"...a
cheesy little rag..." -Stain
I was trying to get a hold of a friend on the phone, which rang and rang, forcing me to eventually give up, unable as I was to contact the only person who could have helped satiate this sudden urge I was having: the need to talk about myself in the third person. Putting the receiver back, I was filled with dread. Who else would understand? Who could I reach out to? I knew there was no one else who would sit around and listen to me talk about myself in the third person--something normally reserved for political figures and celebrities. I would have to settle for some other, similar communication.
I walked outside, pointlessly I guess, just a stab in the dark, hoping to maybe run across someone to talk to. The mailman just happened to be there unloading a box on the corner, filling a bag with stacks of white and manila envelopes. I approached, my hands closed, arms bent in front of me, and shoulders slightly hunched like a coach encouraging his team and said, "Hey, that really is some 'mail' you've got there." He looked up, glanced with his brow a little scrunched and said "yeah," and that was it. I couldn't go on, and went back to the house.
I was crushed. [The degree to which I had to place emphasis on the word mail-- ideally it would have been just-barely, to nearly undetectable--had already meant right from the start any little ironic interaction we might have had would have been not so great, hardly satisfactory.] I didn't get lonely too often, but now and then there was some urge like this, a real need that couldn't be satisfied without another, and now there was no one with whom to communicate.
I sat in the kitchen mulling over my interaction with the mailman when the phone rang. I answered, instantly recognizing a telemarketing call and responded to my name coming from the strangers voice, "That's 'me,' I'm definitely 'here.'" I said. There was an uncomfortable silence on the other end. The male voice, it's initial force now gone, tapered off, "I, uh....I'm sorry sir...," and he hung up. I held the receiver in both hands, closed my eyes, and put my forehead down on my hands.
The guy must have been shocked, confronted with the knowledge, somehow conveyed instantly in the tone of my voice, of the impossibility of my taking part in the contrived scriptedness of the telemarketing "conversation," the goal of his call; In that briefest of interactions two polar opposites bumped into each other. I couldn't meet his needs and he couldn't meet mine. He was probably not very thrilled with his job, and must have been a little embarrassed at making this particular sales call.
I replaced the receiver and put my head down on my folded arms. The day had come to a screeching halt, even faster than I had expected. Darkness, darkness, darkness; the world could shut off so suddenly, as if someone threw a blanket over the sun, and no matter how many times it happened it shocked me again and again. The world was a lonely, lonely place.
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