sleeping with the phone near my head. I am not aware that it is there, until I am awoken by its angry, insistent buzzing. It is 2.39 in the morning, a time when phone calls are for danger, despair. I look at the originating number, and there is no name attached to it so I don’t answer, flop my head back down on my pillow with an irritated groan.
It’s not a wrong number. Whoever it is means to reach me, and the phone goes off again to signify a new voice mail has been left. Who has this urgency, this desperation? I run through a list of who I would want it to be, whose dark night of the soul I would be willing to listen to, who I would accept with compassion, whose confession I would welcome, who I could treat with grace and generosity.
I gird myself. I pick up the phone. I dial in to get the message. It’s not him.
(oh! Who is it? I am astonished...it is from someone I went out with once, weeks ago, who houdini'ed themselves until this. My empathy evaporates.)
posted by ttractor @ 7:06 AM
3 Comments:
Good grief, why would someone assume 2:39 am is the appropriate time to re-appear in someone's life? I recently had a similar situation in which a boy had dated about a year prior (one date) called me up, and begin to try to piece together who I was...I asked him, "Are you just bored and going through your cell phone trying to match people to names?"
"Uh, yeah, kind of."
"Yeah, I gotta go."
Happy birthday cherry marcia!
Slick, why 2.39AM indeed? I don't know whether this was a drink-n-dial, a booty call attempt, or just really poorly thought through. You get points for getting it and confronting it on the fly with your lunkhead. I am not sure this call even warrants the dignity of a response...except that I am prolly going to run into him again, given the circuits we both travel.
you could always trip him, and then say, "That's for 2:39, you rat!"
but I realize that's not good form.
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