NEW YORK PARTY LINE: LOVE, SEX, AND ANGER IN USA

Thursday, August 5, 2010

NEW YORK PARTY LINE: LOVE, SEX, AND ANGER IN AMERICA

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  - NEW YORK PARTY LINE: LOVE, SEX, AND ANGER IN AMERICA

About Me

NEW YORK PARTY LINE: LONG LIVE THE SILVERFISH--KING OF THE PARTY LINES! LONG MAY HE CALL!

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CHAPTERS 1-4 AND INTRODUCTION

PARTY LINE: LOVE, SEX, AND ANGER IN AMERICA

By Dr. Vivienne Kruger, Ph.D.

©2000 Vivienne Kruger

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 1

1. WELCOME TO JACK’S JUNGLE 12

2. CIVIL WAR ON THE WIRES: RACE, SEX, AND VIOLENCE 29

3. BEND ME OVER YOUR STAIRCASE 46

4. I CONTRACT CHRONIC TELEPHONITIS 66

5. “E.T.” PHONE HOME 81

6. I NEVER MADE THOSE CALLS 96

7. DIRECT DIAL TO THE DEVIL 110

8. IF YOU THINK YOU COULD TRACE US, COME AND GET US 124

9. EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN 143

10. CANDY, COME OUT AND PLAY 163

11. TELEPERSONALLY YOURS 179

12. TALK DIRTY TO ME 195

13. MAKING LOVE ON THE PHONE 219

14. IT’S NOT OVER TILL THE FAT LADY SINGS 239

15. ONE FOOT IN THE PHONE GUTTER 258

16. DEALING WITH CHILDREN AND CHIMPANZEES 280

17. DAY OF THE PHONE FEAST 297

18. THE TONE TAKES OVER 316

19. “I’M ONE OF YOUR ARMY, JACK” 332

20. BAD MEN ON GOOd LINES 350

21. PUSILLANIMOUS NONENTITIES 369

22. HI! IT’S ME, WENDY! 387

23. THE PARTY LINE FROM HELL 404

24. THE END OF THE INNOCENCE 424

25. GONE WITH THE WIND 442

EPILOGUE 460

INTRODUCTION

The biggest disease people suffer from today is feeling unloved.

Lady Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales (1995)

Party lines are the hot new way to meet people in the United States today. Advertisements and infomercials on television, radio, newspapers, magazines, trains, and subway cars offer us hundreds of telephone numbers to choose from to fulfill each and every fantasy. Beautiful smiling women in low-cut evening gowns seduce men into calling chat lines to find the sex goddess of their dreams. Tall, handsome, successful-looking men lure women toward their telephones in the hope of meeting Prince Charming. These phone services are so attractive because they provide everything from a social life to sex, blind dates, love, adventure, excitement, fun, companionship, and advice--all from the comfort and privacy of your own home. The party line also permits you the vicarious danger of crossing paths with an unknown masked man who can lead you as far astray as you care to go.

Earnings in the booming, nationwide “dial-it” services industry blossomed from $450 million in 1988 to $1 billion by 1989. Music band hotlines generated tremendous profits during this period, split between the telephone company, the information provider, and the talent. DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s rap hotline took in a whopping $600,000 per month in 1988/89 with 2 1/2 million calls placed to 1900-909-JEFF. Income (including party lines [one million calls placed every week], celebrity recordings, entertainment and information services, children’s programming, fantasy lines, dial-in sex recordings, and confession lines) for 1992 ranged between $2.5 and 3.9 billion. “Lifestyle” applications such as psychic consultations and voice personals produced steep annual growth rates and became the core of the 900 pay-per-call business: the infomercial-driven psychic hotline sector grew tenfold between 1991 and 1996. Psychic advice hotlines like Dionne Warwick’s “Psychic Friends Network” and “Kebrina’s Psychic Answer” hosted by Eric Estrada collected $100 million in receipts in 1993 according to an industry spokesman from Psychic Marketing Group. “Psychic Friends Network” founder Linda Georgian reports that it has logged over four million calls since its inception. Ten thousand lovetorn, success-hungry Americans a day currently pick up their telephones to dial a fortune teller at venues like “Amazing Psychics” and the “American Association of Professional Psychics.”

A research report produced by Strategic Telemedia indicates that over 48,000 new 900-number programs were launched in 1996. National 900 number lines for contests, opinion polls, phone games, technical support, viewer voting, and requests have become an entrenched consumer institution: the North American 900/976 services market generated total revenues of $1.6 billion in 1998, shared between information providers, service bureaus, and local/national telecommunications carriers. Prerecorded mass announcements are also doing goldrush business: in 1999, you can dial 312 active “Infofone Service” programs through New York’s 540 and 976 exchanges for sports and racing results, jokes, horoscopes, soap opera updates, trivia quizzes, stock market reports, winning lottery numbers, job listings, and the weather forecast.

The marriage between new communications technologies and viable waiting markets in prosperous industrialized economies has enabled sophisticated group conversation services and call-in audiotex programs to become widely available for public consumption. In Switzerland, Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, Australia, France, Japan, Hong Kong, and Germany, there is now nearly universal private telephone access, with only 1.1 to 1.8 people per telephone unit (compared to 588 and 1,429 people per telephone unit in Third World nations like Laos and Cambodia. In 1997, Tanzania’s 29 million people had only 85, 756 phone lines.) The compulsion to stay tuned-in to the outside world for personal and professional reasons has transformed the home telephone into the centerpiece of many people’s lives. A new “telephonese” jargon has emerged: the informed, up-to-date touch-tone person must be familiar with beepers, cellular phones, and airborne “Airfone” systems; Custom Calling features like VoiceDialing, Repeat Dialing, Speed Dialing, Three-Way Calling, Call Forwarding, UltraForward Service, Distinctive Ring, and Private Reach Service; and premium “Intelligent Services” such as Call Return, Caller ID, Call Waiting ID, and Anonymous Call Rejection. Party line talkers have their own highly specialized subculture, magic buzzwords, and lingo, like truckers on CB radio: monitors, beeping, trashing, bridges, access codes, pranks, and porch monkeys.

AT & T inaugurated the first 900 numbers in 1980 with “Dial-It 900 Service,” but the pay-per-call industry only took off in 1987 when AT & T opened up premium billing services enabling information providers to generate their own profits on calls. Group party lines began in earnest with the 1987 advent of the original “the Party Line” at 100-411700777-7777. The heyday of the 100 numbers gave way to an explosion of pricey 900 number party lines, followed by less expensive local 976, 970, or 550-prefix number lines in large urban areas such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Houston, Denver, Chicago, Detroit, and New York (which has sixty-eight 550-lines and 380 different 970 numbers running in 1999). Management also instituted free backdoor or courtesy numbers which are discreetly advertised in newspapers or spread by word of mouth to a privileged few. They allow complimentary access to party lines--usually only to women--to ensure an adequate audience for the paying customers to talk to and to attract them to the line. There is a party line for every sexual and racial persuasion and perversion: gab lines, black lines, teen lines, sexually explicit fantasy lines, chubby chasers lines, bondage and discipline lines, bisexual lines, and gay hunk lines. There are even USA-wide 1-900 number party lines which connect callers from different cities and states all over the country.

Party lines are surrounded by fiery controversy. State courts have heard cases initiated by telephone companies or by individual callers plagued by astronomical, out-of-control, unpaid charges and have ruled that party lines cannot operate in that jurisdiction. Dial-a-porn services in New York City were dealt an accounting blow in November 1989 when a federal judge ruled that New York Telephone would not violate free speech rights by barring two-way conversations over its 970 exchange adult entertainment lines. Vendors would still have the right to continue to provide live services, but must be responsible for their own billing and collections. Growing censorship hysteria has prompted nervous television stations to jump on the “clean public image/morality” bandwagon. Fox Broadcasting will no longer accept advertisements from companies that operate sexually oriented 900 number services. Other 900 number advertising must be confined to the hours after midnight. As of March 21, 1990, a federal amendment sponsored by Senator Jesse Helms limits “indecent” communication on commercial phone lines and outlaws any obscene communication that is available to any person under the age of eighteen. New federal consumer regulations require every commercial line to include an opening introductory trailer which clearly and audibly states the full price of the call, instructs minors to hang up, and gives callers the option to immediately discontinue without incurring charges.

* * * * *

Many young Americans in their teens, twenties, and thirties use party lines as a replacement for singles bars. High-tech Don Juans roam the lines with the sophistication of computer hackers, looking for combat, thrills, and members of the opposite sex. Physical appearance is not the initial key to finding a partner in this party line universe. Men are able to come on to women using voice and personality first, rather than good looks or money. Men who are awkward in person can often suddenly be very self-confident and verbally adept behind the invisibility shield of the telephone. They can practice and hone their social skills safely, discreetly, and anonymously: frogs turn into princes, and fuddy duddies turn into playboys. People who tend to fail at interpersonal relationships can enjoy remarkable, successful phone involvements, sometimes for months. Telephone love is perfect for unattractive or handicapped singles; married men or women seeking a back alley “affair”; the extremely shy: men without the means to take a woman out on a date; and floaters who are scared of commitment and prefer a multitude of dalliances. Oddball, mismatched romances that could never survive the glaring light of day can yet be very deftly carried out over the phone. The entanglement often ends only when a meeting finally reveals that there is no sexual or emotional chemistry between them except over the telephone; the dream is over.

Pornographic stimulation, rather than romance, however, is the main objective for the majority of males who call party lines: there are masturbatory overtones to almost every conversation. Whereas in real life men try to take women back to their place at the end of the evening, phone romeos try to speak to women off the line alone and take advantage of them there. The extreme popularity of phone sex in the United States reflects much more than excessive male testosterone: the sexual revolution is over. Phone masturbation arose as a swift, direct response and adaptation to the AIDS crisis. Deadly or incurable venereal diseases have made intimate contact too fearful and fraught with peril: it is easier to make love long distance. Phone sex is ideal for people who already have herpes and AIDS, and even virgins can do it. It is the safest sex: all you can catch is the bill. No condoms necessary.

In the phone world, vocal cords are an erotic tool: the voice is elevated to a secondary sexual characteristic which can be as provocative as breasts or buns. A ridiculous amount of attention is therefore paid to what someone sounds like--even though it is a very poor clue to the person’s genuine identity. Almost everybody has a sensual voice on the phone, because the high, soft female peal automatically sounds alluring to males, and the deep, low male bark sounds pleasurable to females. These natural biological differences exist to help attract a mate, even if it is only over the AT&T system. But handsome voices and nice phone personalities, like appearances, can sometimes be deceiving.

Americans are obsessed with Madison Avenue-generated images of surgically engineered super-model beauty: phone fraud therefore centers around the delicate matter of often all-too imperfect flesh. Ugly or grossly overweight women can disguise all the odds in their favor here to become voluptuous, seductive, “pretty,” and sought after: we all “look good” on the telephone. Unattractive men also flock to the phone lines for sanctuary, but they rather tend to lie about who and what they really are more so than about their appearance. There is little initial trust between callers; since people bend the truth all the time, they assume that they are being fed fairy tales in return. Here, you don’t have to be sincere. This twisted morality seems very natural after awhile. Lying is not a cardinal sin on the party line; it is a competitive, Olympic gold medal sport.

There is an even darker underbelly to talk lines: they foster a culture of intense paranoia and secrecy. Our mothers taught us not to take candy from strangers; we are afraid of exposing ourselves to unknown and unseen outsiders. Callers are typically very concerned that their real name, phone number, and address will be found out and that someone will come and get them. It is playing blind Russian roulette--like looking for Mr. Goodbar with even less of a screening process. Incidents of robbery, sadism, violence, kinky sex, and obsessive attachment have resulted from party line dates. Perth, Australia, banned party lines outright in 1990 when four women were raped as a result of live telephone encounters.

Deception and suspicion run rampant because you can change and conceal your identity so easily on the phone; you can be anybody you want to be. You can even become a different person each time you call by changing your voice or your line name. You can call other party lines and assume a new character on each one. Because there is no responsibility or commitment to a disembodied voice, normal community standards of behavior go by the wayside. Dialers seem like disposable toys that you are entitled to experiment with for awhile. You can gossip, play practical jokes on people, make fun of them, string them along, insult them, and threaten them--and you can’t be made to answer for your actions. You can get away with anything here. You can carry out your blackest Machiavellian plot with no repercussions--just hang up the phone when you’re done.

This harsh 1990s telephone singles scene is crowded with habitual liars, phone sex perverts, and wounded losers; it is a microcosm of the treacherous dating carnival in our country today. Whereas we have heretofore always hoped for love, security, and family, we now live in fear of cruelty, rejection, heartache, and sexually transmitted diseases. Unattached men and women can no longer find spouses; many no longer want to even try. Rising average age at first marriage, high divorce rates, and longer lifespans have created a deep-rooted bulge of bachelors and spinsters historically found only in sexually distorted male immigrant, military, slave, or labor camp populations.

According to U.S. Bureau of the Census figures in Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1993, the proportion of the total population over the age of eighteen listed as married fell (from a high of 97 percent in 1959) to 71.7 percent in 1970 and down to 61.1 percent by 1992, with corresponding increases in the proportions listed as either never married (22.6 percent) or divorced (8.8 percent). In 1992, 53.5 percent of males and 41.2 percent of females aged 25 to 29 were either single or divorced, 36.9 percent of males and 29.5 percent of females aged 30 to 34, and 28.7 percent of males and 25.2 percent of females aged 35 to 39. This book lays bare that hidden, bottom third of society which faces a permanent future of drastically diminished marital, cultural, and social expectations. It is a chilling indictment of what happens to you if you are over twenty-five and find yourself single in America. The telephone has become a safety valve and lifeline for the millions of isolated, unloved, bitter Americans who are increasingly remaining alone, unstable, unfulfilled, and “adolescent” well into middle age.

* * * * *

Talking on party lines, for better or worse, is extraordinarily stimulating; it is like a never-ending, unpredictable joyride. Anything that is this pleasurable can become highly addictive: you can neither prevent yourself from calling, nor can you hang up the receiver--and you don’t want to stop. Callers embrace the party line with excitement and fervor, much as they would embrace a new lover. Party line devotees need their daily fix of imagined sexual romps--their precious shot of human contact. They will not give this up. For them, the telephone becomes an intoxicating cult, an obsession, and a lifestyle. Party line abusers who are compelled to talk on the phone inevitably get into serious financial trouble and are faced with devastating bills and lawsuits. Weak-willed callers risk becoming near-indentured servants of the telephone company. Hard-core party line addiction rivals heroin dependency in terms of social and monetary costs. Some people dial from work so extensively that they lose their jobs. Households are torn apart as children run up gigantic bills which their parents cannot and will not pay: teenagers run away or are kicked out because of their relentless use of the phone. Phone junkies will even resort to theft, violence, vandalism, and forgery--they will do anything to get to the line. Withdrawal is too painful to contemplate. In one terrible instance, a sixteen-year-old boy in upstate New York strangled his mother and stuffed a tube sock down her throat for threatening to put a block on his phone after he ran up a $1,500 party line bill.

Eighteen-year-old Silverfish became the uncrowned king of the party lines. He worked in a grocery store and lived with his elderly, retired Italian parents in a clean but modest, second story walk-up apartment in working class Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He saw advertisements for party lines on television and started calling them on Thanksgiving 1987: in the next eight months, Silverfish met over six hundred new people! He dated 175 women in person; of the 175, he saw 41 more than once. He made love with twenty-three of them: he had only slept with two women previously. All of a sudden he went from rags to riches: he rode in limousines, went to clubs in Manhattan, was invited to parties in penthouses--and all without a nickel to his name. The line transformed Silverfish’s life--it was kicks, cool, ecstasy! It was also “wham bam thank you, ma’am.” He had more girls to go out with than he could possibly know what to do with.

Silverfish described himself on the line as 6’2” tall, 210 pounds, with hazel/green eyes; he usually made himself a little bit older. One notes that he is well-groomed with large doe-like eyes and long lashes, a round nose, full lips (all the better to kiss party line dates with!), a very charming smile, and a smooth complexion. His hair is completely shaved off, but a thick V-shaped wedge runs along the crown of his head down to a little braid at the nape of the neck. Silverfish typically dresses in a black tee-shirt, pale blue bleached jeans with frayed holes at the knees, combat boots, and a black leather motorcycle jacket with white painted-on symbols on the lapels and sleeves. The only unusual identifying marks--a hint at a dark, gothic side--are the linear series of cigarette burns branded onto his right forearm.

Silverfish’s schedule revolved around his phone. He spent all of his time on the line except for eight hours a day to sleep--and loved every minute of it. The compulsion grew by leaps and bounds. He even swore that if he ever had a child, he would name it “Little PL.” Silverfish stole party line posters off the subways and hung them around his plain, bare bedroom. From these utilitarian headquarters, Silverfish rang up the highest known total party line bills in the United States of America, none of which he intended to pay. Neither the enormous charges, his parents, nor the phone company bothered him very much. He was lost in the wonder and excitement of his new social life. He had neither the willpower nor the desire to stop calling: “It was like I have to call.” Silverfish greatly enjoys his addiction to this day: “I am here to tell everyone that the party line is really great, and I think everyone should call them. They’d find out they’d like them a lot and would also call them all the time like I did.”

I know I’m curious! Are you ready to take a ride with me down into the tunnel of love? All of the following calls are edited composites of live, nonfiction telephone conversations which actually took place. I “recreated” Silverfish’s dialogue (paraphrased from interviews with him) to include his characteristically bizarre, shocking, and expensive adventures on the telephone. The line names of these real callers in real conversations have not been changed to protect the innocent. But, dear readers, the secret numbers of the free access lines and courtesy phones have been changed to protect the regulars. Sorry, newcomers, it’s every man and phone for himself! Here, let me dial the number for you. The party line is open!

chapter 1

welcome to jack’s jungle

“Hi! You have reached our local number free of all 900 charges, where you could talk up to thirty minutes. Also try our direct number at 1-900-999-9292 or 9393. The Phone Party! Only ninety-five cents the first minute and forty-five cents each additional minute. Now hold on, you’ll be partying and meeting new friends!”

GIGGLES hurls herself into the crocodile enclosure: Hello!

JACK THE WACK narrows his eyes in contempt: You hideous, fat slob! You sound shy, horny, and desperate!

MADMAN: What’s the matter, Jack? Your girlfriend break up with you?

JACK: Ha! Ha! I like that--the power! I will not be denied. I will destroy these women. The more I stay on the line, the more they’re gonna keep their mouths shut and not talk, the nonentities that they are.

ANTHONY: Anybody ever tell you you talk too much?

JACK: You can talk all you want. As long as you wanna look for pussy on this line, if me or Bushwick Bob are out there, you can’t do it. If you want pussy from twelve at night till five in the morning, don’t look on these lines for it!

Bruising pocket terminator bursts of noise!

JACK: We will never be destroyed. These pusillanimous nonentities will meet me, and I will take them onto the battlefield. Jack and his associates will destroy these lines from twelve at night till five in the morning. There will be three hundred minutes of FUCKING LIVING HELL! you better buy your potato chips, rent your movies, find your loved ones, call people up with regular numbers, because you have no chance against us. and if you wanna join in and beep the line that’s alright, because we get orgasms knowing that you feeble-mindeds can’t talk, can’t converse, can’t try to pick up fat girls, and fat girls can’t pick up fat guys! THREE HUNDRED MINUTES OF TORTURE!

SNOW WHITE: What’d your mother ever do to you, dickweed?

JACK: Obliterator, please take the line down for four minutes. Obliterator, you’re a good soldier; I love you. If I’m not here, somebody else will be here. Jack and his soldiers will destroy the line, led by my secretary of defense, Obliterator. He hates you people worse than I do. And by Bushwick Bob, and whoever else wants to help out. This is the last time I will give out warnings tonight. These lines will be down. Nobody will be allowed to talk over Jack!

DARYL attempts to meet a woman over ear-piercing, video arcade laser gun volleys: How you doin’, baby? Who’s this?

JACK cuts a wicked swath through the sonic blur: Sweetheart, I can hear you!

DARYL shouts: I’ll have the cops trace you!

JACK froths at the mouth: Trace my line, trace my line, trace it, you gutless piece of shit! They’re gonna arrest me for talking on 643 access number, take me to jail, put the bracelets on me, throw away the key. I’ve got urine coming down my pants, you scare me so much. You are a total nonentity and you do not scare me, because I am the Grim Reaper of the Night!

Jagged busy signal rings incessantly over the line.

JACK: They can’t find a girl in real life, so they think they’re gonna find it here--but Jack will destroy you. You have no chance against us. So if you think you could trace us, come and get us, because we will kick the shit out of you and give you a token to get home. Cause when you mess with Jack, you’re messing with a psycho. From twelve to five this is like the Home Shopper’s Club; we take over the line.

MARLBORO MAN clicks on during a screeching, antiballistic missile assault: Hey Jack, it’s me: Marlboro!

JACK calls a temporary cease fire: Only you could be on, Marlboro; I only stopped because it was you.

DARYL: You ain’t gettin’ no pussy; that’s why you act like this. You’re a stupid-ass white motherfucker; they should lock you up.

JACK (as Marlboro Man laughs uncontrollably in collusion): That’s the black bastard that was listening in the penalty box last night for sixty minutes. He said, “I like pussy.” That’s all he says. You fucking simian, you fucking primate! He goes to Jungle Habitat to look for women. They just don’t hang up. There were four fucking idiots still trying to talk.

DARYL: Why do you do it?

JACK: Because I can’t stand the bullshit talk: “Hi! Who’s out there?” “Hi! What do you look like?” The same thing every fucking night. They can’t differentiate a voice. They don’t know. They have no fucking talk, they have no intelligence, they have no personality.

DARYL: Alright, I got another question for you. Why don’t you just not call the line?

JACK: Cause I love to trash it. I am the terminator. I’m a fuckin’ terrorist in real life, too. I’m a terrorist motherfucker!

An angry, disturbed person like Jack the Wack can create a reign of terror on the line as he gets back at a cruel world which shows him as little mercy as he shows us. He can sustain a one-man campaign against fat women: he can take over an entire party line and halt all conversation. Who is Jack, and why does he spend six hours a day, five days a week, on his telephone, spewing out venom at anyone who will listen? Some callers speculate that Jack launched a full-scale vendetta against all party lines to exact revenge on his enemies from the Wild Line. His mission is to shut every single line down; he spends almost a third of his waking life carrying out this crusade. In his mind, he is at war every night. His fury is so fascinating, his personality is so charismatic, that he has attracted partisans; Jack is the quintessential dictator. Adolph Hitler had nothing on him.

I am going undercover to investigate party lines first hand: I’ve been eavesdropping on the 643 line (a twelve-bridge, 900-number access link) every single night since Silverfish smuggled me the free calling code. I crouch down in silent, delighted shock each time Jack goes off: he chews up his victims like a lunch snack and then spits them right back out, their self-esteem and egos violated and battered. There is absolutely no way I would even breathe loudly if Jack was in the middle of a tantrum--or if I suspected he was calmly lurking anywhere nearby. I doubt I’ll ever have the nerve to speak: in this riot-torn telephone game of hide and go seek, I don’t want to be “it.” But, ever so gently, I am being drawn deeper--and inexorably--into the party line world.

Shrill, high-pitched beeping disrupts the line: BEEEEEP! BEEEEEP! BEEEEEP! BEEEEEP! BEEEEEP!

RAGING BULL: Beepers, you’re becoming rowdy now. Calm down!

LISA: Who’s the guy who knows how to get past the 550 numbers?

KOKOMO JOE: Right here. I have a touch-tone phone. All you do is set it on pulse, and calls to 500 numbers don’t register. I get my regular bill and nothing extra on it.

RAGING BULL: You’re wrong. You’re a fucking idiot. Put a hole in the wall and stick your ding dong in there. I can’t believe they’re talking about digital fucking phones at seven o’clock in the morning.

Shallow snoring noises in the background.

RAGING BULL: Don’t you want to beat the shit out of that snorer? Hey, cut that shit out, man! If I was over there, I’d fuck him up. If I could trace his line, I could wake him up. He probably fell asleep watching a porn movie with a sandwich in his mouth.

SILVERFISH: I gotta be up at work in another three hours. My boss caught me on the phone in the manager’s office during my lunch break. He was yelling at me that I’m not getting enough sleep, I’m spaced out, and he’s gonna have to lay me off. I’m gonna quit, anyway.

RAGING BULL bellows: You dumb fuck! this fucking guy’s gonna quit his job to stay home and talk on a party line.

SILVERFISH: Damn right I am! Raging Bull, go back to Death Valley! SNAP!

Silverfish’s mother (who threatened to jail him today after receiving an $8,197.91 phone bill!) suddenly snuck up with a giant pair of sewing scissors and snipped the wire in two right out from under him! Silverfish had successfully concealed his party line activities from her for the last four billing cycles (“She thought I was talking to friends.”) by intercepting the bills at the mailbox and burying the voluminous Pay-Per-Call Services pages behind the kitchen refrigerator. Silverfish now has to resort to various complicated subterfuges to wrestle control of the hotly contested telephone away from his mother: he has the party line ring his house so she thinks he’s received an incoming call and will let him pursue the unapologetic pleasure of his nightly nine-hour gabfests in peace. He even brought a mattress into the tub and barricaded himself in the family bathroom overnight--phone clutched tight--to escape detection. With the subsequent arrival of a new phone bill for $7,013.86, however, Silverfish’s mother bypassed the bustling communication wires altogether and tossed the entire offending phone apparatus into a waiting Brooklyn garbage pail.

STACY Q suspends disbelief: Are you calling from Chippendale’s now?

CHIP: No, I’m home in Jersey. I don’t work there anymore. I’m not famous or anything; there are millions of Chippendale’s dancers.

STACY Q: How old are you?

CHIP: I’m twenty-one.

STACY Q: You’re a little too young for Stacy.

CHIP: I’ll make up for it in other categories.

STACY Q treads on sacred soil: How tall are you?

CHIP: I’m 5’8”.

STACY Q: You’re too short for this line, babe!

CHIP: I’m big enough to handle the job, don’t worry.

SILVERFISH: I heard half those dancers are gay, anyway.

CHIP: It’s true, but half of us aren’t, and I’m the half that isn’t. Stacy, you gonna give me a call, or not? I ain’t gonna sit on this phone for a half hour. If you don’t like me, hang up--I mean, gimme a call; it’s cheaper that way.

STACY Q: It’s not that I don’t like you.

CHIP exhibits delusions of grandeur: You don’t like big dicks?

STACY Q: You ain’t a man for twenty-one years old.

CHIP (chewing noises in the background): I don’t understand why you won’t call me unless you’re a lesbian.

STACY Q: It’s because I have a boyfriend and if he’s out listening on the line, he’d freak out.

SILVERFISH: How do you find time for your boyfriend when you bullshit on the phone all day?

GODDESS clicks on: Hi! I’m a goddess--I’m a love goddess.

CHIP rushes in: Hi! If you’re really a goddess, why don’t you give me a call?

GODDESS publicly snubs him: I’m just hanging out on the line.

GROUNDHOG: It means they’re not desperate bitches, so they’re not gonna call so fast.

CHIP: What’s the matter, you don’t put out? Aren’t you a real woman?

CHUBBY: They’re like ice cubes, these babes; they’re frigid.

GODDEsS: You know, if you want to meet a woman, you don’t start right away.

CHIP: Don’t tell me how to meet women; I go with more women. . . .

CHUBBY: Hey Chip, you gotta make a few of these line parties; it’s like going to Weight Watchers.

CHIP: I bet they’re all fat and ugly, huh?

STACY Q: Yeah, I’m six hundred pounds and I keep Clearasil on the dresser.

CHIP: I could see guys calling these lines, if guys were horny. You don’t care. But girls, man.

CHUBBY: Remember when you were dancing, the girls up front that stuck dollar bills in your G-string--the type you would spit on? Those are the ones on this line.

CHIP laughs: Stacy, you got cellulite on your pussy?

STACY Q confirms his worst nightmare: Yup, you know it.

SILVERFISH: I know a girl who gets off on male strippers. She’s a knockout: 5’8”, lots of crimped brown hair, hairspray, blue eyes, Italian, twenty-four years old. I talked to her on the line for a few months, and finally I said I’d come over. I dressed up in this white shirt; 1960s sweater; striped nerd pants; high water boots; low, pushed back hair. I knock on the door and two hours later we’re in bed. But I was very nervous about it because of AIDS. I don’t even know her; I know her by phone, you know? So she said, “Do you have any protection?” “You’re damn right I do!” I spent every weekend with her for a month, and she’d always want to go to this male strip joint, watch them, get horny, and take it out on me. I’d pay for her to go there and for her drinks, and it’s like, “What the hell am I doing here?” Then one day she takes me over to some guy’s house, and he’s kissing her. What do I do--should I punch him in the face? “Oh, here we go.” It turns out he was her boyfriend, and he’d just been away on vacation.

A socioeconomic profile of our newfound phone friends--hardbodied strippers and Greek goddesses alike--reveals that they are lower middle income, working class, or the working poor. Very few hold a university or professional degree: bad language, bad manners, and bad grammar abound. The average dialer is between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age. Many “thirty-something” men are overweight, balding, and sedentary with declining physical assets; they have difficulty competing for women in person against younger, stronger, better-looking men. In the telephone pecking order, however, their added maturity suddenly translates into a distinct advantage: they are more aggressive, experienced, deeper-voiced, and dominant than their calling brethren in the eighteen-to-twenty-four age bracket.

Many baby boomers feel uncomfortable at bars or clubs where the average patron is at least a decade their junior. They are sick of the “What’s your sign?” scene and would prefer to stay at home. On the phone they can reconstruct their adolescent peer group; the party line is almost as good as tearing the town apart on a Saturday night with the boys or smoking cigarettes at a pajama party in pink curlers and a terry cloth bathrobe. For the striking number of single and divorced young mothers on the phone, this is also the most convenient, and possibly the only way, they can “get out of the house” for the evening. All of these disparate callers, however, come together on shaky common ground; they are defenseless fair game for the infamous Jack the Wack. Just pray that he is not lying in wait for you on the line tonight as we unplug our ears and press our glass jelly jars to the wall again.

We will overhear Silverfish boldly and brilliantly defying both his mother and the officials at Bell Atlantic as he continues his tempestuous odyssey on the line. Silverfish’s mother replaced the phone and now wearily tries to stay awake all night hoping that he will go to sleep before her and not make any calls. Silverfish consistently outlasts her: his new ruse is to stand near the phone with a blanket draped over his head so she can’t hear him talking. Silverfish even managed to expand his dialing possibilities in the neighborhood: “I was at my friend’s house and I forgot to put the phone back on the hook; it was still connected to the party line for the next two days. Man, he’s gonna hate to see his bill!” Silverfish just as cavalierly dismissed his own mounting collection of past-due notices: “Hell no! They can’t make me pay! There’s nothing they can do about it. I don’t have any money. If they sue me, then maybe I would stop calling as much, but nothing’s happened.”

MUFFLED WHISPERER challenges: Silverfish is an asshole!

SILVERFISH: Bend over in the mirror and count the pimples on your ass, buddy!

JACK THE WACK spots new prey: I hate whisperers; they’re gutless!

NERVOUS WHISPERER: I can’t talk in my real voice cause my old lady is here.

JACK swears impatiently: You let a woman toilet train you? You’re disgusting! You’re worse than fucking Silverfish with a blanket over his head. You’re more worse than the Wild Line motherfuckers, man. You’re a fucking asshole! You pay the bills in your house, and you can’t even speak up cause your old lady might wake up and dash the phone across your fucking head, and not make you meatloaf dinner tomorrow and pork chops on Sunday. You make me sick! Go down on your fucking wife and eat her fucking vagina out, okay? Why don’t you clean her cunt out with Clorox and go down in that shit!

Male laughter in the background.

JACK: You’re a piece of shit work, you are! You can’t even fuckin’ talk loud in your own house. Take that, motherfucker! (Muddy, discordant music punishes 643!)

TOPAZ clicks on and whispers: Hello! Who’s out there?

TURTLE: I’ll know who the whisperer is the minute she opens her mouth, cause I’m sure I came in it before.

SILVERFISH: Turtle, I remember you. My dog remembers you. You’re the one who picked up his shit--he still asks for you!

ROBERT: Topaz, have you met any guys from the party line?

TOPAZ: I met one guy on Sunday. He looked like Fat Albert. He said he was chunky; those were his exact words. But he was a nice guy, so I figured I’d meet him. He brought his friend with him, and his friend goes, “Topaz, you’re not gonna like him.” And when I saw him, it was, “Oh, my God!” He had to be five hundred pounds, at least!

INCENDIARY WHISPERER hammers: Lisa, Lisa! Her name is Lisa: 555-2583.

ROBERT: What are you, a sex pervert?

TOPAZ: My real name is Lisa, and he’s giving out my real number, too. I want to know who he is.

ROBERT: Lisa, you shouldn’t give out your number--not over the party line, at least.

LISA: I didn’t. I called him back and gave it to him. I don’t know who it is. The only person I can think of is Tony who is the type of dick to do this.

SILVERFISH: Shut up, grandma! Dial 1-900-SHUT-THE-FUCK-UP! You old fucking bitch! Go call the Geritol Line!

TRUCULENT WHISPERER: Lisa’s a party line regular: 555-2583.

LISA (as Silverfish incapacitates the line for thirty vengeful minutes): If he is who I think he is, then I have Tony’s address. And if I don’t, a friend of mine works at the phone company, and I’ll give her the number and she’ll get his address. Then I’m gonna call the cops!

In person, Silverfish is gentle, innocent, unaffected, and shy, with a good sense of humor. He is soft-spoken and likable, but he can victimize people on the line, as he did tonight. Silverfish told me: “I want people to hear that I’m there; I want them to know I’m there. I want power over the phone.” He can also do this in everyday life: “I can be aggressive. That’s when I have to use violence. Say I want to go out there and beat the shit out of someone, or go to jail for something, or go to my mother and sock her around, or break something. Instead, I dial the number and fuckin’ yell my fuckin’ head off and hurt people, but I don’t give a shit about them cause I don’t know them.” Loners can call to vent frustration on a captive audience here without getting into any real trouble. The phone is always available as a convenient whipping boy. Just ask Jack.

Party lines address a real crisis: people who previously never had any opportunity or way to socialize and express themselves effectively can now use the telephone to break out of their isolation and rage for the very first time. Competent adults with robust, sunny personalities love well, work well, play well, and expect well. Other, less resilient individuals--with physical or mental disabilities and liabilities--can suddenly step up to be kingpins and social butterflies on an equal footing in this unusual public forum. This unique communication medium draws in the millions of people who have no access to group participation elsewhere in society; they feel that they belong--and are in control--on the party line.

When I first called I never thought about the people I’d encounter, or about whether or not I’d like it, but I, too, took to the party line like a duck takes to water. All it took was one phone call! Disconnection now means deprivation: on the 643 line you are automatically cut off after a half hour with a noncommittal, unobtrusive click. Getting through again precipitates a romantic epic of Herculean proportions: fifteen excruciating minutes of biting your fingernails, swallowing your pride, hearing only busy signals and busy recordings, and bodyslamming redial until you’re finally rewarded. Wallflowers of the world, pick up your phones--we’re back in the pleasure dome!

TORCH: There’s plenty of fish in the sea.

ROSE: I’m not a fish; I’m a shark! Back up!

TORCH flexes his fins: Wanna take a swim?

ROSE: Hey, only time I take a swim with anybody, it’s gonna be with Frankie. Frank, I love you, honey.

TORCH: Frankie’s all yours. I’m laying back, homeboy. I wanna see what the rest of the action brings. Anybody come up and take a stab at it, go right ahead.

FRANK: What kind of work do you do, Rose?

ROSE: I’m a sanitary engineer. I work in industrial waste and sewage treatment. I’m the one with the steel-toed boots, the coveralls, and the tool belt around my waist, and I’m going up a ladder to fix a two-story centrifugal pump.

FRANK: I like a woman who gets her hands dirty. I know that she could give me a greasejob whenever I need it.

ROSE: Baby, baby, changing oil--that’s nothing; let me do your crankcase for ya.

FRANK: Can you give a good massage?

ROSE: Oh, baby, I’ve got big hands; I do a good job of everything I do. I’m six feet tall, 212 pounds, I’m a 43, 34, 44, and my legs are 35 inches long. I’m all woman.

FRANK: Hey, Rose. I’m 6’1”, 235 pounds, green eyes, good-looking, half Puerto Rican. All you gotta do is call me on my private line, and we can eliminate all of these little hassles out of the way.

TORCH: She sounds like the type of woman that will make her man stand out.

FRANK: She sure do. She sounds like the type of woman that she can get you in that bed, and you won’t get up till the bed is wet.

ROSE: When I’m with my man and we go out somewhere and anybody walks up to him talking crap, I’ll take his balls and I’ll put them in a pickle jar and hand them back to him before the ambulance gets there!

TORCH revels in imaginary pleasure: God damn!

SILVERFISH stirs up the party line: Shut the fuck up!

ROSE: So who’s the sub-homo-sapian anal retentive that told Frank to shut up?

SILVERFISH: It’s the Silverfish.

TORCH: Hey Silverfish, I got a number for you: 1-900-QUEER!

SILVERFISH jousts: Why don’t you suck my dick?

ROSE: I don’t think that I would like to do that, cause I’m not gonna be arrested for murder when your heart gives out!

SILVERFISH: Ooh! How old are you, babe?

ROSE: I’m twenty-seven with a bullet. How old are you?

SILVERFISH lies: I’m twenty-one.

ROSE: Oh, twenty-one with a crutch, is that it?

TORCH: He’s gotta dial the junior line.

SILVERFISH: Why don’t you suck me off, buddy, alright.

TORCH (guys laugh in unison): Why don’t you fucking suck your mother off! You probably got your little sister right there on the phone sucking you off right now!

SILVERFISH probes: Hey Rose, you must be a nigger.

ROSE: Ooh, personal! Wouldn’t you like to know, honey? Wouldn’t you like me to bend over and check and see if my lips are brown before they’re pink? Wouldn’t you like to check?

SILVERFISH exclaims: Oh, yeah! What nationality are you?

ROSE: I’m Creole: French, Cajun, and black. I’m from bayou country.

SILVERFISH: You’ve got such a hot voice, its incredible!

FRANK yells: Rose! Those fucking punks cut Rose off. That sucks bad. She liked my voice. I wanna meet me a nice chick on the Spanish line that gets high and have a good time, go out, party, give it up--you know. Shit like that.

TORCH: Forget it, man. You meet ‘em in the fuckin’ grocery store; you meet ‘em where you least expect ‘em. You don’t meet ‘em on the party line.

FRANK hears a new click: Hello! What’s your name?

JENNIFER flirts conspicuously: Jennifer.

FRANK: Just with the name alone is gorgeous.

JENNIFER giggles: You don’t even know what I look like.

FRANK plays the field: I don’t even have to know what you look like, Jennifer, for me to know you’re gorgeous. Why don’t I give you my number and you give me a call?

BENNY: Alright, Frank, that’s a good move.

FRANK puts the line on hold as his call waiting beeps: Benny, you know what the fuck them guys were with that Jennifer bullshit? A bunch of fuckin’ homos! Her fuckin’ boyfriend puts her up to it, you know what I mean? The motherfucker was on the phone, and I said who the fuck is calling me? Then the bitch gets on and she wants to suck my dick.

BENNY: Don’t give out your number anymore.

FRANK: Most of the women you meet are fuckin’ married. Who the fuck wants to meet married women? Gets very dangerous when you’re steppin’ out of someone’s house and shit. Find yourself with broken kneecaps.

Party lines subtly change all the rules of the dating game. Strangers engage in immediate sex talk and ask intimate questions which they would never pose to anyone in person. Introverted, milquetoast men act macho and brave and woo more women in one night than they have ever even spoken to in their entire real lives. They do risk rejection, however: women can be flirtatious, fickle, and choosy as they auction themselves off to the most convincing bidder. The favorable five to one ratio of men to women on party lines ensures that before the conversation is through, a lady will always have a healthy selection of eager phone suitors vying for her attention. Rose’s brown sugary southern twang scorched the 643 wires to shreds: everyone got what they wanted and needed tonight.

Silverfish talked to Rose a few more times; he seduced himself with her raw, sultry voice: “It was making me so hot I wanted to crawl through the phone to get to her house.” They met at a bar in the Village, and she hinted that they would go back to her apartment later. Silverfish was entranced by her provocative appearance: “She was tall, long black hair, brown eyes, wearing a miniskirt, big tits, makeup, heels.” They sat and talked, but when Silverfish offered her a drink, she suddenly ordered a triple-olive martini in a deep bass voice! Silverfish began to panic. Rose said, “What’s wrong? You look nervous.” Silverfish tried to grasp the situation: “Over the phone you sounded really hot, and what happens here? Are you taking hormone pills or something?” He sought a second opinion from the man next to him: “Is this a guy?” Then Silverfish inquired, “What’s your real name besides Rose?” “Bobby!” Silverfish bolted out the swinging double doors with one regret: “The worst thing is, I tongue-kissed her hello. It makes me sick to think about it!” “She-males” can have a field day cruising talk lines--no gender reassignment surgery or pancake makeup required: a flexible larynx is all you need to get off.

Silverfish also wrenched himself off the phone to see Joanna, who had caught his ear with her scantily clad voice for two long months on the Love Line. Silverfish went to her house and found her to be age thirty-seven, Jewish, and pretty: “I took off my shoes, we’re fooling around on the couch, and I hear keys in the fucking door--it’s her husband. She never told me she was married; she must’ve been talking on the phone while he was out.” Silverfish’s life flashed before his eyes: “I’m dead. Oh, my God! I was gonna cry. I said, ‘Can I use your bathroom, please?’ I was looking and the window’s too small, and it’s on the sixth floor. Then I hear, ‘Who’s that guy in there?,’ and they go into the bedroom arguing. My sneakers are in there, and I said, ‘Fuck my sneakers, man,’ and I left. I was already out there halfway to China--I was barefoot on the bus and people were freaking out! I haven’t heard her on the line or I would’ve told every guy, ‘Don’t go there! She’s married! She’s a nut!’”

I could never hope to be in Silverfish’s grand dating/oratorical league; in the past three weeks I’ve only listened in raptures and issued noncontroversial comments under the safe pseudonym “Donna.” Threats, insults, or sexual innuendoes bounce much more easily off her plastic skin than my fragile flesh; they’re not really talking to me. When you adopt an assumed name, there is substantial psychological separation from what is said or done to you--or what you do. On party lines, a caller can have as many layers of protection as he wants: a fake name, age, appearance, job, address, marital status, even sex--in addition to the precious invisibility afforded by the telephone. In real life we carefully select whom we associate with; on party lines, we guard against possible undesirables by disguising our true identities. I’m just a secret voice in the dark--like a hidden Swiss bank account.

chapter 2

CIVIL WAR ON THE WIRES: RACE, SEX, AND VIOLENCE

Hong Kong Harvey, Sweet Buns, and Lone Wolf tripped all over themselves with desire as I slithered out of a warm, Thanksgiving holiday shower in need of a lot of loving. Sweet Buns exploded like a broken, unfettered bullhorn: “I really wanna talk to you!” Harvey gave me his beeper number and urged me to rush right down to Chinatown: “You get a free egg roll. honey, this egg roll is extra large. Big egg rolls--bigger, biggest egg rolls!” Lone Wolf zeroed in on my late autumn bed habits: “I know about those teddy bears, Donna. the biggest bear you have there is about five feet long with a Santa Claus outfit on him!” they all wanted me: the attention reeled me in like the Sirens calling unlucky, hungry sailors to their deaths on the treacherous, poisonous seas!

FRANK: If the water’s too hot, baby, it’s time to get out of the kitchen. You know what I mean?

BENNY: You’re right, homeboy.

SILVERFISH laughs: I was talking to this girl Patty on the Gabb Line for four months--we’re friends already. She’s so nice over the phone; she got me all excited to meet her. I ring the bell: I was expecting to see something really nice, and I see some bitch with no legs! She comes out in a fucking go-cart! My friend Kyle was with me. He’s a wise-ass, so he insults her, “How the hell do you get to the telephone? You roll over to it?” She wheels me over to the side to talk: “I hope you’re not upset cause I didn’t tell you.” “No, no, there’s no problem, but I have to go home now cause I have to go to school tomorrow.”

BENNY laughs: Is that a fucked-up bitch?

SILVERFISH: I felt so stupid. I swear I felt like punching her in the face for lying. I mean, she said she liked to dance, so I figured she had legs--and then big stumpy comes to the door. How can you go out with a girl who has her legs in the closet? She never called me again, but when I came across her on the line, I made jokes like, “Did you meet half and half yet?”

HEATHER clicks on: Frank, are you black?

FRANK: No, I’m Puerto Rican. So’s my man, Benny. I’m light-skinned Puerto Rican. I’m 6’1”, 230 pounds; I look like a linebacker for the Miami dolphins. I got green eyes. I’m a college graduate; I’m an AT&T technician. The money is good--I make about $33,000 a year.

HEATHER: How old are you?

FRANK: Thirty. I’m a real man. I’m not one of these little kids trying to get on the line.

HEATHER: A real man wouldn’t be calling the line.

FRANK: Why not?

HEATHER: Because you’re not gonna find anything real serious on these lines.

FRANK: You don’t know that, Heather. Just because a person calls out there, he’s pitching a penny into the well, and sooner or later, someone nice might appear. Someone nice is not only skin deep--it could be all the way around.

HEATHER: I call because I take care of my eight-week-old-son and he’s always up at all hours. And it’s fun to talk.

FRANK: Tell me about it; I have a daughter who’s thirteen. You sound like a mature woman.

HEATHER: I’m twenty-four years old and I have a son. I’m not gonna sit here and play games.

FRANK: Right, you’re not a little girl. Your little girl days have been over already. I’m looking to call into some number where I can meet mature people that are resourceful, like you.

BENNY: Well, Frank, I hope you meet a nice girl, but if you treat the girls too nice, you get screwed.

HEATHER: I resent that.

FRANK: You gotta always treat them like a lady.

HEATHER: I live with the baby’s father right now, and you’d think he’d do the right thing. He thinks he can go out and screw other people and come back home, and he thinks it’s okay. Now meanwhile, this man gets his clothes washed, his food cooked--everything, okay--and what do I get?

FRANK: And he gets it on the side, too? He’s a great bastard. He’s got my compliments. No doubt about it. But you know a man can’t have a woman just for sex; he needs a woman for all the time. Cause what goes around, comes around.

HEATHER: He’s out there now, and I hope he finds what he wants, because it’s the couch when he comes home.

FRANK laughs: If you want, I’ll give you my number, and you can call me collect. It costs me less money than it does on a regular party line.

HEATHER lifts herself up: Hold on, let me get a pen.

My thrill-seeking pen was busy when I was on the love phone with Mr. Sweet Buns from Tom’s River: “Donna” has enjoyed three polite but uninspired conversations with him since her first, exhilarating, triple rite of passage. I dialed his Jersey Shore number to do literary research--but also out of personal curiosity: it was delightfully easy to call a total stranger, especially compared to the stage fright and fear of rejection I normally experience with men from real life! Sweet Buns claimed to be Italian/polish, twenty-eight years old, blonde, 5’9”, and 165 pounds; he works as a nursing home administrator. We arranged to meet at 2:30 A.M. at Pat’s Diner in Belmar, following a concert at the legendary Springsteen haunt, the Stone Pony in Asbury Park. He had volunteered to pick me up after the show, but I’m not hitching through the barren, south Jersey pines with a ski-masked, spasming gluteus maximus!

Sweet Buns turned out to be just as he described himself--neat, choppy, bowl haircut and twin Tupelo honey cheeks (peeked at purely for the edification of my readers!) He looked good in his gray sweatsuit and gold chain, but this evening was not exactly “down the Shore where everything’s alright, you and your baby on a Saturday night.” We had a bland, impersonal, three-hour discussion of geriatric health care, after which he gallantly paid for my English muffin and walked me to the station to catch the 5:34 A.M. train back to the city. the wait was filled with silent, uncomfortable pauses as we shivered side by side on the chilly, deserted platform bench. Sweet Buns looked sick as he tried to pluck up courage, but he was unable to make a move until the steel dawn train was roaring down the New-york bound tracks. Green to the gills, he choked and sputtered, “do you think we’ll do this again?,” as I somersaulted aboard in exhausted relief. To sleep: perchance to dream, or perchance to hear the phone sparks flying high overhead again on 643!

SILVERFISH attacks: Sammy, are you black?

SAMMY: Why should that subject even come up?

SILVERFISH: Cause I’m curious.

NICK: Sorry you’re so sensitive about it.

SAMMY: I’m not sensitive about nothing. You’re bringing up a conversation that’ll start a argument on the phone. If you’re talking to people, you shouldn’t worry about that.

NICK: Don’t get excited. Nobody called you a nigger or nothing.

SILVERFISH: Nobody said anything negative about moulies or anything like that.

SAMMY: But you wanna get into something; I can feel it.

SILVERFISH: Hey Nick, why did God make Adam white?

NICK (delighted chortles in the background): Why?

SILVERFISH: Did you ever try to take a rib from a nigger?

SAMMY: You white boys are real smart, aren’t you?

SILVERFISH mimics: I be a good nigger, massa; I’ll do your windows. Please don’t whip me! My name is Kunta kinte.

SAMMY: You like that, don’t you? Make a black man look like an asshole. I never did anything to you people.

SILVERFISH: Your father should’ve tied his dick in a knot!

WHISPERER joins the fracas: If it wasn’t for that dog beating me upstairs, I’d be your father!

CANDY clicks on: Hey nigger, you’re not wanted here--hang up!

SILVERFISH: What do you call a nigger on your bike?

Kyrus clicks in: What?

SILVERFISH: A thief. How do you stop a nigger from looking at old ladies?

KYRUS (as music thumps over the line at Marshall amp volume): How?

SILVERFISH laughs: Give him a basketball. how many Ethiopians can you fit in a bathtub?

KYRUS: How many?

SILVERFISH: None. They all fall down the drain.

TYRONE: Who cares? Are there any females out there? Hello!

SILVERFISH hisses: There’s only niggers!

BACKGROUND AGITATOR: Wendy, Wendy!

JAMES: Your mother’s like Wendy’s. Where’s the beef?

SILVERFISH: Your mother sucks my dick for a bottle of crack.

KYRUS laughs: Your mother’s so poor she can’t afford to pay attention.

JAMES: You guys must be niggers, right?

SILVERFISH: We’re white.

JAMES: Then why don’t you talk like a white?

KYRUS: I’m white, motherfucker. Why don’t you shut up, you Jamaican asshole!

FEMALE BLACK: I’m gonna sign off, cause these fools--I don’t even wanna hear their bullshit.

LOUD CHORUS: Shut up, niggerette!

SILVERFISH: Her mother’s so fat when she gets on the scale, it says, “to be continued.”

JAMES: I just can’t stand black people. A bunch of black people shot and killed my father. When I go on the streets now, man, I carry a fuckin’ knife up my ass.

SILVERFISH: Damn right! I carry a bat. I call it my “nigger be good stick.” A bunch of niggers jumped me, man. Since that day, I became a skinhead. I fuck up every nigger I see. Niggers can’t fight one on one.

KYRUS: I know, man; they fight in posses.

SILVERFISH: Yo, I went over to a nigger’s house, I stepped on a cigarette, and the nigger’s mother said, “Where’s the heat?”

KYRUS laughs: I went to a nigger’s house and stepped on a cockroach, and they told me to save the white meat.

SILVERFISH laughs: I went to a nigger’s house, I asked the nigger’s mother what’s for dinner, and she said, “The first damn thing that moves!”

JAMES: I’m in the Bronx, man. I’m the only white up here.

KYRUS: Where do you work at?

JAMES: I’m a part-time mechanic.

SILVERFISH: Are you calling from your job?

JAMES: Yeah, fourth straight day--fuck it, man. My boss owes me a lot more, so fuck him. I’m taking vacation for a month. He won’t know. By the time I get back, he’ll forget all about it. Yo, man, you believe this? I talked to a girl on the fucking party line, and she calls my house collect, thinking I’m gonna pay for it. I said, “No way, bitch!” I’m trying to sleep right now at work and four fucking bitches call me.

SILVERFISH: I’m telling you, man, this is the nigger line.

JAMES laughs: 1-900-999-NIGGER.

KYRUS clings to his skin privilege: This tape I got--this Slayer tape--it says, “Destroy all niggers that walk in your face.” I’m gonna put the tape on, man, for killing niggers all over the world. If there’s any niggers out there, just listen to this: “Our family used to own your family, so shut the fuck up!” We used to own the fucking niggers, and we still do. Right?

JAMES: Yup! that’s right. You know what I’m gonna do? Starting tomorrow, the security guard--I’m gonna have the nigger chained up to the door.

HARVEY speaks pidgin Cantonese: Hi! How ya doin’? This is Chinese man: Harvey. I just came home from Chinatown. Too much monosodium glutamate.

SILVERFISH laughs: Whattaya, a fucking moulie? Ha, ha, ha!

WHISPERER: Hey, what are you, a fucking skinhead? Ha, ha, ha!

KYRUS: Yo, you’re not man enough to talk right over the phone. Where are you from--Chinatown?

WHISPERER: Yeah, come on down. I’ll give you an eggroll.

Party line conversations reflect rampant racism, sexism, ageism, xenophobia, and homophobia. This is really how people feel--no holds barred--in Andrew Dice Clay-land. Before the civil rights movement of the 1960s, America blithely enjoyed a heady, troubled feast: widespread affluence and exuberant consumerism lulled the white majority into a complacent faith that the fruits of post-war capitalism were being passed evenly around the table. Restricted access to education, jobs, housing, public facilities, and voter registration rolls kept blacks invisible and subservient. Surprised and guilty when Watts exploded and blacks demanded a long overdue place at the groaning board, white privilege optimistically contracted to accommodate, include, and empower Afro-Americans. The impetus for equality and integration was short-lived, however: times grew tougher, and the promised land never materialized. Competition for scarce resources, coupled with disillusionment over expensive liberal programs which left the ghettos, a dysfunctional black family system, and poverty intact but spread crime and social problems throughout the entire society, produced a ringing racist backlash by the 1990s.

Party line conversations mirror the underlying fears and prejudices of the marketplace: callers are remarkably dishonest in their personal relations, but they are uncompromisingly candid about their social attitudes. We discover that Americans are profoundly racist; they proudly harbor and nurture prejudices which are seldom if ever vented in public dialogue. Because it is an anonymous outlet, hate-mongering and intolerance surface freely on the party line: callers use words and voices as instruments of racial genocide with no fear of physical reprisals by either the KKK, Lewis Farrakhan, or progressive watchdog neighbors. Human nature innately balks at diversity: from the family to the clan to the international arena, we have historically sought to eliminate, destroy, or control people different from ourselves.

As a barometer of American culture, opinions expressed on the telephone exchanges are a devastating indictment of the melting pot experiment. Stubbornly preserved ethnic identities are still so strong up and down the eastern seaboard that third generation inhabitants consistently refer to themselves a Irish, Italian, or Jewish rather than as american. The tired, humble, hopeful immigrants who filed through Ellis Island past the Statue of Liberty over the last one hundred years failed to coalesce into a nation: Americans hate each other, with both unreasoning, knee-jerk anger and furious introspection. Residents of all states, stripes, and persuasions are turning against each other as the social fabric of the United States unravels: nationality, race, and religion have become both cause celêbres and lethal weapons.

America stands on an historical precipice in 1999 as white, European-descended, Anglo-Saxon Protestants realize that they will be engulfed and supplanted by a multi-racial population mix in the next century. According to census projections in Statistical Abstract of the united States, 1993, whites will comprise only 71 percent of the population by the year 2000, and only 52 percent by the year 2050. Our English-speaking, post-colonial-era heritage is crumbling in the face of crazy-quilt immigration and a staggering patois of new foreign languages and accents, black and brown faces, and Old and New World allegiances. We will see more LA riots, more violence, and more attempts at exclusion as the racial complexion of America darkens and Third World immigrants continue to pour into a fragile, unassimilated society already bursting apart at its psychological seams.

whites feel afraid, angry, and helpless: it is easier to scapegoat and humiliate burgeoning minorities than to confront and solve society’s long-festering, escalating problems. If any blacks or foreign nationals are unfortunate enough to call the party line, they will be pitilessly abused and degraded. “Moulie” (“moulignon”) is an epithet for blacks bastardized from the Italian word for eggplant: this shiny, inky black vegetable is our 643 mascot. “Whattaya, a fucking moulie? Ha, ha, ha!” is chanted hundreds of times a day by a laughing squad of five unidentified Brooklyn gentlemen in croaking frog voices. Racial tensions and animosity are particularly acute in outer-borough Italian neighborhoods which feel threatened by encroaching Caribbean, Asian, and middle Eastern populations and growing black competition for unskilled and semi-skilled jobs. Silverfish, himself, can be mistaken for a light-skinned mulatto because of his rounded features and caramel complexion. defensiveness about his racial status and appearance have made him particularly aggressive against non-whites. (What is he, a fucking moulie? Ha, ha, ha!)

Silverfish’s shenanigans on the telephone landed him in the middle of serious ethnic and religious strife: “these Jewish guys were talking, and I figured what the hell--I might as well get out aggression.” Silverfish made jokes about the Holocaust to the wrong callers: his comments about the oven and the microwave (“I’m gonna make you into a lampshade!”) pushed Larry, a first-time dialer, over the edge. silverfish recounts: “I’m not like a racist; I didn’t really mean anything I was saying, but you could tell it was really hurting his feelings. He was getting upset about it, so I said fuck it! Good, the hell with it!” silverfish challenged Larry with his real name, phone number, and address: “I didn’t believe him that he’d really come down and bother me.”

Three days later Silverfish had visitors: “These two big guys with beards, and they had like war helmets on, they said they were looking for me. They rang the bell and I buzzed them in, but when I got to the door, I looked down and there was a pamphlet on the floor in the hallway.” The Jewish Defense League flooded black and Jewish neighborhoods in Long Island, Bedford Stuyvesant, Flatbush, and Crown Heights with three hundred pamphlets calling for public action against Silverfish. Leaflets appeared on windshields and in mailboxes: “Silverfish is a Nazi skinhead. He must be stopped! He must be stopped now! He is recruiting young sixteen-year-old kids into his group and polluting their minds! . . .” The literature described Silverfish as a dangerous cult leader, juxtaposed with a “picture of a Nazi soldier with barbed wire running through his eyes and mouth.”

Consequences poured in from all sides as a local Brooklyn newspaper covered the story. silverfish was inundated with harassing calls: “Is that white Nazi bastard there? Oh, we’re gonna kill him!” Silverfish was frightened to leave the house: “It was pretty scary. I was very nervous on going out, but I said fine--these people don’t know what I look like. I’m sure if they got me on the street, they would’ve killed me, right there and then. But they woulda saw me that I was tan skin; I’m not white white. How could I be a Nazi being Puerto Rican color?” silverfish’s long-suffering mother called the police and changed the phone number after flyers charged that Silverfish’s parents were “supporting his cults!” Silverfish recalls the incident very uneasily: “I’m happy it’s over with. It was one big crisis kind of thing.”

Face-to-face physical violence as well as episodes of emotionally violent, self-destructive sex can eventuate from the seemingly benign act of picking up one’s telephone receiver. There is a lot of indiscriminate, bad sex (and bad politics) on the line: couples meet and there is no physical attraction whatsoever, but intercourse takes place just because it is convenient and one or both partners are horny. A male has sex with a female even if she is very fat or ugly, simply because he wants a warm, wet place to insert his penis and ejaculate. A woman will often jump at the opportunity to enjoy a man that her looks alone could never rate. A concealed appearance and a fetching voice have enabled her to trap him for the evening; this is her only chance to make him like her. party line men often confess that they’ve bedded these women against their better judgment: an erect organ has neither selectivity nor conscience. but it finds very little gratification in these encounters, either.

Josh met a new woman the last time that he visited 643: when he asked her if she “wanted to have a nice time,” she gave him her address and said to call her when he reached the train station! Josh relived his flash-in-the-pan erotic experience, beginning with her description: “She said she was blonde, but she wasn’t--she had dark brown hair. I’m twenty-four and she was thirty-five, so it was a big experience for me. I have a baby face, so it’s hard for me to get older women; they think I’m too young for them. Her apartment wasn’t that clean, though. She looked at me and said, ‘Don’t use the condom.’ I looked at her and said, ‘You must be crazy! No way!’ as a matter of fact, I put two on--in case one broke. I was like--wait a minute. What am I doing? I was ready to turn back. It was like a fantasy at first. then when I was in bed with her, it was like--oh, shit! But she was clean.” Curiosity and desire gone, Josh loped away from his flagrant sexual indiscretion the very next day: “No! No way am I gonna go back there! She enjoyed it, though. She wanted my phone number, but I said no. I’ll probably call her back later today, but I don’t feel like going to her house.”

Silverfish met a twenty-five-year-old hairdresser named “Honeymooner” (Chris) on a 900 line who wants him to go to his apartment with two friends and beat him up: “We’d go private with him and he’d masturbate over the phone. I’d say, ‘You’re worthless! You’re a piece of shit! You’re not worth anything to the world.’ He’d be panting, ‘Yeah, yeah, tell me more!’ And I’d go, ‘Shithead! When I come over there, I’ll beat the shit out of you. I’m gonna pull your bike.’ He’s probably some stupid, ugly maniac who gets off on being beaten. He’s gonna pay us fifty dollars each, so what the fuck do we care. We’re doing it for beer money.” Silverfish, Kyle, and Midnight Wizard hopped the subway turnstile tonight to Chris’s cold-water tenement in the rundown, West Forties theatre/hooker strip off Eighth Avenue. they knocked on the door and Chris opened it; he was tall, well-proportioned, and muscular, with blue, Mel Gibson eyes and long dark hair. He invited them in, put on some music, and offered them beer and reefer. His apartment was stylishly furnished with black leather couches and a gray rug, but the bathroom contained only peeling celadon paint and a chipped toilet; a freestanding, antique, claw-foot bathtub crowded the pre-war kitchen.

Chris aroused himself by looking at Silverfish’s motorcycle boots, cut-up jeans, thighs, and groin, as he shed his tight black pants and strappy red “Guinea-tee” and moaned for Silverfish to kick him in the testicles and urinate on him. Kyle kicked him instead: “You fucking queer! Where’s the john? Ah, fuck it! I’m not gonna use the john. I’m gonna make you my john!” Kyle urinated all over Chris’s face and naked body as he lay on the floor begging for Kyle to beat him. Silverfish pulled Chris up by his hair and dragged him into the kitchen, where Kyle ordered him around: “Get me a beer right now!” Chris jerked off while he got it out of the refrigerator. Kyle growled: “Did I ask you to open it for me, you AIDS victim?” Kyle hit him hard on the head with the can; beer and red blood flew all over the room.

Kyle, Midnight Wizard, and Silverfish whipped Chris with a belt, pushed him on the floor, drenched him with water, and threw cat litter at him. Silverfish asked, “What happened? Why don’t you ever try to do it with girls? You’re a good-looking guy.” Chris wet his full, moist lips: “I get more turned on by big guys like you!” Chris ratcheted the transgressive sex up another notch by having Midnight Wizard defecate on him: he smeared the watery feces all over his body and yanked frantically at his scrotum. When Kyle kicked him hard in the balls with his boot, Chris projectile-shot a load of semen onto Kyle’s pants. Silverfish and Midnight Wizard beat him viciously for ejaculating on Kyle: “We kicked him so hard--like we were kicking the door in. He must’ve had bruises.” Chris got up: “Okay, that’s enough; I’m worthless now. You guys can go home. Here’s the money.” After the second visit, Chris offered to rent Silverfish a room in his apartment: “He said if I could hit him every time he came home from work, he would let me live there.” the rough sex sessions continued, but as the remuneration declined and Silverfish grew concerned that they could be arrested for assault, the choreographed, staged violence came to a quiet conclusion.

Maurice (Rocco) three-ways 970-DICK onto 643: “Welcome to New York’s hottest gay fantasy line, specially designed for men who prefer men. you’ll have the option to choose from five different fantasies, each offering a unique pleasure. Press number one on your touch-tone phone and make him beg for it. He’ll do whatever you want and do it well. Do you need to be told what to do? Press number two and get on your knees. We’re gonna fuck the big one and we don’t take no for an answer. you like ‘em young and cute? Who doesn’t? Want to suck and fuck a hot young stud? Press number three and New York’s hottest little bottoms will service you. . . . Make your selection now. the charge for this call is $3.50.”

MOULIE Man one laughs: what are you, a fucking moulie, Maurice?

MOULIE MAN TWO: Whadda ya, a fuckin’ moulie, Moulie Man?

MAURICE presses number four: “This is your masked man again. Yeah, I’m here to give you anonymous sex. I’ve got some toys to play with and you’re gonna like them. But first, you better suck my big dick. Mmm, yeah, that’s right. Make it real hard and then the masked man will give you pleasure. Come on, faster now; your hot mouth feels real good on my big shaft. Okay, that’s enough; I don’t want to come yet. Roll over and show me that horny ass. I’m greasing up the dildo now. You know what’s coming. I’m shoving it in now. Slow, so slow you can get used to this big thing right in your tight hole. Pumping the dildo in and out of your ass. You like this, don’t you? Now I’m replacing that big dildo with a vibrator. It’s in there now. you feel that? Like a shock through your turned-on body. Yeah, now you’re ready for the real thing. Here’s the masked man’s big cock up your ass. (Grunts) Oh, yeah, you feel real hot in there. go on, pump your dick, so you can come for me. Oh, yeah, I’m coming, too, baby! Let’s come together! You’re a very sexy guy. I wanna make love to you over and over again!”

DEEP GROWL (as the guys on the line all laugh ghoulishly): What are you, fucked up or what?

KENNY chuckles: Do you have any other numbers?

DEBBIE (as Rocco rings 594-7441, an access portal to the dollar-a-minute Luck Line): My dial tone is protected.

JACK THE WACK: Oh, Debbie, you gave Marlboro an orgasm. He thought he had a free dial tone to call the fuckin’ Wild Line. that was a heavy click. Who’s the heavy person who just came on the line?

LISA (and Mike) click on: Are there any horny guys out there?

JACK: Who’s the horny girl who’s finger fucking herself while she’s eating Entenmann’s cake? You’re finger fucking yourself, you filthy, sucking cunt! You got a Roach Motel in your cunt you got so much fucking lice! You came out of a bachelor party, and they sent you back for a refund!

ROCCO needles: Lisa, you’re with a guy and you call the line? He must be exciting.

LISA laughs: Yeah, it is exciting.

JACK: Lisa. Her cunt is like a Honda dealership: a two-car garage. He can’t do more than one push-up on you. That’s the problem, huh? Put him on--I’ll trash him.

MIKE: What’d you say about me?

JACK (as the entire line roars with laughter): Hey Mike, I said you can’t do push-ups on that fat, fucking phone slut you’re with! My name is Jack from Hawley and Wyckoff and I’m the demagogue of the line. You must be shit cause she’s looking for more cock. You couldn’t last more than two minutes, man. She needs it, man. She’s a fucking nympho! Do something! Why don’t you just cut her with a fucking razor, man: open her up!

LISA retrieves the phone: did you teach him what he has to do?

JACK cuts to the heart of the matter: I talked to him. He agrees: you’re nothing. He just fucks you, and he’s gonna get rid of you tomorrow and get another girl.

LISA: That’s okay. No problem.

JACK causes pandemonium: Rocco, you can get phone numbers where you are, right? Jack Nicholson--he’s a sick bastard: I know he’ll stay on the party line!

Rocco, with his machine gun, rapid-fire voice; playful Chinese Harvey/gushing gay Maurice impersonations; and remorseless interest in explicit recorded vignettes and the seamy side of the telephone, has innocently enough become my first friend on the line. A Bell Atlantic night manager, thirty-three-year old Rocco (6’1”, 160 pounds, with long brown hair and a mustache, Dutch/English extraction) is a familiar, safe social haven since he’s married with a newborn baby. (His wife never discovered his colorful, complex, nightly three-year career on 643!) My fledgling efforts to comprehend the mysterious inner workings of the party line--to appreciate the convivial, fast-paced phone hacker lifestyle--have borne additional fruit. I’ve already figured out how Jack manages to monopolize the line for five solid, uninterrupted hours (I originally thought it was black magic!): utilizing an auxiliary line, he three-ways himself back in on a new thirty-minute talk slot each time the old one expires. At long last, an explanation for the omnipresent dial tone, compulsive dialing, ringing, and busy signal din in the background!

chapter 3

BEND ME OVER YOUR STAIRCASE

Silverfish exchanged hot times on the telephone for a late night, Flashback Disco party sponsored by The Party Line at New York’s scandal-ridden super-club, The Tunnel. He arrived in a white stretch limousine (courtesy of Mike from Bensonhurst) in a black wool trench coat, knickers, high tube socks, and gold eyeliner. The punchy, pulsating, derelict railroad tunnel crawled with nametagged telephone customers: they pinned a silver-painted fish cracker on the Silverfish in the full-bar-service, unisex bathroom. Saddled with an inflammatory personality, Silverfish was an odds-on magnet for chaos and disorder: he deliberately sought out and confronted his line enemy, Captain blood, in Peter Gatien’s magenta-fluff, cosmic Cavern Lava Lounge. Circulating within a tri-level, five-DJ firmament of slow-moving Michelin men and certified sheiks of schmooze, Silverfish recalled Captain Blood’s sworn oath: “‘You’re always too noisy; you’re too hyper on the line, Silverfish. If I ever run into you, I’ll kick the living shit out of you!’ Someone pointed him out to me. this guy turns out to be close to fifty, bald, short, and skinny: a nerd businessman. I go up to him and say, ‘I’m the silverfish. Now you gonna kick my ass?’” Captain Blood curtailed the snappy, bullyboy patter; apologized; turned tail through the Subterranean Coffee Bar; and quickly pole-vaulted out the Twelfth Avenue highway exit!

A second infatuated saga unfolded as love and deception once again joined hands together against the Silverfish. Silverfish was supposed to have met Tattoo here, with whom he has had an intense phone relationship for over two months. He couldn’t find her, but the next day she told him that she had seen him outside in the limo: “She might’ve been this really fat biker lady who came over to give me a pass to re-enter the Tunnel. She won’t tell me if that was her or not. She lives in Bay Shore, and she says she has a room open if I wanna move in there with her.” Silverfish’s untenable, telephone-traumatized household finally exploded: the last parental straw was this month’s bill for $1,745.40!

At any hour--day or night--we insinuate ourselves directly into people’s parties, hearts, homes, discos, and places of business right through their telephone units. As an extraordinarily live, kinetic medium, the party line barges in on all our senses with the candor and indiscretion of a crisis-coverage, eyewitness news team. Complete strangers reveal their most intimate personal secrets and dramas: in one short hour you will know someone better than their own mother does. Callers safely and anonymously unload their romantic problems to objective, interested peer singles rather than to repetition-weary and judgmental friends and family. Instant camaraderie is established between callers who seek and give solace, advice, and commiseration. A friend in need is a friend indeed, even if it is only an unknown and temporary one: we all need a little shelter.

Long Branch, New Jersey, was an epicenter of nocturnal discontent and vacant, violent longings tonight as Trish ran up a vicious, covert phone bill from deep inside a double-locked, dead-bolted bedroom. Trish’s friends had confined her to quarters while they had early morning, post-bar sex in the other room: “I have a whole apartment of my own where I could go and do absolutely nothing like I’m doing now, except I can’t dial 900 numbers. I would take a cab home, but they won’t even let me do that.” angry and unstable, Trish was in preventive custody for her own protection: “They don’t want me to be alone. I got really pissed off at this guy. This guy comes to your house and sleeps with you every night, and gets up with you every morning, and all of a sudden out of the blue he shows up at this bar with some bitch that doesn’t even hold a candle. And wouldn’t you get a little upset? I’m supposed to stand there and smile? So I turned around and I fuckin’ punched this brick wall behind me!”

Legal practicality prevailed over Trish’s gut instinct to throw a drink at him: “You see, I didn’t want to do that, cause I don’t want to have to go to court for assault. I’d beat the shit out of her, but it isn’t her fault; it wasn’t her dick, it was his. I wanted to put his head through a plate glass window tonight. I doubt I’ll ever even speak to him again. We just got out of bed together this morning, and all of a sudden I find him with this other ugly bitch. You just don't do that.” After another hour of interactive party line therapy, Trish’s friends returned to find her cheered-up and laughing: “Someone’s running a fingernail along my foot. Yo, bitch! Oh, she’s still got her pants on. I’m talking to a friend of mine--get your penis out of here! I’m being joined by two other people. But anyway, I’m gonna have to hang up and deal with these two. Then I’m gonna eat a few quaaludes and go sound asleep. Have fun, folks, for the rest of the night!”

John, a local Long Branch paramedic, instantly replaced Trish on the overnight conversation caravan. Calling in from the antiseptic quiet of a pale green hospital hallway at 4:00 A.M., John filched the staff keys and snuck into a doctor’s office to while away the graveyard shift in the absence of myocardial infarction, death, and contagion on his watch. You could ”see” his crisp white uniform and cushioned orthopedic air shoes as he sat jackknifed with his feet up on the patient files contemplating both the staggering bill and his increasingly tenuous health services career: “If the hospital works the bill by phone number, and they send it to each desk, oh my God! I’d hate to see his face! I know somebody’s getting fired for this. I’m gonna say I was sleeping.” Silverfish also left a cold trail of phone bills behind him; he pulled up stakes for greener pastures and the happy prospect of unlimited, stress-free dialing opportunities.

SILVERFISH: I had to get away from my parents. My mom was happy I was moving out. She said, “Good, don’t come back! You’ll probably use someone else’s phone all the time and cost them a lot of money.” Tattoo pulls up to my house to help me move--I’d never seen her till then--and this big fat ugly Jabba the Hutt walks in. She had a sexy voice on the phone, but she’s a bow wow in person. She’s in her late thirties, 5’6”, but she must be five hundred pounds, at least. She looks like Jack the Ripper--with eyes that look like they haven’t slept for days. But she’s nice to me; I’m like a son to her. I have a curfew and everything.

ROCCO: Where are you living?

SILVERFISH: That’s one thing that bothers me. When I used to talk to her on the line, she claimed to have a $300,000 house she was gonna buy, and that she had ranches, horses, ducks--that she was rich. Then all of a sudden we’re living with her skinny Puerto Rican boyfriend in the Bronx. this place is a dump, man. He’s the super, and we’re in the basement apartment, right? There’s no furniture: just cardboard boxes. It’s disgusting. It’s a long series of rooms, and he’s got a white pitbull with its turds all over the fucking floor; the place stinks. It’s in this burnt-down block on East 182nd Street, and its all blacks and Dominican fucks up here. there was another lady living in here, too, and he had to kick her out when an ambulance came and got her, and she told him she had AIDS. I said to myself: “Motherfucker, holy shit! I slept in that room!” I have to put down paper and a towel before I sit on the toilet. there’s no shower curtain. It’s like a fucking welfare hotel, man. There’s cockroaches in the bed. He cooks everything in tons of grease. I’ve gotta eat this Puerto Rican shit like fried pork chops every night with platanos, rice, beans, and green fucking snotty looking things that look like boogers.

JACK THE WACK hacks back in: People are being nice to each other tonight. the line’s only been trashed twice, Rocco.

HEATHER laughs: Hey Jack, you know everybody used to think you pushed the buttons. A girl got on and she said, “Well, you guys think it’s Jack, and it’s not--it’s me.” And she starts pressing the buttons. And everybody blames you for it. They say, “Jack must be on the line.”

JACK: Yeah, I know. there’s followers; they’re called Jackettes.

HEATHER: Jack’s a nice guy. Listen, Jack. I’m gonna three-way a guy in--curse him out and threaten him. All the guys on the phone can do it. his name is Dennis.

DEEP SNARL: Fuck Dennis! Put him on the line, Heather.

SILVERFISH: Is it your boss?

JACK: Oh, he just fired you, right?

HEATHER laughs: No, what are you kidding me? Me, Star, Pepsi, and Candy were on another line together, and I had three-wayed him in. He started getting nasty to the girls, like saying, “My dick is as big as your mouth can open.”

JACK arms himself: Yeah, shit like that. Go on, put him on!

DENNIS is massaging his erectile tissue: Ummm! All these beautiful ladies on the phone! I want to hear you say something intimate.

JACK instantly becomes unraveled: YOU’RE DISGUSTING! You think you can come on here and talk dirty to the ladies. You’re gonna fucking regret it, you gutless piece of work! Get off this fucking line, you fat fucking pig!

DENNIS salivates: Where are all of those ladies?

JACK: You Jew bastard! you pusillanimous nonentity!

DENNIS: Fuck you, you little punk! I’ll give you my fucking address, you fucking wimp!

JACK: You mean you’re not gonna be at Carvel, you’re not gonna be at Pastrami King?

DENNIS takes leave of his senses: 135-41 Eighty-second Avenue, Kew Gardens, Queens. what time?

JACK: We’ll be there.

DENNIS: Listen to him. You can bring your mommy and your boyfriend if you like. Give him an address and he runs away.

JACK: I don’t run away. In about three months from now when the line is quiet, I’ll ring your fuckin’ bell. You’ll never forget me!

the chronic verbal sparring and mental violence on the line reflect a two-fisted, fearless, young male macho aesthetic. Nature and nurture mesh here as aggressive, protective, and territorial male instincts search for an opportunity to surface. Provocative words and actions trigger immediate Rambo-like reprisals from legions of phone Capones who challenge each other to show up and step outside. Wormy science geeks and chartered accountants change into proud weekend warriors and survival retreat types--from the relative safety of their telephone wires. No one will do a better hatchet job for Heather than Jack: he has a vested interest in every act of anarchy and lawlessness committed on the party line. One finds undeserved hostility and scorn as easily as one finds unearned allies and personal bodyguards. Which number the roulette wheel lands on tonight is anybody’s guess. But I’m willing to risk it, aren’t you?

LONE WOLF clicks on: Hello! who’s the girl?

WENDY: It’s Wendy.

LONE WOLF: Wendy, what do you look like?

WENDY: I’m five feet tall, ninety-one pounds, brown eyes, long brown hair down to my waist--all teased up and spiked out on top. what about you?

LONE WOLF: I’m 5’11” and 165 pounds; I’m not heavy at all. My hair--it’s getting there. I’m starting to grow it again.

WENDY: What work do you do?

LONE WOLF whets my appetite: I’m a mason. You know--cement blocks, brick, construction work.

WENDY: Yeah? You must be muscular, then.

LONE WOLF: Oh, yeah. I mean, I’m not a bodybuilder; the strength I’ve got is from the work I do. My arms are developed.

Background loud, rhythmic female moans.

WENDY: Where do you live?

LONE WOLF: Brooklyn, Windsor Terrace. And what about you?

WENDY: Manhattan.

LONE WOLF: Why don’t you give me your phone number?

WENDY: I’m not giving my number out on the line.

LONE WOLF: I don’t give mine out, either.

WENDY: There are ten lunatics listening in the background who would write the number down also, if I gave it out.

LONE WOLF: Yeah, that’s true. And I’m not one of them. There are people out there who are lunatics, as you say, and I get put in the category with the lunatics--and I’m not one.

WENDY: From what I’ve heard, girls never give their numbers out over the line.

LONE WOLF: you want the right person to get it, not the wrong ones. Just ask if anybody else can hear you.

Wendy shouts into a one-way well of silence.

LONE WOLF whispers: Alright. You got a pencil? 718-555-4780. And don’t repeat back what I say. Did you get it? I’ll say it once more.

WENDY takes a deep breath: Alright, I got it. I’ll call you back right now.

LONE WOLF answers on the first ring: You have just one phone?

WENDY: Yeah.

LONE WOLF: Would you mind--I’m on the line--I wanna disconnect it. So you stay there, and if we get disconnected, call me right back. Hello? Let me just see if I’m off. (Clicking) Just wait for one moment. Cause after I talk to you, I’m going to sleep--in another twenty minutes, a half hour. So, how old are you, Wendy?

WENDY: I’m twenty-eight.

LONE WOLF is bowled over: Only twenty-eight? MMMM! That’s nice! I’m thirty-seven. Are you sexually active?

WENDY: Yeah, but just with this one guy.

LONE WOLF: For the moment--because you haven’t met me yet. Are you in love with him?

WENDY: No. So, have you been sexually active these days?

LONE WOLF regrets: No, not for the past five weeks--and that’s long enough!

WENDY: Don’t you get paranoid about AIDS?

LONE WOLF ( a divorcée): no, I know I’m clean. the last lady I was with had a test and it came up negative. You don’t got it, do you?

WENDY: I’m sure I don’t, and i don’t want it, either.

LONE WOLF: you don’t have to worry about me, sweetie.

WENDY: i think that’s why people are talking on party lines a lot; it’s so safe.

LONE WOLF: yeah, but i like to hold a woman in my arms; i’m a realist. do you have a pretty face?

WENDY: yes, if i do say so myself, right? I sound conceited.

LONE WOLF: No, hey! Look, there’s only one person that’s gonna pat us on the shoulder, and that’s ourselves. What size dress do you wear?

WENDY: three.

LONE WOLF: Do you have a nice backside or a big backside?

WENDY: It’s nice.

LONE WOLF: You get a lot of whistles out there?

WENDY: All the time.

LONE WOLF: Baby, come and get me!

WENDY wails with laughter: I wanna hear what you look like.

LONE WOLF celebrates the male body: I look like a man that would make you melt.

WENDY: Well, describe yourself, then.

LONE WOLF: I’m a good-looking guy; I’m in good shape. I’ll give you a better workout than that machine you’re using.

WENDY: What does your backside look like?

LONE WOLF: I got a nice ass, so I’ve been told. I don’t turn around and look at it in the mirror, but I’ve been told.

WENDY: How come you don’t look at it in the mirror? I look at mine all the time.

LONE WOLF: I’m sure that if you were in front of me, you wouldn’t be the only one looking.

WENDY: So what does your hair look like?

LONE WOLF solemnly states facts: It’s brown, with some gray in it. It’s a little long. The guys on the job say, “When are you cutting your hair?” I say, “I’m not.” What kind of clothing do you usually wear?

WENDY: Rock and roll kind of clothing.

LONE WOLF stokes the fires: Would you rock n’ roll me?

WENDY laughs: I don’t know, I don’t know.

LONE WOLF: I’m serious and teasing at the same time. I’m feeling you out. I’m not a pervert or anything. I’m seeing what you can take, I’m checking your limits, I’m seeing if you got an attitude. See, I’m very intelligent; I’m trying to find out about you.

WENDY: What ethnic group are you?

LONE WOLF: Italian.

WENDY: Italian guys are usually cute.

LONE WOLF: On a scale of one to ten, I’d say I was nine or ten. Somewhere up there. We should meet; it’s up to you. I guess at this moment you don’t want to give me your phone number?

WENDY: I guess not right now. I’m very cautious about that--especially because of the whole party line thing.

LONE WOLF raises his hackles: I got no problem with that, Wendy. Well then, of course, don’t give my number out to anybody. And don’t even go on the line and tell anybody that you know me. Because a lot of bullshit goes on--believe me. And your name will be all over the place if you mention your name with my name.

WENDY: If we’re on the line at the same time, we’ll just pretend we don’t know each other?

LONE WOLF: Yeah! And if you wanna call me, you don’t even have to say, “Lone Wolf, I wanna call you.” I got the call waiting, so I’ll get you anyway. I’ll be straight with you: I wanna hear from you again. Will you call me?

WENDY: Yeah, I will.

LONE WOLF: We’ll talk a few more times, then we’re gonna meet, and of course you’ll melt in my arms. I’ll start out with your lips and work my way to your earlobes, flicking my tongue at your neck. you like being bit? I’ll give you goosebumps.

WENDY laughs: What else do you like to do when you’re in bed with a woman?

LONE WOLF jumps to attention: Oh, you wanna hear that? Oh, alright. We can talk about that. But then you’ve gotta tell me what you like to do with a man, too.

WENDY giggles: Next time when I call you back, I’ll tell you; I’ll keep you in suspense.

LONE WOLF: Let’s say something happens to one of us, something goes wrong, and we don’t have the opportunity to talk again. I’m saying, “Baby, live for the moment!”

WENDY squeals: Well, you tell me first.

LONE WOLF’s voice softens an octave: In other words, you and I are lying in bed together, and you wanna know what I’m gonna do.

WENDY: yeah. From the very start--from even before we get into bed.

LONE WOLF: Let’s say you come into my bedroom and you’re wearing heels, and your pants are very tight, and I can see the shape of the place where I want to go. Your breasts are sticking out cause your nipples are hard, anticipating wanting to go to bed with me. I put my hands on the sides of your face, tilt your head up, and lean down and kiss you. Can I kiss you?

WENDY is giggling girlishly: Um, yeah.

LONE WOLF sends over a loud, succulent kiss: And my tongue will go into your mouth. Your arms will go up around me, and you’ll pull yourself closer to me. I’ll put my hands on your back, massaging your back as I go down, until I get to that beautiful butt of yours. I’ll start rubbing it nice and gently and pushing it close to me, as my cock gets hard. Enjoying it so far, Wendy? Want me to continue?

Wendy laughs with embarrassment and says yes.

LONE WOLF: And then I’ll run my fingers down between the crack of your ass and underneath between your thighs, in a gentle soft motion. I’ll undo the buttons on the back of your blouse--and you’re not wearing any bra, right?

Wendy savors the sensations: Right.

LONE WOLF: I’ll start pulling it off your shoulders, and start kissing and licking your neck. And what are you doing at this time?

WENDY laughs: I’m getting horny while you’re doing this. But at some point I might stop you, you realize.

LONE WOLF: Oh, no, you won’t stop me. Because you’ll want me like you’ve never wanted a man before.

WENDY is excited and squealing with laughter: so continue.

LONE WOLF: I’ll stick my hand inside the back of your pants. You’re wearing bikini panties, or? . . .

WENDY peeks down: Bikini, yeah.

LONE WOLF: And I’ll start pulling down your pants. You’re supposed to say something like. . . . It’s easier to do if you go along with me.

WENDY: No, I’m just listening; I’m enjoying hearing this.

LONE WOLF interrogates me: What are you doing? You lying down, sitting--what?

WENDY: Sort of . . . on one knee perched against the couch.

LONE WOLF: And where’s your other leg? One knee is bent?

WENDY can’t stop giggling: Kind of leaning on both of them.

LONE WOLF: You’re kneeling? Okay, I’m squeezing your thighs and rubbing them, and your pants’ll come off. And I’ll stick my hand back where your ass is, and I’ll feel the hole in your ass. Just behind the hole in your ass, I’ll go beyond it to the place where you want me to put it.

Wendy is doubled over with laughter.

LONE WOLF tries to touch my innermost recesses: I’ll stick my fingers in your love hole, and feel your wet, beautiful juices so sweet on my fingers. Are you tight or large down there?

WENDY: Probably tight.

LONE WOLF: My tongue is deep inside your throat, and I take one of my fingers and stick it inside of you. It’ll slide right in, and you start moving frantically up and down on my finger, and I’m going in and out and up and down. And I’ll take your panties off and pick you up. . . .

WENDY breaks into a sweat: Were we standing all this time?

LONE WOLF: We didn’t get on the bed yet. Hey, why don’t you undress me?

WENDY shrinks away in embarrassment: No, next time. this is your fantasy.

LONE WOLF grumps: alright then, I’ll just have to take my own clothes off.

WENDY: what will you look like when you take them off? Is your chest hairy?

LONE WOLF: Do you like a hairy chest?

WENDY: I like hairless, really.

LONE WOLF is dismayed: You’re not gonna like me.

WENDY: You have a lot of hair?

LONE WOLF: Well, I mean, I’ve got hair. I got a nice body: you’ll be licking me all over. How do you like it when you’re doing it with a man? What position?

WENDY: I like to start out with the man on top.

LONE WOLF: You like it rough or easy?

WENDY: I like it gentle.

LONE WOLF: A gentle woman--how sweet it is! I pick you up and I’ll lay you on the bed, and you’ll have your arms around me. And you’ll be telling me you want me, but I’ll just continue to kiss you. I don’t want to give it to you yet.

WENDY shrieks as she gets teased: Oh, God! I’ll like that!

LONE WOLF: You have long nails or short nails?

WENDY: It depends which week we’re talking about. A little bit long at the moment.

LONE WOLF: You like scratching a man’s back when you’re making love to him?

WENDY wonders aloud: I never think about it, really.

LONE WOLF: So I take you and I lie between you. I put the head of my cock inside of you--just the head of it. And your legs are opened, wider than they’ve ever been opened before, and I’ll push it all the way in--or at least half of it, anyway. And you’ll moan. give me a little moan.

WENDY giggles: No, no!

LONE WOLF: I take it out, and you say to me, you want what?

WENDY guesses: I want you to put it back in?

LONE WOLF coaxes: Say it!

WENDY giggles: No, I can’t!

LONE WOLF insists: Don’t say no, baby--say yes! Put your tongue in my mouth!

WENDY stammers in confusion: How can I do that over the phone?

LONE WOLF is almost whispering now: You know what I mean: with your mind. Come on, kiss me back!

WENDY squirms and blows him a kiss: KISS! KiSS!

LONE WOLF: Yeah? I’m biting your lip. You like that? You biting my lip?

WENDY: Yeah, like chewing on it.

LONE WOLF: Umm! Feels good, baby! I’m gonna give you my cock again. You want it, baby? Tell me how bad you want it.

WENDY cracks up in hysterics: I can’t do this! I would have to be drunk to do this!

LONE WOLF: You don’t want me to stop, though, do you?

WENDY: No, no! How big is it?

LONE WOLF: About seven inches.

WENDY: Is it wide?

LONE WOLF is defensive: Ahh, wide enough. Does it have to be wide? You’ll just have to see it.

WENDY appreciates stamina: Does it stay hard long?

LONE WOLF regains his confidence: Sure it does. I put it in again and fuck you real hard--nice and fast, and nice and slow. My hand goes behind your ass. you like when I put my finger up your ass?

WENDY: No, no. I don’t think I’d like that.

LONE WOLF is sad: No? Aw, too bad. You’ve never done that before? But you like that I’m fucking you, though, don’t you?

WENDY laughs and screeches: Yeah, but I don’t know you well enough for phone sex--this is only the first call!

LONE WOLF: No? You’ve had phone sex before?

WENDY: Not really.

LONE WOLF: But from me you want it!

WENDY stutters: It, it, it--it’s interesting.

LONE WOLF mimics me and moves ahead: Okay, so then I’ll get up and I’ll walk downstairs, and you’ll come after me: “Where are you going?” And I say, “Ah, I’m just gonna go downstairs right now; I’m gonna have a cigarette.”

WENDY is surprised: You mean you just stopped in the middle?

LONE WOLF is cocky: Yeah, I just felt like it, you know? Cause you’re giving me a hard time, so I’m gonna give you a hard time.

WENDY gasps: Oh, shit!

LONE WOLF: You grab me, and I sit you down on the top of the staircase. I’ll bend you back, and I’ll stand three steps down and stick my cock back inside of you. Your back will be arched up, your tits will be sticking up, your mouth will be opened, your legs will be opened, and I’ll stick my cock all the way up inside of you. Start fucking you harder and harder, in and out. Can you breathe for me, at least?

WENDY swallows nervously: I’m breathing.

LONE WOLF’s temper flares: Through your mouth, not your nose!

WENDY: When are you gonna come?

LONE WOLF whispers: Not for awhile yet. I’m gonna make you come first. I’m licking you.

WENDY can’t hear: What?

LONE WOLF: I’m not gonna talk real loud cause I’m getting sensuous now. Then we get up and I turn you over on your knees. I’ll eat you and you’re going wild moving all over the place. I’m sucking and licking it, and then I’ll lay you on the floor and put my cock in your mouth. Then I move you around and start fucking you doggy style while I’m rubbing your tits. You’re going so fast your ass is hitting against my stomach. It’s a solid hittin’ sound, because I’m solid, too. I wish you would moan for me or do something!

WENDY: I’m enjoying listening.

LONE WOLF: Yeah, but are you turned on by it?

WENDY: Yeah. I’m gonna go masturbate when we hang up.

LONE WOLF acts macho: What are you gonna do? Who’s name you gonna call when you masturbate?

WENDY: Bruce’s. I usually fantasize about Bruce Springsteen.

LONE WOLF: Who? Get the hell out of here: Bruce! frig Bruce Springsteen--this is me!

Wendy cackles hysterically.

LONE WOLF: I’m fucking you harder and harder. How’s your ass going while I’m fucking you?

WENDY tries to hide: I don’t know, I don’t know.

LONE WOLF presses: I got my cock all the way inside of you and you don’t know?

WENDY screams with laughter and refuses to answer.

LONE WOLF: Then I pick you up and put you on top of my thighs; you’re wrapped around me. You’re bouncing up and down real fast, like I almost couldn’t control you. And you’re quivering--and you’re enjoying it. Are you fucking me, Wendy? I’m gonna drop a big hot load inside of you.

WENDY can’t stop laughing: Um, that sounds good.

LONE WOLF: well, fuck me, then! Come on, fuck me, Wendy!

WENDY laughs even more: I am.

LONE WOLF: You think its funny, Wendy? I said, fuck me, Wendy! Are you fucking me? How much are you enjoying it? Tell me how much you love it. Humph?

A hard curtain of silence falls between us as Wendy barely gets away with another no.

LONE WOLF: Too real, huh? Say you want me to come. Kiss me, baby, come on!

Lone wolf suddenly stops talking for a full minute.

WENDY pauses: Hello?? Hello?? Did you come?

LONE WOLF straddles the sexual issue: Maybe. I’ll leave you in suspense--make you wonder.

“Donna” turned into “Wendy” shortly after her Thanksgiving baptismal flight on 643: too much ribbing about ”Donna do you wanna?” I tried on Candy for a week or two and then Sherry--but they just weren’t me. Nor did I want an exotic handle with a patently false name and character: Wendy fit the bill perfectly. the name is young, sweet, feminine, and friendly, and Wendy is the lucky girl in Bruce Springsteen’s signature song, “Born to Run.” He wants to die with her on the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss. Long live Wendy! Lone Wolf does everything just the way I like it, but while he was talking, I felt extremely bashful and uncomfortable; I didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t intend to lead him towards or have a tele-erotic conversation; I was just innocently interviewing a hypothetical new lover. In fact, I didn’t even realize that we (or rather, he) was conducting a phone sex session! Lone Wolf appears to be an old pro at the very modern art of exchanging erotic dialogue; he knows every mechanic and dynamic of the complex procedure. I can’t talk dirty to an unknown voice and contort myself into a fabulous orgasmic frenzy all at the same time. I’d rather take matters into my own hands in the sanctity of my boudoir, where I can concentrate in privacy on delicious, multiple partner, sex slut scenarios in the back seat of limousines.

Sex therapist, sex line owner, and radio talk host Susan Block identifies the new dating trends for the nineties as communication about sex, fantasy, voyeurism, and exhibitionism. Block considers phone sex to be “another form of communication--another way in which people are exploring a form of safe sex. And it is also turning them on to all sorts of aspects of themselves that were kept hidden before. Phone sex is something that people are seeking because of convenience, safety, ease, excitement. But what it inevitably produces is people talking about sex--people talking about their needs and desires.” Completely protected by the telephone, women can let down their erotic hair and expand their sexual vocabulary: if you can learn and talk about sex, you can be a more uninhibited, compelling, inventive lover.

New York has a global image as the information capital of the world: an encyclopedic amount of sexual data is processed through the party line network. With unprecedented, intimate access to a large cross-section of society, callers learn that eroticism is multi-faceted: many forms of sex are available. Callers are introduced to sexual practices and ideas (fetishes, bondage, bisexuality, body piercing, intricate fantasies) which they would normally never think about or be exposed to--and never even knew they wanted to try. People are more willing to test out new things over the phone first: it is a safe place to explore novel sexual thoughts, submerged feelings, and alternative lifestyles. Many men and women are thereby encouraged and emboldened to turn the comfortable sexual aspects of their behind-the-phone experiments into a new neon reality

chapter 4

I CONTRACT CHRONIC TELEPHONITIS

After three weeks in the Bronx, Silverfish and Tattoo moved to a hardscrabble, redneck trailerpark in Bay Shore, Long Island: “It’s slimy with beer cans all over the place. She’s a fat sow living on 7Eleven store shit: these truckstoppers, heartburn sandwiches, and 7Up. the earth shakes outside every time Big Mama cass over here comes back in.” Silverfish, relegated to a spongy floor mattress, defined the parameters of their close-quarters relationship very early on: “She tried to jump on top of me once, but I pushed her off and said no thank you. I still date girls I meet from the party line, and she knows it.” He also walked a thin financial tightrope with Tattoo: “I just started working in a plastics factory, and I think she ripped off my paycheck. I gave her two hundred dollars to open up an account for me, but I don’t see any bankbook. then her boyfriend ran up five hundred dollars on the phone, and he said I did it. Tattoo always goes to Atlantic city to gamble and loses lots of money; then she tries to blame me for her phone bills. she’s always on the line, too.”

Silver-tongued mistress of ad-libbed illusion, Tattoo surreptitiously approached silverfish’s family for money without his knowledge: on the pretext that he needed to go to the dentist, she obtained and then pocketed $150 in cash from his mother. Tattoo later extorted another $500 for his living expenses: she took $100 for rent, gave Silverfish $100, and kept the rest. Tattoo deliberately exploited the already strained relationship between Silverfish and his mother as part of the hustle: “My mom was real angry about Tattoo, cause she’d come over here and humiliate my mom and call her a liar. Tattoo was always telling me bad things about my mother--that she’s no good for me, and that she doesn’t love me and all, and I don’t know who to believe. I think she’s trying to separate me from my mom. Maybe she’s jealous.”

Victimized by a virtuoso of deceit and his own blind passion for the telephone, Silverfish dissolved his partnership with Tattoo two months later and fled back home: “I found out that she was a con artist.” Silverfish curses: “You know, she even called my sister to get money, saying, ‘Oh, you’re married to a big doctor--you must have money.’ She thought I had a trust fund, so that’s what she was after all along. She also ripped off $70 from a party line operator for a rack system. Then some guy gave her $2,000 cause she claimed she could double it, and then she just kept it. They’re all looking for her.” Tattoo refused to return Silverfish’s clothes, television, and VCR, but Silverfish left them with “a nice little surprise”: “Their next phone bill should be around $10,000!”

silverfish was glad to be home, but his mother took great exception to the return of her prodigal son: “she said, ‘Ah, you’re back, you son of a bitch!’” She immediately installed a lock on the phone, but he pries it off to sneak calls when she is asleep. Silverfish’s nocturnal dialing activities produced a devastating new phone bill of $8,049.40 one month after he moved home: his mother counter-attacked by blocking the line. Silverfish pushed the envelope one step further: once the press found out that he had amassed $152,000 in party line bills over a ten-month period, they requested an interview with him, the Lord, and Captain Blood. Against his mother’s wishes, he admitted an aggressive group of reporters into the house when she was out shopping. silverfish appeared on the front page of the next Sunday’s Daily News, proudly displaying one of his notorious, itemized telephone bill pages (which inadvertently showed his home number in the lower left hand corner!).

Silverfish was instantly swamped with crank calls. “Every day this week some Indian fuckhead’s been calling: ‘Can I speak to Silverfish?,’ and then he starts cursing for five minutes. He has it on tape: ‘You stupid son of a bitch! You’re an asshole . . . your phone bill!’ He won’t even let me talk; he just keeps burping and says, ‘I’ll give you 152,000 farts!’ I call him Mr. Asshole or Mr. Burper.” Champagne, a sixteen-year-old runaway, saw his picture in the paper and began to call him twice a day for phone sex: “she asks me what kind of underwear I’m wearing.” silverfish’s mother was afraid that the publicity blitz over the unpaid bills would prompt the phone company to prosecute him: “they used to threaten her to sue, but then she told them, ‘Oh, my son has a learning disability,’ and they stopped harassing her.”

Silverfish became an instant, overnight media celebrity. As Silverfish’s manager/biographer, I arranged a guest appearance for him on the “Phil donahue” show, where he was sandwiched onto a “sex oddity” panel alongside a nude talk show host, the owner of a topless carwash, a prostitute, and a woman who hawks Frederick’s of Hollywood lingerie and customized dildos at suburban Tupperware-style parties. struck deaf, dumb, and blind by stage fright, Silverfish and his phone hijinks unfortunately took a tertiary, silent back seat to the complimentary supply of photogenic, purple silk G-strings passed around the overstimulated studio audience. After we had exhausted both the staff’s endurance and NBC’s spartan, post-show spread of tea and cookies in the Green Room, we headed for the elevator. Silverfish stopped at the corridor payphone: with eyes narrowed to a wolfish squint, he announced that if it were an AT&T telephone, he could’ve called the party line right from there. I could log onto the worldwide web five times a day and never become a compulsive cyberjunkie; I could cavort through Bloomingdale’s with a gold credit card and never become a compulsive shopper. But, for both Silverfish and I, the party line proved as dangerous as a single vial of crack.

JASON: How tall do I sound?

MUNCHKIN: The guy I know who sounds like you is 6’8”.

JASON: No, I’m 6’3”. I’m bigger wide than I am tall; I weigh seven hundred pounds. I lived on Long Island, and I layed in bed for twenty-seven years.

MUNCHKIN laughs: Yeah, right. What made you get out now?

JASON: I’m not out of bed; I can’t move. I may be more now; I haven’t weighed myself in two years.

MUNCHKIN: You’re catching up to Mike from Manhattan.

JASON: I bypassed him a long time ago. I used to go down to the meat market and weigh myself on those beef scales. I would use two of them, cause it only goes up to five hundred pounds. I’m a big guy; I used to play football all by myself.

SKINHEAD: Cause nobody else could get on the field with you.

JASON: Hey, I’m not ashamed of my weight. I love it. I have another three or four hundred pounds, and then I’m gonna do a sideshow act. I’m gonna go travel on the road with Ringling Brothers. You know how much money I’m gonna make off of that? Then I’ll drop down at Jack LaLanne.

SKINHEAD can’t keep a civil tongue in his head: Fuck you!

Jason: fuck you! yeah, you wish! you fuck me, and you’ll never go back to your girlfriend!

POWERFUL, DETERMINED BEEPING CLEARS OUT THE LINE!!

JACK THE WACK: now it’s nice and quiet. That’s the way I like it: decent people on the line. Actually, I’m not that bad. When there’s stupidity and childishness and perversion on the line, it has to be shut down. there’s no two ways about it; it has to be censored.

MICHELLE: How come these lines were down for two days?

JACK clucks his tongue: I wonder why? Did you do it, too, Tony, you bad boy? I’m not the one who does all that beeping: I know six other people who do.

TONY THE ONE AND ONLY: You get all the sickos and boring people on this line.

JACK: Boring people--I ain’t got no problem. the Wild Line people started all the trouble.

LINDSAY: How many people can you get on this line?

JACK: Six. there’s three people just listening now.

ASHLEY: On the Love Line, you can get ten on at once.

JACK: Oh, you’re from the Love Line, Ashley? I never went to the Love Line--only a couple of times to trash the people from the Wild Line when they went there. The Wild Line people I hate. That’s why I’m on this line. If they weren’t on this line, I wouldn’t be on this line.

TONY: Lindsay, did you ever meet anyone from the Love Line?

LINDSAY: Yes, but never again.

JACK becomes agitated: You gotta meet the good guys, not the shit ones. You met the fat guys, or the guys with no personalities, or the guys that love you on the first date. they say, “Oh, I love you, baby.” They think because you’re thirty-four and you’ve got two kids, that--oh yeah--you’re loose as a goose. You date ‘em once: “Oh, baby, I love you,” and they don’t even send you a Hallmark card before they got hand problems.

LINDSAY laughs: Thank you, Jack. Keep talking. You’re a smart guy. Jack, how old are you?

JACK hesitates: Me? I’m twenty-seven. The guy tells you he’s 5’10”, 180 pounds, built like a brick house, and you come and meet him and he’s 5’9”, 300 pounds. “Oh, I just started the Pritikin Diet today, honey.” More guys are fat on this line than girls, that’s a fact! This has gotta be a record for how long it’s been quiet. No wars. Ashley, how old are your kids?

ASHLEY sweetens: I have just one: she’s four and a half.

TONY rattles the cage: Have you ever been married?

ASHLEY (an unknown belcher lets out a gas bubble): No, I haven’t.

BLACK MALE clicks on: Hello! How many girls are here?

TONY digs a ditch for himself: You sound like a Buckwheat.

BUCKWHEAT: I ain’t no Buckwheat. Act your age--you’re probably twenty-four or twenty-five, stupid motherfucker!

JACK: Watch your mouth Bucky, or I’ll have to disconnect you. All you need is one person who isn’t wanted. . . .

Jack the Wack never lies: he wields the unvarnished truth as an exquisite, consummate instrument of aggression. Jack’s unflinching, trenchant observations about human nature and about us form the crux of both his unseemly power and our profound emotional subjugation. As the soul and conscience of 643, he forcefully offers us unabridged, uncomfortable reality sandwiches morning, noon, and night. I desperately want approval from Jack; I would love to be acknowledged as worthy of conversation in his presence. It is the ultimate in party line prestige for Jack to take you into his small, celebrated phone cell of night time commandos. Detainees in prisons or concentration camps often develop a similarly servile, childlike identification with their captors. They come to see even sadistic guards as respected, legitimate authority figures. One aligns one’s interests with the omnipotent tormentor in order to survive psychologically and come out with some measure of self-esteem. We are helpless flies stuck to Jack’s wallpaper; we are loyal inmates trapped in his asylum. My last and ultimate mission is to forge an alliance with the grand baron of this satanic telephone empire!

If someone asked me who my best friends were, I’d place “the line” at the top of the list. I can’t depend on any of the actual people on it for anything, but I can rely on the line itself to always be there for me. I don’t call my old friends as much anymore; calls that I have to make to them are just an annoying allocation of time better spent on the line. There isn’t even enough daily phone time available to talk on the line, call back acquaintances I’ve made from the line, and talk to my real friends. They have become phone widows. The only numbers we need in our address book are the secret free access codes; the rest of the world can get lost!

Conversations with real friends are nourishing, trusting, pedestrian, and safe, whereas the line is a thrill-a-minute, Coney Island roller coaster ride. Real people disappoint, bore, hurt, and irritate me; they present ongoing complications, problems, and responsibilities. Low maintenance, risk-free party line “relationships” feel a lot better: with all these numbers and all these people to choose from, I get constant excitement and stimulation--and a perfect way to permanently avoid facing my problems. the line is the greatest of all possible great escapes! Silverfish even reinvented himself with another new handle this week as he outran the telephone blockade with a purloined MCI calling card number! Silverfish uses his new toy to call Australia every day to discuss weather conditions with his mates in the outback. He dials Rome in the guise of don Corleone: “This is the Godfather; I’m gonna give you cement pajamas!” He dials his own number plus the london, England, country and city code to check on the local punks, the Queen’s health, and the latest royal antics at Buckingham Palace. Silverfish’s unique, sunny brand of shuttle diplomacy extends all the way to Tokyo with 550-RODAN: “I dialed fucking Japan, and this man is babbling in Japanese. I said, ‘This is the U.S. army. Godzilla is sighted in your area, sir!’” If he’s dialing, he’s smiling!

SKINHEAD laughs: People are lying all over these lines. Last week I went to Queens to meet this girl who sounded beautiful, and she had more chins than a Chinese phone book. I saw her waiting there for me. I talked to her again, and I pretended I couldn’t find her: “Were you the skinny one with the book?”

SPACEMAN laughs: I saw you on that INN News report on party lines. I said, so that’s Silverfish. I’ve heard you so many times. You can’t tell by the voice; you can’t tell by the description, either. the face could be anything.

SKINHEAD laughs: Everybody recognizes me now in my neighborhood. the guy in the pizza shop calls out, “Hey Silverfish, wanna use my phone?”

WENDY paints the party line a fairy tale pink: These party lines are great.

SPACEMAN: And you don’t even have to leave your house. People can talk to each other and forget who they are for awhile. A lot of people don’t even like to go out no more; they stay home and listen to the party line. If they don’t want to spend a lot of money on a Friday or Saturday night, they stay on the phone instead for a few hours.

WENDY: The problem on these lines, though, is the disrespect.

SPACEMAN: Yeah, people curse people out, saying, “Oh, I’ll break your face,” but in person it’s totally a horse of a different color. That’s why a lot of people like this concept of the phone, cause they can call just to be obnoxious or to fuck off. And there are a lot of the real sickos; they’re the epitome of party lines. But at least if you come on, you can ignore people or fight with them and then it’s over. People on the line don’t want anything from you other than maybe a phone number. I mean, where else can two people who don’t even know each other, talk like we’re talking right now?

WENDY: Yeah, like we know each other for years.

SPACEMAN: Okay. If I went up to you on the street and started talking to you, you might think this guy is fresh or something. But if it’s on this line, I can talk to you for an hour. You just have to be careful not to become too addicted to it. And you have to realize the boundary between reality and fantasy.

WENDY: What do you mean?

SPACEMAN: When you have to call, or when you have to talk to this person before a certain time; that’s mixing up fantasy with reality. When I first started calling the lines, I had to be on talking to people. I didn’t even care about eating; I’d grab a quick sandwich and eat it while I was on the phone. People from the street didn’t really matter to me. My friends would ask where I was going, and I’d say I’m going home to sleep. And I’d go on the phone for two or three hours.

SKINHEAD: When I first started calling a lot, my friends started to hate me, and they wished the party line would just disappear. they’d say, “What the hell is it with you? Why don’t you come out and hang out?”

SPACEMAN: Some people don’t even tell their friends about the line: it’s like a secret vice. Now I keep the two lives different, and never the twain shall meet, or I’d get into big trouble--like I’d call at work and lose my job.

WENDY understands the power of obsession: I talk about it constantly to all my friends; they even know who Jack the Wack is.

SPACEMAN: My friends don’t know the characters. I have to divorce the line from real life--where one starts and the other stops.

SKINHEAD: I lost all my old friends, but I didn’t really care; I just couldn’t relate to them anymore. They didn’t know what I was talking about and couldn’t understand the party line, or what I was doing on it. It was like another language. I knew I could make so many new friends on the line that I didn’t need my old friends. I could meet fifty new people in a week.

SPACEMAN: But that’s what I mean by confusing fantasy with reality. A lot of these people on the lines are just “friends” for one conversation--there’s no real relationship at all. I know a guy who’s infatuated with this girl, and he’s never even met her.

SKINHEAD: If I meet a girl on the line and she wants to talk to other people, I don’t give a crap. If I go out with any girl on the party line, I always go with other girls. I don’t care, cause they’re only party line people--so to hell with it. Big frigging deal! It’s like they’re fake or something. Now if I met some girl down here, it’s different.

I’m howling with infatuation for Lone Wolf! I called him back once or twice and he was happy to hear from me, but he didn’t have time to talk--and I was too chicken to meet him in person. I let several weeks elapse, and then I tried him again: he was sleepy and didn’t want to be disturbed. Another time, he was abrupt and rude. A month later, I gave him a final series of calls only to be decoyed by his answering machine: one time a girl answered--then I got recordings that the line was out of order--and finally an announcement that the number had been changed to an unpublished listing. Now I’ll never get to sample his passionate technique in person. But, I had the next best thing--he made love to me on the phone. the sweet memory of that multi-purpose staircase has so far provided me with several pleasant hours of fuel for the solitary fires that burn in my narrow twin bed. I enjoy him--posthumously and tremendously--as I lie curled up in a ball, fortified against the cold beneath my sweaty, undulating Swiss blue eiderdown.

Cliff is going to trigger the pleasure centers of my brain next--hands on--rock n’ roll arena style! I spent an entertaining hour on the line with two Garden State imports: Cliff from East Rutherford and John from Woodbridge. Thirty-two-year-old John and I needled each other and bickered about the artistic and sexual merits of Bruce Springsteen: “He’s a pretty shallow guy. In his high school yearbook, everybody else has at least six to ten things listed under their picture, but he had nothing. Bruce was a nonentity in high school. I mean, everybody belonged to something. They even gave you credit if you walked to school with sneakers on.” Then John attempted a spider-to-the-fly lure: “I can get you to meet him, Wendy.” John also lied about seven years of physical fitness training: “I do all aerobics and . . . uh, I pull the things off the walls.” Cliff, on the other hand, was a hot-blooded, twenty-four-year-old firebrand with impeccable accident-waiting-to-happen credentials.

JOHN: What are you asking her on the phone what color hair she has? What the fuck’s the difference what color hair? You ain’t gonna meet her.

CLIFF (long, strawberry blonde hair): Why not?

JOHN: Wendy, meet this guy, will ya? Tell him what color hair you have.

CLIFF provides vital statistics: Wendy, I bench, I curl; this guy don’t know what he’s talking about. Check this out: I got a weight set in my house.

JOHN engages in preventive prostate maintenance: Pulling my dick is enough exercise.

CLIFF: That’s all you do--pull your dick. Only in his wildest dreams does he look like Bruce Springsteen.

JOHN: Hey dude, you don’t even know what she looks like. How could you fuckin’ wanna meet someone, you don’t know what she looks like?

CLIFF (cute, grainy, sleepy-sluggish voice): That’s why I wanna meet her--to see what she looks like.

JOHN: You know, I really feel sorry for a lot of the guys that call up on this phone. they should have a lonely line.

CLIFF: I’m not lonely.

JOHN: You’re not lonely. You can go to a disco and meet five thousand girls, man. Why meet somebody new over the phone? I don’t understand.

CLIFF: Why’d you call the phone?

JOHN manufactures a personality: To rap, to talk about other things. You know when you get a date very easily--call on a Saturday night.

CLIFF: I don’t want a date.

JOHN smirks: Well, what do you wanna meet her for?

CLIFF (inquisitive, “little-boy” whine): I don’t know.

JOHN makes Wendy an object of unwholesome worship: He doesn’t even know why he wants to meet you. but Wendy, I know why I want to meet you.

WENDY uncrosses her legs: I could guess!

JOHN: Are you stoned right now, Cliff?

CLIFF medicates himself: I drank some beers.

JOHN: You sound Irish, man.

CLIFF (funhouse shrieks and Mothra vs. Mega-Godzilla prehistoric cries): I am Irish, man. I’m Irish and Italian.

JOHN: That’s a good combination: you must fight with yourself a lot. I wish you were here with me now, Wendy. We’d have a good time. I’d put on some good mood music for you instead of that rock n’ roll shit.

WENDY extends her adolescence: No way! Rock rules! I’m gonna see Aerosmith soon.

CLIFF is very interested: Hey, what seat you sitting at? I’d like to hang out with you at the concert!

WENDY: Are you driving there?

CLIFF lists to the right: No, I lost my license for six months. the Jersey cops, man. They pull you over: they strip search you on Route 80. they rat pack you.

TONY: They got nothing else to do.

CLIFF: I’m telling you. I went by my friend’s diner last night and got a hamburger, and the cops come in and asked me for ID and arrest me. the waitresses got all freaked out. And the guy that owns the diner was hiding in the back; he hides. they said, “You’re too drunk to drive. You drive out of this town, I’ll arrest you.” I said, “I ain’t driving.” the Jersey cops, man. You go down to Seaside Heights, and you get a ticket even if you build a sandcastle on the beach. You get a ticket for it. Volleyball, throw a frisbee--nothing. They got this club there that opens at 11:00 at night and closes at 11:30 in the afternoon. We got kicked out once.

WENDY loves heart-of-gold troublemakers: What’d you do there?

CLIFF (tailed by the usual squad of handcuff-happy patrolmen): Trashed the place. Oh, man! They started playing ACDC, and I drank a whole bunch of Heinekens Next thing you know, tables were flying. Cops were there. Listen, I’m gonna go to sleep. I’ll check you out at the concert. I’m gonna come there. Call me. We can party on my friend’s boat after.

WENDY (really hot for Cliff): Alright, I’ll call you next week. Take care. Bye. Bye.

The party line is great: i can make a date with a gorgeous guy via telephone as conveniently as ordering in moo shu shrimp and vegetarian dumplings from the hunan balcony! What could possibly be better? Talking to nice-sounding, twenty-six-year-old, transplanted Florida welder, Mike, eight days later! Mike also had it all: shoulder length, feathered blonde hair, blue eyes, a 5’9”, 150-pound frame, and an Aerosmith concert ticket in his back pocket. Jealous, possessive, and masculine, he warned off all other phone mashers by proclaiming that I was his girlfriend calling with him from his Jersey City house. Cliff and Mike (who offered to drive me out to the Meadowlands complex with him) are identical in appearance and attitude; I am excitedly scheming a way to juggle Cliff out in the hallway at 7:30 P.M. and Mike during the intermission without them beating each other--and me--up! scared, nervous, embarrassed, and thrilled, I’ll be sweat-waiting on a seat of nails for two rowdy drunks to stumble over and ask, “Are you Wendy?” If they’re ugly, I’ll be Donna, but if at least one of them is beautiful, I’ll turn beet red and have to be medivaced in a dead sex faint to the lobby level first aid station!

Silverfish has his phone problems, and I’ve got mine! After our wonderful, “easy dating,” music-in-common conversations, Cliff and Mike both gave me phony telephone numbers; there was nobody there by that name at either house! the on-phone social contract rests on a mutual willingness to believe: relationships exist on self-aggrandizement and fantasy, in the open causeway between received information and publicly projected image. In a medium which lets people represent themselves as they choose, personas are thoroughly malleable, real identities are almost undiscoverable, and unwitting callers can slip between the low romance-high technology cracks. Cliff and mike could have been two pencil-necked Jugheads who have never even been near a concert in their whole lives! Or, maybe they happily sat front row center with their high school sweethearts; I’ll never know. There is a continual danger of letdown and emotional cruelty in this 1990s telephone version of “the Love Connection.” There are always so many new fish in the sea, that you can afford to “find ‘em, fool ‘em, feel ‘em, forget ‘em.” Supply so far outstrips demand in this teeming human marketplace that particular individuals mean very little. Nothing is real here in party line land.

CHAPTERS 5-10

chapter 5
“E.T.” PHONE HOME
ALMIGHTY SENTINEL gives military orders: The Sentinel is speaking, ruler of the planet Earth! No foolish human mortals will speak when the Sentinel is on! Where are all the women? I need a woman--female species--to bring back with me to Zoran.
LAMOTT snipes: Well, look in Playboy; I’ll buy you a doll!
WENDY laughs: Did the Enterprise ever visit your galaxy?
SENTINEL continues the Occupation: Spock evaluated our planet, and Kirk beat up all my men, fucked all my women, and left. And Dr. McCoy stayed in the ship to give immediate medical attention to all the men that I have made into nothing, like all the humans on these lines. Wendy, my ship is approaching your building: I will beam you aboard, and we will be gone from this miserable planet.
Wendy shrieks happily over blaring music: Take me away!
LAMOTT defends Earthlings: Step to the middle, and I’ll show you something, boy! Wendy, I thought you had more sense than that.
SENTINEL gloats: Poor human: you are the fool! She’s leaving with me! We’re going in the supersonic, supermatic, superficial elevator. Arriving now on Admiral Sentinel’s bridge. Wendy, wanna help me fly the ship?
LAMOTT: Man, go West with that! I don’t wanna come up there with no fool. Wendy, take down Wayne’s number.
SENTINEL proclaims: Quiet! She’s not interested, you good for nothing black human. We are now looking directly over the Earth, and the mortal that is on the line is where that red dot is. Shall we eliminate him?
WENDY joins the conspiracy: Let's get the planet with a photon torpedo!
SENTINEL seals our fate: I will do what has to be done. The whole planet it is! You are the only human specimen on this ship: there is nothing left. If there is to be any reproduction of your species, you are the key.
WENDY squeals: Has a human ever mated with a Zoran before?
SENTINEL harvests Terran body parts: Never, but we have conclusive evidence that it will be a successful procedure. We are made to adapt to any life form.
Wendy squawks hysterically and accidentally disconnects herself: The Sentinel is gone when she returns.
LAMOTT is genuinely horrified: Wendy, you done broke my heart going up there with him. Wayne told me to call you. He was mad you was on that spaceship.
NOSY SPECTATOR cries like a colicky infant: I'm horny!
LAMOTT: Hey Wayne, now we got another pervert on the line we gotta get rid of. Wayne, where was you all this time? I told Wendy we didn't like her no more; she left us.
WAYNE: I told Wendy I was gonna baby her when she had the flu last week, but she didn't want me. I would've brought her wonton soup and Chinese food in bed.
WENDY: Well, you told me about your jealous girlfriend.
WAYNE: She's my roommate. She's an ex-girlfriend, and I don't want anything to do with her anymore. It's just she didn't have no place to go. She's a bitch: she's hard to get rid of. She's destroyed a lot of relationships for me already. I had a chance to be with this gorgeous nurse. This lady was the head nurse of a hospital.
LAMOTT counsels: Show her the stoop, and show her the street!
WAYNE: Listen, Wendy. I'm gonna call this number, but don't say a word until we're on the line. It's a fantasy line and strictly for people who like phone sex. Only women could get onto the courtesy phone; I'm gonna bridge it in. Lamott, you've gotta be totally quiet until we're on the line. Wendy, when the operator comes on, say your name is Passion, and you want to go on the Fantasy Line.
LAMOTT's eyes glaze over: I'm gonna be totally awesome quiet.
PERVERT ONE powders his scrotum and performs random acts of autofellatio on the telephone: Is that a lady there? I'll suck your pretty clit. You want a fat cock in your face? I'll massage you real nice. I'm gonna put my cock down your throat. What's your name, lady? Write this down: 718-555-2567. Call, lady! Just dial the number and listen to me, that's all; you don't have to talk. I'll make you feel better on the phone than even in person. Make you feel much better that way!
LAMOTT: Man, shut up with that! I hate homos!
My virgin voyage to the fantasy lines frightened me to death! I had no idea where Wayne was taking us, or what to expect--and I wasn't ready for it. But I loved my first deep space, intergalactic crime spree: long live the Sentinel! I grew very attached to this little group of callers at five o'clock this morning. The party line makes me feel optimistic and daring--it gives me hope that my life can be changed, rejuvenated, and opened up. I can build a fresh new world here. Everything can be experienced: sex, marriage, divorce, death. Every passion can be felt: love, friendship, loyalty, ecstasy, hate, anger, jealousy, rage, rejection. God bless my dial tone: it is the gold key to adventureland!
Unfortunately, sweet-sounding Wayne wanted to share his fantasy with me afterwards! Wayne pressed me for pillow talk: what was I wearing, what color was my ultra-sheer nightgown, and did I have anything on underneath it? Although school-boyishly disappointed when I wouldn't help him get off, Wayne now spends all of his underpaid time at work daydreaming about me. He was happy when I called him again a week later, but his "roommate" of two years preferred to derail and monitor our every communication. Wayne portrays Beth (Heather on line) as merely his ex-girlfriend--but, as I just found out, she is also the mother of his six-month-old-son! No one can dislike a former lover this much: she must be his wife! When Wayne first met Beth, she was a recovering cocaine abuser who instantly became addicted to him: after only one date, she bought herself an engagement ring and booked the wedding hall! Wayne introduced her to an even more insidious, daily dependency: the Fantasy Line (he only calls when she's not on to "badmouth him" or "lie" that they are married!). Instead of strangling me with a taut, squiggly telephone cord--and knocking Wayne across the room (again), Beth did me a great favor: she handed me Jack's real name and telephone number!!
Since Wayne works from 2:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. as a book jacket graphics designer, I initially suggested a noon lunch date with a built-in, anti-lechery curfew. Wayne was dejected: "But I want to give you a big kiss and hug as soon as I see you, and we can't do that then." We all know what he really means, don't we? Although I promised to wear a black lace thong to our little tryst, I also added that he's not going to get to see it. Wayne is nothing, if not endearingly persistent: "Well, we'll see what happens and pursue it from there." He will be ready for every possible contingency in his tomato red, Playboy bikini underwear.
I arranged to meet and greet Wayne at Drake's Drum--the perfect nautical setting for a party line tête à tête. It is dark and quiet: old-school alcoholics and voluble barfly philosophers hold sway over the occasional crass yuppie in chartreuse plaid shorts downing strawberry jello shots. We are in the last, burnished wood outpost of the great British Empire: inverted, international ceiling flags form a desert tent canopy; UK soccer team scarves flutter from thick overhead beams; and a rough, rusting iron anchor hangs near the shipwrecked Coos Bay's vertegris-covered copper helm. A garden gnome figurine in rubber Wellies, a tan raincoat buttoned up to his neck, and a gold hat--pipe stuck to mouth--stands braced for a squall in a niche below a dusty, three-quart yard glass. Determined to master the blustery trade winds in the name of the Queen, he bears the unperturbed expression of a crusty old sea salt who has already weathered a hundred howling storms and spied a thousand heathen shores. Today, however, he will notice astonishing strange bedfellows converging on him in the bustling, polluted port of New York!
I approached Drake's Drum with trepidation and paranoia and found a skittish guy standing at attention outside; sure enough, it was Wayne! He immediately asked if I really wanted to go inside--probably hoping for an imagined invitation to my apartment, instead! He matches his own description: age twenty-three, 511011 tall, 180 pounds, curly black hair longish in the back, hazel eyes, a moustache, and a light fringe beard. But as for the "you can't pinch an inch" part of it, I could've clamped a stainless steel caliper on two cascading, symmetrical love handles. Resembling a young, full-faced Bob Dylan with a 1963 Spanish twist, Wayne was cinched into spankably tight, generic blue jeans; a Great Adventure Amusement Park baseball cap; a plain white shirt; and sneakers. He also sported a necklace with a gold, Playboy bunny charm presented to him by a previous party line girl on their first date.
Wayne and I positioned ourselves at one of the little red and white checked, cloth-covered tables that line the side wall, right below an eight-foot-tall wood cutout of a surly, scowling buccaneer pried out of the deepest dank dungeon in rainy maritime Liverpool. With arms akimbo, hands defiantly dug into front pockets, black eyebrows knit, and mutiny in his eye, he serves his vessel in a red and white-striped sailor's suit and a dangling, red/navy stocking cap. Wayne and I sit bracketed by our pirate mate and the jukebox, which plays pop music loudly enough to entertain, but not forcefully enough to drown out pearls of phone wisdom dropped by certain circumspect, anonymous landlubbers.
All that is familiar about Wayne is the lisping, raspy voice. He orders me a vodka tonic as I head for the ladies room and worry that he will slip a tiny, white Rohypnol pill or LSD into my drink before I return. Wayne said I looked like he imagined I would. He admitted that he was jittery around me, and made the excuse very early on that he had to go back to work again, appointment book in hand; I also had an emergency exit plan cooked up. Wayne was a perfect gentleman, though, as we talked about the lines and his "roommate" for the next hour and a half. Wayne turned out to be one of the inveterate double digit dialers who talked on the 100 lines back in the heyday of the Silverfish. He would hotwire a public telephone booth on Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, from which held make nightly ten-hour party line calls. He would remove the steel plate and reconnect the black, red, green, and yellow wires inside to recircuit incoming and outgoing calls through the number of a closed gas station (to the tune of three thousand dollars a month in charges!). The telephone company's fraud investigation unit almost caught him because he revealed the booth's location to a radical calling clique who dialed him back there. Others, however, believed all along that he was living large on a limousine car phone, rolling around Manhattan networking in style!
At the end of our chat Wayne paid for our drinks, and we walked together for a few blocks toward the subway. He asked good-naturedly, "Can I at least have the hug?" I gladly embraced him as a friend and said goodbye--and then made sure that he wasn't surreptitiously following me home. It is disappointing now that I know who Wayne is: all the mystery and intrigue is gone. The very key to the success of party lines is the fantastical, formless "man without a face in a long black cape"--forever hypnotic and elusive. I gave him a buzz a few days later, and Wayne the pervert re-emerged again behind the security blanket of the phone. He asked if I'd like to go with him to a resort in the Poconos this summer, and cooed about the edible panties for sale at the Pink Pussycat boutique--an emporium for sex toys, vibrators, and suggestive items of erotic clothing. I yearn to go back to the planet Zoran; that's the only fantasy I want!
DEE: Hey, you stupid piece of shit! What's your name?
JACK THE WACK: Jackass. She's right. This is the Jackass, here. You like that, or you can't take it? I'm too secure for you. So get offended! I love it. Nothing amuses me more than people actually getting upset over a party line. Creating their own ulcers. Nothing makes me more happy. This is me in my tired mood--otherwise, I'd be screaming.
DEE: Now the line's coming down (a rap rhyme explodes!).
JACK: Bring it down; I feed off of it! You don't deserve to party! I really do hate you people. That guy can't even trash the line! You can talk right over the music; that's terrible. He can't do anything right. You don't know what the fuck taking down the line means! That sucked what you did. You only did it for two minutes; I wanna hear music for at least ten, twenty minutes.
LAMOTT laments: Did Wendy call yet tonight?
BLACK GIRL: That's the bitch Jackass was talking to.
JACK: Well, boys and girls, I'm signing off. I'm gonna wake up in the morning and live a real life. I wish you people the best of luck. I just tell you women out there, never give out your numbers, and don't bother asking for these guys' numbers. It's pathetic! Pathetic, to say the least!
WENDY laughs over jackhammer chords: Have a good night!
LESLIE: The asshole playing the music should really die! People who deliberately disrupt other peoples' conversations cause they have no conversation themselves. They got no social life; they don't even have a mouth.
GRIM REAPER opens his trench mouth: You stupid bitch!
LESLIE: Shut up, you stupid fucking idiot! Why don't you die? We don't want you here. What good are you in this world? You make a mess out of it, anyway.
JOEY (as "Twilight Zone" television screams drown out the line): Why don't you leave him alone and stop answering him, and he'll stop.
LESLIE: I'd slash his throat. I wish held come over here so I'd kill him; I wouldn't even have any remorse. Probably a black son of a bitch!
CHUCK: Hi! My name is Chuck, and I don't give a fuck!
RAY clicks into the mushrooming chaos: Hello!
LESLIE: Ray, you got a computer with a phone modem? You could trace this guy real easily. There was a guy on the party line, right, who was making an ass of himself the same way this guy is doing. They traced his number and went to his house and scared the shit out of him, you know?
CHUCK: My name is Chuck, and I don't give a fuck! Leslie, you wanna give me a call?
LESLIE: I can't hear you.
CHUCK buttresses his argument: Can I fuck you in your ass?
LESLIE: You're probably the guy playing the music.
CHUCK prides himself on being offensive: No, I'm not playing music, but I would stick my dick in your mouth and watch you suck it. But I wouldn't even do that; I would let my friends do that. I would put chocolate sauce on a dildo and shove it in your mouth, you fat, fucking overgrown woman! I want my grandmother's period to come all over your fucking face while you're sleeping! I think you should choke on a Kotex!
LESLIE: Who else is on the line besides these two weirdos? I'm stuck with you, foul-mouth, and the guy with the music.
Repetitive phone-off-the-hook drilling in background.
CHUCK reveals his identity: Leslie, I know your voice; I know you, Leslie. I'm the Marlboro Man!
LESLIE laughs in disbelief: I know Marlboro from the 100 number a long time ago with Playboy and Silverfish, and he was normal--and now what happened to him? It's amazing how people could be so different.
MARLBORO MAN reflects: I became a psycho case, I guess.
Marlboro Man is an uninventive, copycat phone lackey: he plagiarizes his mentor Jack's best put-down lines and fattening food sources without so much as footnote credit. He and Leslie proceeded to rip apart Silverfish with guillotine tongues and sophomoric bathroom humor: "That fucking guy! Now with that new haircut, instead of having skidmarks on his underwear, he's got skidmarks on his head. Did you see him on 'Regis Philbin' sitting on that chair twitching? He couldn't sit still; he looked like he had fleas. He kept scratching his head, his nose; he's scratching his dick. I mean, I could understand being nervous in front of millions of people, but that guy is a poor representative of a party line person, you know? Fucking Silverfish! They had this doctor analyze why he has to talk on the phone."
Egged on by moronic Beavis and Butt-head laughter and spitting noises in the background, Leslie elaborated: "He's just milking it. He tries to impress people like he's a big star or something. I don't like Silverfish. I used to always have arguments with that guy. No one liked him on the 100 line; he had very few people that spoke to him.” Marlboro composed a final eulogy on Silverfish: "He looks like a dick with ears. He looks like he's wearing a little strip of rug on top of his freaking skinhead. The guy's a loser; I met him. I made him hang up every time he's called." Marlboro also warned Leslie about the potential consequences of her public debut at tonight's party line party at Hot Rod’s: "If you do go and I don't hear from you for a couple of days, I'll send flowers to the hospital in the shock department. Let's just put it this way: after witnessing these people, Friday the 13th will not scare you!”
Her sexuality and sci-fi fantasies running amok in hitherto unimagined directions, "Little Sherlock Holmes" also decided to uncloak and infiltrate the invisible handful of Wild Line mutants hidden among Hot Rod's hundreds of normal Saturday night clubgoers. It was a piece of cake: the couple waiting behind me on line in the biting cold were loudly discussing favorite phone numbers ad nauseum! Once inside, my stakeout was brief; the rapt, concentric circle clustered around them had to be the Wild Liners. I casually sauntered through the Tahiti aqua, 1950s theme room to admire Marilyn Monroe posters; vintage Elvis 45s; a flame-red fire engine; and a parked, tail-finned fleet of Eisenhower-era Chevrolets. I knocked back several nostalgic glasses of 80-PROOF courage and then made my approach--very innocently inquiring if they were from the party line. Frankie the All Night Swinger, one of our few token blacks, introduced me to everyone and immediately offered me a ride home--which I tentatively accepted for the sake of convenience and economy.
Only twenty phone fanatic founding fathers had the nerve to show their faces in public. On a ten scale, the average Wild Line caller rates a one or two. Most of the males were in their thirties: bald, bearded, pink and pudgy, short, and very unattractive. Three hundred and seventy-pound Mike from Manhattan was hard to miss: visualize the Hindenberg with eyeglasses and thinning hair in a blue and white striped, button-down shirt. Further handicapped by a docile, phlegmatic personality, Mike (a real estate agent) was the very dictionary definition of immobility as he nested idly all night long on a welded brace of three durable, reinforced chairs. His similarly obese tablemate, Candy, presented me with a Hershey's Kiss to welcome "Donna” to the group; she prudently deflected unkind bovine references and "Miss Piggy in a mumu” jokes by openly lugging her calories along with her! Candy even wore a plus-size white sweatshirt with her name written in candy canes above a milk chocolate nugget!
I stood in awe of the smiling, brown-haired, bearded Lord; he may be a mere 5’5” tall, but his bills are second in size only to those of the celebrated Silverfish. Since The Lord owns a contracting company, he was forced to pay his $95,000 party line charges or face disconnection of his business lines! I sniffed out informative contacts like Shadow Cat (a short, bearded, stout Hassidic Jew in a blue suit with button-festooned lapels, a hat, and thick goggle glasses), and Pussycat from the Fantasy Line, who looked like a timid, smalltown grade school teacher rather than like a phone sex nymphomaniac. The best of the bunch was Psycho Cyclone, formerly the Dungeon Master. Tall, with short brown hair brushed straight back, bulging brown bug-eyes, a thick push-broom moustache, and a (rare for this group) normal ratio of body fat to muscle tissue, he danced with the line ladies and injected a note of hope into the proceedings.
When Andy Panda introduced himself, I recalled in amazement a very recent, raunchy group conversation on the 550-5000 fantasy line! The owner of that sexually fixated, sophisticated voice turned out to be a 6’2”, 275-pound, balding, middle-aged man with a well-manicured, light brown beard and glasses. I doubt that anyone would let swinger Andy Panda near them armed with his heralded, eighteen-inch European cucumber or anything else in real life! The closest he will ever get to heavy bondage or tantric sex in a swimming pool is vicarious skinnydipping on adult telephone lines! The giddy, no-holds-barred soirée produced other exciting, documented--but unphotographed events. En route from my first trip to the ladies room (oh great sanctuary of women everywhere!), The Lord sidled over and slipped me his phone number. Scrunchy-faced, bearded Jake intercepted me the next time I visited the powder room. He tittered a lot--popped me a business card--then nervously inquired where the payphone was (for a party line fix?). My eager beaver chauffeur, Frankie the All Night Swinger, hounded me twice about the lift home as I roamed the premises trying to avoid the public social stigma of fraternizing with this absurd collection of physical have-nots. (Back in high school, these were the goofball kids nobody would've been caught dead talking to!) Except for Frankie's pal, Cyclone, who eventually made his move.
Cyclone bought me a black Russian, and we talked and joked; he soon leaned down and gave me my first pleasurable party line kiss (Sigh!). Frankie stood one foot away--wiry and erect--glaring at us with beady eyes in steady, stony silence. During the ride home afterwards, Frankie stewed jealously at the wheel next to me as Cyclone played with my ear all the way from the back seat. I momentarily panicked when the conversation turned to Frankie's prior arrest record on separate charges of sexual harassment and subway pickpocketing. What am I doing alone in a car with these two? Frankie grew angry when I requested to be deposited a few blocks from home and refused to show them my building. But Cyclone understood; he hugged me goodbye and let me go. Dire Hitchcockian warnings aside, Wild Line parties can have happy endings, after all!
I called Cyclone two days later; he was eager to meet me for drinks at Oliver's Pub at 4:30 on Monday afternoon. Grubby and unshaven, with steely stubble on his face and chin, he waited outside the provincial English tavern for me in a bright red, button-down longjohn shirt and baggy jeans. Cyclone initiated a mortifying, protracted tongue-kissing session on the street as soon as I arrived. Somehow, the magic of Friday night had withered away in the freezing, sober light of the February sun, and I wanted to scurry inside as quickly as possible. I realized now--too late--that I could not have any romantic interest in this man. We sat down at the knotted pine bar, ordered drinks, and I steered the conversation away from myself as I dug out every last detail from Cyclone's brimming cranium.
Cyclone, an experienced fixture on party lines, once ran up $35,000 in bills over a three month period. Like any normal party line caller, of course he never paid. Cyclone spun many a spellbinding yarn about his life on the line: thinking that his bachelor days were behind him, and that he was through sowing his wild calls, he took Vanessa the Undresser as his lawfully wedded party line wife. The monitor officiated over the joining: she had bridesmaids and he had ushers. The two-hour ceremony cost them a small fortune before they realized that they had each others' home numbers and could continue the nuptials without 900 charges!
But, trouble lurked for the happy newlyweds: Vanessa felt compelled to appease one of her jealous, jilted line boyfriends with a good bye orgy at a hotel room in the city. She suggested light bondage as a prelude to sex: true to her maiden name, Vanessa undressed him, tied him to the bedposts, threw his clothes out the window, and left! He managed to unfasten himself, ran out into the street wrapped only in a towel, and taxied back to New Jersey. The half-naked lothario sought asylum immediately on the sex line and told everyone what she'd done to him! Vanessa, however, could remain faithful to no one: a few days later Cyclone heard she'd married someone else on the phone, and he dialed for a divorce. I wonder who got custody of the phone?
Cyclone is plagued by underhanded, sex-crazed party line women, one of whom set him up to be robbed during their date: he caught her team of two "second-story men" loitering in his lobby. Cyclone's double date with Pussycat and another line couple ended up in her apartment as an intended four-way "swing"; Cyclone quickly heaved himself out the front door. He also spent an evening with Carol Ann, Andy Panda's ex-wife, who (after lying that she only weighed 130 pounds) invited him over sight unseen to dinner at her house! After the meal, she jumped on him and tried to attack him on the couch. In Cyclone's own words: "She's far from being my type. If you do that the first time you meet someone, it gives you no class at all."
Cyclone totally unnerved me with his account of two callers who met for dinner and a movie: as he had been a perfect gentleman all evening, she agreed to go with him to pick up something at his house afterwards. Once he got her inside, however, he locked the door and all of the windows and proceeded to rape her: "You're not getting out of here until you spread your legs!" She never pressed charges, but Cyclone and two off-duty Brooklyn patrolmen pounded back street, Giuliani-style justice into him. By this time, I was becoming paranoid about Cyclone’s increasingly annoying interest in me; obsessive personality; and odd, fixated talk about the line for hours on end. Was he the perpetrator in this tale?
Cyclone insisted on walking me to the subway, where I squirmed for five interminable minutes trapped against him as we played tug-of-war with our tongues once again in front of hundreds of waiting passengers. Finally, at long last, my industrial gray freedom train rattled and hiccuped its way into the mouse-infested Bloomingdale station. Cyclone left me with the disquieting thought that he was determined to find out what "Donna’s" real line name was. I kept looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't tracking me home to come and get me. I even stayed off the 643 line for a few days. I might be delving too deeply into the treacherous, seductive voice underworld without police backup!
CHAPTER 6
I NEVER MADE THOSE CALLS
Money can't buy love--and it can't buy safety--but it can provide many happy hours of conversation on the party line! Today I embarked on a premeditated dialing orgy on 970-BUTT, 970-FUCK, 970-EROS, 970-ACDC, The Party Line, The Gabb Line, and The One Line. On The Rock Line, I found myself assaulted by frenetic fifteen-year-olds with glandular disturbances and braces: they twittered and gossiped in extremely annoying, glass-shattering squeals like hyperactive parakeets in a suburban mall pet shop! I even rang up the dead-as-a-doornail, starchy-stuffy Wild Line, which permanently blacklisted Jack a year ago in response to the hysterical demands of a bridge full of terrified, embattled customers. I ended the night with a quick, patriotic nod to the lovetorn ladies of the Clinton "Oval Orifice" on the 970-9600, "Amazing Presidential Line." We are going to completely test the telephone company's much-rumored, liberal, good-will billing policy. Last year Cincinnati Bell forgave $274,000 in charges over a three month period according to a company spokesman: "That figure reflects calls made by mentally handicapped people as well as those on party lines--we just lump those two categories together." I'm sure that New York Telephone will somehow accommodate me, also!
I will leave no MTV dial-in contest, celebrity teen hotline, charge-by-the-minute, or private number undialed: I punched in upscale Club 2121 at keystroke 1-900-999-2121, where I connected with TWJ (The Wandering Jew). He described himself as 5’11”, 190 pounds, with blue eyes and curly hair: "I'm not the handsomest guy in the world, but I can hold my own." Corrections officer TWJ is solidly entrenched in uniformed services, proletarian culture. He accused me of hobnobbing with "the snobby, upper class people" when I mentioned my penchant for club crawling on guest list and high-octane rock stars. TWJ caught me in a downhearted, down-on-men mood: "You sound so skeptical and nervous." He felt compelled to defend his sex and offer quick-fix constructive advice: "You know what you need? You need a good guy to show you the light. I'm a true gentleman from the word go; I treat people with the utmost respect."
TWJ congratulated himself for engaging me in this twenty-seven-minute-long, fourteen-karat-gold gab-a-thon: "Boy, at seventy-nine cents a minute, I must be worth a lot! Just remember one thing: you spoke to The Wandering Jew! I made you happy, didn't I?" Hubris knows no bounds for "upstanding citizen" TWJ, who considerately "lit up my life" with a phony home telephone number! When I asked to speak to "The Wandering Jew," adding hesitantly that he calls party lines ("Maybe he's your son or something?"), a woman replied in profound disgust: "He don't live here no more," and hung up on me! I tried his beeper number once from a phone booth, and he never deigned to call me back!
Let's bid au revoir to wandering minstrels, training bras, and Teen Spirit and act like adults: we'll get very naughty next on the 550-7777 Fantasy Line. Stark naked, Clorissa (Donna) and I played with our magic free telephone as we donned pink fishnets and mini-skirts to go out to the Cat Club. Thirty-two-year-old Sparrow sounded mouth-watering, with thick brown hair down to the middle of his back. He even cuts hair freelance: "Have scissors, will travel." Sparrow happily offered to give both of us a massage if we would come to his apartment. He was willing to teach nineteen-year-old Clorissa anything she wanted to know, but he liked what he already heard in womanly Scarlett: "Your voice sounds so scratchy and sexy and bitchy--like a feline about to claw my eyes out. Meow! Make my tattoos bleed. Call me back!" We asked him to meet us at the Cat Club, since he lives only half a block away from it. Sparrow (whom we both sensed was gay) set up an uncomfortable riddle for us to unravel: "Maybe I'll drop by. You won't know it's me, though."
A mysterious secret admirer sent two drinks over to us a half hour after we arrived, carried by a waiter relaying a saccharine singles bar message: "This is from someone who loves you." When we were about to leave, a nauseously ugly, nasty-looking, forty-year-old man with a pizza-face full of potholes, short dark hair, a moustache, preppie clothes, and an alligator shirt, approached Clorissa and identified himself as our benefactor. Was he the real Sparrow? As I thought further about his stated hair color and length, profession, sexual preferences, and Manhattan residency, a chill of dread traveled down my spine. I might have matched wits with the same deranged masochist that Silverfish and his friends beat up for kicks and profit! I have called Sparrow's answering machine at least twenty-five times--day and night--to ask him point blank if he enjoys dangerous liaisons involving sexual mutilation, but he's never home. This is like running into Jack the Ripper on a desolate London street corner in thick rolling fog! I need some new, clean, sane telephone numbers, so let's sidestep the sex offenders and look for romance tonight on the Love Line:
"You've reached 550-LOVE. Just fifteen cents a minute, forty cents the first. And every five minutes you'll hear a tone. And now, for live one on one adult conversation, strictly for adults only, dial 540-LADY, just a dollar a minute. For hot adult conversation, call 540-LADY, that's 540-5239! Go all the way--do it now!"
TONY: I'm a man of leisure.
Intense snickering in the background.
WENDY: I'd love to do nothing; tell me the secret.
TONY: A lady of leisure? I can help you with that. Call me and we'll talk.
WENDY laughs mischievously: Why don't you describe yourself?
TONY: Don't worry about me--this is quality stuff!
Loud, juvenile coughing and guffaws.
TONY: I wanna go private with you--as long as you're not fat!
WENDY: I'm not fat. Are you fat?
TONY: There are only fat girls on this line.
WENDY: I happen to be skinny. I look like a small version of Joan Jett.
TONY: Alright, you pass. I'll tell you something. I met a girl who looked like Humpty Dumpty. She says, "Oh, yeah, I'm medium weight. I got alotta guys after me," right? So she opened the door. I'm telling you, I almost died. Really big in the middle. Thin ankles, and then it got steadily bigger up to the waist, and then it went the other way. I graciously declined. I got the hell out of there very quickly. I said, "I gotta go get my car. Gee, I'm sorry, I've got a meeting I've gotta make, you know."
DAMON clicks on: Hello! Who’s out there? Are there any cucinettes out there?
TONY directs traffic: Cucinettes? Sounds like a pastry. Go to an Italian bakery!
WENDY screeches with laughter: Oh, God! What do you think she thought of you?
TONY: I know what she thought of me. She was looking to latch onto me, and I said, "It ain't here.” She just stood there, man. I took off. And then another story: I met the girl at her house, and she and her mother were trying to pick me up.
Histrionic gales of laughter.
TONY: An Italian girl and her Italian old lady. She was divorced, I guess. These two women living in this house
WENDY: Was she pretty?
TONY shudders in horror: Hell no! No, no! Another one! Bad, bad--real bad! Nightmare! But I was already in the house.
WENDY: You were trapped.
TONY: I hadda get out, you know. The other one I didn't even get through the door. Trapped by that monster!
WENDY: So now you think all girls you're talking to on the line are fat.
TONY broods at top speed and volume: I have to ask them--to try to make some determination about the weight factor.
WENDY: I've seen what some of the guys from these lines look like, and it's horrendous.
TONY: It's nauseating.
DAVE: Can I make a recommendation for you two? Great topic! Why don't you call each other and talk about it? You can see who’s fatter, who has more teeth.
LOUIE bungee jumps onto the line: What's the lady's name?
TONY lobbies hard: She's my girl tonight. All of a sudden he's moving in on my woman; I've been working on her for forty minutes. Come on now, Wendy, take my number.
WENDY: Why? So you can try to have phone sex with me?
Listeners laugh.
TONY: That's what all those other bald, fat men want! You like to write books, and I like to read them. We'll talk about that.
I'm not enjoying this forced, free phone spree: I'm on the lines at times when I don't even feel like talking to anyone. I have to squeeze the calls together during the same few hours each night to substantiate my well-constructed sob story to the telephone company: "My best friend Mary from high school was visiting me, and she must've done it all when I was out.” I am also constantly aware of and worried about my mounting party line indebtedness--in case I am eventually forced to render unto mighty Bell Atlantic Caesar his rightful due! A convenient, 1992 federal law, the Telecommunications Disclosure and Dispute Resolution Act, offers a measure of protection: basic and long distance phone service cannot be disconnected for failure to pay charges for calls to interstate 900 numbers. Consumers also have the right not to be billed for unlawful calls made to these services. Payment of any disputed amount may be withheld and collection action will be suspended pending review without injury to the customer's credit rating.
Except for the expense (about which we see a surprising general lack of anxiety), there is no difference in the quality of people or conversation on paying or access lines. There is the same deception, hostility, rudeness, formulaic party line pick-up raps (How old are you? Where do you live?), and often the very same people. But, there is less of the beloved silliness, as monitors play host, referee, and bouncer to restrain the trashers. On The Party Line, the moderator kept the ball rolling by individually introducing each new caller to everyone already on the line--and wound up monopolizing the entire conversation. I felt inhibited--as if a gung-ho camp counselor was supervising and censoring each costly, contraband bon mot.
I've already called Tony (really Danny) at home several times for long conversations. Italian/Irish, friendly, funny, and outgoing, he helps me curse out--in very foul language--my bulging rucksack of recent romantic candidates. Age thirty-two on the line became age thirty-five on the private phone, and he described himself as 5’11”, a "husky-solid" two hundred pounds (and he's interrogating me about being fat?), with brown hair and a moustache. The "man of leisure" is, in fact, an extremely busy slumlord, who houses welfare recipients in single room occupancy buildings on Long Island. He often comes into the city to close real estate deals, and in order to meet, I concocted an elaborate communication plan. Monday morning I left the number of my corner phone booth on his answering machine, he retrieved the message at 12:45 P.M., and I waited by the phone at precisely 1:00 P.M. It worked: we meet at 2:30 P.M. at Drake's Drum. As usual, I entrusted a friend with my date's name and phone number in case I wind up missing, dismembered, and dug up body-part-by-body-part along the Major Deegan Expressway.
I walked in and saw a mature, manly man settled on a pub stool in front of the Whitbread Tankard Ale on tap. (I wonder what the bartender thinks of these twice-a-day, afternoon and evening shift, cloak and dagger "dates"?) Tony had a good face; a full head of curly hair; and strong, rugged-looking hands: he wore a conservatively styled black leather jacket, black slacks, and black dress boots. He would be gorgeous--minus forty or fifty "quality" pounds. He politely offered me a drink and asked if I'd also like something to eat as he ordered himself a grilled cheese sandwich. We had a nice, platonic, civilized afternoon discussing crime in the streets, law and order, vigilante justice, and the three anti-burglary systems simultaneously safeguarding his expensive car outside. He expounded on the trials and tribulations of sheltering the transient, the drug-addicted, and the alcoholic. He provides clean rooms for them to sleep in, processes them through the public assistance paperwork channels, and forcibly evicts them at the first sign of trouble. It's always comforting to learn that your luncheon companion is packing a stungun! Tony calls party lines because he is too busy to meet women in the course of this daily business routine (and even plans to launch his own unique, pictorial version of a singles dating service!). I don't know what Tony later thought of me, but a casual observer might have catalogued a comical resemblance to Archie Bunker with Gloria on an amicable father and daughter outing!
These déja-vu dial-a-date killing fields tossed out Eddie the lawyer, who conducted a short, superficial, routine interrogation on 550-GABB about my weight and figure type--for ulterior tele-sexual motives. When I called him at home, however, Eddie was very different from the outspoken, brash, property-foreclosing wheeler-dealer that he was on the line. There were numerous embarrassing lulls in our conversation: he seemed shy, fearful, and edgy about women. He inquired whether I'd date someone from the party line and if we could get together, but then irritably said he couldn't make plans today. He wanted the secret number of 643, but not only do I not want to hear his basket case voice on it, I don't need it getting even more crowded than it already is! I continued to call Eddie for two frustrating weeks, and left repeated messages on his machine; he is never at home. When I finally got him in tonight, and told him how difficult he is to reach, he said, "Yeah, I'm a moving target." Eddie was suspicious, whiny, sarcastic, and grouchy: in other words, a typically unpleasant member of his vulturous, bottom-feeding profession.
EDDIE exclaims with surprise: It's Wendy! How you doing? Can you hold on a second?
Like last time, Eddie changes extensions as his electronic hold-button resolutely beeps; he then announces that he's just climbed into bed!
WENDY: How are you doing with your party line bills? Last time I spoke to you, you were upset about it.
EDDIE (a steady caller since the first, mid-1980s, pre-party loop lines): I took a drastic step--it was $200 one month, $200 the next month; last month it was $315. I got it blown off by the phone company, and I told them to block those numbers.
WENDY: Place you out of the path of temptation, right?
EDDIE: Oh, yeah. And I'm sorry I didn't get them to give me a credit for the last couple of months.
WENDY: I think they'll only forgive you once.
EDDIE: For one month's bill, or forgive you one time for all your combined bills? I could've said for the last few months I didn't know this was going on; I just paid my bills without looking at it.
WENDY: If you really insisted, you might've gotten away with it.
EDDIE: Whatever--it's done--it's over with. To tell you the truth, I don't know if they really blocked it out or not. I haven't tried to dial those numbers. Yeah, that's it for me; I'm out of that stuff.
Wendy and EDDIE leave their only subject of mutual interest and the counselor tries a bold, last-ditch hormonal gambit: What are you doing right now?
WENDY is surprised: Talking on the phone.
EDDIE: I know that, but, just lying on your couch, or. . . . (A cue for Bell Atlantic hanky panky, complete with furniture props?)
WENDY snaps: Sitting on the floor.
EDDIE backs off: I would let you know if I was coming into the city if you'd like to meet, but it's tough to schedule pot luck like that. You don't get out to Long Island, huh?
WENDY: No. How often do you come into the city?
EDDIE :I don't really get into the city that much anymore; I have no regular reason to be there. It's no big thing.
WENDY: Well, I guess I better go. Take care.
EDDIE: Have a good night, Wendy. Bye.
I am so relieved not to have to expend any more efforts on Eddie! Would I really want to date an unmoored, prickly litigator whose answering machine message begins with: "You know what to do," and includes precise, measured instructions to "be sure to speak in a slow and clear voice"? Party line talkers are like tall ships that pass in the night: a glorious regatta of characters who sail in and out of this nether world and each others' lives. Some (like Eddie), thankfully vanish forever and are never heard from again, while others suddenly float back out of nowhere--like a long-lost first cousin twice removed. Andy Panda curiously resurfaced this week on a "Channel 7 Eyewitness News" party line feature story. His face was blacked out, but the name Andy Panda flashed across the screen, and that oh-so-familiar voice described the captivating lifestyle of talking on the telephone until 4:00 A.M. and sleeping until noon in lieu of going to work. I was shocked to hear this respectable, portly, well-spoken personage admit that he never knew the meaning of addiction until he found the telephone. (I have penetrated sufficiently deep underground in this "plainclothes operation" that I am already well-acquainted with most of the big cheeses of the party line syndicate!)
I finally got my own current phone account (Evil day--and evil brown envelope!): I only spoke for six hours over a five-day period, but I still managed to rack up $116.82 worth of discreet, generically billed debts. (Bills can unexpectedly skyrocket because of higher rates for the first minute of each call; callers who three-way friends onto the line also incur additional usage fees.) I refused to throw myself on the mercy of the telephone company; I ranted and raved that I shouldn't be charged since I didn't even make any of the calls! And furthermore, I am not going to pay! Bell Atlantic and AT&T didn't just fall for it hook, line, and sinker. They sent me a disconnect notice--I panicked until I got a temporary stay of execution pending further security operator investigation. I grew paranoid of the phone company; they became my enemy. I jumped every time the phone rang during Bell Atlantic business hours. I even got nervous every time I saw 1-800-CALL ATT and 1-800-COLLECT ads on television. I would be petrified to date a Bell company executive: I became a telephone outlaw on the run!
Luckily, I was eventually passed on to a supervisor who longed to clear her desk of both me and my self-inflicted predicament. She bluffed, checked, and scolded, but in the end she issued a one-time credit adjustment for the entire amount! Far be it for me to violate the sacred Party Line First Commandment: "Thou shalt never pay a phone bill in vain." This act of brigandage initiated me into the elite fraternity of party line high rollers and scofflaws; I am really one of them now. Had I been certain in advance that I was going to get away with it, I would've done much more damage! Industry-wide statistics indicate that 30 percent of party line bills are charged back by telephone carriers to information providers as unrecoverable. Jack commented on the financial pitfalls of line ownership: "The phone company isn't gonna go fight with customers to make them pay. Legislators would take the side of the caller. They'd say, 'What is this crap?' It's seduction at its greatest level. You're seducing the people to call up and then rake them."
To deter fraud and nonpayment, the new generation of pricey 800 and 900 number party lines require a credit card in order to talk. Messing around with Ma Bell is one thing, but fewer people will risk ruining their credit rating over a party line: MasterCard doesn't take excuses. Callers to lines like 1-800-568-NASTY or 1-800-72-ERICA initially reach a business office, where charges and services are explained and their name, address, social security number, personal and business telephone numbers, and credit card information is taken down and verified. The customer hangs up and is then called back at his own expense within a few minutes: he is responsible for long distance collect charges (most often originating in California, Florida, or Arizona) in addition to the company's per call or per minute rate (typically $12 to $30 for a five to fifteen minute conversation, or between $1.99 and $5.99 per minute).
The latest marketing wrinkle in the industry obviates the credit card requirement by ostensibly offering callers "instant access free from all premium charges." These numbers bear a Oll international prefix: you can dial the XXX EROTICA Line ("smuggled out of Europe”) at 011-351-993-5978, The Submissive House of Bangkock ("banned in the USA") at 011-59-224-6666, and the Live Group Sex Retreat at 011-972-56-544842 for "free" phone sex if you are willing to absorb hidden toll charges to Portugal, Guyana, and Israel! These businesses shifted their operations overseas to escape the reach of U. S. government regulations: while they secretly re-route the calls right back to the U. S. or Canada, the customer still pays applicable trans-Atlantic long distance rates. According to a "Dateline NBC" investigation aired in November 1994, most of the international calls were billed from Sao Tomé, a small island off the west coast of Africa, whose government-owned telephone company retained a hefty percentage of the globe-trotting sex line revenues. In.1995, resourceful billing entities introduced an unfamiliar new “10718” international dialing sequence: AT&T and MCI operators could not identify the calling destination.
In 1994, four international exchange carriers (AT&T, MCI, Sprint, and Telesphere) collected $900 million in profits from international calls alone, a market which thrives because of its relative freedom from FCC obscene content regulations and FTC business practice restrictions. Even greater profits are earned from domestic 900 and 976 exchanges: to get around federal statutes, many 900-numbers have chosen to transfer their services onto regular long distance lines, thus stripping parents of the ability to block their number and prevent their teenagers from making unauthorized calls. "Dateline NBC's” report revealed that the rural town of Jefferson, Iowa, became a telephone crossroads for hundreds of these so-called "free" talk lines and sex lines. Jefferson's local phone company reaped windfall financial profits from their sex line contracts: they received a cut of every call placed to their 515 area code exchange hub. The FCC is currently investigating the legality of these creative compensation arrangements.
Wendy's own transformation from listener to charlatan over six short months has been remarkable: the Miss Wendy Party Line Barbie now comes complete with derelict unpaid bills, a change of name and age, and a make-believe life story. Since she is allegedly writing a tome on American history, she is fully equipped to deliver an extended academic monologue on the slave family in colonial New York whenever cornered. Wendy even lives in a neighborhood of her very own: the East Seventies of New York. Why be disturbed by such a niggling little detail as honesty? After all, her clothes hair, makeup, height, weight, ethnic group, sexual activities, workouts, and musical tastes are real. So is her truly, authentic, "individual as a fingerprint" voice: a highly recognizable squeak by any other name would not sound as sweet! I have grown to love "Wendy"; she is my alter ego. I answer to that name instinctively now: Wendy is copyrighted, and she is very cool. Wendy even has a better social life than I do, whoever I am!
CHAPTER 7
DIRECT DIAL TO THE DEVIL
I am turning an audacious, spine-tingling social corner in my party line career: move over Silverfish, and let Wendy take over! As a seat-of-the-pants safari of sexual adventures, the party line is the best place in the world to pick up men! At any hour of the day or night, I can dial the line right from my living room couch and have men fight to give me their phone numbers; I can then call them all back at home and have them beq to see me! We have a giant, kosher butcher shop here with daily deliveries of fresh, new quality cuts of beefcake! I want to have harrowing encounters with sleazeball briskets holed up in pizza box-littered, threadbare rented rooms behind Esso stations. I plan to meet drink-ravaged ugly ducklings who have embroidered the entire truth about their disfigured appearances. I may wind up in close quarters with married swine and sex-addled fiends who want to forcibly live out their most unsavory, unexpurgated fantasies with me. Let the tax-deductible bacchanalia begin!
To save undue wear and tear on my fingernails, diaphragm, and twenty-six-station Panasonic speakerphone, I weed out the prospective phone call candidates based on stated looks, interests, and personality. Rich got a thumbs down because he is forty-four years old, bearded, and plays classical guitar: superannuated bookish intellectuals need not apply. John, a graphics lab production manager/Cat Club lounge lizard turned me off with his fussy pill phone presentation. Unexpected mayhem ensued with ill-conceived calls to "Rhett Butler" (Vinnie) from the Fantasy Line, a twenty-nine-year-old, six-foot, 182-pound, blonde, tattooed Harley rider from Long Island with an import-export business. Vinnie (aka "Dave" on his answering machine) and I spoke a few times at home, after which I left him adorable, dynamic," periodic little love quips about "mammy and the plantation" until his number was taken out of service three weeks later! Then I tried out Bill from Manhattan, who beseeched me to call him back--even for a minute--after a long talk on the line. When I finally relented, he curtly and inexplicably said, ”Oh, you didn't have to call," and that he had to go to sleep right now because he was tired. We were on the phone for no more than fifteen seconds! I should have known better than to ring up a morgue-frequenting, "medical" video-shooting, Columbia University graduate: enjoy your closeups of spleens, body bags, and ganglia, demon seed of Zacherley!
I declined to call at least another fifty new blind date possibilities this week: I found similarly sufficient reasons to reject them all--sight unseen! Mike, however, eclipsed my better judgment by offering an aggressive, generous physical assessment of himself: "Hi, I'm Mike! I'm twenty-three, I'm 5’10”, 175 pounds. I'm a bodybuilder. Can I call you up?" Since he couldn't give me his home number on the open line (he lives with his father), Mike suggested we both call 550-CLAS and have the monitor sequester us on a private bridge together. Unblocked and daring, I was willing to invest an entire forty cents to meet Mike all alone on alien telephone terrain in the middle of the night. He was so stupid: Mike senselessly hung up on me after one minute without a goodbye when I refused to give him my number! God only knows what he really wanted from me! Left hoodwinked and stranded, I now have to negotiate a difficult party line path back through the 465-1290 free access door into Club 2121. Since they disconnect you there every ten minutes, I turn into a neurotic chimpanzee in a psychology experiment--index finger crooked over redial button--mechanically pressing and pushing for food pellet rewards. I better spare myself the compulsion tonight.
Instead, I took on the death-defying challenge of 643 and ran into "Snoopy" for the first time in two months, now traveling under the new "nom de phone," "Mouth." He is intrigued by my voice: "It's a little hefty--kinda cute. There's something special about it We now enjoy mutually consoling chats about our bereft social lives for at least an hour each week at home; we make each other feel better. Twenty-eight-year-old Snoopy talks at leisure on a nightly basis with a large number of love-starved women from the entire New York City area. He has acquired this platonic harem precisely because he acts so relaxed, sympathetic, understanding, and honest. (Any man who chooses the handle Snoopy because it "sounds cuddly" and owns a large teddy bear named Raffles can't be all bad!) A computer parts assembler and motorcycle owner, Snoopy is coming into Manhattan for a bicycle race tomorrow: we meet afterwards at my local watering hole, Drake's Drum. I'm not scared at all; I feel like I've known Snoopy for years.
I arrived early and hid across the street to scope my favorite Peanuts character out first from afar. Eventually, a tall, emaciated-to-the-ribs rider in a blue shirt and jeans chained up his bicycle to a parking meter and went inside; my sixth sense screamed "Snoopy"! He plunked himself down at the coppertop bar near the front door on the exact same stool temporarily occupied by Tony two weeks earlier. Snoopy ordered a beer and didn't even apologize for being thirty minutes late: he asked what I wanted to drink, but almost as an afterthought. Snoopy was fugly! His mouth was skeleton-like and cadaverous, with prominent gums and widely-spaced, bad, conical crocodile teeth; even his fingernails were dirty. Long, black, kinky hair and a dark complexion made him look Spanish rather than Jewish. Only his voice was the same as on the phone; otherwise, it was a very different person to kindly, friendly Snoopy.
Snoopy downed two more beers as he complained about the taste of New York City drinking water. Although he commented that he was glad held met me and that he liked my appearance, things did not go well. We avoided eye contact; I felt ill at ease, and all of a sudden we had nothing much to say to each other. He revealed that he put a block on his phone to kick the 550-exchange urge, but has an outstanding long distance bill of eight hundred dollars for several months past: party line love affairs are expensive. I foolishly admitted that Wendy wasn't my real name: Snoopy became angry when I wouldn't divulge what it was. Once I stopped posing questions about his multifarious, (sometimes) dirty-talking telephone activities, silence reigned.
Snoopy asked if there were any "green open spaces" we could go to, but I'm not interested in becoming the next Central Park rape victim--jogging or stationary. I didn't want to go anywhere alone with him or get anywhere near those tartered teeth, either! After only forty-five minutes, he nervously sprang up and said, "I don't want to sit in here anymore," and suggested we go outside. I excused myself to the ladies room and made a quick covert call to arrange a last minute date with energetic Johnny Midnight. When I emerged, Snoopy was perched on his bike like Woodstock the canary, poised for flight. He hurriedly said that he's fidgety in the city and feels like pedaling; he looked like he was having a panic attack. I casually said, "Yeah, nice meeting you. Thanks for coming in." Snoopy shot back, "I'll run into you on the line," and sped away. And that was it, folks!
I was grateful to escape from anorexic, skanky Snoopy, but I wonder why he acted so strangely. He was certainly not the reliable, considerate confidante I'd communicated with for so long. Many men are brave on the party line and shy on their private phones, but Snoopy sparkled in any phone situation; he was just socially disabled eyeball to eyeball! I won't call him again--nor did he want me to! What a turnaround! The whole human bond we'd established and nourished together is gone; I've lost a close friend. I hope I have better luck with Johnny Midnight; he came running to see me on only two hours' notice. I've been talking to Midnight for a few weeks on 643 and at home. He likes me. I'm sweet. He calls me honey. Johnny thinks I'm special: "When I like someone, I go after them. So, be prepared! I'm resourceful, even though I lack funds right now, cause I'm depleting them for purposes of entrepreneuring my business." He blows me big kisses over the phone. Johnny is looking for love: "I'm very romantic, so I like mystery. So not seeing a person, that's a mysterious situation. I thrive on that." He likes the intrigue of blind dates and phone relationships so much that he calls national 900 numbers to develop a growing network of long distance pen pals whose doorsteps he can someday land on, scuffed valise in hand.
When we first met, Midnight asked me to ring him at his corner telephone booth to prevent swarming, scribbling party line locusts from jotting down his residential/business number. In nervous anticipation of my call, he dabbed on extra cologne--just as insurance--before he went downstairs. Midnight is very upbeat, boyish, and animated on the phone. In a clamorous, Italian, Canarsie brogue, he promised: "You're gonna be glad you met me. I'm one in a billion, honey. Just remember that! I'm very talented. I could do thousands of things--or ideas. I do everything for myself." He even leaves his "scent," his "aura," everywhere: "People tend to look at me--to study me.” Johnny Midnight is a new form of nut that I haven't come across yet. He is banking all his dreams of wealth on a new home business venture: he feverishly mails out carefully printed sales literature on behalf of a nationwide advertising franchise. He is also applying for a federal post office position. He would take the job "for security reasons: you can't get fired unless you really fuck up." Johnny Midnight broadcasts his career and family problems on the line. His sister is suddenly missing: someone at her office told him she was in a car accident. He stayed on the line talking to us about it instead of calling area hospitals to see where she was. Risk, ever the master of dry understatement, ragged him: "You're not going to call the line from her funeral, are you?" Midnight let out one of his braying donkey hee-haw laughs: "Aaaaah haaaah! I would mourn for a few days and that's all. That's the way I am."
I know I will enjoy his lively if loony personality, no matter what he looks like. I was still two whole blocks away from Drake's Drum when a skinny, slinky small-time bookie in black Ray Bans accosted me; Midnight had been casing out the vicinity for a half hour already in order not to miss me (my phone description obviously works perfectly!). Midnight immediately handed me his personally autographed modeling composites to keep as a memento: "To sweet Wendy, All my love, John." Midnight's professional pictures are stunning: he could easily appear in the Sunday Times Fashion Section. But, without the stage makeup, studio lighting, and moody poses, he is a little scruffy and facially lined (they don't make twenty-seven-year-olds like they used to!). His clothing also skirts the skid row edge of fashion. Johnny Midnight is dapper and disheveled--all at the same time--in a black leather jacket circa 1978; a loosely buttoned, colorful shirt; and too-baggy jeans. But, he is still a good-looking, tall man with an uncanny resemblance to a youthful Frank Sinatra.
"Johnny Jack of All Trades" treated me to a black Russian and a resume of his notably transitory life. He flits from job to job every few months: the Marines, the fire department, modeling, temporary office work, get-rich-quick schemes in real estate, and data processing. He also flits from home to home: his parents (kicked out), ex-girlfriend (kicked out), and a fleabag hotel room on the Upper West Side last year. He's a good-natured soul, but he just can't seem to make anything work right, no matter how hard he tries. We had a good time: Midnight complimented me profusely for hours (I blushed), he held my hand several times (I squirmed), and he expressed how happy he was to have met me: "All I want is to love and to live. Period!!!" If Midnight had money, held be generous: he wants to take me out for a lavish Italian dinner next week. I walked him to the subway, he hugged me and bussed me on the lips, and then pleaded unsuccessfully for my phone number. I don't want to hurt my sweet Johnny: I will definitely call him up again as a friend.
Scottie from Secaucus, New Jersey, filed a phone application to be my next hot date. Scottie is a 6’1”, 170-pound painter-plasterer, with green eyes and medium length black hair: "I'm no rock star or anything like that; I guess I'm a disco duck." He loves clubs: we compared Manhattan dance floors and had a rollicking good, flirty time on the line. He played madman boyfriend and beat off both the terse "whisperer from junior high school" (who wanted to know "if he’d ever fucked a girl") and John the warehouse worker. The whisperer shied away after Scottie called him a "faggot," but John was tenacious and wanted a phone call: "Wendy, I'd remember your voice anywhere! I've been looking for you on the line!" Scottie and John turned combative and contentious, and the embarrassing confrontation only ended when I was unceremoniously disconnected in the knick of time!
I called Scottie at home the next day to make plans to meet; he still sounded working-man, white trash sexy. But, two hours before our 8:00 P.M. Tuesday rendezvous at nearby Flemings Bar, Scottie sounded high. He laughed and joked about the talk show he was watching on TV as I impatiently racked up long distance charges and tried to abbreviate the conversation. I had butterflies in my stomach about meeting intimidating, aggressive, balls-to-the-wall Scottie: our appointment loomed ahead like a cross between doing a nagging chore and facing a firing squad. I brought my friend Sylvia along for safety and moral support--and for someone to have a drink with when he never showed up! I guess he didn't want to go as badly as I didn't want to go! Could it have had anything to do with the slight age-related glitch I heard in his voice: "You're twenty-eight, huh? I'm twenty-two." I wasn't angry at all, really: I laughed it off in good spirits. Being stood up is the quintessential party line experience!
I called John back next, who was twenty-seven years old courtesy of the Telephone Line Fountain of Youth, but is now suddenly an age-accelerated thirty-eight. The 195 pounds ("I've got meat on my bones") became 200 pounds, and his favorite band, Metallica, fizzled into soft rock, instead. This crotch-clutching pervert tried to evacuate his testes with me in the middle of Saturday afternoon: "Are you the one with the nice legs and mini-skirts?" When I said I had to get off the phone soon to get dressed, he asked what I was wearing and what I still had to do. Do I like to dirty dance, am I good at it, and would I do it with him? His parting salvo, delivered in a nasal Chester the Molester squeak, was that he wanted to "rock and roll with that voice!" No way, José!
I have established a new, ironclad, "no-travel" dating rule: party line men have to meet me conveniently close to home in case they don't materialize. I also stopped calling back geographically undesirable, out-of-state men: the bills are not worth it, and they live too far away to realistically communicate. I have learned that the telephone is mightier than the sword: I never used to regard a functioning dial tone as a primary method of justice and retribution, but immersion in this little phone cult has changed my entire approach to social relations. We need to exorcise a few personal demons.
"You have reached The Confessor on 212-980-4949. We know that this is a big step in your life. That's why we're here to listen. We understand how desperately you need to talk about what you've done or about what has happened to you. We are not affiliated with any law enforcement organization or church group. We have no way of knowing your name or who you are unless you want to share that information with us when recording your confession. Begin at the beep, and remember, this confession will be heard by thousands of New Yorkers."
"Hi! My ex-boyfriend, Scott, is an illiterate, stuttering, twenty-eight-year-old carpenter, pot dealer, and rock hustler. His testicles didn't drop until puberty; he had prostate problems at nineteen; his penis looks like a deformed, pointed baby carrot; and he has a chronic, nasty, pungent odor around his private parts. As a suicidal teenager, he thought he was gay because he couldn't get along with girls. When he was eighteen, a date's father had Scott arrested for rape when he dumped her off propped up against the front door--drugged, disarrayed, and barely able to stand. Scott stole expensive concert tickets from me--took two other girls in my place--and then swore in the very same breath, ‘I'm the nicest guy you'll ever meet.’ If there are any decent people out there, please help me curse him out at 201-555-0025!”
Sad but true! I never heard from Scott and his bulging bag of very dirty laundry, so either no one ever called him, or his miniscule, confused barbiturate mind never figured out what the 4:00 A.M. "Smelly underwear!" phone calls were about or who had instigated them. The police have started to listen in on confession lines to trap criminals: maybe the world-renowned Jersey state troopers will pay Scott a friendly little visit to examine his premises for illegal substances and observe his patented "eyes shut tight with a big smile" drugged driving style. I'm always happy to be of public service, and unburdening myself to several confession lines has done wonders to restore my self-esteem! I am putting both Scotts back on hold, and I am eyeing my telephone entertainment center--I can almost taste it!
Turtle three-ways the Bondage and Discipline Line onto 643 as we maintain strict, radio listening silence: "You've reached the courtesy phone for the Fantasy Line, the Bondage and Discipline Line, the Large and Lovely Line, and the Gender Line. This call is charged as a regular call to Manhattan. No 550 charge will apply. Please be patient. Shortly, a moderator will connect you to the group of your choice. Thanks for calling. Have fun!"
DOROTHY (Candy) whispers: Little bitch! Hello! Can you connect me with B & D?
MARK is waiting: Hi! My number is 555-8489. Can you call me?
Turtle, Lorielle, Cyclone, and Wendy snicker and confer as DOROTHY calls Mark back: Hi, Mark! What's going on?
MARK: Nothing much.
DOROTHY: Mark, tell me something. How big is your dick?
MARK: Eight inches.
DOROTHY: Wow, that sounds good! What are you wearing, Mark?
MARK: Nothing.
DOROTHY takes aim: You have nothing on? I wanted you to have your clothes on so I could peel them off you. What do you like done to you?
MARK grovels in a dog collar: I like being tied up.
DOROTHY: You like being whipped or chained to a bed?
MARK moans with pleasure: Uh huh!
DOROTHY cracks the riding crop again: Do you like leather?
MARK: I love leather.
DOROTHY: Do you want to be gagged?
MARK: If you'd like me to be gagged.
DOROTHY: Do you like being butt-fucked? Can I butt-fuck you with a carrot? Then I want you to suck on it. Can I do that to you?
MARK likes to play with matches: Mmm! Yes, you can.
DOROTHY impales him with an orange tuber named “Mistress”: Just imagine I have my carrot up your asshole.
A man huffs and heaves in the background, another symptom of the decline of Western civilization!
DOROTHY: Come on, Mark, suck on that fucking carrot! Suck on it! Is your dick getting hard?
MARK prepares to milk his udder: My dick is real hard.
DOROTHY: Are you getting ready to come?
MARK starts bucking away right on the telephone: Yes, very close.
DOROTHY: No, you don't come yet! When I count to three, I want you to come, okay? Come on, suck harder! Harder! Beg me! I wanna hear you moan. Louder! Beg me louder!
MARK's voice oscillates between a whisper and a shriek: PLEASE, PLEASE!
DOROTHY ORDERS: One, two, three! Come now! Hey listen, I changed my mind. Forget it!
LORIELLE (perpetrators split their sides laughing): Hi, Mark! You're on national radio: this is the Howard Stern show.
CYCLONE: You pathetic motherfucker! You've got a carrot up your asshole.
DOROTHY: I'm the Surgeon General’s assistant; I'm here to ban unsafe phone sex, Mark. I'm gonna have you arrested for talking dirty over a party line.
LORIELLE (giggling and howling): Did you really come, Mark?
MARK retracts his testicles in disgrace: Yes.
DOROTHY: I put a carrot up your ass and you came? You sick fuck! I'm gonna puke! This is the job I used to make nine dollars an hour doing. I could've had him down on his knees licking the phone.
Mark hangs up and CREAM clicks on: Hello! What's your name?
CANDY: I'm the Psycho Lady; I'm Joanna’s evil twin. If she doesn't butt-fuck you, I will.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Insistent beeping goes up to 8 on the Richter scale.
CREAM: I love that. Can we arrange that sometime in the near future?
TURTLE: Cream, get the hell off the phone, you moulie! Dial reject! Fucking Hindu!
CYCLONE whispers: Get his number!
CANDY: Hey, you little Chink, you want me to call you? He's gone. I'm gonna call myself Robin for the next one. Hello, B & D. Little boy, hello! Where are you?
MICHAEL clicks on: I'm in a payphone in Rockefeller Center.
ROBIN: Can I call you?
MICHAEL: Yes. My number is 555-0126.
TURTLE instigates: Candy, do a fucking good job, now!
Silverfish won a black belt at this "mod squad," group bridging art form whereby unknowing, entrapped victims perform phone sex in front of an undercover, rubbernecking, party line peanut gallery. Silverfish and I come together anew now as compatriots with an unbreakable phone bond: when I first met him, I was a mystified stranger to his special world, but today we drop the same names and travel in the same elite phone circles. Silverfish, however, is now riding the tail end of the telephone jet stream: although his phone is still ringing off the hook with party line people and "all the nuts," his stolen MCI calling card was cancelled after they traced three hundred dollars worth of calls he placed to Europe. The grand old master has finally been blocked and pried off the party line cold turkey: no more 550s or 900s for him ever again.
Desperately combing the market for a complimentary dial tone, Silverfish impersonated his father on the telephone and almost succeeded in convincing a Bell Atlantic representative to remove the noxious block. (Bell Atlantic had to assign his parents their own secret authorization code!) Silverfish mapped out two other last-ditch strategies: "I'm going upstairs to break into my neighbor's house and use his phone--or I'm going into the basement to connect my phone wires to somebody else’s line." Silverfish's mother reacted with a court order: "She claims that I'm out of control and that I get drunk and angry and start breaking the furniture and things. She told the court that my friends threatened to take her possessions and sell them, so she's got a protective injunction. Now I can't bring people or liquor over here.”
Dead broke, legally enjoined, and with his fifteen minutes of fame run dry, Silverfish had to resort to making local phone calls for fun: "I would call this girl's house a few times a day and just breathe, or I'd talk dirty to her. She had my line traced, and all of a sudden two detectives come to my door. My mother lets them in the house: I was in my room with two friends and I was smoking a pipe. They thought it was dope. They took me down to the station and told me I was allowed to make one phone call. (Silverfish called the party line and left the police with the charges!) They put me in jail for the weekend, but then they had to let me go cause I'm under age. I don't even have to go to court."
Silverfish is free, but his telephone is under house arrest, his party line life is restricted to the 643 access group, and the dating flood has dwindled down to a selective trickle. Depressed, he sour grapes the line and all the people on it so that he will miss it less: "You see all those sexy ads telling you to call party lines--and later you see what you really get when you call. Now I make the girls meet me here at my house. I hide behind a car or ask one of my friends to go out there and come back and tell me if she's ugly or something. This one girl wanted me to go to Jersey to meet her. What if she's a fat, ugly bitch or something like that? What do I want to see that for? Make me go all the way to Jersey for nothing. So, if she's ugly and I look out the window, I won't come out." Silverfish (reincarnated as Vinnie Goombahs) would rather stay inside and engineer renewed social, racial, and religious warfare on 643. Known as Skinhead, Mr. X, and Hammerhead to unknowing innocents--and as Vinnie Goombahs to hundreds more, he spends hours enhancing his disruptive phone reputation and recapturing his glory days as a living legend on the line!
CHAPTER 8
IF YOU THINK YOU COULD TRACE US, COME AND GET US
Clinical paranoia and fear of invasion of privacy fuel all-night manifestoes on the intricacies of tracing numbers, taping conversations, and telephone function and technology: fountains of misinformation and party line folklore are eagerly dissected and devoured. Once callers do obtain your real name and phone number, it is too late; they will track you down. It is nearly impossible to rid yourself of the connections you make in the party line world. You will receive phone calls forever, even if you try to unlist or change your number: party line luminaries have too many inside contacts at the hallowed halls of Bell Atlantic. Distraught victims of harassment find that they have acquired the equivalent of a permanent, lifetime telephone number--as immutable as a social security card. One night, I received a series of menacing, whispered "Wendy" calls--amidst gastric burps and canned laughter--on my answering machine. Was Silverfish playing a joke on me, or did Rocco manage to trace my number from his job? Luckily, the phantom calls did not persist.
BILLY FROM MANHATTAN warns: We're being taped.
Periodic, tubular beeping in the background.
WENDY (stunned silence): You mean by the party line company?
BILLY: No, if they were taping us, they wouldn't have that tone so we would know they were doing it.
FRED: I'd love to find the taper and get his number.
BILLY: You could get it if you knew someone in the phone company. But they're not gonna take that chance, anyway. It's a big criminal offense--not some petty charge. Hey taper, give it up! Everybody's afraid to talk.
FRED: We're not scared; all they can recognize is our voices.
DOMINO (as the verifying operator tries to decode our busy signal): You can never tell. Did you hear about this girl that was interviewed that she uses these phone lines? They put her photograph and real name and address in the paper. This guy from Buffalo saw it and was immediately attracted to her. He came down from Buffalo with flowers in his hand and a ring in his pocket to marry her. She had to move, change her phone number, change her name over the line.
CLOVER: Occasionally you do hear horror stories.
FRED: I used MCI to dial, so nobody could get my number, anyway. If you call the 900 numbers, they know what number you're dialing from.
GYRATOR threatens: You're as good as dead; I have you traced already! I can trace your voice, connect it to computers--IBM tracers--and it will select the choice of where you're calling from.
CANDY: Stacy, this guy thinks he has a trace. I have a tracer, but it doesn't work for the party line, cause there's too many people on it. The person has to dial you direct.
Periodic beeping haunts the 9393 bridge every seven seconds.
FURIOUS WOMAN speaks into our eerily deserted, wiry abyss in the dead of the night: Yeah. Just watch the newspaper tomorrow. There's gonna be a murder in Brooklyn. Fourteen-year-old girl by the name of Vicky. She's gonna be dead! I'm gonna kill her! She's my little sister, and I hate her. I'm gonna kill her tonight! I've had it with her bullshit! I put up with it for thirteen years. They can give me the chair if they want; I don't care. I don't care anymore. It's my last night on the phone, because next time I get on the phone, it's gonna be one phone call from the jail, and the next call will be to God when I go up in the fucking electric chair!
Tombstone silence and then a resigned sigh: SON OF A BITCH!
Nerves rubbed blood raw, I was intrigued by the promotional literature on the movie, Party Line: "Some Talk, Some Listen, Some Die! Mystery, romance, and fantasy by phone. Millions of eligible, and not so eligible Americans, are participating in this new 'safe-sex' dating scene. What better way to entice strangers to meet at odd times in unusual places . . . than to lure them into seemingly innocent conversation? But on this Party Line, murder victims are suddenly turning up all over Los Angeles. Party Line will keep you holding the receiver . . . and the edge of your seat!" Film fans can see older brother Seth dress up in his dead mother's wedding gown while his sister Angelica slaps him around and calls him a mama’s boy. Seth and Angelica also happen to enjoy murdering the would-be lovers that Angelica invites to their mansion from a chat number. The police traced all of the victims' phone records; their only common link was the party line.
Party lines have a bad reputation: Hollywood and the press sensationalize and exploit the cautionary theme that blind, sexy talk invites blind, brutal violence. Phone sex businesses are portrayed as fronts for either organized prostitution or seductive, silk-stockinged stalkers. In 976-EVIL, After Dark Enterprises operated a seedy, basement consortium of phone banks including a fake Santa Claus connection and a blasphemous hotline to the devil, who talked a bullied teen into launching a chainsaw massacre: "Now horror has a brand new number!" Jane Seymour's wayward husband was murdered by his professional phone sex mistress in Are You Lonesome Tonight. In Distinguished Gentleman, Eddie Murphy threatened to blackmail a married politician with public disclosure of his phone sex peccadilloes. Deborah Harry played an alluring phone sex operator in Intimate Strangers who inadvertently warmed the tender waiting cockles of a serial killer! Spike Lee's hardworking Girl 6 became psychologically obsessed and physically depleted by her phone sex actress fantasy roles and kinky clients.
Anonymous computer conversations pose similar risks: Dr. Judy Kuriansky warned readers in a January 17, 1995, Newsday column that "although some people use these services with integrity, others hide behind false identities to act out fantasies or perversions." Adult computer correspondents who reveal personal information on-line have been victimized by determined "cyberstalkers" who tap into their credit reports and post their names and addresses to hardcore sex Internet newsgroups. Unsuspecting children are increasingly targeted by Web-savvy computer perverts and pedophiles: "A Manhattan computer analyst was charged with second-degree sexual contact with a minor whom he engaged in a private 'chat room,’” while "a Brooklyn computer programmer was jailed for attempting to sodomize a teen he met on a computer bulletin board.” State Senator William Sears introduced legislation in January 1995 making it a felony for an adult to use a computer to conduct sexually oriented discussions with or to disseminate indecent material to minors, or induce a child into immoral or obscene behavior. A parallel federal Communications Decency Act (Telecommunications Reform law), however, was overturned by the Supreme Court on June 26, 1997, as a violation of free speech. Virtual erotic strangers beware!
Caller Identification presents an additional, freefloating dating security threat. Caller ID, originally a NYNEX "Phonesmart" service, is based on SS7, a new switching technology which carries information on the call along with the call itself. New Jersey Bell Atlantic first offered Caller ID to its customers in February 1989: in Caller ID areas, complaints to the telephone company's Annoyance Call Bureau about obscene, anonymous vindictive, or prank calls dropped by 50 percent. Subscribers to Caller ID as of 1998 are able to see the date and time-stamped name and number associated with their incoming calls displayed on a separately purchased screen every time the phone rings.
The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court, however, ruled that Caller ID is an invasion of privacy and a violation of state wiretap laws. Maryland's phone service announced plans to keep numbers of undercover police and social workers from being revealed. Norman Siegel and the ACLU successfully kept "Caller ID" out of New York State until 1993, when it finally came on line along with free to request, Per-Call or All-Call Restrict options that automatically block number (and later name) display. Calls from restricted numbers show as "Private," "Anonymous," or “Blocked” on a Caller ID display box. In order to conform with privacy laws in neighboring non-Caller ID states, these devices may register long distance numbers outside the Regional Calling Area as "Out of Area" or "Unknown". In 1999, Caller ID subscribers were offered a free “Anonymous Call Rejection” option to prevent these blocked calls from ringing through to their telephones. Callers whose numbers are blocked hear a message asking them to hang up, temporarily unblock their line by pressing *82, and redial the number.
The Call Return system is more versatile and dangerous: it enables you to dial back the last number from which you received a call (answered or unanswered), simply by pressing "*69” on your touch-tone keypad within a half hour. The caller's number may also appear on the Call Return user's bill under Itemized Calls if it is a toll charge, or on a Local Call Detail list available for a fee. Call Return (and its attendant evils) could not be completely blocked until December 15, 1994, when NYNEX expanded the All-Call Restrict option to effectively prevent all calls from being returned or identified by the service. A new ID feature for NYNEX Call Return Service as of 1997 lets you first hear the number, date, and time of your last incoming call--you can either jot down the number and call later or press “1” to automatically return any in-state call.
Further privacy concerns are raised by the introduction of Circuit 9 Service for business customers assigned to 910, 920, or 880 exchanges, enabling them to identify a caller's billing number, even if it is unlisted. Many businesses using 800, 888, and 900 numbers (through Automatic Number Identification technology) have long had the ability to receive and use such information to compile electronic telemarketing databases. In 1999, Bell Atlantic unveiled “Private Reach Service,” an intrusive message delivery system which enables callers to record their name and number for playback to customers with non-published numbers (which are not, however, given out to the caller). The Bell Atlantic network attempts to deliver the recording every half hour for up to seven hours (fortunately circumvented with Access Code Restriction).
MR. KNOW IT ALL ("Battlestar Galactica” computer-enhanced voice): Hi! My name is Mr. Know It All. I'm writing a book about party lines. I've got a lot of pages in my book for people called Obnoxious, Mystery, and all those kinds of names.
JACK THE WACK premeditates: The line is meant for one purpose only, and that's to destroy it. I wish I could go to Con Ed and just pull the plug to every party line.
MR. KNOW (sound machine effects): Toni, do we have to put you in the chapter for trashers, too? Toni, what's the highest phone bill you ever had?
TONI WITH A SMILE (in a demure, high tinkle): I had over a $1,000 phone bill the first month from the Wild Line, then $2,200 for a few months combined.
MR. KNOW: She calls just to add material to my book.
LORIELLE: My phone bill was around five hundred combined.
MR. KNOW: Jack, how much money have you paid to party lines?
JACK: You mean out of my pocket? Approximately $1,200. I never beat ‘em. Hey, I trash the lines. I call them one hour a day, beep them out; I have some good times. I pay my bills.
MR. KNOW: That's also one of the chapters: biggest rip-off people. AT&T lost five million in New York because of people not paying their party line bills.
LORIELLE: Jack, are you going to the Wild Line reunion party?
JACK gets a kamikaze look in his eye: No!
MR. KNOW: Mr. Know It All will be there, but no one will know it. Jack, we have your percentage: one out of every seven times you call the line, you don't trash.
JACK laughs: It depends who’s on. You know my gimmick.
MR. KNOW: I know your gimmick: if they're fat, they're gone.
JACK: No, not really--it's the Wild Line people. Also, guy, if you do write something about me, write that I started the "penalty box": ten minutes if somebody calls a girl a cunt, fifteen minutes if you curse a mother out, half an hour if you bother Toni With A Smile.
MR. KNOW laughs: Jack, you got more chapters than anyone: you lead the leagues. If they gave out degrees in party lines, Jack would be a doctor.
RICH clicks on: Hi! Who’s out there?
MR. KNOW recites: Your name is Rich, and you got married to Homegirl B over the line.
RICH: How does he know that?
MR. KNOW knows where all the bodies are buried: I know it all; I know everyone that ever spoke on any party line. I'm a sicker fuck than Jack, and there's not too many of those around. Chapter One: "The 100 Lines"; that's where it all began. Rich, how big was your bill?
RICH: Twelve grand. I told them my neighbors made the calls, and they gave me a break.
LORIELLE: What are you gonna say about me?
MR. KNOW: You're gonna be in a chapter called, "Good Girls on Party Lines."
LORIELLE: You're talking about all these sluts. Half the girls on the line meet someone new every week and sleep with them.
MR. KNOW: They might be meeting them, but after seeing what they look like, they ain't sleeping with anybody. Hey, Moulie Mike!
MOULIE MIKE: Yo, Adrian!
MR. KNOW: You got a big chapter in the book: the best imitator on the party lines ever is Moulie Mike. He does more good voices than anybody.
RICH: Do you ever keep in touch with Silverfish?
MR. KNOW: No, Silverfish has a chapter in the book, but I don't keep in contact with him. He's too sick.
RICH: Does Marlboro Man still call up?
MR. KNOW: Marlboro calls up every night and trashes the line.
RICH: Does anybody remember Billy Bubba? He came to my house after he spoke to me on the phone: he just turned up! I come downstairs, and he picks me up and carries me out to the fucking street! My mother's looking out the window and sees a strange man with a red beard lifting me over his shoulder.
MR. KNOW: It takes all kinds to make a party line.
BUSHWICK BOB kicks in on a wartime footing: All those fat girls who aren't admitting they're fat. We gotta take care of it.
JACK: You know that Friday night after it comes down, I'll be eating shrimp and lobster and thinking of all the idiots who can't get through. The 9500s: I really destroyed them, man. That was the dollar a minute Wild Line, the 9500. It went out of business.
BUSHWICK: We took that one down; we'll take this one down.
JACK: Bushwick's my partner on the line. He's Bushwick Bob on the line when he wants to play games. When he wants to trash the line, he's "Jack," cause he wants to be a sick person. When he wants to pick up the chicks and talk nice, he's Kenny, and he uses his natural voice. And when he wants to trash women, he's the whisperer.
MR. KNOW: I'll give him several pages in my chapter on multiple personalities on party lines.
MICKEY MOUSE voice clicks on: Lorielle, you used to hang out with Vinnie Goombahs? He's a dildo. Is he black?
LORIELLE: I know he's Italian for a fact. You wanna know why? He used to live with a woman named Tattoo.
MR. KNOW: Tattoo from Long Island: four hundred pounds. Professional blackjack player and motorcycle girl.
LORIELLE: She went to see his mother, and the whole family is Italian. He's just dark Italian.
MOUSE: Fat piece of shit! He looks like an albino.
MR. KNOW: He ran up over $200,000 in bills. He moves from different place to place every month. He's a sicker puppy than you or me, Jack.
JACK: No, he's just out there. He doesn't know why he's out there. He has no purpose: I'm out there to destroy. He's out there to be. He could talk louder than a beep, I'll tell you that; he's the only guy that could. I like Vinnie Goombahs--he's the best.
MR. KNOW: He has professional experience. Every time I got on the line, it was like, "Don't you ever go to sleep?"
JACK: Remember Mario? He used to call the line from Dunkin' Donuts. He was there sixteen hours one night: they had to kick him out.
LORIELLE: Talk about addiction, right? Who remembers The Lord? How about his bills?
MR. KNOW: $92,560. Anyone who runs that up and pays for it is a psycho. That's grounds for committal, Jack.
JACK: Yeah, but The Lord pays his bills, number one. And, number two, The Lord is looking to get married off the line. So, if he does, he understands why he's out there. Vinnie Goombahs don't know why he's out there.
LORIELLE: A lot of these people don't have a life.
MR. KNOW: I know all; I know everything that ever happened on any party line. We like you, Lorielle--we defend you. Get engaged to some nice guy and get off these party lines forever.
JACK: Let me ask you a trivia question on the 9500 line. Who was the most hated caller? It wasn't me, either.
MR. KNOW: Nicholas the Virgin. He was thirty-eight years old and he was a virgin.
FRANK: I have a question. There's been no new callers on this line for a month.
MR. KNOW (throwing up noises in the background): We don't want ‘em on. We just like throw ‘em off. You gotta go through the gauntlet. If you take all the insults and trashing and you still wanna call, then we'll let you in.
FRANK: But that cuts down on meeting new people and everything else.
MR. KNOW freaks out: You don't wanna meet these psychos! You crazy? You might get killed! We're all psychos; I'm a psycho. I'm normal? Oh, my God--he's in trouble!
For an occasional break from the adrenaline flow and a quiet evening at home, Music Man (Marshall) is a reliable source of phone company. He is not a "slick Rick," rampaging ladies man; he belongs to the tasteful, 1950s, "Leave it to Beaver" dating culture. A stereotypical, suburban factory neighborhood "man's man," he bowls in a local league every Wednesday night. Wendy can't even lift up a bowling ball, but Music is proud of his stamina on the lanes: "Are you kidding? The sixteen-pound ball is light for me, and it's the heaviest one made." (That's almost a quarter of my bodyweight, for Chrissake!) He is the type of avid sports enthusiast who can be found welded to a couch for season after season of tennis ("I'm a Wimbledon freak!"), basketball, and football, buried under beer cans and tubs of popcorn. He's even going to a Mets game Saturday!
Music Man is feeling the caution and common sense that come from age and experience. He had an argument with a girl on the line: "Don't talk to me about lifestyle. Don't even attempt to do that. When you're twenty-one, you're like a rookie in baseball. You think you know everything, and you wind up a couple years later: 'Wow, this is life!'” Music has grown weary of the wild days when he was "the hit" at fraternity parties. He doesn't want to go discoing at Webster Hall on Fridays: "The last time I went there, I couldn't get into the crowd; it was too young. I'm not into that eighteen-to-twenty-year-old, goody two shoes stuff. I don't fit in with them people.”
Music Man holds a dim view of liquor and drugs: "Some people like to waste their lives; other don't. I've gone the gauntlet already, so I know better." We compared "sex and cocaine" club etiquette across county lines: we discovered that in Manhattan, guys approach girls to ask if they want any drugs, and then if they want to go to bed. Music informed me that "in Brooklyn, it ain't like that. In Brooklyn, it's the bed, and then who knows what goes on after that!" Music Man is from the old school: "If I meet a girl and you have a relationship, it's gonna get to that, anyway. It's good to do it with somebody, but if you don't love the person, what's the sense?" He’d rather meet a girl "that knows how to play golf or likes doing sports rather than doing stuff like that." Music wishes he was married like everybody else: "I wouldn't have to worry about the single bullshit anymore. I'm too old for this scene already. It's a fucked up feeling waking up every day and not seeing anybody there. You reach a certain stage in your life where you wanna see somebody else’s face besides the four walls." I will call him on Wednesday to plan a date and spring him from his bachelor bedroom and bowling pins by the end of the week.
WENDY: Hello! Can I speak to Marshall, please?
MUSIC MAN’S MOTHER interrogates me: Who is this?
WENDY: Wendy.
MOTHER (suspicious silence for a few seconds): He isn't here, Wendy. How do you know Marshall? How do you know my son?
WENDY: I'm just a friend. If you can just tell him I called.
MOTHER: Where do you live? In Bayonne?
WENDY: No, in New York City.
MOTHER: You're in New York City. Uh huh. Yeah.
FATHER picks up the extension: We were just getting a call from someone in Jersey, and we were wondering who it was. It reflects on the bill here, and we don't seem to know who it is.
MOTHER: You're not associated with some party line, are you?
WENDY: I did meet him over the party line, but I live in Manhattan. It must be someone else he's calling.
FATHER: Oh, you did meet; I see. Wendy, I'll tell him you called.
WENDY cheerfully retreats: Alright, thanks very much. Bye.
I called Marshall's house again the next day.
WENDY: Hi! Is this Marshall? It's Wendy.
MARSHALL: Yeah, hi! What's happening?
MOTHER picks up the extension: Hey Wendy, no more calls in this house! I don't want that girl--whoever the hell she is--calling here ever again.
MARSHALL: Why? What happened, ma?
MOTHER yells: That's why! Final! I spoke to her yesterday. I mean, this has gone far enough! I don't know with the tracing of companies, pornographic language on the phone. I don't wanna hear of it.
MARSHALL: She's not one of those people.
MOTHER: She is so. I spoke to her directly yesterday, and she said she was on the party line.
MARSHALL: So, what's that mean, because she's on the party line?
MOTHER screams: I DON'T WANT IT! DON'T EVER CALL HERE AGAIN!
Marshall's scolding Jewish mother crashed the phone down with the full-throttled force of a jackhammer and disconnected me! Tragi-comically, “mommy dearest" is short-circuiting thirty-six-year-old Marshall’s only romantic and sexual outlet! Her overgrown, unemployed, 230-pound tyke exhibits all the classic warning signs of party line addiction: big bills, traced crank calls, and endless dirty talk. Real romance was never in the cards, but it seems that polite, hearty, practically pristine Marshall has been seeking synthetic pleasures with every other telephone tart in town in spite of Wendy's funny, two-month-long effort to woo him! I won't let the dysfunctional Music family put a damper on my burgeoning telephone social life! Mr. Know It All doesn't know it yet, but I, too, will be attending next Saturday's much-maligned ball for the battle-scarred veterans of Jack’s nemesis, the Wild Line. I reverentially dialed The Lord's ten holy digits for Divine guidance (and the party's secret location), but he had craftily palmed off Shadow Cat's number on me instead!!?? Shadow Cat ecstatically directed me to the Cat Club, whose Wednesday night promoter, Tommy Gunn, has been known to take an expensive talk on the Wild side, himself! Shadow Cat's strong he-man voice sounded sexy and clear as a bell: lucky I recollected the gnome-face hiding behind the buffed and polished telephone accessories!
I was hit full force with the sexual scent of fresh smoke and expensive new leather as I climbed up the narrow Cat Club stairway. Soak in the swirling, psychedelic octopus/crab sketches on the ink-black, painted brick walls: turn left, walk up a step or two, and station yourself at the main front bar. Feel free to squint up at the groupie memorabilia: two hundred signed white napkins with a cherry red lipstick kiss planted on each one. Still-frames of illustrious rock personages who have graced the room with a touch of real stardom flash on a throbbing video screen. But tonight, there are no promotional band posters plastered everywhere at eye level. Tonight, the rows of twinkling lights crisscrossing the ceiling will not support a live act; the powerful banks of black speakers on stage will not deafen us with cranked-up rock. Tonight, as scary as it is, the party line invades the real world!
I walked past the elevated VIP terrace and the round crescent of tables ringing the dance floor to ferret out my phone community. They were crammed into the rear exit corner against a floor-to-ceiling fresco of a sleek black cat standing proud guard over a mountain--like the Corcovado Christ statue high atop Rio’s Sugar Loaf. Theo was representative of this unofficial Ralph Kramden convention: bald, middle-aged, six feet tall, with his belly bulging with one hundred pounds of undigested grass, he remained steadfastly glued to his overburdened, red plush chair for the entire duration of the evening. Happy appeared to be mentally challenged: six feet tall, tipping the scales at 270 bloated pounds, he stood in place for one whole hour without moving an inch in a blue shirt and ratty, bacteria-infested wool cap. (Happy and Silverfish have been involved in a cantankerous grudge match ever since Silverfish publicly insulted him at a party "in front of all the ladies.") Jut-boned T-Bird was instead walloped hard over the head with an ugly stick as a youth; he hovered over me and persisted in putting a constant, cold skinny tentacle around me every time we talked.
Heather (Wayne's girlfriend Beth!) and Joanna were both short and well-groomed with forty extra pounds apiece of surplus adipose fat tissue. Candy handed out Hershey's Kisses again, but very abruptly snapped at me that she was not the one who'd shoved a carrot up Mark's ass on the B & D line. (Well, excuse me for asking!) Six-four-three's very popular Playboy blinded me with the glittering stockade of gold chains and double Playboy Bunny charms dangling from his throat. From his mucho machismo Italian image on the phone, I had expected to see a Bob Guccione--not a 250-pound sumo wrestler with brown eyes and well-cut brown hair in a white cotton tee-shirt and extra-large, crisp new blue jeans! He gave me the address of his upcoming, invitation-only, Saturday night house party, and kissed me goodbye on the cheek when my concert friend, Donna, whisked me away like a fairy godmother at the evil, tolling stroke of midnight. I wonder what romantic follies would have ensued this time around, had I stayed?
The jingle-jangle of the bright lights and party circuit always gets my heart racing and my blood pressure rising: I dragged my girlfriend Lorie to Playboy's party for protection. I pictured a darkened dive way out in the post-industrial satellite ruins of Marine Park, Brooklyn, with nine fat fucks sitting in a row on a couch planning to gang bang me. Playboy's strict orders not to bring along any guys fueled my uneasiness that I was being set up for some disaster. Thankfully, when I approached the well-kept house, a huge shindig was in full swing with Playboy and his professional nightclub bouncer carefully scrutinizing each new arrival at the door. Lucky for him that he let me use the telephone to reassure my "brother," Chris from Bellevue, that all was on the up and up; otherwise, Chris had orders to send the police to Playboy's address by midnight.
Playboy's honesty reaffirmed my faith in the line. Everything was there just as he promised: the one hundred guests, the dj, the music, the food, and a delightfully copious alcohol selection ranged from Moet to Absolut to beer. In a proactive orgy of competitive overeating, I scalded my allergic lips on several squares of the delicious, ten-foot-long, Italian hero sandwich stuffed half a foot high with prosciutto, mortadella, Genoa salami, and provolone. I threw caution to the wind--inhaled a triple vodka tonic--and introduced myself to everyone and everything that drank, walked, or crawled. I located Playboy’s younger brother, who refuses to even try party lines after seeing Playboy's five hundred dollar a month telephone debts!
What a surprise to discover that the famed Marlboro Man, he of the loud-at-any-volume voice, was fat, flabby, and slovenly. Marlboro wore a rumpled blue shirt and ill-fitting jeans; he had short brown hair parted on the side, and was phenomenally ugly. The moment I was introduced to him, he profusely apologized in case he had ever insulted me on the line. I would hope so! (Must be all that mood-altering marijuana he smokes; I could smell it on his breath!) His petite, cute girlfriend from the line, Munchkin (The General), kissed with him all night for reasons I would never even want to understand. They make a very incongruous-looking couple.
Love, however, blossoms in the strangest of places--one of them being on the phone. Sheila and Sinbad plan to get married soon; she met him after only two weeks on the party line through the introductory offices of bubbly-bouncy beach bunny, Valley Girl. Thirty-eight-year-old Ann from Bensonhurst brought along her younger line boyfriend, Rocket Man, who spent most of the night slouched alone against the hall wall in a surly posture. With longish, curly brown hair and a huge stomach protruding out from under his black Guns n' Roses tee-shirt, Rocket Man's presence occasioned the only volatile incident at the party: Amazing Twat Amanda's fiancé threatened to kill him if he ever came near her again! Playboy was a vigilant, attentive host: he roamed the rooms in military rotation to prevent additional untoward outbursts and latent risks to life, limb, and property.
I lounged on the staircase with pretty Awesome Annie (lame in one leg) and Joanna, dressed in fashion-slave black on black with long, curling, black fingernail extensions with a white stripe painted down the center of each one. She confided that she has dated three hundred men from the line so far, all of whom were "losers!" Andy Panda's ex-wife, Carol Ann, joined us clad in a red blazer and loose black slacks with short dirty blonde hair and thick eyeglasses. Carol Ann, of an independent disposition, sniped that she now runs her own company: "I support myself and my two children very well without Panda's help, and I like it much better that way!” Mike from Manhattan was only spotted once, strategically stockpiling four thick blimpies on a large oval platter. He disappeared with them through the dance floor and wasn't seen again until it was time for him to go to Wo Hop's Restaurant in Chinatown with Carol Ann for breakfast. Steve from Whitestone (otherwise known as EMS--an acronym for Eat My Shorts) was an artificially gorgeous, "Las Vegas" George Hamilton who looks like he's spent the last thirty-five years lying supine on a tanning bed. Accorded sexual hero status as the most eligible male bachelor on any party line, he was surrounded by a gaggle of squealing, ovulating twenty-year-old girls near the kitchen refrigerator all night long. (Scurrilous rumor has it that he sends pictures of himself in swimming trunks gratis to all the girls on the line! Will my mailbox also runneth over with well-hung joy?) EMS left at 2:00 A.M. with new caller, Tracy, endowed with a double-D chest and a reputed appetite for the entire Seventh Fleet!
Carol Ann, Andy Panda, and Mike from Manhattan kindly dropped Lorie and I off at her father's house in Brighton Beach afterwards. Carol Ann and Andy Panda have been divorced for six years, but they fenced and scrapped nearly to the death during the intensely nerve-wracking joyride. Shortly after her suave ex-husband proclaimed that at this stage of his life he's into sex, drugs, and rock n' roll, Carol Ann swung by his house and summarily kicked him out of her car. After a long hard night of data collection and drinking, I went to bed happy. As is usual at line parties, I felt somewhat more like the spy that came in from the cold than like a fellow phone freak. But that's okay; I have come to love this line of work!
CHAPTER 9
EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORN
A brave new world beckons--a vast cornucopia of pleasure awaits: Uncle Steve and I traded access codes on 643 tonight. I showed good faith by giving my little jewels out first, and in return, I hit the courtesy number mother lode to fourteen different lines: GABB, 6969, CHAT, 1234, Teen, Rapp, HOTT, Girl, Domination, Bisexual, Gay, TV, Chubby Chasers, and Bad Girls! This million-dollar, trailblazing combination is my insurance against Armageddon: if 643 disappeared, I'd be forced to either pay for party lines or do without! My second worst nightmare is that my phone will break down, but I stashed a flamboyant, baby pink spare in the closet to tide Wendy over such a dreadful emergency. I love Uncle Steve, and I am elated; this makes my entire week!
When I first called, I didn't intend to become one of these people--and I never dreamed I'd grow to love it this much: I started out posing as a telephone addict and quickly became a telephone addict. Obsessive personality types are particularly susceptible to this mesmerizing affliction: the party line takes on a three-dimensional life of its own as we magnify it in our imagination into the end-all and be-all of human existence. Persistent and possessed, we have no power over it; we live for it. We forfeit degrees, careers, loved ones, sleep, food, sunlight, and even sex over it; we shun the world in its name.
When I'm out at a club and I'm not having a good time or am bored, I'll think of the line and wish I could be on it. I've found myself calling courtesy numbers from payphones in the subway station at 4:00 A.M. while waiting for the train to come. If I'm at a friend's house, I'll wistfully glance at the phone and stifle the urge to ask if I can use it to call the line. Back home after a recent date, I stampeded straight to my ex-boyfriend's desk to dial 643; I was much more interested in that than in making love with him. I'd even have trouble holding a job; commandeering the corporate switchboard would be my main career objective!
I was seduced by party lines first and foremost as an excellent vehicle for proving my prowess with men. I need constant reassurance that I am still young, pretty, and sexy by seeing how many men I can attract: if the stud count is high, I am happy. I don't go to bed with them; I just need to know they want me. The party line satisfies additional telephone needs we didn't even know we had: I love the pranks, games, pratfalls, and masquerades. The party line is Peter Pan and Tinkerbell time for thirty-five-year-olds who have never grown up. And they can't even suspend us from classes for making phony phone calls to teacher's house anymore. Age has given us a lot of power. I like being a snotty little brat back in the schoolyard--only it's better, because this time around, I'm one of the popular kids. I'm experiencing everything I ever missed out on in life--from pre-kindergarten right through my party line senior prom!
The line also gives me the family, friends, community, and attention that I need but don't have. It really is a lonely hearts club, but when I'm on the line, I'm never ever lonely--especially if Jack is on! Anyone who calls up is instantly and automatically accepted into this ready-made, close-knit, ongoing social circle. It feels fantastic! All my real friends are in marriages or committed relationships: I don't have a partner to love, or unattached friends to pal around with, but the party line exquisitely simulates genuine fellowship and caring. It's often all I have, and it's all I require; it is the joy of my life. Scratch deep enough, and within any normal person, you will find the dormant seeds of a wild-eyed phone maniac. With enough exposure, it could become anyone's fatal attraction. Are you vulnerable?
Frantic pumping noises as a hidden whisperer takes liberties with himself at the other end of the wire.
RODNEY: Hang up and come so I can get you the hell off the phone!
WHISPERER jerks himself off: Ooh, Rodney, I'm coming so good! Alright, I'm done now. You know who I am.
RODNEY: If it is who I think it is, I'm aghast. I can't believe it's you. Of all the people in my life, I would never expect you.
VIC VASELINO clicks on: Is that you, Rodney? Is that my idol?
RODNEY: EMS, you're my idol! How you doing, baby?
VIC VASELINO laughs behind a Halloween goblin mask: You know, that wasn't me at Playboy's party. We hired an unemployed actor--we simonized him and sent him there.
RODNEY laughs: Steve, I just jerked this guy off and he came.
VIC VASELINO: Ooh! Who is he?
RODNEY: If we had blueberry pancakes together, then I know who it is. And I don't believe it: I'm shocked!
WHISPERER: Rodney, we shared a pizza and some Jack Daniels.
RODNEY laughs: Now I know who it is, and I don't believe it. Hey Steve, this guy is one of the most macho men I've ever met in my life.
VIC VASELINO: And he just got moist for your voice?
RODNEY: My best friend in the world on the line, man! Marlboro was my partner when I was on the Wild Line.
SIMONE clicks into the hermetically sealed, sacred wormhole of 643: Good morning!
CYCLONE: Hi, Simone! She's the one we all make fun of.
SIMONE carps: I'm still mad at Steve from yesterday: he was being obnoxious.
VIC VASELINO: I wasn't being obnoxious. I was just telling you to call from a phone. Listen to what just happened: everybody has to raise their voice twenty decibels to talk over the street noise cause she calls in from a payphone. That's the problem. Why don't you get a phone, Simone?
SIMONE: It's not that easy; I still have to pay my last bill.
MARLBORO MAN: She's blackballed by the fucking phone company. Hey Simone, The General and I did it on the line. And you know something--being on the line--I lasted more than ten minutes. Cause I said everybody's out there, and they're listening; I'm gonna have to last more.
SIMONE snorts in disgust: Ten minutes--that's it?
MARLBORO MAN laughs selfishly: That ain't enough? Simone, I'd like to hear you have phone sex with somebody.
SIMONE: I don't do that kind of thing from a payphone.
VIC VASELINO: I don't need this line to get sex. I've got my chicken livers; I'm all set. I'm heating them up before I go to work.
There is tremendous curiosity about who callers really are and what they really look like: the Knights of the Wild Line Round Table convene together every single workday morning from 6:00 to 8:00 A.M. for a communal gossip festival on the 9292 bridge. Cyclone (who had to change his listing again), gave me his highly encrypted new number (minus old area code and three-digit prefix) to throw any eavesdropping mercenaries off the scrambled, coded scent. A brother-sister team have been threatening him with hand-delivered letters after requisitioning his former number from an errant AT&T employee (for which Cyclone is passionately pursuing a lawsuit against the callous phone giant!). Cyclone reminisced about his illustrious party line career: "I knew almost everyone out there; I am a popular person. You know that." Sweet-natured and harmless, with a slightly ludicrous persecution complex, Cyclone's whole life is the simple minutiae of the telephone. Unconfirmed reports indicate that he will take the line down for twelve hours this Saturday, from 10:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M., under the charismatic new pseudonym, Dr. Trash. I didn't have the heart (or the stomach) to ask why!
Instead, I flashed a Hollywood smile and sashayed onto the Fantasy Line as young Miss Scarlett on a whispering spree. I patronize the jaw-dropping confession recordings and fantasy and S & M lines when 643 is too busy, or if I want to talk to new people other than the regulars. For these calls, I use my namesake, Scarlett O'Hara, to protect and hide my Wendy persona from the slobbering sleazebuckets: Wendy only talks on reputable lines. Rhett Butler instantly plugged himself in as my male counterpart--until whimsical Scarlett expressed a sudden hushed craving for singer Axl Rose. Rhett left Atlanta burning to the ground and metamorphosed again: "Hi, this is Axl, baby!" Rocky cued up a Guns n' Roses medley in the foreground and strapped Slash's Stratocaster across his chest. I rock n' rolled with the very bad boys in the band for the next two hours.
AXL was in a philanthropic, expansive mood: Baby, you come to my dressing room, and I'll put my lovegun deep inside your rosebud. You wanna hang out with the Axeman, baby, you better hurry up. You know I don't like to wait; I got girls banging down my door.
SCARLETT has a hunger for what she sees: I'm coming down to the Plaza Hotel now.
AXL pulls a temper tantrum: Fuck the Plaza! We're outta there. We trashed the joint and they threw us out!
SLASH leaves a trail of destruction behind him: Cost me and Axl $6,000 to pay for the damage.
AXL fondles his pierced nipple ring: That was cake, bro! We threw the cash on the floor and told the manager to fuck himself and keep the change! I told him here—come here--I smacked him and gave him another $1,000!
SCARLETT is enthralled by Axl’s raw animal strength: Axl’s so cool!
AXL: You know it. Call me: 718 area code, baby, 555-7749. I'll have Rocket my limo driver pick you up in ten minutes in the forty-foot stretch. I'm gonna take you to Central Park, baby, and fuck you while we're driving.
SCARLETT allows the forces of the night to take over: Ooh, alright, baby! What does the license plate say?
SLASH struts his fame and fortune: The front one says Guns and the back one says Roses. Baby, when Axl gets done with you, I'm gonna open up the sun roof and place you on top with your ass hanging in the limo, and we're gonna have a nice lick job.
AXL: Slash, man, you been drinking too much Jack Daniels. What time we gotta be at the airport?
SLASH: Seven-thirty in the morning--I don't remember.
SCARLETT: You guys aren't gonna wake up.
SLASH is chain smoking: Yeah, we will. Fuck it! I'll fucking fly the plane there myself. We're playing Wembley on Saturday, baby.
Interloper belts out a rousing, incessant background rendition of "Welcome to the Jungle."
AXL: Cool out, guy. Cool out. There's only one Axl.
SCARLETT: You gonna take me with you, baby?
AXL: We gotta meet you first. Scarlett, come on and call the Axeman, baby. Get off the line: you got our number. Slash, you think the groupies took down our number?
SLASH coils up his pet Burmese python: We put a roadblock on a couple of extensions; we're cool.
SCARLETT: You got your security men on the line?
AXL: I don't need any. Don't worry, baby, you're coming with us to London. We're putting you on stage with us, baby.
SCARLETT: I'm gonna tease all the security guards in front.
AXL: With your Guns n' Roses tee-shirt on, baby?
SCARLETT: You bet--and with no bra on, underneath.
SLASH strums a few chords: Be sure you flash them once in a while. I play better when I see tits.
SCARLETT: It'll be the best concert of your life, baby.
AXL: Baby, I'm gonna send you six thousand roses. Slash, I want you to make some arrangements. I want this chick's apartment to look like a rose garden, man.
SLASH knocks over his drink: No problem. I'll make sure she can't walk through her house without getting pricked.
SCARLETT trembles with misbegotten desire: You guys are great!
AXL: No one's gonna prick you. Hey Tank--clear the room! Get rid of that bitch right now! Come on, get the hell off! I told my bodyguards to get everybody out of here! Leave the coke! Come on, baby, call me—Axl’s cock is hard.
SCARLETT: I bet it's sticking out of your spandex shorts.
AXL: No, I got the leather on, tonight. It takes me a half hour to get these pants on and an hour to get them off.
SCARLETT wants to feel Axl’s serpentine: I'll help you get them off--I'll pull all night!!
I melted each time Axl whipped out orders and called me baby: I worked up the nerve to call him back at home at 5:00 A.M., and we continued the fantasy. I promised to wear high heels, white lace stockings, and white crotchless panties with little red hearts on them underneath a long, black leather trenchcoat as his newly-crowned rock and roll queen. I am aroused and hot from acting out our deeply shared superstar/groupie scenario; it was just as exciting as if it were real! I visualized their faces the whole time, which made it seem like I was talking to Axl and Slash--jumped straight off a testosterone-laced, customized concert stage. Even if it's only on the Fantasy Line, there is one place where everybody's dreams can come true.
A few days later--in a state of erotic urgency--I dialed Axl again: "Hi! Is this Axl Rose?" A bewildered man said I had the wrong number. My golden-throated, tattooed lead vocalist must've just crashed there for one temperamental, rebellious night out on the road! Many men, women, and rock stars require substantial anonymity to unleash their innermost sexual selves: I was suddenly able to act very provocative behind the emotional insulation of an unrecognizable whisper. I can grow into a sensuous, sexy new "character" apart from Wendy--totally uninhibited and unaccountable for all my words and deeds. I'll go down in Mr. Know It All's chapter on multiple personalities on party lines if I'm not careful!
BUSHWICK BOB picks a fight with the world: Who said, "Who’s the fucking asshole playing Doors music?" If I find out who cursed me, there's trouble in paradise. You wanna fuck with me? I'll put on the radio, and you wanna hear it all night?
Wendy depresses her touch-tone buttons with a Heavy Hands barbell to retaliate against the pulsating noise pollution.
DJ sticks his own head in the oven: You have a nice phone bill, don't you?
BUSHWICK: Don't fuck around with me, man. No one tells me my phone bill. I fucking run this line all night.
DJ: So run it all night! What are you spiting me for?
WHISPERER instigates: Fuck you, Bushwick Bob!
BUSHWICK twitches with rage: Can you hear that? Someone's cursing me. I want the whisperer's name. I'm gonna put a fucking cap in all of you! I don't take no shit from no one, cause I've been on the inside. You know what I mean?
DJ: I ain't cursing you out. It's not me, pal. Fucking relax, man!
DANA FROM SHEEPSHEAD BAY clicks on: Hello!
BUSHWICK: Dana, why don't you go dance with yourself in the mirror at the Day Club Disco? I know the deal with you, Dana. I run the show in Bushwick. I'm a white boy, and I hang out with the homeboys--and no one fucks with me.
DJ: Bushwick Bob, be cool for a minute. Stop picking on the girl. Dana, give me a call. You got a pen?
DANA: No, I'm laying in bed.
BUSHWICK gnashes his teeth: You could fucking get a pen. Just get a fucking pen and don't bullshit around!
DJ: Be cool with the lady. Listen, this is DJ; you could call me if you want to. Here's my number.
DANA: How old are you?
DJ: I'm thirty. How old are you?
BUSHWICK: Stupid fucking questions. I know all the moves these girls make. She knows I'm right. They don't fuck with me. You could be a homegirl or a guidette--I know all their moves. I know you Dana; I know your type.
TONY FROM BENSONHURST clicks on: Hey, anybody got any bitches' numbers you want to exchange?
DISGRUNTLED WHISPERER: Yeah, my mother's.
BUSHWICK sits on the phone all liquored up with a gun: You want some crack, Dana? I'll hook you up. Come on, Dana, come down here. I'll do you good!
This is what it feels like to be permanently and irrevocably unloved and excluded from the body politic in the United States—caught between a rock and a hard place in an empty, non-spiritual, greedy mercantile culture. Some Americans are born angry, but most Americans are made angry: Bushwick Bob was born angry and made furious. Thank God I wasn't the one on the splashing end of his bottomless supply of bottled bile! Jack the Wack’s recent absence has created a power vacuum which Bushwick Bob seems determined to fill: he has Jack's powderkeg hostility, demand for respect, penchant for revenge, and desire for control, but he is unable to quite step into the master's shoes. Bushwick Bob does not possess Jack's verbal wit; his wide, expletive-filled vocabulary; and his extensive knowledge of the full bakery line of Entenmann's cake products. A certain limiting lack of imaginative flair is also indicated by his repetitive choice, night after night, of stale Doors music to disrupt the line. When Jack trashed the line in the good old days, for hour after hour, it was a game of calculated, demonic craftsmanship which required skill and foresight. There will never be another Jack. Tormentedly gifted and magisterial, he had an unerring instinct for the communal jugular.
Other, more fallible instincts, caused me to exercise my hormonal privileges with a preening police officer named Anthony from Middle Village, Queens. Anthony loves Bruce Springsteen: we compared notes for an hour on the line about mutually attended Bruce concerts, his albums, and his lyrics--it was great! Anthony also bodybuilds at World Gym: this man was made for me! Unfortunately, though, when I called him back at his house, Anthony kept bothering me about my measurements and about what I enjoy doing sexually. Nevertheless, this 6’2”, 195-pound Italian stallion sounds like someone I'd love to lock lips and loins with live on a Saturday night. Although I've dialed his number many times during the last three weeks, nobody answered until a few days ago: I left a polite message with what I presumed was his sister. I finally reached him in last night:
WENDY: Anthony? Hi! It's Wendy.
ANTHONY doesn’t want telephone stroking today: Who? I think you got the wrong number.
WENDY: I don't have the wrong number. Remember, I was talking to you a couple of weeks ago from the party line?
ANTHONY: No, I don't think so. Somebody's been making calls here, and I don't know what it's about.
WENDY: Your name is Anthony, you're a cop, you're twenty-eight years old. I spoke to you and called you at this number before.
ANTHONY furrows his brow: No. You got the wrong party. I don't know who gave you the number.
WENDY: You're the same person; I recognize your voice.
ANTHONY: I think you got the wrong party.
WENDY: Not really. What happened?
ANTHONY: I gotta tell you, you got the wrong party, okay?
I honestly wasn't sure that I had dialed correctly, so I called again this afternoon. A woman answered the phone.
WENDY: Hi! Can I speak with Anthony, please?
WOMAN: Who’s calling?
WENDY: Wendy.
WOMAN: Hold on a moment. Tony, it's that Wendy, again.
WENDY: Hi! How you doing? Is this Anthony?
ANTHONY (little kids in the background): Yeah. What's up?
WENDY: Nothing. I just figured I'd call and say hello.
ANTHONY is adrift in a moral vacuum: I know, I know, I know. But we had company the other night.
WENDY: Uh huh. So that was you.
ANTHONY laughs: I couldn't talk. You know, I was in a precarious situation. So what's new?
WENDY: Is that your wife or something?
ANTHONY: Yeah.
WENDY: You didn't tell me you were married.
ANTHONY: You didn't ask.
WENDY: Well, it seemed obvious that you weren't married since you were home alone, you were calling the line, and you wanted to meet me, right?
ANTHONY: I don't know. Maybe it's better that you don't call, you know.
WENDY: Isn't your wife upset that I called?
ANTHONY: No, no. It's a funny situation right now.
WENDY: I could just imagine.
ANTHONY: Hold on a minute; I'll be right back.
The two-timing bastard beat a cowardly retreat and hung up: how dare he penetrate our telephone fold gussied up like a married wolf in single sheep's clothing! I fled to the line for comfort and a series of shocks: Star already knew how gorgeous Anthony is--and very generous, too. When they met, he immediately invited her to stay at any “no-tell motel" in New York City, regardless of price! The party line is a very convenient place to lead a double life: lively, chipper, eighteen-year-old Gerrie from Rockland County was another one of Anthony's recumbent spring fevers. She had dated him for a month until she began to wonder why she didn't have his last name and home phone number. She wheedled them out of his precinct captain and called the house, where she introduced herself to his wife as "his girlfriend!" I feel a lot better: at least I was not bamboozled alone.
I have to salvage my dignity with a consolation date: twenty-eight-year-old Joey the bank teller from Ozone Park, Queens. When I found Thirty-third Street and Park Avenue South, I scanned the crowded sidewalk for a 5’7”, 140-pound, trim male with black hair. Joey was the exception to the rule that all Italian men are cast in the extravagant Florentine mold of Michelangelo's "David." I spotted him solidly planted on the corner in a pale yellow windbreaker; white pants; and cheap, white plastic shoes. We greeted each other in amused embarrassment and proceeded to a nearby coffee shop, where I stared at greasy skin, brown eyes that periodically turned inward, and a well-developed, yucky, bushy beetle unibrow!
We talked sociably about your favorite topic and mine as I drank a vodka with soda water and Joey had a burger and "Sex on the Beach" (reflecting his recent Aruba vacation, where his friends nicknamed him "The Slut" because of his numerous [?] female admirers!). Joey's telephone love life, however, recently went belly up on the rocky shoals of puberty when his girlfriend's mother suddenly accosted him: "I don't know who you are, but my daughter is only eleven years old, so don't be calling here again!" Joey also filled me in on party line media coverage: "Unsolved Mysteries" spotlighted Lewis Carlucci, a nationally wanted serial bigamist from Queens, New York, who had conned thirty women into marriage, fleeced them of their money, and then disappeared. He had recruited some of his early victims on the original “100” exchanges as "Elvis," a favorite crony and contemporary of Silverfish (whose amazing, bill-panicked, photographic phone memory instantly downloaded both the FBI's crime hotline and Elvis's target phone number!). Joey walked me to my allergist's office afterwards: I quickly bowed "sayonara” in front of the union doorman so he couldn't try any lovey dovey maneuvers. Joey is a nice schlub of a guy, and although he hoped I'd call him again, I won't exactly be inviting him over to my crib for afternoon tea and crumpets anytime soon.
Twenty-eight-year-old Paul from the Fantasy Line sounds much more socially and visually palatable: his manner is clear, familiar, aboveboard, and heartfelt. French Canadian, "clean shaven with a hairy chest," 6’2”, 180 pounds, with dark brown hair and brown eyes, Paul works as a data processing consultant. He has already tackled meetings with thirty girls from the phone, including one nervous twenty-two-year-old who had brought along a whole entourage of girlfriends with her: "I said, 'Look, I'm meeting you in a mall. Any more public than this, I can't get!” One time he waited for a woman for hours in the rain and she never showed up: "That was awful." Paul ruminated in toxic glow detail about his worst "determined Jersey beast" party line horror date: "When we met, she was about four hundred pounds. I couldn't tell where the tits left off and the rolls of fat began. I don't know how the hell she did it, but like in two seconds, her hand was down the front of my pants. Wait a minute! I tried to pull her hand out, and it was like wrestling with a tree trunk."
Paul had a better time with a good-looking girl in the Bronx, who ripped his clothes off ten minutes after he was in her apartment and slamdunked him into bed. Afterwards, she told him that she had only done it to get back at her boyfriend for cheating on her: "I felt like I was used. I mean, I had a good time, so I wasn't used used. But don't lead me on like there's gonna be something more--like you're gonna be my girlfriend. Don't do that!" Paul prefers to iron out every area of romantic and sexual controversy/ambiguity before a date, from kissing in public, to ass grabbing, to holding hands: "Give me an indication about what's going on! Don't keep me in the dark about this!! I don't want to make that mistake--to do anything to jeopardize having a good time with the girl." I'll let you in on the tail end of what was once a very congenial, low-key conversation:
PAUL: I've been with girls from 34AA to 4ODD. It's like, no, no, no! My comfortable size is 34C to 36D.
SCARLETT: Oh, shit! Well, I'm not that!
PAUL (playful and seductive): Oh, you're close.
SCARLETT: Not that close.
PAUL: Close enough. I'll make ’em into a 34C, don't worry.
SCARLETT lets out a munchkin squeal: Oh, God!
PAUL: You sound like a lot of fun.
FREDDY clicks on: I love her.
SCARLETT: Who’s that?
FREDDY: Freddy.
SCARLETT: Freddy Krueger?
FREDDY: No. Where are you from, baby?
SCARLETT: Manhattan.
FREDDY: We won't hold that against you. What are you doing right now?
SCARLETT: Playing with my green Crayola bear and talking: she's right next to the phone.
FREDDY: I see. She wants to hear too, huh?
SCARLETT: She's a very curious bear.
PAUL: So Scarlett, you wanna give me a call?
SCARLETT: I'll call you Tuesday at work. I just ask for Paul?
PAUL: My real name is Ray--so just ask for me. It's time to curl up with your teddy bears, right?
SCARLETT: Yeah. I have to choose between them.
RAY: There's only one you have to choose.
SCARLETT laughs: Not you!!
RAY laughs: We'd have a lot of fun.
SCARLETT: Yeah, but they're safer. I like my teddy bears; they're sweet. They're good-natured.
RAY: So am I. Go ahead--keep going.
SCARLETT: I can just go over and kiss them anytime--and put them anywhere--and hug them.
RAY: You can come over and kiss me anytime. You can put me anywhere.
FREDDY: Jesus Christ!
SCARLETT: The guy in the back doesn't appreciate teddy bears.
FREDDY takes a phone furlough from Elm Street: I'd like to screw your teddy bear right in the eye! As a matter of fact, I wanna rape your teddy bear.
SCARLETT: You wanna do what to my teddy bears? Why don't you hang up?
FREDDY sharpens his dialing blades: I wanna rip up your teddy bear and throw it out the window.
SCARLETT: You're a sick piece of shit! Why don't you throw yourself out with it?
FREDDY: I wanna cut its head off and step on its face.
SCARLETT: You're disgusting. Go call the axe murderer's line!
FREDDY: I don't think so. I'll spit and pee on it.
SCARLETT: That's alright. They’ll bite you.
FREDDY growls: I'll put a rope around its neck, tie it to my back bumper, and drag it three blocks.
SCARLETT: If you did anything like that to them, I'd do the same to you.
FREDDY: You know what I wanna do with it? Put it under my tire, and run over its neck till its eyeballs pop out. I'm gonna take a hammer and smash its face. We don't need fucking weirdos like you with teddy bears.
SCARLETT: The only weirdo here is you, you sadist!
FREDDY: I'm a sadist cause I wanna rape your fucking teddy bear?
SCARLETT: You wish you could get near any of my teddy bears.
FREDDY refocuses his resentment: Fuck you and the teddy bears! How do you like that? As long as they're not black, cause I'm prejudiced; I hate niggers. So you don't have a black teddy bear, do you? Matter of fact, you sound black. Are you black, bitch?
SCARLETT (as Ray laughs in background): Abusiveness is beginning, right?
FREDDY is the fed-up voice of society’s underdog: Come on, CUNT, talk to me!
SCARLETT: Well, on that note, I'm hanging up. I don't want to deal with an asshole this early in the morning.
FREDDY: Shut up, you cunt! Don't call this line again! Call the other fucking lines! Don't call this line!
SCARLETT spins out of control: Why don't you go die!!
FREDDY: Shut up before I put a strap around your fucking teddy bear and make . . . .
Scarlett slams the phone down with an angry, hard click.
I recovered enough to call Ray at work Tuesday afternoon, but I chickened out of our dinner arrangements. I don't want to feel self-conscious, trapped for too long, and obligated for the price of the meal. He was disappointed and mildly aggravated, but capitulated. Ray emphasized: "You're not bringing any of your girlfriends along, are you?" Why must we be completely alone? I still dread going on a party line blind date; it is very scary and peculiar--but exciting--all at the same time. The venue was Drake's Drum at 8:00 P.M., and I was running late: I rounded the corner squeamishly, wondering if the very tall, blonde business type walking past me was Ray leaving in disgust at having had to wait so long. Then I noticed an agreeable-looking gent with longish black hair in a pink shirt, red tie, and black slacks propped stiffly in the doorway of the adjacent Italian restaurant. He followed me inside, took a chance, and asked if I was Wendy. I was pleasantly surprised; he's the best man I've met yet. I could even forsee kissing him.
Ray was gregarious, courteous, and intelligent. He offered me food and two vodka tonics while we talked for 3 1/2 hours about phone lines, his vacation at nudist Club Hedonism in Jamaica, and his four-year-relationship with his still much-desired ex-girlfriend. He's been a party line addict for the past two years; he even calls bestiality lines, bisexual lines, and sex lines at work with his supervisor sitting right across the desk from him. A friendly monitor lets him listen on the lesbian line, snatches him from the snapping jaws of telephone transsexualism, and advises him on all prospective party line dates. He added that I'm one of the only four or five women he's met that haven't lied about their appearance.
As Ray ate his fried mozzarella sticks and Caesar salad, his self-touted "sexual aggressiveness" extended only to an occasional brush on my arm to make conversational points. Ray also plied me with nonstop, softcore shoptalk about bust sizes, penis lengths, his orgy with two lesbians, a public fornication incident in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and his emissions on the mouthpiece of the telephone receiver. This adult dialogue could well have offended and frightened a normal woman not used to the ritual erotic accompaniment and verbal pornography of the average party line conversation. I prefer a less explicit, slower, less experienced man with whom I can enjoy passionate foreplay but postpone lovemaking for several lingering, semi-virginal months. That kind of anticipation, lust, trust, and longing--once ignited--can last a lifetime.
Why does a fellow who resembles a young Paul McCartney (albeit with a little pot belly), has an entertaining personality, and is well-established with enough money to fly and own an airplane, need to call a party line to meet a girl? He fears rejection, feels he can't compete with other men in looks, and is insecure without a sexual etiquette blueprint. To his tremendous social detriment, Ray is also uncommonly keen on sexual vulgarity and conspicuously small on live action. All I got was a goodbye kiss on the cheek as I said I had to go stop off at my grandparents' house (Oh, those fictive relatives lovingly dusted off the family tree--how they come in handy!), and he shuffled away towards his car. I had a good time tonight, though; I just might see Ray again! But as for now, I'm heading home to my telephone; I miss it.
CHAPTER 10
CANDY, COME OUT AND PLAY
The ringmaster raises the tattered curtain on tonight's 5:15 A.M. performance of Uncle Jack's Theatre.
JACK THE WACK: Shut up, you pusillanimous nonentity! Give me a Colombian woman and I'm in heaven; I want some shrimp, too! I'll destroy your fucking social life, you pusillanimous nonentity Spics! You have no morals. You have no conscience. You've got nothing going for you. All you've got is fucking grease on your fucking hair! You can't even speak our language. You're ruining our fucking country. You're disgusting, you piece of shit!
JACK jumps from the frying pan into the fire: I haven't fucking been on this line for a fucking week, and the fucking people are taking advantage of me. I'm on this line now, and you shut the fuck up, you piece of shit!
JACK THE WACK: It's a disgrace that you plagiarize the other Jack: you don't even deserve to have that name on this line! I know one thing--your voice makes me quiver. If I was a girl, I'd get sick listening to you one on one: I might nauseate and throw up my whole dinner! All you do is talk dirty! You come to this line at five in the morning with your underpants off. You're a disgrace--think about it! I have a girl for you: Candy from Forest Hills. Wanna go see her? She's a little overweight. But with your garbage can mouth and her body, hey, the two of you could do something together.
We are bombarded by the piercing beep of someone's mental problem for the next thirty minutes.
JACK THE WACK mans Madame Guillotine again: The guy who’s three-waying. Do you have any girls' numbers who call up this line?
DANNY: Jack, I'm gonna three-way a very good piece on the line for you. She's definitely party line material.
JACK THE WACK: You know what I like about this line, Danny? No matter what time of day or night, you always find hostility.
KAREN mistakenly answers her telephone: Hello! Who’s this?
JACK THE WACK engages the battle: Hi! It's Jack from Hawley and Wyckoff. You know Jack--who calls the 643 line. You do call party lines, don't you? You are guilty of the crime, aren't you? You sound fat and you sound stupid. So why don't you call the 9292 line tomorrow, and you'll fit in with the rest of us. Thank you.
Karen hastily hangs up amidst slaphappy hoots of laughter.
JOEY: Very good. You're doing good, Jack.
HEATHER responds to nature's unholy call: Hello!
JACK THE WACK: Heather, you call party lines, don't you? My name is Jack, and I'm thinking of starting my own party line. Would you pay ten dollars to become a member?
HEATHER (half-hanging up): I think you have the wrong number.
JACK THE WACK: I don't think I have the wrong number. You know why? Cause I'm looking for fat women, and I think you fit the bill!
NATALIE finds herself locked in Danny’s laughing crosshairs: Hello! May I help you?
JACK THE WACK: Hi! How you doing? This is Jack from Hawley and Wyckoff. There's a lot of hostility on this party line. There are a lot of people mad at each other. Can you bring some nice love? We have Jews and Catholics who are fighting with each other.
NATALIE raises her voice: I'm gonna call the police.
JACK THE WACK: There's twenty thousand people in the state's jails, and they've gotta get rid of a thousand of them onto the streets. And you're gonna put somebody in jail for three-waying? You hear that, Danny? You're gonna do hard time.
DANNY: I don't give a fuck.
ROBERT: Is the fat smelly Jew out there?
JACK THE WACK: Danny, you're gonna do a year's probation without a phone.
SERIAL BEEPER pounds out another round: BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
JACK THE WACK goads: Oooh, you could do better than that! Number three is the loudest one!
DANNY studies human nature: He's frustrated.
JACK THE WACK: I think it's a female. She has a soft touch on those buttons. Is that you, Candy, doing this? Candy, come out and play. Candy, you're going to get into trouble for this. Candy's a nightmare: anybody that's a friend of Candy is a very bad enemy of Bushwick Bob and I--very bad. You like the music, Candy? This is going to get ugly. You're gonna hear the whole album side.
While Jack the Wack vandalized the 9292 bridge, I dialed his home number in a deep, disguised male whisper: Hello!
JACK THE WACK: Candy, I can't lose. You know why, Candy? Cause these people on this line, they're not loyal to each other. They're all gutless; they're all lowlifes! They have no loyalty, loyalty, loyalty! They have none. They could all be destroyed; you know it, too. There's no loyalty on that line. You catch one into a corner, they all fucking give up everybody. The line's a joke. (Double-clicks) Trashing the line--see that? One of the trashers is out. It's like tag team trash. I'm just the captain of the team; that's all I am.
Malicious mischief is great, but once in a long while, dating has to take precedence over pranking! Michael is a stray caller to the 643 Fellini circus: he is thirty-two years old, Jewish, and has custody of his two young sons. Three weeks ago his girlfriend told him to start going out: "You're a man. Do what you have to do." She didn't ever want to have sex with him: "She just lay there reluctantly." Nor did she care to marry him: her child didn't like him, and her mother "hated his guts." Could this be because Michael is frighteningly over-anxious for a partner: "If a girl likes me, I don't believe in long courtships. Either she wants me, or she doesn't want me. That's the way I've always been." He wants "to be loved to death, passionately!" Interesting romantic concept.
Although the subway had made me twenty blood-boiling minutes late, sure enough, a light blue car was still double parked outside the Midnight Express coffee shop. At the wheel was a very alert, very curious, bald, fair-skinned Richard Dreyfus. Michael’s eyes darted out at me like a hyperactive squirrel who’s just spotted a mid-winter cache of buried peanuts. Michael rolled down the window and eagerly peered through thick eyeglasses held together with white masking tape minus one ear frame. I was starving and expected to be taken out to breakfast, but Michael had mysteriously already eaten there (?) while he waited for me; the only option left was to join him in his car. We let the engine idle and conversed until a passing patrol car ordered us to move along. I hinted again that I was hungry, but Michael drove a few blocks down, parallel parked, and reached over to kiss me within two minutes. No shy party line boy, here!
As ugly as Michael was, he had very soft lips and knew exactly how to use them. He repeatedly put my arms around his shoulders, but I took them right off: he was too repulsive to actually touch. My date wore a conservative blue suit, white shirt, and what he must've thought was a rakishly undone tie. His arms felt hard and muscular, and he was compactly well-built for 5’8”, but we'll deduct points for sweat and body odor. I will grant Michael nice brown eyes and a cute smile, but he has the asexual, generic face of an Orthodox gastroenterologist--so plain that his patients are not embarrassed to hoist up the blue dressing gown for their annual, rubber-gloved rectal exam.
Michael wanted an immediate, lifelong commitment from me right then and there! He surveyed me up and down like a savvy shopper appraising a good bargain on a refrigerator-freezer and pronounced that he could "wake up happy seeing my face and smile every morning for the rest of his life." What conceit! I'd think I was in the middle of a nightmare if I woke up and saw his puss! We swapped a lot more spit, and he still didn't offer me the bagels, lox, and cream cheese that I'd been craving. But, if he "could be so bold as to already make plans for New Year's Eve (!)," he'll put a deposit on the room with the heart-shaped jacuzzi at the Commack Motor Inn. What a sport! What a considerate guy for asking me what I'd like to do on New Year’s. Next Memorial Day weekend he's taking me to Lake George (I've landed a jetsetter!).
Michael has all sorts of merry little egocentric plans to spoil me with love and affection. He wants me to move in with him and his children. He "can offer me as much security as he has": his health, a car, and a workers' gloves manufacturing business somewhere between thriving and bankruptcy court. Michael desperately needs a woman for traditional family life centered around the yeshiva and the shul. (What about a Russian mail order bride?) I did consider his offer of husbandly protection and safety; a part of me wants a refuge and a man to take care of me. But, am I ready to relinquish rocking in heavy metal clubs four nights a week for domesticity and stepmotherhood? Judging by his sensuous nature and juicy, aggressive kissing techniques, Michael would be an ardent, persistent, faithful lover, but, I'm afraid, he's not for me.
In the meantime, I am somewhat ashamed that I succumbed to his advances. Need for affection and stimulation and a few drinks will lead you to otherwise unthinkable acts in the darkness of a front bucket seat. He got pretty offended when I wouldn't give him my phone number. I was warned not to wait too long "to call and snap him up," because he "was such a good catch and might get taken!" I overheard his melodramatic, Billy Joel New York voice on the line the next night: "I'd rather kill myself than face the prospect of never having love again. I was happily married for five years, and I had a girlfriend for 2 1/2years. You mean I can never be happily married again one day?" But, Michael is not giving up just quite yet on his hopeful quest for a mate. I heard him read his number out to another girl, and when she asked why if held already met me, he was jaunty and self-confident: "I'm free and single!"
So am I--to enjoy sipping a rose pink decanter of sweet, cinnamon Egg Nog. I called him back at his brother's house for a private consultation right after we got off the 6969 sex line. Mr. Egg Nog took great pains to convince me that he was a bodybuilder by outlining his arduous, disciplined, daily gym routine: "Okay. On Mondays I do chest, tris, shoulders, and abs. I do crunch abs; I do Roman chair abs for about half an hour. Then I go on to my chest: I do flat bench, incline bench. Then I do flies; then I do dips. Then I go to triceps: French curls, push downs, close grip triceps push ups. Last I do shoulders: shrugs, stand up rows. Tuesdays I go into the gym and do lat pull-downs, rows, pullovers, and one arm pull-ups. Then I go to my biceps: straight curls, four sets of preacher curls, concentration curls. Got it? And I'm not lying about my looks, either. I'm 5’10", 175 pounds, and I look even better then I did when I was an amateur bodybuilder at twenty-two. Most girls like my body--let's put it that way."
Egg Nog's voice was smart, robust, and self-assured: I visualized a strong, strapping lifeguard body on the other end of the telephone ("You know what I look like? A Jewish Tony Danza.”). He has a beachfront, yuppie summer house on Fire Island: "But I'm a cool yup. I'm just as comfortable in blue jeans as in a suit. I'm not one of those people who thinks their shit don't stink. That's the definition of a yuppie, isn't it?" (In sharp cultural contrast, he typed me as "a little bit artsy fartsy!") Egg proceeded to interrogate and cross-examine me: "You're really good-looking? Are you being truthful to me?" The Grand Inquisition bordered on a harangue: "It's cause I'm gonna be a lawyer--you have to be very aggressive and suspicious. And people on these lines all lie." Egg nevertheless prosecuted this case with characteristic student vigor for the better part of an hour:
EGG: You know, it's really silly. I'm coming back into the city, now. We can go have some coffee, and then we can snuggle up and watch some "Star Trek" tonight together.
WENDY: I have all seventy-six episodes on tape.
EGG: I've seen every "Star Trek" there is at least twenty times; we can mouthe the words along with it.
WENDY: I don't invite strange bodybuilders from party lines over to my house to watch Captain Kirk at 5:00 A.M!
EGG wrestles with the demons of intimacy: But you know me now, though.
WENDY: No I don't. I'm not letting some strange guy into my apartment. No way!
EGG: Well, you'll know me after we have a cup of coffee and shoot the breeze. It'll be a nice day; it really would. Oh Wendy, I could make you so happy! And you can't have anything to fear with me. I just finished exams; this is my first weekend away from law school. I haven't been out since New Year's Eve. I'm just looking to enjoy myself. I've been studying my brains out for the last seven months. I think you're missing out. You're being too prudish. And it's not like we have to have sexual intercourse. We can just watch "Star Trek" together.
WENDY hoards the honey: No, I'm not into apartment dates in the middle of the night.
EGG has an unrequited erection: Well, you're talking to an overheated guy. You sure, Wendy? I'm disappointed in you. It would've been a lot of fun. Why'd you call the line, then?
WENDY: I'm not disappointed in me. I just called to talk.
EGG: But it's a sex line.
WENDY: That doesn't mean anything. The people who call regular party lines or sex lines are basically the same.
EGG: I don't think so. Oh, come on, Wendy! We could make beautiful music together! All you have to do is say yes!
Egg Nog and I continued "moot court," where we finally buried the hackneyed subject of one night stands with a rendition of his ill-thought-out conquest of a colleague behind Columbia University's narrow, dusty law library stacks. He had to guiltily brush her off in a public confrontation the next day when she started trailing him around campus like a crushed schoolgirl. Egg challenged me to a sweaty, "Richard Simmons" workout date at the elite Vertical Health Club on the Upper East Side and exacted a legally binding oral contract from me to call him next week: "Okay, you got a deal, lady!" I love this opportunity to explore the male animal in all his promiscuous, untamable, procreative glory. On the phone, you hear the worst of a man right up front. He is not trying to be a gentleman--in sharp contrast to club life--where he lies very hard to impress you with his sincerity, net worth, generosity, and good intentions. I've been introduced to obscure elements of human anatomy (the mysterious frenulum and the camera-shy perineum) and learned that partialism (focus on a specific female body part as an object of intense fetishistic arousal) is the cornerstone of male sexuality. Some men worship heavy cleavage and silicone breasts, while other men spend time and money on magazines and high-powered telescopes searching for the perfect ass.
Limited and primitive, the masculine mind is so closely linked to the glandular system that it's a wonder the average bloke can tie up his shoelaces in the morning! After overhearing their behind-the-scenes bantering and locker room sessions on the line, I know how they really feel about us--and converse among themselves--when there aren't any women around and normal social filters are removed. Still, I'd rather meet men on the party line than stand around bored and alone in an over-air-conditioned disco watching wolfpacks of macho Italian bodybuilders in white undershirts eke out "Saturday Night Fever"--with each other! I had a lousy time at the China Club tonight, but I had a great "night out" on the line later with Greg, Billy, Skippy, and Gary. I had "bridge and tunnel" boys all the way from Brooklyn to Yonkers begging for a call. I just wish some of the cute guys would find their way here, but they're so frightened of both rejection and relationships that not only can't they talk to pretty girls at a bar--they can't even pick up economy-size ones over a telephone!
Derek and Wendy did manage to introduce themselves on 643, on a lazy weekend afternoon. Derek was thrilled to pieces when I kept my word and called him back, although he was alarmed about my spiked hair: "You have a Mohawk? What do you do--dip it in punch?" We both suspected very quickly that he wasn't my type: "I'm nothing like what you'd probably prefer. I look at what the women I talk to prefer, and more or less, I figure what kind of man they want to be seen with. Nah, I probably don't fall into that category." Thirty-one-year-old Derek described himself anyway: he is 5’7”, two hundred pounds, with black hair, brown eyes, and "a very trim beard--not like Pine Brothers, don't get me wrong--and I'm chubby. Not chubby--I'm husky; I carry my weight excellent for my appearance." Derek, a born-again Hispanic Christian, provides references from previous blind dates to all new prospects: "They call me average. A few have said I'm handsome. At least, thank the Lord, I have some looks that women do like. I've never had any trouble with my looks as far as women meeting me . . . only one or two of them that reconsidered." He apologized for not having a long lion's mane of rock and roll hair and tried to compensate by playing unendurable, adolescent Eddie Van Halen guitar leads for me over the phone.
Derek, who works as a messenger, has so far met forty girls from the phone: "Well, some people have met more than that; that's just me. My friend Venus says she met around two hundred people in a year's time. Sometimes I have three dates a week, and other times I'll have one date in a month and a half. There are peaks and highs and lows of dating people. You come across girls you like and you wanna meet them, and other times nothing happens: no one new comes on the line for months." While Cyclone complains that his dates are uncontrollable erotomaniacs, Derek is disappointed rather with their size: "Most of the women I've met have been very overweight--over 160 pounds--all of them, and I got tired of that. There are some overweight women when it doesn't look healthy for them: that's what I call obese."
Our conversation was intermittently interrupted by the party line hounding Derek through his call-waiting. Having just publicly transmitted his telephone number, enemy agents pounced on the meat within minutes: "Sometimes they do it consistently. They'll wake me up at one o'clock in the morning, at five o'clock in the morning. As long as they don't put it on my answering machine; I hate that. I come home and I see a light blinking, and I wonder who called--and I get all these stupid conversations and obscene noises. I'm a single parent, so I have responsibilities, too." Derek nevertheless remains both resiliently single and sanguine about the social potential of the telephone. He courageously showered my voice with compliments: "It sounds--how shall I put it--you sound like you're ready to say, 'Darling!' You say it with such flair. A lot of guys would find it appealing; I think it's sweet."
Derek was inquiring whether we could meet sometime when the party line, itself, sideswiped him mid-sentence with another crank call: "It was them. Rosemary is on the line, and she was giving out my real name. My real name is Angelo, by the way. Is Wendy your real name?" Wendy reassured him that she was the genuine article, and Derek relaxed: "That's good. People on the lines that I'm meeting--a lot of them get all crazy on me. I met one girl, and since I didn't call her immediately afterwards, she started calling me every day and left constant nasty messages on my machine. She kept on calling, and I had to hang up on her. I didn't hear from her again until this foolishness when I get on the line now, and she's giving away my real name."
Derek creates unintended consequences when he cheerfully circulates his number in order to date: "One girl keeps calling me to tell me her problems after she broke up with her boyfriend. I can't get rid of her. She calls to tell me she's hot, she's horny, she misses him, she wants to get laid by him--but he doesn't want to. I said, 'What are you telling me these things for? Leave me alone.' I hung up on her so many times: she called me at four in the morning. Then she wanted to meet me and see if we could hit it off. She still calls me and heckles me. And she gets stoned, too. Personally, I don't smoke or drink." Wendy's silence screams loudly at Derek: "I can tell that shocks you! Anyway, you're wondering why I still call the party line! Well, at your leisure, whenever you like to call me, you're more than welcome."
Derek is positive, grounded, and jovial--for a very refreshing change, but it's a shame he's also so roly-poly. I know I would never like him, especially compared to the delectable, gourmet hors d'oeuvres already on this week's dating menu: the ever-scrumptious Mr. Egg Nog and Tarzan of Greystoke. When I woke up this morning, I was surprised to find a cryptic message scrawled on my notepad from two days ago: "Go to phone booth for Robert Plant lookalike on Monday, 9:30 P.M." During this past weekend of wine, men, debauchery, and song, I obviously crossed fantasy line paths with Tarzan--who can't give me his number because he lives with a woman! I cut short my conversation with Mr. Egg Nog at 9:25, put on my butt-ventilated jeans, and hurried downstairs to the corner in the middle of a spectacular thunder and lightning storm.
Briing, briing! Hark--a telephone rings! Should we answer it? Tarzan was right on time and was excited to speak to me, especially since I'd allegedly told him all about my four boyfriends (I wish!)! This long-haired thirty (oops--he changed it to thirty-five)-year-old unemployed, aspiring musician gave me his friend Will's contact phone number and plans to fantasize about me (and our next romantic phone rendezvous in eleven days hence) while he's away on vacation next week "with his old lady!" Soaked and battered by monsoonal rain, I'm heading in to dry off and step under the full Fantasy Line spotlight--come upstairs with me, okay? Or, would you like to dial it yourself?
Bobbie and I began the game show by team-calling from our high chairs as squeaky, make-believe midgets who like being tossed up in the air and burped like babies. The monitor eventually disconnected "the terrible twos" when she noticed that ten men in a row clicked on and off the line in less than a minute: we were driving customers away! By 3:00 A.M., I reluctantly graduated to a more grown-up dating endeavor: I had to choose between bright-eyed, bushy-tailed bachelors number one, two, and three! John, the biker from the East Village, was a real trooper: he kept me entertained with the story of a man gurneyed into Beth Israel’s emergency room with a trial size bottle of Joy Liquid stuck in his rectum. (Mice or chains are one thing, but dishwashing detergent?) Robert impressed me when he introduced his sunburst yellow bass guitar, Veronica, to the melee: he plucks her, slaps her, and sleeps with her in his bed. An ephemeral voice soon joined in to beg for a callback on his car phone--transmission interference, crunchy distortion, and dissolving conversation notwithstanding. Bald Barney suggested we all meet now for brunch--after he rubs in Minoxidil to fluff up his last two vestigial tufts of hair. But, when I heard that Robert had long hair, big muscles, and could whip across the Whitestone Bridge in fifteen minutes, it was all over for the other contestants on the line.
I waited for Robert for twenty minutes in the Midnight Express coffee shop entrance, much to the delight of two Peruvian customers who made annoying overtures to me until I found a patrolman to make them stop. When Robert finally drove past in his beat-up, brown shitkicker wreck at 4:20 A.M., I knew I had found my thrill. He pulled up at the corner, got out, and shoved a police barricade aside to clear a parking space (juvenile delinquents who flout social conventions feed my insatiable nostalgia for the gutter). Robert later said he was giving me the time and option to run away if I hadn't liked what I'd seen. Ooh, baby, I would never even dream of it! I couldn't wait for him to climb out of that greasy pile of junkyard scrap and walk my way!
Robert was 5’6” tall, had long curly brown hair, and a hot, Playgirl pin-up boy physique. A skimpy, black muscle shirt showcased his rock hard, hairless chest and pumped-up, tattooed arms; skin tight black jeans covered firm bowling ball buttocks and built-up legs. Twenty-nine-year-old Robert works as a union glazier; he can install my windows anytime he likes! We chattered like happy magpies till 7:30 A.M. about our contact lenses, his fear of dentists, our fear of bugs, and relationships. We even borrowed an air-powered, water machine gun to play with from the drug dealers lounging in the red vinyl booth behind us. Robert and I complimented each other that obviously neither of us needs to meet people through a party line. After breakfast, Robert bought lotto tickets at the corner candy store, and we dawdled in morning sunlight romping with a fluffy brown shih tzu crossing at the intersection. We felt very comfortable with each other, and I think he could tell I liked him. Wendy lingered and procrastinated, anxiously anticipating "The Grand Moment." Eventually, Robert leaned down and kissed me goodbye lightly on the lips--I'm still trembling from it! I've fallen head over heels in lust; I have just met my first party line lover.
The next lucky wet weekend, my little glazier delight and I went out on a Hot Rod Club date. On the way inside, we were forced to huddle against the Spring rain together under one umbrella; Robert's left arm felt like a steaming brick wall pressed against mine. We danced to Seventies disco hits, he bought me three black Russians, and we talked and laughed in drunken depth as if we'd been best friends for years. The date ended back at the Midnight Express for a scrambled cholesterol and French fries encore. He drove me home afterwards, asked me to leave my number on his machine, and said we'd have to do this again. But, in spite of prolonged parking till half past the crack of dawn, Robert merely gave me a perfunctory, grandfatherly peck before I crept up to the sarcophagus to rest bones on native soil. Why no romantic moves or physical contact? It's driving me crazy!
I am going to have to take precautions now on the Fantasy Line: I don't want Robert to catch Wendy collecting phone numbers. I would be very jealous if I heard him flirt with another girl! This is a high-tech polygamist's paradise: Robert has an adoring fan club of full-figured women wooing him, just as I have a loyal coterie of heavy-set men. And to make it even easier for him, all the ladies have his home phone number! The rare physically gifted caller automatically leapfrogs up several social desirability levels; he can have starstruck, smitten admirers standing in rows six-deep, waiting their turn. (One insatiable phone date had wanted Robert to simulcast their private lovemaking session over the line and make everyone orgasm together!). With my fantasy factory working double shifts on Robert, I, too, euphorically entrusted him with both my body and my highly classified number.
Robert and I made arrangements for another date, but he cancelled at the last minute and requested a raincheck due to his mother's sciatica attack. I was very depressed; I was looking forward to being wrapped up in my musclebound honeypie's Soloflex spokesperson arms. Robert sounded so sweet as we joked about Veronica, who was about to be kicked out of his bed and put on the floor: "Yeah, she's upset cause I didn't even do nothing with her." (Does this ring some sort of bell?) I spoke with Robert twice more, but both times he hurriedly hustled me off the phone: "I'm just on my way out." He said held tried to call me (but my number is always busy), and promised to get back to me. I've called him over twenty times since then, only to reach his recording; I left four messages. Too late, I realize now that Robert was lying about poor old mom's "back trouble." Could his story about near-miss sex with a transvestite have been a roundabout hint at homosexuality? I hope Robert's puny, gratuitous gonads get drawn and quartered by Veronica’s E string while he sleeps!

CHAPTERS 11-16

CHAPTER 11
TELEPERSONALLY YOURS
Voice personals dating lines are increasingly outstripping party lines in popularity and economic viability: a tangled jungle of similarly named services (Night Encounters, Close Encounters, Night Exchange, Telepersonals, 540-CALL, 970-DATE, and USA Dating Network) vigorously compete for New York's 1999 telephone voice dating dollars. Male customers on Telepersonals must purchase prepaid block-of-time memberships (one hour for $36, two hours for $60, or four hours for $94) to respond to ads, retrieve their voice mail messages, or connect live, while ladies call choice, advertised demo numbers for free. Participants safely communicate through assigned voice mailbox numbers and private passcodes: all lines also include a caveat that they assume no liability when individuals meet through their service. The Telepersonals line even offers tips on safe dating: "When meeting someone for the first time, select a neutral public place, like a coffee shop or a well-lit restaurant, preferably during the day. Tell someone where you’re going. Please exercise good judgment with your personal information: don’t reveal your home telephone number, address, last name, or details about where you work. Since Telepersonals does not pre-screen its callers, we can't vouch for the character, stability, mental or physical health of our callers. It's up to you to assess others and to assume all risks when meeting with someone. Listener discretion is advised." A privacy protection message also offers information on maintaining anonymity in the face of Caller ID and Call Return technologies.
The Telepersonals line has offices in twenty-five cities across the USA and Canada: 100,000 people called its nationwide network every day in 1999! In New York (encompassing New York City, the Bergen area, Westchester, and Long Island), Telepersonals currently logs an average of 18,000 calls per day. On June 12, 1999, 3,679 men and 3,073 women had permanent ads running on the Telepersonals system in three “communities” based on relationship needs: long term romantic relationships, casual dating, and intimate encounters or alternative relationships (which can be further sorted into specific age ranges). A total of 849 men placed ads in the Telepersonals “long term romantic relationships” group, while another 1, 035 men advertised their wares in heavy rotation in the “casual dating” division. Under the “intimate encounters or alternative relationships” banner, 1,795 men submitted ads in four sub-categories: singles seeking intimate encounters (431 ads), attached and seeking discreet encounters (291 married men [and 104 women] sought to spice up their otherwise pedestrian sex lives), alternative relationships (461 ads divided into domination and submission, phone encounters, safer [non-genital] sex, and fetishes), and couples (153 ads for singles looking for couples, couples looking for singles, and couples looking for couples). Voice ad customers can also choose to answer a web profile questionnaire and have their voice recording heard and accessed by thousands of webpersonals members on the Internet for free (computer replies go directly into their voice mailboxes).
Tens of thousands of New York men and women have personal ads playing on a kaleidoscope of dating lines in specialized social, sexual, and age categories. On the USA Dating Network, women have a mind-boggling array of twenty-five sexual lines and thousands more men to choose from: they can press buttons to listen to men who want to secretly watch them perform their fantasies, men into group sex, bisexual or gay men into dirty undergarments, or submissive men "who've been very bad and need to be punished." On 970-DATE, another adult-oriented fetish and fantasy conglomerate, over one hundred expectant backdoor penetrators promise women eight ever-ready inches of rectal pleasure on the anal sex line. Hard-boiled, guttural men left women graphic ads in categories ranging from "water sports, enemas, and diapers" to "lingerie, negligees, and sensual apparel" to "feet, foot worship, shoes, spikes, and heels." One caller sought a woman with multiple sex partners willing to call him immediately after intercourse so he could perform oral sex on her--with all her lovers' various viscous compounds still intact and unwashed.
On 970-DATE's "mutual or solo masturbation" line, a miserly, mousy forty-year-old pedophile included his phone number for either women or teenage boys: "Hi! I'm a guy. I'm uptown Manhattan. I'm a white male. I'm 5’7”, on the heavy side. . . . I got my own place. I like to make friends. I like young ladies if you wanna watch me play with myself, or you wanna play with it. You wanna bring somebody over, and we do it together. I especially like high school boys, okay. If you're a young boy who has never been with a guy before, never talked to an older guy, and would like to make friends, I would really like to meet you. I'm nice to you and I'm understanding. . . . If you're a young guy and you wanna get in touch with me and you wanna have a little fun, I'm very good to be with. I really like young guys. You can call me at night at 555-3919, or leave a message on my machine, or call me back later on if you can't leave your number. I'm very discreet and trustworthy."
These men record their succinct sexual autobiographies in semi-moaning, strained voices; half of them sound like they are passionately pounding their pud. They arouse themselves just by verbalizing what they want to do to a woman, and by describing the prodigious size, power, and virility of their well-endowed sexual organs: it excites them to think that a woman somewhere is listening to them. Some men may want to receive dirty mailbox messages in return, while others get off just leaving a missive in the bold brutal vocabulary of the self-centered, self-aggrandizing predator stalking its next erotic meal: "Hi, ladies! I'm really into anal sex. Little tight asses, big chunky ones. I just love the way a woman can bear down on me with her anus and squeeze my fat cock! It's almost eight inches, about 7 and 5/8. So, if you're out there, I'm a white male; I'm forty. Decently good-looking. Brown hair, green eyes, a moustache. Six feet tall. And if you'd like to have your fanny fucked, leave me a message; I will definitely get back to you."
Scott's jubilant voice was a hotbed of sexual sedition: "Hi, my name is Scott. I'm twenty-four, 5’6”, 130 pounds, intelligent, and extremely horny. There's nothing I like more than sticking my cock deep in a woman's ass. . . . I also like a woman who doesn't mind fingering or sticking her tongue deep in my asshole. I have all kinds of fantasies. One is a rape fantasy, in which I handcuff you to the bed and fuck your cunt and your ass both with my cock and a few favorite toys. And also force you to suck my cock and let the come run down your face. I'd also like to experiment with golden showers. I think I'd like a woman to squat over me and piss on my hard, hot cock through her silk panties. I think that would be fucking hot! If it sounds like something you might enjoy, please leave me a message. I'm in central Jersey, but I'm willing to travel."
Besotted with their own fantasies, men browse the voice media for free phone sex partners, the odd willing female, and a chance to blow off sexual steam: few women realistically welcome unromantic, impolite, sexual savagery. A minority sweeten the offer with financial compensation for women respondents ("I can be a good sugar daddy."), while others indicate that they are not inviting contact with professionals or prostitutes. The men, themselves, are shamelessly promiscuous, without self-respect, respect for women, or conscience. They stand on the telephone street corner, hairy legs spread wide open, unconditionally offering themselves--anywhere, anyplace, anytime--to any female who will take them home.
Night Encounters and The Night Exchange combine the voice message features of personal ad lines with the live interaction opportunities of party talk lines. After callers place a short personal statement on the system, a computer enables listeners to hear and respond to ads from all other callers currently on line. This go-between system ostensibly offers the customer the freedom to "pick and choose who you want to talk to." Callers ping pong long series of erotic voice notes (as mental foreplay) in and out of each others' electronic cubbyholes like busy, sassy bees in a gooey, productive hive. On The Night Exchange, one can even activate a voyeuristic "peeping" function to eavesdrop on other callers' extended voice correspondence!
Although male callers on Night Encounters have to purchase expensive blocks of phone time ($15 for 20 minutes or up to $300 for 840 minutes), they will happily spend an hour exchanging either indecencies or small talk through an interactive voice mail system which detains people on the line in maddening, solitary social limbo. (My inoffensive, cordial greeting, "Hi, my name is Wendy! I'm cute, petite, pretty, and adorable. I'd like to talk to any nice guys who are out there right now," provoked a one-sided, forty-minute barrage of sexual aggression and threats of cunnilingus!) When men finally, and very reluctantly, consent to a painstakingly negotiated live conversation, they segue into sex with a standard lead-in, "What do you like to talk about on the phone?" Should you refuse to engage in a sexual dialogue, they become engorged with rage and immediately hang up.
Searching for partners on voice ad date lines is still a lot cheaper and quicker than spending many hours a week on party talk lines; here, one can set one's "message in a bottle" adrift for only a few dollars. I couldn't resist dialing the only three attractive-sounding men out of the seventy-six scrolling voices scanned on Selections, "New York and New Jersey's premier voice meeting service.” The first castaway to wash ashore was thirty-one-year-old Rob, an offbeat, working artist from downtown Manhattan. A recovered party line addict from the 1234 line, Rob is slender, 6’2”, with short brown hair and a beard: he sought "a nice sweet woman to spend some time with." Rob's ex-girlfriend from the line, however, liked S & M, and Rob loved it: "This is great; I can get away with being rotten to her!" When he eventually grew tired of handcuffs and leather harnesses, she would bang on his door and have the emergency operator interrupt his personal calls to try and reach him: Rob was forced to move out of his apartment to escape her round-the-clock harassment. At the end of my verbal visit with this delightful gentleman, he became incensed and almost hung up when I refused to give him my number. Blockbuster Hollywood whodunits like Sea of Love have been made out of material far less psychotic than this!
John, a twenty-seven-year-old, 6’1”, Czechoslovakian construction worker/amateur roadie from the Bronx was another party liner slumming on the voice personals network (handle: The Deerhunter). I reached him through call waiting while he was engaged on a priority assignment: listening to Jack the Wack deliver dropkicks to the groin on 643! Two hundred and twenty-five pounds of ornery, uncommunicative boredom, he sounded like one of the backwoods, banjo-dueling hillbillies in Deliverance. A red-neck, red meat kind of guy, John's scintillating conversation consisted of him asking me repeatedly, "So, what's good?" (Not you, buddy, not you!) I spoke with twenty-one-year-old Rob Number Two from New Jersey for forty-five minutes (long distance again!), mainly about Bruce Springsteen (his message backdrop), but as for Rob, he's just a tedious good Samaritan with a safe, suburban, white bread future. With a raw, pinched voice, Rob came across as an introverted, awkward pipsqueak: he bristled slightly in terror when I suggested that maybe he’d come into Manhattan sometime to see me. Since held only gotten two other responses to his Selections ad, he should've bloody well been doing triple backflips over the offer!
Most Selections singles left uninspired, routine, corny messages: they wanted partners for quiet evenings at home, syrupy strolls on the beach (in sub-Arctic New York?), picnics in the park, and dining out. The endless parade of feebs; fatties; stilted androids with digital, robotic voices; and career deviants responded heavily at either end of the bell curve: to innocent, non-threatening, non-demanding romance, or to upfront, "anything goes" sexual propositions. Jenny and Jamie won the popularity contest ten to one: "Hi! This is Jenny. And this is Jamie. We just wanna let all you guys know out there that we like to date together. So, if there's any guys out there who want two girlfriends and not one, you can call us. We both have blonde hair, we both have green eyes, and we're both very well-built. So leave a message for Jamie and Jenny on the men's line, and we'll get back to you." Mike the stripper wanted them--as did Lloyd, Joe, Bryan, Jim, Scott, Mike, Vito with Carmine, and Bob!
As the American character continues to decay, the social focus of voice message lines shifted from legitimate dating concerns in 1989 to sexual apocalypse by 1999. From May 1995 through June 1999, I conducted oral interviews/had extended home conversations with 228 bachelors, their numbers gleaned from Close Encounters, Private Connections, and Telepersonals listings--but was unable to meet anyone face to face! Four resentment-filled years of trawling the voice personals for potential dates (with an exclusive concentration on Telepersonals from March 1996 to June 1999) netted me a monumental, deep-seated blind rage against both the telephone and the answering machine. I found myself talking to a London-educated man from New Delhi; an on-the-go, bodybuilding real estate mogul; an ex-Navy SEAL; a political scientist who resettles Russian refugees; a buzz-cutted, U. S. Coast Guard petty officer; a married radio sportscaster; and one man whose vocal cords made my heart thump right out of rhythm! I have never reacted this way to the sound of the human voice before: its breathy, earthy, unusual grain pushed all my sexual and psychological buttons. Joe leisurely handled and fondled each individual vowel and consonant--almost as an impediment--as it slipped off his tongue. I couldn't get the sound of him out of my mind: "Hi, ladies. I'm a six-foot-two, 200-pound male with brown hair and brown eyes. Very strong, handsome, and muscular. I wish to meet a woman who would love to get satisfied. One that is being deprived and is looking for a man that can satisfy her in the most intimate way. If that sounds interesting to you, and you would like to be satisfied, please leave me your number in my voice mailbox, and I'll call you back. All messages will be returned.”
The man who could excite me--and unnerve me--with the mere touch of his voice, turned out to be a Rockland County office equipment/copier repair service owner with a peculiar working schedule stretching from early morning till way past midnight. We talked only once for forty-five martini-enhanced minutes, and despite undeniable electricity, the sensual blush was off the rose: thirty-three-year-old Joe was twenty pounds heavier than in his ad with a galloping horseshoe hairdo. Subsequent sincere efforts to reach him ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous: after two frustrating weeks of playing answering machine/voice mail tag with each other, I cut my losses and abandoned the cross-county chase.
Thirty-eight-year-old Ken advertised himself as a six-foot, 200-pound non-smoker with brown hair and green eyes with interests in working out and cycling. We stumbled across each other on Telepersonals's box talk live connection feature at 2:00 A.M., but he was tired and was only on the system to pick up messages. In a New York voice mail accent you could slice with a knife, he grudgingly offered: "I'm gonna give you the ability to contact me by phone." At 8:30 P.M. the next night Ken was again on his way to bed: nasty, depressed, and unhappy. He had just been "on the line" listening to women's personal ads to help put him to sleep: "They bore me." I tried to be polite with this angry, moribund, defensive man: "Did I call at a bad time? Would you rather talk or go to sleep?" He gruffly said he’d rather go to sleep; I razored back: "You sound like a very unpleasant person," and hung up! This is how Ken reacts when one of the female voices he hears every single night attempts to liberate him from his Draconian, dating line eavesdropping regimen!
Several "voice personals" patterns emerge. The Telepersonals line clientele are a decade older than their party line peers: most dialers are between thirty-five and forty-five years of age. As author/commercial phone sex expert Gary Anthony writes, “This age group has had time to develop strange and unpleasant personalities that alienate people, particularly the opposite sex, so that phone sex ends up as their main source of sexual communication.” The typical personal ad placer is a well-educated, white collar, Jewish professional with a large plurality of mean-spirited, manipulative, middle-aged lawyers. Telepersonals also has a large cluster of black and Spanish callers, who are ordinarily unwelcome and conspicuously absent from the virulently racist, interactive group lines. The quality of most personal ad callers is low: almost half the advertisers are married or attached men boldly looking for casual, "discreet" daytime encounters. The single segment consists of wary, never-married, forty-something bachelors who exhibit severe psychological problems with emotional and physical intimacy. The remaining callers seek only erotic phone conversations or unusual, fetishistic sex partners.
A noticeable proportion of Telepersonals advertisers had migrated to New York from other states or countries (England, Ireland, India, and Iran), only to find themselves socially stranded on a dating network half a continent away from the nearest friend or family member. Several of the brusque, busy, ambitious men I spoke with were unencumbered, Calvinist workaholics: big city business transfers and fast track careers left them little time--or even inclination--to meet women. Many of the advertisers worked alone at home: as Fortune 500 companies downsize and outsource work in the 1990s, professionals are increasingly being dispersed to home-based offices as independent consultants, stock traders, attorneys, and agents, depriving them of the socializing opportunities formerly available in corporate offices. Although these diverse, harried, solitary men had invested considerable forethought and money into construction of their ads, they subsequently proved suspiciously elusive and consistently difficult to contact. A rolling stone gathers no moss--or any dates with Miss Wendy, either!
Personal ad participants are far more disturbed than party line callers: they are at the very bottom evolutionary rung of the dating skills ladder. As prospective partners, the men on the line have very little to offer the women on the line. Many of these sexually depraved cretins wouldn't even have the nerve to talk on a party line. They can't even concoct an appealing forty-five-second blurb about themselves: a voice personals leitmotif of wishful sex discolors every paid advertisement. Owlishly bland and socially stunted, the men are unequal to the task of carrying on even a rudimentary human dialogue with a woman; except for hit and run sexual exploitation, they sound even more petrified to be with one face to face. Please don't hang up in disgust, loyal listeners--I'm going to three-way you all onto 1234 to find a real date right away!
At five o'clock in the morning, we have twenty-five-year-old Nicolle Amie (Nick for short), who is the "creative type": he lisped as he told me that he "acts in some plays and is trying to get into film." He is a spontaneous, one on one person when it comes to dating: "I'm very flexible. If the person likes to dance--then fuck it--I'll go dancing and have a good time. If the person likes to stay home and fuck, I'll do that. If the person likes to go to the movies, I'll do that. It's different with whoever you're with." Nick is deliberately eclectic, from his dabbling in the performing arts to his mixed heritage: "My mom was born in Israel, but she had French blood in her. If it's a full moon, the Jew in me predominates; if not, the Italian comes out."
Nick mimicked a Russian accent as he asked, "What about you, Wendy? The woman from the colonial times--born out of her century." Fascinated by my subversive historical imagination, Nick confessed to a deeply cherished Pocahontas fetish: "Absolutely--the moccasins and all that shit. I used to be into her as a kid, man. I used to fantasize about her. I'd be one of the settlers, and she'd come and save me and we'd run into the woods. I thought she was really cool. If I ever have a kid, I'm gonna name it Pocahontas [Poco for a son]!” Reinvigorated and spurred on by Jamestown colony mythology, Nick soon began an enthusiastic probe down "the long and winding road" that leads to my door: "You wanna meet? You wanna meet now?" When I declined the much-male-valued "automatic apartment date," Nick pretended to be pop-eyed and shocked that I don't take complete strangers from party lines or clubs home with me! Nick was pathetic, but likable--a sympathetic figure, really--as he pleaded to come to my apartment: "I'm pretty sensual, trust me. It wouldn't be like nothing. It would be pretty special!"
Operating under a mantle of innocence, he smoothed over my mass murderer objections: "Oh, please. I'm very decent. You can meet me downstairs, and if you don't like me, you just say, 'Hey look, Nick. I'm really tired and it was nice seeing you,' and I'll split. I'll go have breakfast someplace by myself, and then I'll come home and go to sleep till I have to go to work. But if you like me, you say, 'Hey, you seem cool. Let's hang out--let's rap a little bit.'” Wendy yawned back that she will be asleep in five minutes, and Nick saw his opportunity slipping away: "Oh, fucking great--I made you tired, right! I'll be there in ten minutes--I'll take a fucking cab! You sound so good!" When sleep-talking Wendy confirmed, "I am good!," Nick gained further momentum: "I know you are! Oh, Wendy, Wendy, Wendy! You were depressed earlier cause there was nobody out, and now you've found somebody cool, and you don't wanna deal with me. And the same thing will probably happen tomorrow night, and you'll go--oh, fuck! That guy wanted to come over--and he was a nice, cool guy—and we could have an intelligent conversation. So, come on!" Wendy wanted to hang up, but Nick persisted: "No! Things happen in New York--it's the capital of the world! It's New York! People meet each other, people fall in love! Lots of things happen!"
Nick could've melted any other "strong-willed Jewish author" with his boy-lost-in-department-store tone, but his entreaties fell on deaf ears as Wendy nodded and sleep-talked her way towards the sandman. He carried through with the sleep motif: "You're not even tempted? What if I just came up there and we just went to sleep, and I cuddled up with you?" Nick resorted to guilt next: "What if I told you I couldn't get to sleep unless I was sleeping with you?" Nick tried to instill buyer's regret: "You mean to tell me you met ten guys--and then you're talking to me--and you don't wanna meet me? I'm probably the nicest one out of the bunch!" Eventually, Nick reluctantly gave up: "I'm having trouble sleeping; I wish I had some company. You sound so nice. Alright, if you wanna go, you can go." Juliet waved Romeo goodbye from the chastity of her telephone balcony and promised to call him as soon as she woke up.
I waited three days: I got newly moved "Nicolle Amie’s" number from his ex-roommate, only to lock antlers with his answering machine many frustrating rounds until I finally found him in this afternoon. His voice greeting consists of a dominant woman screaming over rhythmic, background slapping and yelping noises. Nick was elated to hear from his "Pocahontas" and was eager to see me immediately. Since I was conveniently dressed already for tonight's Metallica concert, I boogied right out the door to the usual scene of the crime. Nick knew what it was, too: "So, this is your party line meeting place, isn't it?" At first glance, Nick looked like an eighteen-year-old, bohemian art student who needs either a mother, a sugar lady, or a veterinarian. He was 5’10” and 155 pounds with longish (unshampooed) brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Sloppily avante-garde, he wore a loose black cotton shirt which exposed much of his pasty chest, beige jeans, and black oxford shoes. We sat down for drinks underneath a slate gray oil painting of a marooned, mid-Atlantic ghost ship: an antique kerosene ship's lantern suspended overhead shed a similarly gloomy, Elizabethan glow on us!
Nick was a witty, humorous, colorfully inventive live conversationalist--especially when he suggested that I kidnap Bruce Springsteen at gunpoint on a loud, backfiring, black Harley Davidson! (This kind of advice to the lovelorn I don't need!) Nick shot me a few impish, amorous glances; I lowered my head and pretended not to notice. I know whether or not I am sexually attracted to a man based on the shape of his hands. I love muscular, thick, knuckly fingers--but Nick's are soft and lean and effeminate. I don't want to feel them anywhere on me--especially not in my apartment in the languid torpor of a hot, groggy, horny night! Nick's soft voice and gay vocal mannerisms easily enable him to pass himself off as and experiment with being a woman on the phone: he likes to forge female identities as a try-on gender game. Much to his sexually ambiguous delight, he is always inevitably surrounded by a pushing herd of gluttonous rutting males. When there is a real girl on the line that held like to meet, Nick also transforms into a woman; he takes down all his competitors' phone numbers and has them hang up in anticipation of a call. He then instantly "reappears" as a male and uses his considerable thespian arts of persuasion to induce the lady to call him back, instead. Nick startled me next by asking if I was bisexual: when I reversed the inquiry, he grinned like the cat that swallowed the canary and shook his shaggy locks no!
Nick started calling party lines six months ago because he was lonely after he broke up with his girlfriend. He dials when he is at friends' apartments or housesits for out-of-town chums who will return to nice, fat, unexpected phone bills. Nick has occasionally found himself the sandbagged subject of a pillaging, party line "mod squad" (I wonder if he ever sat on Candy's carrot?). Rather than show anger, he hung up on them, hoping that they would simply forget his number. Poor, sweet Nick is a nomadic dog pound puppy with no place to snuggle; he has to vacate his new hostess's home on St. Mark's Place in two more months. When it was time to go, he paid for my cranberry juice, walked me to the drugstore, kissed me on the cheek, and faded into the busy Manhattan skyline. Boy, there are some screwy people on party lines. Adieu, ma chère amie!
Older women have traditionally been given short shrift in the highly competitive "meet market," but in the 1990s they, too, are demanding and getting much-younger lovers with top notch physical attributes! Young men, in turn, gain status and prestige among their peers for being able to attract a sophisticated, sexually ripe, real woman. Never one to buck the tide, I just put an ear mark on a tender spring lamb of my own: nineteen-year-old Lee from Sheepshead Bay from the 1234 line. Golly, was he ever eager to convince me that I should just "jump in bed with someone, just cause it would feel good--just for the hell of it!" With all the sunny optimism of youth, Lee still harbors the virgin schoolboy fantasy of having an exotic, experienced seductress teach him the fine art of great sex: "I never had a woman. She might move different, and she might know better than a girl who’s just starting, cause they're used to doing it so many times. You know what I mean?" He also did an abject, knee-scraping, twenty-minute genuflection for my phone number: "You will be safe. Your number will be safe with me. Please!! I'm Jewish, come on. Usually every girl I speak to gives me her number afterwards. You could make an exception: you forget--I'm Jewish. I'm not a baby. I'm not gonna prank you. Jewish people don't do things like that!" Since men on party lines are the kind of guys who could never score girls' phone numbers anywhere else except on a party line, they want numbers very badly! But don't they have any pride?
I reached Lee in again on Saturday afternoon, but he didn't sound happy to hear from me. He quickly and glumly shunted me off the phone: "I gotta go now." A few days later at 2:00 A.M., he danced the same silly shuffle: "I can't talk now." Conspicuously short on diplomacy, I extracted the truth from the sniveling, uninitiated little pygmy: "What happened to the 'nice young Jewish boy' I could trust and who wasn't a slime?" Apparently, he had had a temporary fight with his girlfriend, and now that they've made up, he's a monogamous one-woman man once again: "Nothing personal, Wendy." He groveled for two hours for my number and my body, and then this is what I get?
The party line dating pool suddenly seems like a depressing, disenchanting, transparent mirage. The men always seem extremely promising and exciting on the phone, but most of them unfortunately later turn out to be conniving deadbeats or unattractive undesirables. It is impossible to stay in touch with any of these unstable crackpots as they shift their apartments, attitudes, and phone numbers completely at random. This week's roster of possible dates usually goes on next week's deactivated list of crossed-off losers. It is often a long leap of faith from a line conversation to a meeting: phony phone numbers are given out, phones are disconnected, numbers are changed (Cyclone switched his listing again this week!), phones ring and no one is ever home, they only want to talk or to have phone sex, or I am stood up. Phone relationships are torturingly unpredictable: there are too many blind corners, blocked entrances--and eerie, open elevator shafts.
CHAPTER 12
TALK DIRTY TO ME
Phone sex is a unique evolution in human sexual expression: erotic activities can now be engaged in by two (or more) physically separated people. We have simultaneously become so desperate for contact and so afraid of death, disease, and emotional distress in the twenty-first century that we will happily settle for the expedient of "making love" many miles apart from another living being. We feel safest pleasuring ourselves during this sad dominion of "the new plague," occasionally in tandem with a fellow soulful presence over a mechanical instrument. It isn't necessarily any better than solitary masturbation, but it is more than just an alternate source of external stimulation. Phone sex walks a thin borderline between real sex and pornography. The crucial difference between it and conventional erotica is that you now have an enthusiastic, interactive live partner!
Men hungrily hunt for phone sex and will run up any kind of bill to get it: since women rarely call fantasy lines and are much less motivated to pay for it, the "ladies night" courtesy concept underwrites the economic success of this type of line. It enables the company to easily recruit and maintain a steady, free supply of female partners for their avid phone clients. I am almost always the sole woman on theline with several members of the opposite gender. I hate their leering, come-hither, Mae West tone: their voices hover between a purr and a tremor as they ask with a bubbly queeniness, "What are you wearing right now?" or "What are your measurements?" One requires Webster’s New World Thesaurus to catalogue the frequency and intensity of unrepentant self-abuse on every type of talk line. For the past three mornings in a row, creepy-crawly Jeff from Scarsdale has ventured onto 643 between 6:00 and 7:00 A.M. Some men call the second they wake up--with a sticky, sour paste tongue and filmy, unbrushed teeth! How gross! Come on, lonely guys, let's pay some attention to personal hygiene! After a few nondescript moments of slimily suggestive conversation, he proclaims: "I'll have to take a cold shower just from hearing your voice." And he really means it! Although graced with a raging, blue-veined erection, Jeff speaks without lust or anticipation; he sounds like a prim librarian delivering a dry discourse on the niceties of the Dewey Decimal System. Next time I hear this phone flasher on the line, I will remain silent until he pulls his pants back up.
Softcore gutter talk and masturbation--both in public and in private--has become the new "Disco of the Nineties." One afternoon, a nervous caller from Pittsburgh announced that it was his birthday. He haltingly explained that he was both very overweight and very shy--but then boldly begged me to whisper hot and naughty nothings in his ear and started volubly stroking himself on the line. And earlier this evening I had to suffer the indignity of some halfwit masturbating on the line all by himself--with nobody even talking on it! And he took so godawful long about it, too! Many of the men are latent gropers and exhibitionists: they can effectively expose their genitalia simply by saying that they are naked, tumescent, and excited over the phone. Whereas obscene callers normally face prosecution for their activities (a Manhattan man is charged with 504 counts of harassment for placing 13,000 obscene calls to female college students in various states), sexual delinquents now have a legally sanctioned social institution where they can indulge their oral proclivities to their hearts' content. Males all over the country are talking dirty, going blind, and sprouting bristly black hairs on their palms as we speak!
The prominent, voluminous advertising space accorded telephone sex lines in the television and print media provides the public with a devastating sexual portrait of women as birdbrained, made-to-order bedroom toys. Breathy, bosomy, bleached-blonde television vamps promise the viewer intimate female disclosures in comical, come-on commercials which make them look and sound like ditsy, pixilated computer chips. Impressionable minors under age eighteen as well as grown men read catchy, graphic copy inviting them to play with "Tied Up Sluts" on 970-ROPE and "live wet horny nymphos" on 1-900-HOT-DUCK; they are importuned to "Stack 'Em and Snack 'Em" on 970-3SUM or "Come Between 'Em" on 970-HOOTERS. Ads for gay male lines like Metro Male at 1-900-933-5858 or the Working Man's Playground at 1-800-577-STUD capitalize instead on take-charge, craggy faces; combat-hard, shaved pecs; and six-pack abs for customers who want pragmatic action-adventure on the telephone and quick, prospective live contacts. Their bulletin board users list specific preferences for aggressive "male culture" icons (bodybuilders, jocks, masseurs, "big tools," porn stars, and leather boys) in blatant solicitations for rugged, no-strings-attached sessions of sodomy.
Illegal escort services splashily advertise themselves as “full service adult bodywork” businesses: undressed models offer sensual body rubs, body shampoos, body therapy, slippery rubdowns, bubble baths, and fantasy fulfillment on either an outcall/incall basis or at bachelor parties and swing clubs. Ads for telephone services celebrate their legally protected status in a very similar, side by side maelstrom of provocative text and semi-nude photography. Phone sex ads raise dangerous expectations: they condition men to see women as giggling, wriggling public ejaculation pits in leopard spot lingerie rather than as sentient beings. The male perception that women are sexual service centers transcends the telephone and carries over into high-stakes dating: many men become violent and abusive towards women who refuse to fulfill the anonymous sex fantasies they have been spoon-fed in the back paid advertisement pages of their daily newspaper.
ALEX walks me upstairs with him on a portable cordless: Our tongues are entwined. I put my hands down to your ass and pick you up. I slide my cock inside.
ROSA: Already? You gotta foreplay a little bit.
SCARLETT wants him to stroke her skin slowly: Yeah, that's too quick. We want more foreplay. Go back and do more to us now.
ALEX laughs: Okay, okay, okay, okay!
SCARLETT: Go back to kissing and then start again. We want a good bedtime story.
ALEX turns up the sexual heat: So I'm licking up and down your thigh, and I pick you up and put you on the counter and spread your legs wide. I put a finger inside your pussy, and put my tongue on your clit and suck on it softly. It tickles, huh? So, what are you doing?
SCARLETT: I'm visualizing what you're saying. Continue. We're just getting to the good part now.
ALEX: Okay, alright. Somebody wanna give me a call?
Marauding voices from 970-FIRE pile on top of each other in the sexy Nuyorican argot of the street: Hi! Who’s this?
ALEX: Alex. Where are you calling from?
MARIA cuts through the commotion: Brooklyn.
ALEX: What'd you do tonight?
MARIA: I just hung out. You're the only one on the line?
ALEX persists in outlining his oral talents: No, Scarlett's on the line. I was just teasing Scarlett's pussy.
MARIA cooperates: Go ahead: I'll listen. You have two girls here who are excited.
ALEX: Yeah, you guys sound excited. So, your legs are all the way open. I'm sliding my tongue inside your pussy, and I'm slowly biting and nibbling on your clit. I'm squeezing your breasts while your pussy is getting wetter and wetter.
MARIA: You better go into her fast! Oh, he wants you to talk back to him.
SCARLETT rebuffs Alex’s attempts: No, I'm just into listening.
ALEX: That's no fun; it's getting boring.
MARIA: How old are you, Alex?
ALEX: Twenty-five. How old are you, Maria?
MARIA: Thirty-five.
ALEX: Maria, you know what it's all about.
MARIA: When he does something like what he was describing to you, he likes return favors. Right, Alex?
ALEX: Of course.
SCARLETT: What do you like the girl to do to you?
ALEX: Use your imagination. You have to try. If I told you exactly what it was, it takes all the fun out of it. So, Maria, what do you do for a living?
MARIA: I take care of my two children. I'm a widow.
ALEX: Sorry to hear that. How old are your kids?
MARIA: Fourteen and eleven.
ALEX: What do you look like?
MARIA sells her own body by the pound: I'm 5’2”, brown hair, brown eyes, nice breasts, sorta heavy. Did you lose your partner there?
ALEX smirks sarcastically: Oh, I'm done.
MARIA counsels: If you want him to finish it, call him back.
ALEX creates a wall of ice: I can see that this conversation isn't leading to sex. Maria, you wanna give me a call?
MARIA: Okay. Give me your number. You gonna say goodbye to your friend there?
PETER picks up the pace as Wendy chirps goodbye: Hi! This is Peter. How are you?
SCARLETT: Sleepy. Are you?
PETER: I'm in that middle ground and I started to get horny, so I thought I'd call.
SCARLETT: Why don't you do something with someone in real life?
PETER: I did.
SCARLETT: Oh, you already did? And you're still horny? Well, where is she?
PETER guages my mood: Not here. Wanna play?
SCARLETT: No, I don't think so. I like to play in real life, not on the phone.
PETER: I like to play all over.
SCARLETT is curious: What do you look like?
PETER complains: If you don't wanna play, why go through all of this?
REBEL clicks in (as Peter hangs up to have an intimate encounter with his right hand): You really do sound like Scarlett O'Hara. The high tone: the optimistic, devil-care-all voice.
SCARLETT: I am a lot like Scarlett; I'm a twentieth-century reincarnation of her.
REBEL booms with excitement: Wow, that's so sexy. Call me up!
SCARLETT: If you want to talk to me, you can talk to me here.
REBEL: What did you call this line for, then? It's 5:30 in the morning. Girls are always horny at this hour--it's the best time to get them.
HELLBOUND clicks on: How about just a big black dick?
SCARLETT: No thanks.
REBEL sees phone sex as his birth entitlement: Come on, Scarlett, we all like the sound of your voice. It's 5:30 A.M. You gotta be horny now, Scarlett. Call me up!
HELLBOUND: You shouldn't be on this line; we want girls who like cock on this line.
SCARLETT: Call somewhere else--you're rude!
HELLBOUND becomes sexually insistent: I'm gonna try you. My dick is hard. How about that, baby? You don't mind?
SCARLETT: Go fuck yourself, not me!
Hellbound beeped for the monitor, who threw me off and banished me for sexual insubordination! What a horny tattling toad! Courtesy is great because you don't get cut every thirty minutes, but the monitors pressure you to either talk up, talk nice to please the customers, or be disconnected. I was humbly debridged off the Gabb Line once just for two seconds of silence during a bathroom break! And just to add insult to injury, I got dumped three times tonight! But Peter is a premature ejaculator (I can tell), and I didn't like Alex's technique, anyhow. He got as frustrated and snippy as if I owed him sex and then turned around and denied him our prepaid night in bed. These men are angry, arrogant, and ruthless in their single-minded, harsh quest for someone--anyone--anything--to make them come.
The application of verbal coercion and emotional pressure to get sex has been defined as a species of rape on many university campuses. Antioch College established rules of conduct requiring specific consent for all aspects and at each stage of sexual activity in order to protect students from a growing culture of intimidation and harassment. Unwelcome phone sex is tantamount to verbal assault and rape: it violates my emotional well-being and invades my deepest privacy as a woman. Last night Eddie from Manhattan Beach enticed me off 550-KISS with the lure that he was a bodybuilder, who then all of a sudden loved hard massages and my dominating voice. He sneered at me nastily, "Do you want to sit on a fourteen-inch dick?" I felt like a hitchhiker trapped with a beefy, sweaty truckdriver who pulls out a sawed-off shotgun and unsheathes his throbbing, ruby red procreative organ behind the steering wheel.
Dirty dialers steadfastly refuse to differentiate between amateur and professional phone sex. Salacious conversation can serve as a legitimate, safe sex outlet between consenting adults, but it turns exploitive when men try to trick or force gullible ladies into servicing them gratis. (Go dial 970-4848 for live girl fantasy talk at $99.95 a call, you cheapskates!) The availability of commercial phone masturbation encourages men to see all women as disembodied, disposable sluts to be hunted, manipulated, and mined for quick seminal fluid release. As a step-sister of prostitution, phone sex perpetuates the victimizing notion that a man can take or purchase sex from a woman: the phone fantasy artiste vends her vocal cords to him as erotica. Pay to play or not, phone sex is a one night stand: they use you for your voice and abandon you immediately afterwards. Your casual push button lover will not cuddle you all night afterwards--nor will you ever wake up next to him. The most you will get here is a nervous, hasty goodbye after he comes, followed by the sterile buzz of your dial tone. And then you'll hear him get on the line the next day and compare you with other girls as to how good you were at giving phone!
Later for these masturbation evangelists and handjob mavens looking for phone freebies! I will soon be Jane, swinging from vines in the steaming urban rainforest with Tarzan (Jean Marc) the adventurer. Eleven days passed--and sure enough--as I stood by the payphone in another raging downpour, it rang like a five alarm fire. We arranged to meet today at 3:30 P.M., and you know the place. Jean Marc arrived a half hour late--as I luxuriated in the warm sunlight hungrily devouring a roast pork bun from the take-out Chinese restaurant next door. He was well worth the wait: 5’10”, 165 pounds, and handsome, with very long, curly brown hair past his shoulders. He had just come from his karate class and wore loose-fitting, blue-striped drawstring pants; a white tee-shirt with Chinese lettering; white moccasin loafers; and bright blue, tinted sunglasses. He looked clean, well-groomed, and fit with succulent, bulging biceps. Age and drugs have been very kind to Tarzan.
Jean Marc mysteriously doesn't seem to work, and divides his time between flute lessons and practicing in his $15,000 home studio in the hope of someday--somehow--gaining a livelihood as a musician. Since he doesn't drink and probably doesn't have a dime to his name, he suggested that we take a stroll around the neighborhood. He smoked a joint as we ambled along discussing his acid trips, out-of-body hallucinatory experiences, Sixties days panhandling in the East Village, and dangerous misadventures in the cocaine trade. All chemicals aside, Jean Marc seems sensitive, socially enlightened, and articulate. He started calling the lines a few months ago out of curiosity and sexual boredom with his live-in girlfriend (wife?) of two years. He subtly hinted that he could walk me in the direction of my building (wherever that was!), but I kept us going around in circles--in more ways than one!
It was a sexual turn-on for me to be seen in public with this desirable, wild-looking, big strange man on my arm; I enjoyed staring up at him. We are supposed to go to a rock club together Sunday night if we can communicate through his friend Will. If not, it's the wet booth for me next Monday. He kissed me goodbye on the cheek (shucks!) at 5:00 P.M. and ran for his bus back to Riverdale. Tarzan gave me a fun afternoon and I feel happy. So, there are some attractive guys floating around on party lines, after all! He's not the kind of man it would be wise to fall in love with, but held be a great offbeat bauble to add to my growing collection of male exotica. Speaking of fondling foreign trinkets, let's dial Fantasy again!
ANTHONY's muse is masturbation: The wildest thing I've been asked to do by a girl is to masturbate her with a peeled banana till she came, and then she wanted me to eat it out of her. That was wild.
SCARLETT: Did she like it? The banana would have to be firm and green.
ANTHONY: It was, and she definitely did; she had a good taste.
SCARLETT: You know, I think I've spoken to you before: did you ever call the 550-3333 fantasy line around six months ago? One guy was talking about inserting orange sections into women. It sounds like you.
ANTHONY has an organic farmer's market in his shorts: I don't know. A while ago I have--maybe eight months ago. Are you hairy around your vagina?
SCARLETT: Yes.
ANTHONY suggests a beauty makeover: Would you mind if somebody trimmed ya?
SCARLETT: It'd be prickly and itchy.
ANTHONY: You keep up with it. I don't like a lot of hair, cause I like to see the vagina in full. I like what a woman looks like. I like to watch a woman masturbate.
Anthony, whose best assets are his “eyes and his ass,” had a long shopping list of carnal questions for me: he wanted to know the size of my vagina and if I could “handle a big person." He asked what I thought of the date who sat on his toilet bowl, forced him to watch her masturbate, and then had him urinate directly on her clitoris to make her come. Anthony is extraordinarily preoccupied with cunnilingus, particularly in relation to the amount of lubrication that a woman can produce. He got himself very over-excited by this conversation, and by the fact that I was listening to him in a nightgown with no panties on.
ANTHONY: I like to concentrate on that part of the body when I’m with a woman. Tell me, what’s your wildest fantasy?
SCARLETT: I love guacamole, so I’d like to have a gigantic bowl of it—maybe even a bathtub filled with it—and lick it off his penis, chunk by chunk. It’d be the best blowjob he ever had; I’d use his penis as my tortilla chip.
ANTHONY has his pants around his ankles: Sounds great! I'm sitting here with nothing on, and I'm definitely feeling hot. Why don't you reach down and play with yourself?
SCARLETT: No, I don't feel like it.
ANTHONY coaxes: Come on. For me?
SCARLETT: I get embarrassed doing that over the phone.
ANTHONY: It's just me and you alone now. Come on, touch yourself. I wanna know if you're wet. Let me know. I'd like to be there. I'd go down on you. But I'd restrain you to the bed so you can't fight it.
SCARLETT: I don't think I'd like to be restrained.
ANTHONY starts fiddling with his nether regions: And I'd keep licking your clit till you couldn't take it anymore--just to tease you for hours till I get you good and wet.
SCARLETT: I love being teased.
ANTHONY: Put your clit in between your thumb and finger and roll it around a little bit. Feel okay?
SCARLETT withdraws: No, I'm not gonna do that.
ANTHONY tries to bend me to his will and fantasy: I'm masturbating right now. You got me hot. Just take one finger and I want you to slip it inside you. You get it good and wet; taste it, and let me know how you taste. I like to see a woman when she's all wet--watch her--her lips all moist, and watch it drip between her cheeks when she's excited. I reach down with my tongue and catch every drop. Have you tasted yourself before?
SCARLETT: No, but boyfriends have told me I taste sweet.
ANTHONY: Is it watery or thick?
SCARLETT: It's different at different times of the month.
ANTHONY: How many times can you come in a night?
SCARLETT: My record is eleven times in one day.
ANTHONY spins his own particularly perverse scenario: I bet you could fill a shot glass for me! That would be my ultimate fantasy--for a girl to come that many times to fill a shot glass. Excite her to that extent. And then just drink it down.
SCARLETT: Jesus!
ANTHONY: What's wrong with that?
SCARLETT: You'd really want to drink it down?
ANTHONY (suddenly hangs up the receiver): Yeah. I like the taste. When a woman's about to come, I'd like her to sit on my face and just get my face soaking wet!
Anthony miraculously aged three years (thirty) and gained seventeen pounds since he first appeared on the line as Zeppelin--only his fruit remained the same. Like all the other weird, castrated, diseased, or celibate eunuchs on the line, Anthony never envisions conventional vaginal intercourse with a woman. He was so monomaniacally engrossed in what he was saying and doing, that he was almost oblivious to me: Anthony merely drafted me as an incidental, unpaid walk-on extra in his award-winning screenplay. Mental rapists don't require explicit cooperation or sexual input from a woman: Anthony bulldozed right past me in a determined, self-absorbed push towards his own private finish line. Our unsociable oddball practiced the regulation party line birth control method, "phonus interruptus," the very millisecond he vaginally drowned himself to a climax.
While callers are highly biologically explicit, sex lines are the province of the most sexually repressed men. They overcompensate for their real life inhibitions and inadequacies by speaking as lewdly and crudely as they can over the phone: men can never address a woman like this anywhere else. Spurred on by the inflection and rhythm of a female voice, one-handed fanatics revel in a glorious, self-generated, triple-X soundtrack without visual distractions or emotional encumbrances. They have elevated their telephone masturbation activities into a comprehensive world view: twisted, profane, and obese, you can hear them panting on every phone line like overheated, overstuffed mongrels in the noonday sun.
Dr. June Reinisch, Director Emeritus of the Kinsey Institute, addresses the question of whether or not phone sex is healthy: "These kinds of things are abnormal if they hurt somebody else, or if you're not doing anything else. That is, if you're on the phone instead of going to work, making friends, and having relationships, then I would say you've got a problem with phone sex. If it's something that you use to enhance your arousal as somebody else would read a Playboy or a Penthouse or watch an erotic video, then there's nothing wrong with it. It's just another way, like having fantasies, of stimulating oneself." MTV's resident television therapist, Dr. Drew Pinsky, sees phone sex as "such a fantasy. It's not a way to develop a relationship." He counseled a five-hour a day, sex talk addict that "phone sex is an escape from an unpleasant life into a fantasy relationship that's become a sexual compulsion. She needs to make her life more gratifying so she's not trying to escape in this peculiar, masturbatory way.”
Most sex line callers, however, are erotically fixated on their telephones: they have gone beyond abnormal psychology and contact comfort deprivation. Psychologist and radio talk host Dr. Laura Schlessinger comments that, "human sexuality is just a splendiferous thing, and to see it degraded in this phone sex thing, I think that is a loss. I do think there are some inherent difficulties and problems in an individual who either needs to call in phone sex or needs the feeling of power and control by performing it for the customer. There are issues of intimacy and ego and self-esteem, and I think they will discover those in years to come."
Barring any further compulsive masturbation routines tonight, I have to shake myself awake for real life breakfast with Tommy the muscleman. Tommy sounds too good to be true: his sturdy, full-bodied voice pours out like top shelf Tennessee whiskey. My 6’1”, 235-pounds-of-solid-steel phone buddy is twenty-six years old, has long blonde hair and blue eyes, and was a former runner-up in Mr. New York, Mr. Queens, and Mr. Metropolis "super heavyweight class" bodybuilding contests. Tommy even has bulky financial assets: ownership of a cement foundations business courtesy of daddy. So, what's the catch? Tommy has a bashful, quiet personality; he finds it painful to communicate. Every single time I stop speaking, he tightens up like a clam and throws the ball back in my court press conference style: "What else would you like to know?" I learned far more information than I bargained for: my date shaves his legs for the summer! In the winter he only depilates arms and chest: "I can wipe sweat off shaved arms real easily." Tommy also keeps broaching the subject of sex with pointless, disconnected questions. Have I ever done anything kinky? (Tommy's exhibitionist highlight was drunken sex in a hottub at a crowded party with all the lights on!) What's the biggest penis I've ever had (he really wanted to know!)? The pride of Venice Beach jealously complains that it's so easy to get sex if you're a girl: "Any guy will say sure, I'll go with you." He listlessly whines, for no apparent reason, that he's horny: "I'm laying in bed here, all alone.” He even has an erection. Different strokes for different folks.
I waited for Tommy-no-show for twenty minutes in front of the Midnight Express and left in disgust to call him from home. He apologized: "I'll make it up to you. A massage, I'll cook you breakfast--you have my services." Held lost his car keys and had to arrange to borrow a friend's car: "I'm really on my way now this time--swear to God!" Well, when I saw Tommy jump down off the running board in light gray sweats, I was flabbergasted! His beautiful, tanned, Hulk Hogan body was fully equipped and loaded with options--power everything! Tommy was so extraordinarily massive, showy, and Fabio handsome that I was embarrassed to walk down the street with him. I felt that passersby were staring at me the way they once stared at the lucky men who squired fleshy, young starlet Marilyn Monroe around on their arm. They must assume that I want him just for one thing.
The golden Adonis and I sat down to eat; his enormous, striated drumstick forearms could have been my main course. But, Tommy was just as stiff and non-conversational as on the phone. He emitted lots of little wooden chuckles and kept chanting his holy mantra: "So, what else?," as a desperate alternative to dialogue. After a quick, polite meal, he asked if he could come up to my apartment. I pointed out that we'd never even kissed yet, whereupon he invited me into the "love jeep" for some privacy. Tommy drove a few blocks down, parked, but still made no moves--so I climbed out and walked home after a few minutes. I called Nautilus King one more time, whereupon he rhetorically inquired as if reading off a teleprompter: "Am I ever going to see you again? When am I gonna get the chance--what's the word I'm looking for--to seduce you?" With nothing much else to say, and a confession that he used to come really quickly when he was seventeen, I'll reluctantly file Tommy away as a tragic waste of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!
MIKE: I fantasize about Joan Jett all the time.
SCARLETT: Oh, well, I look like a little Joan Jett. I'm smaller, thinner, and more feminine, but I have the same rock n' roll look.
MIKE: Really? She's tiny. How tall are you?
SCARLETT: I'm five feet, ninety-one pounds.
MIKE: Get out of here! My heart's starting to beat fast.
SCARLETT: You said you're 5’9"? How much do you weigh?
MIKE: 175. You like big guys, or what?
SCARLETT: I like tall guys.
MIKE: I'm not tall; I'm stocky. But I guess I'm tall to you, though.
SCARLETT: Yeah. How long is your hair?
MIKE: It's shoulder length. So, do you ever call the S & M line, or what?
SCARLETT: No, no.
MIKE: How old are you?
SCARLETT: Twenty-eight.
MIKE: Oh, that's right--we're the same age.
SCARLETT: So you're really muscular?
MIKE: Yeah. Why, is that a problem?
SCARLETT: No, I love muscles.
MIKE: Yeah, why don't you come on over?
SCARLETT: Naah.
MIKE laughs: You sound hot. What are you wearing right now?
SCARLETT: I'm wearing black leggings and a black midriff top with black lace all around the edge.
MIKE reveals his favorite sex script: Ooh! I'll put a leash around my neck. You want a slave--I'm ready!! What kind of boots?
SCARLETT laughs: I'm not wearing boots.
MIKE: No boots, no high heels, nothing? Go put ‘em on!
SCARLETT: Naah.
MIKE laughs: Any tattoos? I like tattoos--hidden tattoos, though. Just one. Somewhere--I'll pick the spot.
SCARLETT: Do you have tattoos?
MIKE: Just a Chinese script on my forearm, and on my upper arm is sort of like a skull.
SCARLETT: I like tattoos on guys; I think it's sexy.
MIKE: I like when girls bite on my tattoos.
SCARLETT laughs: Bite on your tattoos? You didn't have any luck in the bathroom at Mars tonight?
MIKE: Actually, I did. I jerked off on her tits.
SCARLETT: Tonight? I don't believe it.
MIKE: Why not? What's the big deal? She didn't think too much of it. Actually, she didn't even want to clean it off; she said it was good for her. She rubbed it all around and just split.
SCARLETT squeals: In the men's room or the ladies room?
MIKE: Men's room. Do that again!
SCARLETT: What?
MIKE: Squeak like that again!
SCARLETT: Why?
MIKE: It sounds like you're having a good time.
SCARLETT: What did you wear to Mars tonight?
MIKE: Black jeans, some rocker boots, a Damned tee-shirt.
SCARLETT: I like guys to wear all black; I like the heavy metal look.
MIKE: Yeah, so do I. I like a girl dressed just the way you said you are--with some spikes on.
SCARLETT: My hair's all spiked.
MIKE: Really? You got a tiny little hiney, don't you? I think I have a nice place where it would fit. I'd love to have a little tiny girl like you ride my face.
SCARLETT laughs: Oh, shit! Guys like little girls?
MIKE: Naah, no, no, no! Me! How’s that sound?
SCARLETT: That might be interesting.
MIKE: Might be? Baby, you gotta know it would be.
SCARLETT: I've never sat on anyone's face before.
MIKE: You haven't lived yet!! I used to live near you on Sixty-fourth Street right over a hamburger place, but it sucked cock. Cause I hate fucking preppie white girls. Occasionally I'll fucking throw them a bone just to have them down on their knees. Then you fucking just throw them out. You know what's cool, though? You get this little yuppie girl who’s acting like such a virgin, and then you get her down on her knees, and she's acting like such a slut!
SCARLETT laughs: I hate that yuppie shit!
MIKE: Yeah, it's gross. The little monster's awake, and he's getting very angry with you.
SCARLETT: Me? He's angry with you cause you're not playing with him.
MIKE laughs: I am playing with him.
SCARLETT: How big is he?
MIKE: Very big. Naah, that's a lie; he ain't very big. He's big, though.
SCARLETT: Have you ever measured him?
MIKE: Of course. Every man has. If they say they didn't, they're lying.
SCARLETT: Size really isn't that important.
MIKE: That's bullshit, though. If you had a three-inch dick, it'd be a drag. You're probably very tight, huh? I wish your tight ass was right here right now.
SCARLETT: Well, I wouldn't want your monster in my ass.
MIKE: No, not in your ass. Maybe my tongue in your ass.
SCARLETT shrieks in embarrassment: Oh, shit!
MIKE moans: Oh, that almost made me come, the way you did that just then. Oh, baby! Why don't you come over here? I'd bury my face in between your legs--till you cried!
SCARLETT giggles: Really? You like to tease girls?
MIKE: Actually, I like ‘em to tease me--tease me with their little asses, their little tits, their little fingers.
SCARLETT: I like to drive the guy crazy, and then not let him do it.
MIKE: Oooh, I like that! And make him beg for it. Get down on his knees and beg!
Scarlett laughs.
MIKE: Ooh! I'm gonna shoot my load if you do that again.
SCARLETT: My voice has that effect on you?
MIKE: Yeah. The way you squeak like that. Ooh!
SCARLETT: I'm always squeaking and squealing and screeching.
MIKE: I wish you were here teasing me and tormenting me right now.
SCARLETT: You like to be tormented?
MIKE: Nah, not really tormented. It's hard to explain. it depends on the fantasy; it depends on the person. I like rock n' roll girls. They have no inhibitions.
SCARLETT: What do you like them to do?
MIKE: Anything she wants--anything that turns her on. A girl who has hangups, holds back--and I don't need that shit. I'd rather jerk off to a video than be with some girl that don't know how to fucking party.
SCARLETT: Most guys say I drive them crazy.
MIKE: I like to be driven crazy--I tell you that. I'm just very, very horny right now, and I gotta come so bad. I want you to help me.
SCARLETT laughs: How could I help you?
MIKE: Put your little ass on my face.
SCARLETT: I can't do that over the phone.
MIKE whispers: Yes you can; we can pretend.
SCARLETT: That I'm on your face? You wouldn't like to be doing something else to me?
MIKE (contortionist copulations on the telephone): No, not right now. I wanna bite on your ass. You sit on my face and you're facing my dick, sitting straight; you ride my face while I jerk off. How does that sound?
SCARLETT: I could do that.
MIKE laughs: You know what I like? I love high heels.
SCARLETT: I have one pair.
MIKE: Really spiked?
SCARLETT: Yeah, they're pretty high. They have little studs on the back.
MIKE likes his pleasure spiked with pain: Ooh! I like spiked high heels on my balls. A nice pair of legs rubbing against my balls and against the shaft of my dick. It gets me hot. I'm lower body, myself. I don't like big tits; they gross me out. I like athletic bodies . . . and I like giving women head.
SCARLETT: You like just about everything.
MIKE laughs: I'm a pretty easy guy to get along with.
SCARLETT: I could put heels on. You'd have to carry me around, though, cause I can't walk in them.
MIKE: I'd do whatever you want if you had the heels on.
SCARLETT: Oh, God! That's how I get control over you?
MIKE licks the bottom of my shoes: I'd be your slave if you had those heels on. You wouldn't have to walk; you just stick your legs up in the air. I'll carry you on my back or maybe on my shoulders. And then I'll spin you around so my face is right between your legs. I'd kneel down in front of you and start licking on your high heels, licking on your legs, chewing on your legs, while you sit there. I'd kneel in front of you, and I'd suck on your legs and jerk off. You notice I like to jerk off, huh?
SCARLETT: Yeah, I notice that.
MIKE laughs: It's safe. I'll lean you against the wall; you'll stick your butt out. Your ass is real high cause of the heels. I'll kneel down and I'll spread your cheeks apart, and I'll tongue your ass till you scream.
SCARLETT screeches: I probably would!
MIKE: Ooh! (sloshy stroking noises in the background) I like when you take your hand and ram my face into your sweet little ass while I'm jerking off in between your legs. I'd make you stand up, too--I wouldn't let you lay down. Just so you squirmed a little bit.
SCARLETT purrs: Mmm! Would I feel your penis between my legs?
MIKE: Yes. Oh, baby, make me come! Please!
SCARLETT: How can I make you come?
MIKE entertains the grotesque: Talk to me about some dirty, nasty things you wanna do.
SCARLETT: Would you be playing with my breasts?
MIKE: Tell me what you want me to do, and I'll do it.
SCARLETT: I want you to tongue kiss me with your hands stroking my face. You slide one hand down inside my bra, and then you open it and feel my breasts.
MIKE: Ooh! Tell me more.
SCARLETT moans: Then I'd want you to play with my vagina gently and put your finger inside me. Keep moving it in and out and in and out, and I'd be so wet. It'd almost feel as good as if you were in me.
MIKE whispers: Oh, yeah, tell me more! I'm gonna come, baby.
SCARLETT: After you finish kissing and sucking on my breasts and fingering me, I want you to hold me with your hands underneath my ass, and I want you to put it in real deep and then pull it right out. Then I want to spread my legs all the way apart and be fucked long and hard.
Mike is hanging on the edge and breathing heavily.
SCARLETT: Thrusting in and out of me--thick and warm and slow.
MIKE moans: Oh, I shot a load all over my chest. Oh, yes! Oh, fuck!
SCARLETT: I wish it was in me.
MIKE: Oh, baby! Oh, fuck! It's all that beer. I drank too much beer tonight.
SCARLETT laughs: What does that have to do with coming?
MIKE: It gives you a vicious hard-on and makes it hard to come. Why, what do you drink?
SCARLETT: Black Russians. I like the taste, and they're strong--and it's not too much liquid.
MIKE laughs: So when am I gonna meet you, my little rock n' roll bitch? You gonna give me your number?
SCARLETT: No, I'll call you though. When are you home?
MIKE: I'll definitely be here Monday night. A good time is between nine and eleven. Oh, man! This muck is dripping all over my chest. This is gross.
SCARLETT laughs: You're funny.
MIKE laughs: I'm weird, huh? Yeah, but I like it.
SCARLETT: What kind of work do you do?
MIKE: I couldn't really tell you. Maybe once I get to know you better. I'm in the protection business.
SCARLETT: What's that?
MIKE: You wanna protect something? That's what business I'm in. Oh, man, that felt nice, though. Ooh, Scarlett!
SCARLETT: I'm glad you enjoyed it.
MIKE: What's your real name?
SCARLETT: Wendy. What's yours?
MIKE: Mike. Okay. When you gonna call me?
SCARLETT: I'll call Monday--talk to you then.
MIKE: Thank you. Bye Bye. I'll go clean this up.
Mike was the first man I ever consciously "telephone touched" to climax; it was fun! But Scarlett was not through for the evening--no, she was determined to go all the way. Mike was just good foreplay: we're heading for the last, lurid, unexplored frontier of sexual behavior in America, folks. At least I can't get pregnant (Would I give birth to two little twin princess phones?), and the worst affliction I can contract is a stiff arm and neck from gripping the receiver for so long. (Florida’s Department of Labor, however, granted worker’s compensation to an injured, forty-year-old, Fort Lauderdale phone sex operator in 1999. She had developed carpal tunnel syndrome from repetitively answering the phone with one hand and using the other hand to jot down clients’ names and fetishes and then masturbate to orgasm during the conversation!) I also hope I don't get a bad phone reputation. Although I may have talked to an awful lot of guys, I'm still eligible to join Lorielle in Mr. Know It All's chapter on "Good Girls on Party Lines." I'm sure I'll recruit that special fantasy playmate to tease and please me--very soon.
CHAPTER 13
MAKING LOVE ON THE PHONE
SCARLETT: Hi! Is this Max? I'm still trying to get the bee out of my apartment. I hope it flew out the window.
MAX puts forth the blunt sexual vision of one individual man: You did good. Did you take your clothes off?
SCARLETT (curled up on her erotic stage--a lush gray rug--at 1:29 A.M.): No, but I'm going to.
MAX (in a low, controlled, grounded voice): I want you to do it slowly, and I want you to tell me what you're taking off.
SCARLETT screeches: Oh, shit! What are you wearing?
MAX: Right now, nothing.
SCARLETT: Would I like what I see?
MAX doles out his body over the phone: Oh, I think you'd love what you'd see. You'd definitely be able to get two hands on it.
SCARLETT takes inventory: How long is it?
MAX experiences a growth spurt: At least eight inches.
SCARLETT: Is it thick?
MAX: Yup. I guarantee if you see it, you'll say so.
SCARLETT: What does your chest look like? I like men's chests.
MAX: It's a little hairy--not too hairy. It's alright. I think you'd like it. What's your chest look like, now that we're speaking about chests?
SCARLETT: My breasts look nice and perky; they're small to medium size. my nipples are really big.
MAX: Why don't you take your shirt off for me?
SCARLETT laughs: Oh, shit! I mean, I do have to get my clothes off; I wouldn't want to ruin them, right? Alright, my black top with the little skulls on it is off.
MAX laughs: That's cool. What kind of bra do you have on?
SCARLETT sips a Tanqueray and tonic (those colonial Brits sure knew how to prevent malaria!): It's beige-colored.
MAX: Is it a sexy one?
SCARLETT plays the coquette: I guess to a guy, any bra is sexy. I mean, you can see things through it.
MAX: You can see your nipples?
SCARLETT: Yeah. One of them is erect at the moment.
MAX: Why don't you stroke it for me through your bra?
SCARLETT: Alright. I'm doing that right now.
MAX: How does it feel?
SCARLETT: It feels fantastic!
MAX: Why don't you roll it between your thumb and forefinger and pull on it a little bit for me?
SCARLETT: I don't like to pull on it; I like to rub it with the tip of my fingernail. I like it when a guy plays with my breasts a lot; they're very sensitive.
MAX: Yeah? Rub it! I would love playing with them. I'd massage them with my cock. What else are you wearing right now, Scarlett?
SCARLETT: I'm wearing these skin tight, calf-length black leggings with skulls on them; they match the top. I'm skulled out tonight, from my earrings to my legs.
MAX laughs: Why don't you take them off for me?
SCARLETT: Mmm! I'm busy playing with my breasts.
MAX: But I want you to play with that pussy also, for me.
SCARLETT squeals as she strips: Okay, if you insist! Alright--the entire skull outfit has been removed.
MAX probes: Are you wearing panties or no panties?
SCARLETT: No panties. You can't wear panties under leggings, cause you'd have a panty line, so I don't wear anything.
MAX: Sounds good. Why don't you take that bra off for me, so I could see those nipples standing up. Are they fully erect?
SCARLETT: I'm playing with them now--they're getting hard.
MAX: Can you suck on those nipples?
SCARLETT: No, I can't get to them--that's your job.
MAX: Try to lick them.
SCARLETT: I've tried before; I can't.
MAX laughs: You've tried before?
SCARLETT: You'd have to do that. Would you?
MAX: Sure, I'd roll my tongue all over ‘em. Then I'd have you suck on my cock while I reach down and hold onto those nipples and pull on them. Do you give a good blowjob?
SCARLETT: Mmm! I use both my hands and my mouth together: it's a handjob and a blowjob combined. Would you take a shower first?
MAX: Sure, sure. I'd even wear a rubber for you.
SCARLETT: But I hate those things. I love a man to just come in me.
MAX: Yeah, well you gotta use them in this world of. . . .
SCARLETT: But over the phone we don't have to wear one.
MAX: That's true. So right now you'd be sucking my cock. And then maybe I'd jerk off a little bit for you while you lick my balls. You wanna play with that pussy now?
SCARLETT is giggling and squealing: I could do that. Can you still hear me?
MAX: Yeah. What do you have--a speakerphone?
SCARLETT: I have to have both of my hands free.
MAX laughs: What are you doing?
SCARLETT: I'm playing with my clitoris.
MAX: Now, I want you to pull those pussy lips open for me. Let me look inside that pussy. Spread your legs real wide.
SCARLETT moans: Oh, God, they are! What do you see?
MAX: I see all that glistening juice on those lips. I want you to pull them apart, and then I want you to rub it real slow, from the top of your clit all the way down to the end. Let me hear you.
SCARLETT sighs: Oh, God, that's what I'm doing. It feels so qood! I'm lying on the floor on a towel naked, and my right hand is playing with my nipple--and my left hand is playing with my clitoris. OOOH! Oh, I'm getting so wet!
MAX: Yeah? Put your finger in and get a little taste on your finger. Take the finger out, and I want you to lick it.
SCARLETT: I don't want to lick it.
MAX: You gotta lick it. Trust me, you'll like it.
SCARLETT: Trust you?
MAX: I want you to lick that and imagine it was my dick that just went into your pussy juices.
SCARLETT: I'd rather lick your dick.
MAX inspires me to new, higher, more perverted levels of masturbation: Put your finger in your mouth. I want you to move your head around and up and down like you were giving me a blowjob. Let me hear you suck it.
SCARLETT pretends to make sucking noises: Can you hear that?
MAX: Yes. Play with that pussy for me, and make believe I'm fucking you.
SCARLETT: Oh, I am. Tell me how you'd do it.
MAX: First I'd sit you down on the edge of the bed, walk right up, and I'd have you blow me right there. Would you like to blow me? Tell me you'd like to suck my cock.
SCARLETT: Yes, I would. I'd like to suck on it. I'd go up and down on the shaft with my hands while I was licking the top of it, and then I'd bite it a little.
MAX: Ooh! That sounds good. Just thinking about it makes my cock want to come. Work a finger in that pussy for me. Bounce it in and out a little bit. Come on, baby, finger that pussy for me. How many fingers you using?
SCARLETT hums: Mmm! One.
MAX: I have a big cock, so at least put two in there.
SCARLETT: I don't wanna get sore before you're in me.
MAX: Imagine I was slipping my cock into you.
SCARLETT is an empty vessel waiting to be filled: Describe it to me.
MAX: I'd take my big fat head, and I'd push it up against your pussy lips. I'd trace it all around your pussy. And then I'd pull away and jerk it right in front of your face. You'd stick your tongue out trying to get it, and I wouldn't let you have it. I'm just jerking it off in front of you. And then I slide it down over your breasts and stick the head of my cock over your belly button. Tease that belly button until you beg me to fuck you. Should I fuck you, Scarlett?
SCARLETT: Yes, please!
MAX flexes his sexual muscles: You want me to take this big fat cock and stick it in that pussy?
SCARLETT flushes with excitement: Oh, I want it in me!
MAX: I'd rub it against you until you begged me to push it in. And you could feel that cock go right in past your pussy lips and rub up against your clit. I can feel my balls slapping against your ass.
SCARLETT: Oh, God! I like it when you're outside--or just a little way in--and are teasing me.
MAX: I take it out and bend you over and rub my cock all around your ass, and I beat it against your ass a little bit. Then I walk around to the other side of the table and have you suck me a little bit, while I reach back and finger your pussy some more.
SCARLETT: Oh, God, I bet that'd feel great!
MAX embraces auxiliary technology: Oh, yeah. I'd tickle your ass a little bit as I was fingering that pussy. And maybe we'd get a couple of little dildos, and I could fuck you with the dildos. Would you like that, Scarlett?
SCARLETT: I've never done that.
MAX: No? I'd get two dildos. One really, really small one for your ass, and another one for your pussy. I'd have you bend over the table, and I'd come up behind you--and first I'd put one all the way in there in your pussy. Then I'd take another little one, and I'd grease your ass. And then I'd stick the little vibrator in your ass, and then I'd turn it on. I'd be fucking your ass and your pussy at the same time.
SCARLETT sucks in her breath through her teeth: Oh, my God!
MAX: Would you like that, Scarlett?
SCARLETT whispers in a distracted frenzy: Yes!
MAX: Would you like for me to walk around so you could suck my cock while I fuck your ass and pussy at the same time?
SCARLETT pants: Oh, yes! I'd suck your dick until you came.
MAX: It'd be like you were fucking three guys at one time, wouldn't it, Scarlett?
SCARLETT is almost hyperventilating: Yes.
MAX: You'll like it. Now I want you to take out that vibrator, and I'd come up in back of you and fuck you real hard. I have you over that table, and I come up and stuff my cock right in there, and I go in and out and rock back and forth. You could feel my big hard cock way up in you--I'm so deep!
Scarlett is gelatinous with ovulation: Mmm! Ooh!
MAX: You wanna come for me tonight, don't you, Scarlett?
SCARLETT is delirious: Oh, you bet!
MAX: Are you close?
SCARLETT groans and feels faint: Very close.
MAX: How close are you to coming for me and have all that pussy juice spraying over my cock?
SCARLETT trembles: Oh, tell me you're in me!
MAX harnesses his sexual powers: I'm in you, baby. I'm in you qood! I'm gonna come all up inside your pussy. I'm waiting for you to tell me when. . . .
SCARLETT moans with pleasure: Oh, now! Oh, oh, oh! Oh, God!
MAX: Feel my cock; feel my cock inside you, baby! Feel that hot come going up in you.
SCARLETT has a full-throated orgasm right over the telephone: Oh, oh, oh! I just came!
MAX: Was it good?
SCARLETT is limp as a dishrag and smiling: Oh, yes! Oh, God!
MAX laughs: We came together.
SCARLETT is giggling hysterically: Wow, that felt really good!
MAX has a double broken wrist: I hope so. What part of Manhattan do you live in?
SCARLETT cracks up laughing: Oh, my God! The Upper East Side.
MAX laughs: Why are you laughing?
SCARLETT is happy: I have to tell you, this is the first time I ever did this--you de-phoned me. Oh, God! I think this could become habit-forming! I never actually had the nerve to do this before.
MAX laughs: Oh, yeah? Maybe cause we had a little bit in common; it put you at ease. We're both into rock music. How old are you?
SCARLETT (caressing a post-coital teddy bear): Twenty-eight.
MAX: That's cool. I'm twenty-five. So, did you like your phone sex?
SCARLETT: I did. I'm in a state of shock! I couldn't imagine it would really get me excited, but it did. But now I'm not a virgin anymore.
MAX: Oh, come on. You've been calling the Fantasy Line; you knew it was gonna happen sooner or later.
SCARLETT: Usually I say no, but I had a couple of drinks tonight. If I didn't, I'd be too uptight to do it. It's actually a lot of fun.
MAX: Yeah, it is--if you let your imagination go a little bit. You'll get better. You're good, but you'll get better. I'll have to train you. I'll wind up getting you a nice vibrator and a nice comfortable spot by the phone, and we'll work on it.
Except for an all-consuming interest in fellatio, Max was a creative, considerate lover, desirous of pleasing me--they should all be like this in real life! (But, were these vibrant sexual sequences just forbidden fantasies and wet dreams borrowed from instructional, Robin Byrd porn showcases on Channel 35, or his usual erotic activities and abilities?) I felt very close to Max after we climaxed; we talked and unwound, bonding like a warm, cozy, protected couple nestled in bed after a lovemaking session. I found out that he runs a Long Island rock club, the Cathouse, on Monday nights, featuring live bands, free outdoor barbecue, and non-stop dollar beers. He invited me to catch his 10:30 P.M. bus at Bleecker and MacDougal Street and come out to the club: "We run buses from Manhattan so the city crowd can get here."
Max and I discussed the business and image sides of concert promotion and record contracts until he recharged himself and got greedy. Once he realized that he was in the fortunate position of being in bed with a woman, Max decided to go for another round: "I'm rubbing it up and down. Come on, I wanna jerk this cock off, and I want you to talk to me." I underwent tentative, abbreviated masturbation-by-fiat: Max ordered me to "Get horny!" again. He tried hard to prompt and excite me into a second orgasm, but Scarlett has a longer refractive period, and had had enough loving for one night. I still had his pool of ejaculation in me from the first time!!
Men call expensive fantasy lines for sex for a variety of reasons. In real life, everything a man wants to do--from a cheap rented video date at home, to suspending his love object from the ceiling butt-naked in a sling seat, is criticized and judged. The fantasy line is a singular, value-free retreat where there is always an accessible, friendly woman, and she will always say yes. No request is too bizarre: men can call up and have "sick sex" without guilt, humiliation, or censure. Married men call because they can't confess to their wives that they want to dress up in a disposable diaper and a bib and get a spanking. They can, however, comfortably share their fantasy with the 1-800 phone ladies behind ads like, "Two Naughty Little Roommates that Love Hot, Sticky Talk With Bad Boys (Toys, Greek, Bi, Submissive, Dominant). Call us at home. Let's Play!" All he needs is a credit card in one hand, his member in the other hand, and an indecent proposal on the tip of his tongue.
Men can try out new ideas, positions, and techniques on the telephone: they can test their lovemaking skills. They cannot fail in this bed; the customer is always right. The phone eliminates and eases a constellation of fears, ranging from impotence to rejection to the emotional vulnerability of a relationship. Behavioral therapist Cynthia Richmond explains that we are all afraid of "both rejection and intimacy, and if we have this anonymity [of phone sex], we can get hot and steamy and [still] protect ourself." Writer Jackie Collins agrees: "A lot of men are very frightened of being truly intimate with a woman. And when I say truly intimate, I'm not talking about sex. . . . To me, the best sexual trip of all includes being completely on the same wave length as a man. And a lot of men are frightened of that because it is too intimate. He can have great sex with her, but he cannot be intimate with her."
Many men would rather not deal with the difficult, demanding complexities of a real woman. They prefer to conjure up a beautiful, ideal sexpot who will eagerly cater to every idiosyncratic need, with no questions asked or orgasms demanded. Only here can you find a lover tailor-made to your own unique libidinal specifications. It is the utmost in selfish, egocentric sex: you do not have to please anyone but yourself. A good phone fetish hostess will tickle all your erogenous zones. She will take you beyond the limits of surrogate partner playlands, even beyond the capabilities and scope of professional prostitutes and dominatrixes. The phone is the perfect orgasmatron. No one seems to mind--or even to notice--that sex takes place solely within the confines of the human brain. You can get anything you want here--it's your psychodrama.
The brisk volume of sexual transactions (and transgressions) over the telephone reflects widespread marital disaffection and dissatisfaction. The owner/operator of a professional phone sex line revealed on a 1995 "Gordon Elliott" show that most of her clientele are married men who are happy in their emotional relationship but are not getting what they want in bed: "No, and they're dialing my number, and I make mega-bucks off of ‘em!" Brenda articulates: "Most of the men who call me on my sex line are looking for a woman that will give in, that will dress sexy, talk sexy." Brenda gave American wives advice on how to prevent their husbands from calling her: "You can talk the same way I talk, the exact same way. I want you to talk sexy, dress sexy, and do things that normally would not be done."
Sex educator Dr. Judy Seifer recommends private phone sex as a way for long distance lovers to keep their relationship hot and for cohabiting couples to renew their sexual excitement: "Phone sex has been around for a long time. It only has become salable commercially when entrepreneurs started finding out how popular it was among couples. Traveling men, traveling women today--couples who are separated for military service, learned a long time ago." Dr. Seifer suggests that partners make a call from the office during the day or call from another room in the house: "Just taking a moment sometimes to call and say, 'I love you.' That's good phone sex! But if you want to get into the fantasy of phone sex, start talking about either what you're doing to yourself or what you'd like to do to your partner." Author Jaid Barrymore also extolls its virtues: "Phone sex [between spouses/lovers] is so wonderful. It is such an easy, easy thrill, and so immediate."
Many adventurous couples try phone talk as a novelty sex toy to both fire up and escape their conjugal bed. One night a semi-cuckholded husband told me that his wife had had phone sex yesterday with a telephone survey-taker, so he thought held call up and try it now, too. He felt she hadn't done anything bad: "She didn't sleep with anyone or anything." Early one morning, another wedded gent whispered cordially while his wife was in the shower. He was looking for a "phone quickie": "She lets me cheat on the phone. If I cheated on her in person, she'd cut my dick off." Does phone sex constitute adultery? Would you let your husband or wife become verbally intimate with another partner? What if your husband dialed a sex line right from bed, or if you came home early and surprised him in a compromising conversation? Many wives are only first confronted with their husbands' secret sexual vices and proclivities when they discover buried phone bills laden with mysterious, serial 900-number listings.
A train of social consequences accompanies the phone sex invasion of the bourgeois bedroom. For married/coupled practitioners, traditional notions and definitions of monogamy are stretched by the introduced option of commercial sex talk. In an appearance on CNBC's "Real Personal," guest therapist Dr. Pepper Schwartz offered professional insight: "What do I want my partner doing? Do I mind phone sex? Well, maybe I don't. Maybe that's something they could discuss with each other: 'If that's an outlet for you--as long as you don't touch somebody or meet them, [then] I can deal with that.' But, most people crave all of their partner's intimacy. They don't want to share." Typically, the men do not have any feelings for, or any sense of connection to the women—for them, phone sex is just an expensive, non-tax-deductible business transaction. Single practitioners also find that fidelity is not at a premium on the telephone: erotic dialogue carries no romantic or emotional commitment. Volume masturbators are not looking for relationships, although commercial fantasy ladies do develop regular, repeat clients who specifically request their accustomed voice of choice.
Along with traditional mediums of adult entertainment (magazines, photographs, films, and videos), telephones and the Internet are now part and parcel of the "sexual smut" revolution. Computer "hot chatting" is a less intimate, high tech version of phone sex: sexually inquisitive adults type in and exchange fantasies on screen in both private chat rooms and in on-line orgies in public teleconferencing spaces. Ostensibly academic communication networks, modem dating services, and adult line bulletin boards like Cyber-Eroticom effectively transmit "hot" text and graphic images between keen, kinky, on-line keyboard tappers. The global information superhighway/cyberbrothel of the year 2000 offers high resolution porno-nudes; the joys of cybersex; and live, two-way, interactive video sex alongside archival data from the Sorbonne and Renaissance art from the Uffizi Gallery. Matrimonial attorneys can rush in where ambulance chasers fear to tread: new legal grounds for a divorce action. Private investigators will wiretap sex lines, electronic mailboxes, and computer terminals to gather evidence on straying spouses--bedroom snapshots are a thing of the past!
SCARLETT uncorks her own erotic desires: Hi, it's Scarlett!
MIKE's hard voice cracks at me like a whip: Scarlett O'Hara, how you doing?
SCARLETT: Are you still on the phone?
MIKE: No, no. Why don't you come on down here?
SCARLETT: No, I'm not gonna go over there.
MIKE laughs: Come on, it's getting late. We were supposed to get together hours ago.
SCARLETT: I called four times already, and you keep saying to call back again in an hour cause you're watching a movie. We should meet now in public, or not at all.
MIKE: You're really that nervous, huh? What are you, one of those Catholic girls, or something? I got a doorman. He can come up with ya. You'll have a witness in case I chop you up.
SCARLETT: Once I'm chopped up, I don't need a witness!
MIKE: I could just chop him up easily, too.
SCARLETT laughs recklessly: Exactly!
MIKE (after a freewheeling discussion of Judaism as a religion or nationality group): Let's stop talking about religion; I'm losing my horniness.
SCARLETT: So what do you do with yourself except get horny?
MIKE: Well, that's a big part of my life. Besides that, I take care of business, pay the rent--just like everybody else. Hold on a second! Whack!
SCARLETT: What happened?
MIKE: Fucking roach! My dog eats them.
SCARLETT: Oh, gross!! That's horrible!
MIKE laughs: No, it ain't; it's good protein. Um, I'd really like to get together tonight, but I don't really want to go out and have a drink.
SCARLETT: What do you want to do?
MIKE gives voice to his interior sexual monologue at the slightest provocation: I'd like to bite on your butt!
SCARLETT: I don't let strangers bite my ass.
MIKE: We're not strangers. We've known each other at least a week now.
SCARLETT: Oh, shit! I wouldn't exactly call it knowing somebody.
MIKE: How can you consider me a stranger? We got pretty wild. We've already had sex together; it's better than that.
SCARLETT: Phone sex--that's different.
MIKE laughs: Yeah, it is. It's not as fun, but it's not as messy. I thought you were a wild girl; I'm a wild guy sexually.
SCARLETT remains unruffled: Do you talk like this to a girl you just met in person?
MIKE: Sure, if I'm interested, and that's what I want to say to her--yeah! No one's ever walked up to you and said, "Fuck or fight"? It works great with biker chicks.
SCARLETT: What do the girls say?
MIKE: Sometimes she says fight, and then I punch her in the face and knock her out--or sometimes she says let's fuck.
SCARLETT: That's why I'm not going over there.
MIKE: laughs: I'm teasing you. Don't be such a jerk. I'm only teasing you. Yeah, I go around punching people in bars--girls especially. Hi, baby, fuck or fight! Boom!
SCARLETT: That would be a pretty unique pick-up line.
MIKE ups the sexual ante: Oh, I've done it before. But you never smack ‘em if they say no. Come on, come over--I'm very horny. How are we gonna get to know each other if we don't fuck? When we finally do get together, I'm gonna make you beg. You're gonna see me, and you're gonna think I'm so hot you're gonna wanna fuck me. And I'm gonna say no--you gotta beg first.
SCARLETT: No, I don't have to beg; they beg me.
MIKE laughs: They beg you, huh? You know what? Because of your height, I bet a lot of guys like to get into little girl fantasies with you and dress you up. I bet when guys look at you on the bus, some old pervert is saying to himself, "I betcha she'd look great in some pigtails and a cheerleader outfit.”
SCARLETT: Oh, no! I probably would; I'd look like I was ten!
MIKE: Ooh, that might be kinda hot. I'll have to put you in a school girl outfit and buy you a big red lollipop. You getting horny, or what?
SCARLETT laughs: No, not really. So, how many women have you had sex with in your life?
MIKE: I don't know. A lot. Probably above average.
SCARLETT: How many? Five or ten?
MIKE falters between sin and salvation: Jesus! A fucking monk--a priest has more sex than that! Get your nose out of there! Go! Now! Sorry for screaming in your ear.
SCARLETT: Was that your dog?
MIKE: No, it's my neighbor. She's crawling around on her hands and knees eating out of the dog dish.
SCARLETT laughs: Oh, shit! No she isn't.
MIKE: Yeah, she's a stewardess; she gets into getting spanked.
SCARLETT laughs: I don't believe it--put her on the phone.
MIKE: Butch, come here--talk to me! Nah, she doesn't want to.
SCARLETT: Right. I didn't think so. So, how many women?
MIKE counts the rings on his penis: A shot in the dark? Well over two hundred. Because women are so afraid to admit that they're horny, they aren't so easily fucked. But a man--he's a slut. I fucked a girl right in front of Houlihan's on Wall Street--right on the hood of a rattly, old Chevy. St. Patrick's Day. But I would never fuck without a rubber. Never, ever, ever! Matter of fact, even before all this shit happened, I was always using rubbers. I don't wanna get nobody pregnant. Jesus Christ!
SCARLETT: I always fantasize about finding someone in a club and letting him have sex with me in the bathroom. But I'll probably never do it because of all the diseases around.
MIKE is shocked: Are you crazy? You're twenty-eight years old! You're gonna die without finding out how your fantasy would actually feel? I mean, without even attempting it? How could you do that? Fantasies aren't there just to keep as a fantasy; they're there for a reason. They're not fulfilling a need that you have. Something isn't right. I act ‘em out; I do it. Two girls or shit like that--I've done.
SCARLETT: I should go to a psychiatrist to get help to become promiscuous. I always stop short of doing what I really want to do.
MIKE: That's right, babe. Someday you'll be an old lady, and you'll be pretty unhappy. You're getting me very horny.
SCARLETT: Not that, again!
MIKE laughs: I'm as hard as a rock. You sound wild. You sound very imaginative, very daring. I like that. It's like a litmus test. Girls I know I'm not interested in would've hung up on me when we first started talking the first night. So far, you hung in there pretty well. I've been trying to shock you, and you're just blowing it off. You're giggling a little bit, but I like that. Like the little girl. Come on over here. We can do some safe sex; just play with each other. You'll like my apartment; I'm right near the South Street Seaport. I've got three floors, a staircase to bang you on, and you can see the Brooklyn Bridge from the terrace. Do you live alone?
SCARLETT: Yeah, but my brother's moving in in two weeks.
MIKE: Well, we better start fucking around before then.
SCARLETT: No, no no!
MIKE: What do you mean no? Why, you think two weeks from now we wouldn't be fucking already? Are you crazy? What are you, Mother Teresa or something? You're joking, right?
SCARLETT: There are no guarantees, no timetables.
MIKE: Babe, if I see you and I like you, and you like me, we're gonna fuck. I don't like beating around the bush. Obviously, the first second we see each other, we don't have to jump into bed, but if we like each other, I wouldn't be there to play cards. You know what I mean? Hang on, babe, the other phone is ringing. . . .
I lost out tonight: Mike's next door neighbor is coming over to take care of him instead. But, he's going to think about what I look like and fantasize about me while she gives him head. With his technicolor, surround-sound imagination, Mike also insists that he knows Madonna and Sean Penn: "Some girl swore that I looked like Sean Penn. The only reason would be because I have crow's feet around my eyes and squinty eyes when I smile and I'm all fucked up." Mike even pulled a train with the former Hollywood couple: "Somebody from the front and somebody from behind. It's like a little locomotive." Any existing photos of the celebrity sex-a-thon? "No, I'd be driving around in a fucking Mercedes right now if I did." He also gave me the inside scoop on comedienne Sandra Bernhard: "She is the biggest slut in the world--a big-time slut! She's so horny, and she can't get anybody to lay her." Mike declined to explain exactly how he knows so many hot box office properties, but someone in the personal bodyguard business (?) would have easy access to the many rich, spoiled things that go bump and grind in the night.
Brazen licentiousness notwithstanding, Mike incorporates a heavily Irish Catholic background into his mental baggage: his conversation is peppered with images and allegories of priests, virgins, and saints. A childhood of holy water and rosaries has steeped him in a rich, stern, penitent culture which he simultaneously embraces and defies with punchy, New York street grit. Has Mike been able to resolve the inherent conflict between practicing Roman Catholicism and pursuing Church-banned, unorthodox erotic avenues? Can you see him crouched in the confessional, crippled with guilt and haunted by impure thoughts: "Forgive me father, for I have sinned: I called the S & M line every night this week." Although the Catholic Church condemns telephone sex lines for encouraging and facilitating the sin of masturbation, perhaps they are the one make-believe place where Mike can juggle his religious and ethnic precepts and his personal lifestyle. The flesh may be weak, but the phone is strong.
Mike greatly intimidates and intrigues me: he makes me feel like an inadequate, hayseed Girl Scout compared to his raw, underground swinger's club standard of physicality. Has Mike really created this hybrid sexual universe for himself to live in, recognized and accepted on telephone lines and in Hell's Angels, Harley Davidson bars--or, is it all just very wishful thinking? This time, though, I was saved by the bell: no housecalls, and no deposits in the sperm bank. If I indulged myself with a different man every night--and this would be so easy and tempting to do--it could seriously erode my integrity. Even though "sex" would only take place with a male voice, verbal intercourse is a mutual sensual experience--and a very intimate, personal act of giving. I would feel like a human toilet, used and flushed by every man that unzipped his fly and dropped his Calvin Kleins in front of me. I don't want to become an uncompensated (no less!) fantasy hostess for hundreds of sexually volatile men. My struggle with phone sex is not yet over. I am still caught somewhere in between innocence, loneliness, frustration, hedonism, and lust. Which of these forces will win out?
CHAPTER 14
IT'S NOT OVER TILL THE FAT LADY SINGS
Population research cited by the Center for Science in the Public Interest indicates that adult obesity in the United States rose by 30 percent in the 1980s, and super-obesity in children doubled in that same decade. The National Center for Health Statistics estimates that in 1999, one out of three Americans are overweight: sooner or later, they all masticate their eager, ravenous way onto the Large and-Lovely Line. Devoted, ecstatic phone men congregate here to meet abnormally obese women in defiance of bulimic-to-the-bone, cover girl beauty standards: the more pounds the merrier! Clinical obesity is a contributing factor to chronic morbidity and mortality, but on this party line Queen-size ladies are treasured and sought after for their Rubenesque figures. The New Chariot nightclub in Queens even holds a large and lovely night on Thursdays and a lingerie show for "big beautiful women" on Sundays, where ardent admirers can find the fat farm dropout of their dreams.
KEVIN (a flat, uninflected farmboy monotone): Well, it's okay. Thin women are alright. Why don't you give me a call?
JOAN JETT, JR.: Where are you from? You don't have a New York accent.
KEVIN: Nebraska. I'm thirty-one. How old are you?
JOAN JETT: Twenty-eight.
KEVIN (increasingly alarmed): But you're not large!! You're skinny!! You're small!!
JOAN JETT laughs: You go on the Large and Lovely Line cause you wanna find heavy girls?
KEVIN (tentatively): No--partly.
JOAN JETT: What do you mean?
KEVIN: Sometimes late at night there are mostly girls hanging out on the Large and Lovely Line.
JOAN JETT: How long have you been in New York?
KEVIN moves in for the kill: Two and a half years. So, when are you gonna have me over?
JOAN JETT: I don't know. I thought you wanted an overweight girl.
KEVIN: No, I go for medium. I like big butts, though.
JOAN JETT: How big?
KEVIN: Something I can grab onto.
JOAN JETT laughs: So, what do you look like?
KEVIN laughs: What do you want me to look like? Really, I'm six feet, 185 pounds, medium length brown hair; I'm a Michael Landon lookalike.
JOAN JETT: Have you met any girls from party lines?
KEVIN: Actually, I met two, but it lasted like twenty minutes--and then I went home.
JOAN JETT: How come?
KEVIN laughs: Because I wasn't turned on, so I went home.
JOAN JETT: You told them you were sick or something?
KEVIN: I wasn't mean. I just said I'm sorry, I don't see a real attraction. So, that was it. I met one of them over at the Brooklyn Promenade, and the other one up at her apartment in the Bronx.
JOAN JETT: Which one did you run away from?
KEVIN: I ran away from both of them.
JOAN JETT: Do you meet girls at discos or clubs?
KEVIN sounds angry: No, I get real nervous in those situations. I don't know what to say. I'd just laugh if I had to go up to a girl and tell her her dress was pretty or something.
JOAN JETT: It's hard to find someone.
KEVIN: Yeah, I get aggravated a lot. I haven't been in love for eight years. So, do you ever get into phone sex or anything?
JOAN JETT: No.
KEVIN: Well, if you want my number, it's 555-1993.
JOAN JETT: Well, maybe I'll call you later, okay?
JEFF clicks on: Hi, Joan. Joan, wanna give me a call? I'll help you get to sleep.
JOAN JETT: I'm gonna stay on the line a little longer.
BILLY clicks on: Hey Joan, are you horny?
JOAN JETT laughs: Yeah.
BILLY: You are? Why don't you give me a call?
JOAN JETT: No, I'm not into phone sex. I want the real thing.
BILLY pumps me for information: Do you have any clothes on?
JOAN JETT: Just underwear.
JEFF: What else?
JOAN JETT: That's it; it's ninety-five degrees out.
BILLY: Wanna give me a collect call?
JOAN JETT: No.
JEFF: Can I bite your nipples?
JOAN JETT: If you were here in person, you could.
BILLY: Like to touch a man's cock?
JEFF: Are you wet?
JOAN JETT laughs: I'm not telling you! I don't even know. Is this the Large and Lovely Line, or the horny line?
GAIL: This used to be the Large and Lovely Line.
JOAN JETT: How come all you men always live out your sexual lives on the phone?
JEFF: What's wrong with rubbing yourself?
GAIL: Why don't you get off the line and rub yourself!
JEFF: Hey Joan, gimme a call.
BILLY: Are your vagina lips soft?
JOAN JETT laughs: Of course.
BILLY: What color is your pussy hair?
JOAN JETT laughs: Brown.
JEFF: Is it up to your belly button?
JOAN JETT: No.
BILLY: What was the last time you had your anus licked?
JOAN JETT: About a year ago--it's tough on my hemorrhoids.
BILLY: A large woman has a lot of big things to offer.
JOAN JETT borrows Scarlett 0’Hara’s perfect adenoidal locution: What does she have to offer?
BILLY: Cheeks of her rear end.
JOAN JETT: You like big cheeks? Is that what you like?
BILLY: Why do you think I'm on this line? What's wrong with taking advantage of large cheeks?
JOAN JETT: I'm glad that you like large women, but why do you?
BILLY: Cause you can handle a man's body a lot better if you're larger, that's all. Don't you think so?
JOAN JETT: What would happen with a thin woman?
BILLY: It ends in fifteen or twenty minutes.
JOAN JETT: You think big women have more energy?
BILLY: As far as sex goes, they do--yes.
JOAN JETT: Why?
Angry cavalcade of beeping: Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
BILLY: Cause the friction on a larger woman is a lot less.
JOAN JETT: You mean the friction on the vagina?
BILLY: On the whole body altogether.
JOAN JETT: You mean cause there's more padding there?
BILLY: Less punishment. They're tougher, that's all. Big women are always able to outlast. . . .
MONITOR comes on the line: Hello! This is the moderator. I hate to interrupt, but I'd like to point out that the Large and Lovely Line is a non-sexually explicit line. The gentlemen can call our Fantasy Line at 550-5000, and the courtesy caller can also be connected to that line. Okay, folks?
BILLY: Joan Jett, give me a call; I'm going now. My number is 516-555-1990.
JOAN JETT: Okay. Maybe I'll call you later. Bye.
JEFF chimes in: Call me, too. My number is 555-5230. Call me soon. Bye.
GAIL re-emerges in triumph: I was the one beeping for the monitor to get those guys off the line.
TONY clicks on: Gail, so are you large and lovely?
GAIL speaks without calculation: Well, I'm 5’3” and I weigh 185 pounds. I'm large, but to say I'm lovely would be presumptuous. I lost a lot of weight in the past year. I guess that's not the kind of thing that would be popular to discuss on this line, though.
TONY: Oh, you know, I've heard it many times before. How many pounds did you lose?
GAIL: I lost a whole small person!
Many men call L & L simply because it always has a substantial surplus of women--and wherever there are women, they hope there is also sex talk! Not Pete--who disdains "cheap fantasy lines" and holds an idealistic preference for the normally clean conversation and nice people on Large and Lovely. Pete likes big women: "They are warm, they're bustier, they have less hangups. I like a girl maybe twenty pounds overweight.” Pete has already met a few of the ladies: "But I hear people staying on this line for eight or ten hours: those are girls I don't want to know. It'd be a waste of time for me to meet them. You could be in the middle of making love to a woman, and she goes, 'Listen, I gotta go call the party line. Hold on--I can't wait!’” I couldn't wait, either! I called Billy back at 2:30 A.M. to bait him and find out why he likes fat women! When I play against type as "the fat lady in the circus," I feel swollen: I, too, visualize the coveted obesity as I describe my adopted body's unwieldy new contours and perimeters. I have to weigh myself in a neurotic, ninety-one-pound panic each time I reprise this semi-distasteful cameo role as zaftig, little JJJ!
JOAN JETT, JR. begins her telephone courtship ritual: Hi! It's Joan Jett.
BILLY chokes on his own testosterone: How you doing, you hot thing, you?
JOAN JETT marvels and gets into character: You think I'm hot?
BILLY: Oh, yeah! The hottest sex is with a larger woman. What kind of men do you like?
JOAN JETT: I like tall, muscular, masculine guys with long hair.
BILLY tries to fit the bill: Well, I'm 5’8 1/2” and I'm muscular. Muscular men can take care of you better, huh?
JOAN JETT: Yeah, they're strong enough to lift a big girl like me up and carry me to the bedroom.
BILLY: Are you at home now?
JOAN JETT: Yes.
BILLY: Is anyone in the house?
JOAN JETT: No.
BILLY: Do you live alone?
JOAN JETT: I live with my brother, but he's out tonight.
BILLY offers me whatever he has between his legs: You should come over.
JOAN JETT: No, I'm too tired. I'm very heavy, so I sweat a lot in this heat, and I can't move around as much.
BILLY: If I came over to your house, would you meet me at the door with your panties on?
JOAN JETT sucks in her faux midriff: Yes, with my control top, black lace pantyhose over them.
BILLY: Do your nipples become erect when they're sucked?
JOAN JETT: Of course they do. Do you like the way a heavier woman looks in underwear?
BILLY: Well, why not? They're full. It's nice to see how the undergarments of a heavy woman look.
JOAN JETT: Why do you think it looks good?
BILLY: Cause it's full, full of potential.
JOAN JETT frantically concocts enormous, tongue-in-cheek keyster measurements: Cause sometimes I get a little embarrassed with the cellulite and dimples on my ass, and everything. But you like all of that, right?
BILLY: How heavy are you?
JOAN JETT ruins Miss Scarlett's svelte, sexy reputation: I'm around thirty pounds overweight.
BILLY: Oh, that's nothing. So you're not really large and lovely!
JOAN JETT: Um, well, I'm short. I'm only five feet, so thirty pounds on me is like fifty or sixty pounds on someone else.
BILLY: What's your stomach like?
JOAN JETT plays into his pathology: It's kind of big and round, you know. Sometimes I wear a girdle.
BILLY gets very turned on: Would you like to experience sex with me?
JOAN JETT: I don't know; I don't know you.
BILLY: If I were lying next to you right now, wouldn't you try me?
JOAN JETT: Maybe.
BILLY: You should play with yourself. I want you to be hot, wet--to be easy. So you can spread your legs.
JOAN JETT: You'd like my big legs?
BILLY: I like to kiss and lick the edges of large legs.
JOAN JETT: My legs fan out around the upper thighs, in particular. That's where I carry my weight.
BILLY: I'd like to oil your ass. Not to enter you, but to slide my cock around your big butt.
JOAN JETT is amazed: Is that what you like to do?
BILLY: That's one of the things--of course.
JOAN JETT gives out a free sex sample: I have a nice butt. My cheeks are big, perfectly round, and soft; they're nice.
BILLY: Are they?
JOAN JETT: Yeah. Guys like my butt. I have a nice rear end.
BILLY: You should let it be taken advantage of. What's wrong with being oiled? It's smooth, easy.
JOAN JETT: You just slide your penis along it?
BILLY: Up and down the crack from top to bottom. And if I came, I'd probably put it in your hair.
JOAN JETT grimaces: You like to put it in girls' hair?
BILLY laughs: Yeah.
JOAN JETT: What about coming in between the folds of my stomach? It's very soft there.
BILLY: I've done that, too. Can I taste you?
JOAN JETT: Do big women taste different than little women?
BILLY: You taste richer.
JOAN JETT is proud: Really?
BILLY: Creamier, yeah. I would run my tongue from your ass to your clit. Stop in between and slide my cock inside you. How do you think your pussy would feel over my cock?
JOAN JETT: It would feel good!
BILLY: I would be grabbing your nipples and squeezing them. You like your nipples squeezed?
JOAN JETT: Mmm! Gently squeezed. That would be great!
BILLY: I'll open up your wide pussy and lick it from side to side.
JOAN JETT: Do you like wide ones?
BILLY: Yeah, I do. There's more to take advantage of.
JOAN JETT: Mine's big lengthwise, but it's tight inside.
BILLY: Can you grab onto a man's cock with your pussy muscles and hold him in there?
JOAN JETT uses her voice as an aphrodisiac: Oh, yeah!
BILLY: You like to put on a show for your man?
JOAN JETT: My body's enough for a man!
BILLY exclaims: I'm sure it is! You ever tire a man out?
JOAN JETT: Oh, yeah. This guy I was with two weeks ago said, "Oh, God, you're gonna kill me!" He was sweating and he was about to have a heart attack at the end.
BILLY: Oh, no! You should've made him eat your pussy for a little while.
JOAN JETT: Well, held done a good job. Held done enough work.
BILLY is leaking sperm: Well, that's good to hear. How do you move when you're being pounced?
JOAN JETT switches her phone receiver to the other ear: I move around a lot.
BILLY: You do? Up and down or side to side?
JOAN JETT: Every way. It depends on how heavy the guy is. If he's crushing me, then I can't move that much. But, if I'm on top, then it usually prevents him from doing what he wants to do because of the weight.
Billy interviews my fat cells for another twenty minutes: come, already, so I can get you off the phone and make another call! I was tempted to hang up on this boring drone right before his grand testicular finale!
BILLY's appetite is sated: Wow, that felt good!
JOAN JETT: I feel like eating an Entenmann's cake right now.
BILLY laughs: What about eating a man, instead?
JOAN JETT laughs: That'd be better, but I can't go downstairs and buy one in the deli. Well, I have to go. I'll give you a call. Have a good night.
BILLY: You too. Bye. Call me anytime. I'm available.
The brain is the largest and most virile sexual organ: phone men barter sight, taste, touch, and smell for hearing and imagination to enjoy sex. With male arousal so heavily dependent on visual stimulation, callers meticulously construct a lavish, personal mental hologram of the purported full curve of your butt cheeks and the soft largesse of your Wonderbra breasts. Otherwise sane men would have indoor wire sex with a burrowing Australian wombat if she would provide them with the titillating, decorative, microscopic sexual details they need to create and sustain an erotic illusion. Intrusive and invasive, the callers struggle to achieve "virtual reality" intercourse one step ahead of computer technology. They want you to help choreograph the precise scenario and cinema-vérité environment--set them up in living color astride a butcher block table or energetically re-enact the Kama Sutra with them in a purple velvet and brocade bedroom suite.
Words are the coveted tools of this limitless fantasy trade, yet there was no apparent thread or logical progression to Jeff and Billy's stream of consciousness interrogation about my simulated body parts and sex life--at the steady speed of a tennis ball "lob-ster" machine. And poor Kevin from Nebraska is the quintessential, colorless party line caller: alone, resigned to being alone, and cut off from all hope and species memory that love makes the world go round. He has apparently come all the way to New York to lie in wait and placidly gorge himself in a pool of wallowing, phone bathing women. We are in a realm of sexual sublimation, erotic hysteria, and delusional desire, where no one gets what he or she wants: there is no sexual healing on the party line.
MABEL: My number is I81-U812. Any horny men out there?
ROGER tests his mettle: That's not your number.
MARTY: Hey, are you a guy or a girl?
MABEL: Don't be stupid; I'm a girl. I'm a very respectable lady. I'm looking for a nice man. Give me your number.
ROGER: 914-555-1532. You really gonna call me?
MABEL's voice whirs like a helicopter: How big are your feet?
ROGER laughs at his own equipment: Size ten shoe, double E width.
MABEL: A big foot says it all.
ROGER: Oh, that's good. How big are your feet?
MABEL: Twelve.
ROGER: That's pretty big for a woman.
MABEL mortifies the flesh: Yeah, like my tits.
JANET: It's disgusting out here tonight. I don't believe it.
MABEL: The only thing is, I might crush you. I'm very fat.
ROGER (rubber duck squeaks in the background): How fat?
MABEL bulges: About 450 pounds. You like that?
ROGER beams over the telephone: Oh, that's great--I love that!
MABEL proposes aggressive sex: Can I crush you? Can I sit on your face?
ROGER: It's a guy--I don't think a girl would talk like that.
JANET (and CHRISSIE from Los Angeles): You never know, today.
ROGER assesses his chances of success: If she was really like that, she'd give anyone a phone call.
MABEL: Can I call you collect? My phone bill is very high.
ROGER (for whom the party line is a constant, cruel mistress): Yeah, call me collect. I'll be right back. I gotta see who this person is.
CHRISSIE: He must be very lonely to give her his real number.
GARY clicks on under a harvest moon: Hello! Who’s out there?
WALTER kowtows: The sexiest women in the entire world.
JOAN JETT, JR. puffs out her cheeks and adjusts her floral mumu: Hi, I'm Mrs. Roper! My husband Stanley is so cheap!
WALTER laughs spiritedly and hopes for an apartment upstairs: Mrs. Roper, do you consider yourself large and lovely?
MRS. ROPER giggles appreciatively and gags one last time as "The Blob": You know what I look like: I'm very large and very lovely!
WALTER is unabashedly enthusiastic: You're my kind of woman!
The Large and Lovely Line is a good game, but it's a little too peachy keen and squeaky clean for me--let them eat cake! I need something genuinely warped, like Frogman, otherwise known as Foxman, Babyface, or simply as Mark: I picked up this twenty-five-year-old nominee for the party line lunatic-of-the-year award on the 1234 line. We spoke two or three times at home: Frogman's Bugs Bunny-on-acid voice completely fits his off-kilter preoccupation with films and cartoon characters and his matching powerlifter/movie usher career. All I really know about him is that he lives with his parents and sleeps with a stuffed polar bear, but as I was already going to be in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, I arranged to meet him at 2:30 P.M. at the train station. Frogman insisted that we go straight to his movie house for the afternoon, “right, right, right?" Will I go out with him Saturday night, too, "huh, huh, huh?" How would I recognize him? Frogman made it easy: look for "the joyous expression and the mental connection," and the "two lightning bolts on the side of my head, one on each side, eight inches long uncoiled.” I should consider myself very lucky that he never showed up!
In a similar vein, I waited at the phone by the Korean deli for fifteen minutes tonight, but there was no accustomed, prearranged, prompt hearty ring this time around. Tarzan suddenly disappeared: our sub-tropical, trumpet-blowing ape-man must've just wanted uncomplicated, unconventional afternoon sex (go read the back pages of Screw Magazine, you deviant!). Dating rule number one: never beg for anything from a man! If he wants you, he knows where to find you, and he knows how to act when he gets there. I was growing tired of the difficult coin booth ritual, anyway! Skip to rule number two: the best way to get over one man is to jump into phone with another one! I went home, rang up Steve from Long Island, and we are going to spontaneously meet at 11:30 P.M. at a small music canteen near Times Square. I need to shower, get all dressed up, and trudge through the most dangerous blocks in New York City in torrential rain like I need a hole in the head! But, since it's the rare occasion when Steve is available and in the mood to come in, I dutifully donned my rock n' roll shoes to bring you live coverage from the dating demilitarized zone. I've heard of people giving their lives for their country, but for a book on party lines? I should go dial 1-900-IMBECILE!
I met Steve (a twenty-nine-year-old jewelry/clothing designer) several months ago during a racially charged, tinderbox, Latin Line switchblade serenade. I've been getting to know Steve very well from the inside out before I'm sure I even want to know him as a boyfriend/lover. Cerebral interfacing is a perversely backwards dating process: in real life, the heart starts to pound as bedroom eyes suddenly double-lock across a crowded room--and then you learn if your temperaments are compatible. On the line, attitudes, intellects, habits, and personalities can immediately gel, but you might get sick to your stomach rather than weak at the knees when you meet. There can also be a devastating double whammy when the phone personality and the real personality are strangely dissimilar.
Meeting Steve strikes a chord of terror in me: I mentioned my apprehensions to him one night as I watched Psycho II on television. He reassured me, "Yeah, I'm standing here on the phone stabbing the air with a knife!" I bet you are, Norman! Steve’s recent behavior engenders extra anxiety: he has been missing for three solid weeks now on an alleged business trip to Hong Kong. I've called his house countless times, and while he's evaporated into thin air, his trusty machine is always there to faithfully record me hanging up in silent, suspicious disgust. Panic attacks aside, party line men are usually the most subdued, bashful, safe men around: only their vocabulary is aggressive, and only over the phone, at that! Even the pranking fanatics are fundamentally harmless: they wouldn't bother to stalk a woman in person. They can inflict much more gratifying, long-lasting, and extensive emotional damage brandishing their three-ways!
Steve was already there when I arrived--thankfully minus any concealed implements of mass destruction. Based on all our conversations, I expected to see a wimpy, whiny Jewish entrepreneur with a sophisticated, arty edge. Steve was none of the above, but at least he complied with rule number three: men should be seen and not heard, and if they have to be seen, they better be damn good to look at! Steve was a few inches shorter than 5’9” ("Liar, liar--pants on fire!")--and he only mentioned today that he had gray flecks in his longish, curly black hair--but he was arrestingly handsome with enchanting, large green eyes, and an athletic young build. He looked very good in a white sweatshirt, Levi’s jeans, and white Nike hightop sneakers.
Steve offered me a drink, and we spent a few uneasy, distant hours together listening to hardcore/thrash bands: we stood nearby each other or watched from separate vantage points as I mentally undressed the singers, and he thought God only knows what. Deafening guitar crunch and turbulent feedback made conversation nearly impossible, but he immediately told me that he has no friends where he lives, is very lonely, and hates to go back there at night. He lost his last two girlfriends because he "abused" them by “ignoring them" (one of whom gave him a black eye while he lay in traction in the hospital): he had to explain to the surgeon that he accidentally hit his eye with the cast. It soon became apparent that Steve isn't the high-powered rich designer he claimed to be, who travels around the world on business and used to rent an exclusive, $1,500 a month Manhattan apartment. Jumpy and agitated whenever he spoke, Steve blurted out that he gets "emotionally and mentally confused" if all his work isn't "laid out clearly" before him: he doesn't like anything to be "hidden." I detect the familiar sound of shattered pieces rumbling around his head. I didn't pick up any of this Jeckyll and Hyde madness over the telephone, either; it was very well concealed. The real Steve is a taut tripwire triggered to snap at any moment!
Psychological abnormalities aside, Steve was a perfect gentleman and waited with me at the dark, soggy bus stop for a half hour to protect me from the parade of pimps, prostitutes, and killers lined up on pre-Disney Forty-second Street. As a college student, Steve put in a lot of overtime on this block: buying and using drugs, seeing nudie flicks, and crashing for the night in dope dens above sleazoid sex theatres. Although he knew the tenderloin district and its clientele much too well, he was absolutely appalled that one of the girls in the club tonight had kissed three different men. As my bus pulled away, he walked in the opposite direction to his train home--to a massage parlor, perhaps? I won't call Steve again: another long-time, anonymous phone friend bites the disappointing dust.
Later in the week, however, the Houdini of hit and run dating proudly carved a dandy new notch in her telephone dating belt: Wendy deflowered a party line virgin! I had met Tom only two days earlier on his maiden call to the Gabb Line: he was Irish/Italian, twenty-seven years old, a Wall Street computer programmer, and sounded sweet and decent over the phone. I loitered outside Oliver's Pub on the lookout for a 5’11”-tall, 160-pound man with brown hair and brown eyes on an approach vector. My wildcard date took the form of a frightened, plain-looking "Poindexter" in a wake-black banker's suit; I watched him alight from a taxi and march through the door with the last-chance air of impending doom usually reserved for a full-scale audit by the IRS.
I followed Tom inside to a secluded, overhanging window-seat-for-two, where he obeyed Emily Post's dating etiquette rules down to the very last letter. My perfect host nibbled on raw veggies, I got hammered on a vodka with club soda, and I gazed out in elation at the shiny mound of heavy-duty trash bags deposited by the building across the street, which coincidentally harbors the top floor office of Bruce Springsteen's manager! Nice, shy, self-conscious Tom is the kind of guy bred for bringing home to mother--if I had a mother. He is not the kind of guy, however, for bringing home to bed. He could grow his hair long and replace the Joe Corporate uniform with trendy threads, but his personality would still lack the rough, tough, Marlon Brando waterfront edge I crave. No big, beefy, longshoreman's hands here, either: Tom's are thin and refined, and suited more to an IBM laptop than to my G-spot. Tom (who insisted on knowing "Wendy Kaplan's" last name) offered me an evening of drinks, dinner, a nightclub, and cabfare home, but I hotfooted onto the bus instead as he waved goodbye and made me promise to call him for another date. As I reeled up Third Avenue, I said to myself, "Wendy, don't be a dick--call the poor guy!" I really meant it at the time, too! But sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind, and I'd be afraid to kiss him. I'm not sure if I'm afraid I'd like it, or if I'm afraid I'd toss my cookies!
Party lines are like a slick, triple-color-print, shop-at-home catalogue: you can order what you want by telephone, but it's usually the wrong color, fit, or quality, and you wind up having to send the merchandise back. Except for the torch I'm carrying for unobtainable Robert. Let's see: it's 3:11 A.M., and time for his reliable, complimentary, hotel-style rise and shine call. (As an equal opportunity, tightwad telephone saboteur, I only prank after 11:00 P.M.!) Without me, Robert would have to waste half his paycheck for daily, commercial 540-WAKE service--he should be darn grateful! I'm dialing away here--ooh, I love it! So, you thought you could hurt me, did you? Pranking is the supreme act of love or hate: it is never an act of indifference.
CHAPTER 15
ONE FOOT IN THE PHONE GUTTER
Studies by the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in California estimate that 10 percent of American adults have experimented with sadomasochistic activities in which one partner dominates the other with physical restraints, pain, or other punishment for mutual sexual enjoyment. Madonna, MTV, the fashion industry, and movies like 9 1/2 Weeks have catapulted bondage and discipline into the public eye as elite, alternative sex for the nineties. Surveys indicate that 30 percent of Generation X regularly incorporates specialized S & M sex into their lovemaking. Over 100,000 Americans share bondage paraphernalia tips on S & M computer bulletin boards offered by established companies such as CompuServe. "The English Palace," an international S & M computer sex bulletin board, took in over 10,000 calls a month during 1994 from on-line clients in Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, and the United States. Findings by both Masters and Johnson and Nancy Friday report that conquest and captivity scenarios are the most common adult sexual fantasies: rivers of gore run right through our secret gardens.
Bondage and discipline line: the words themselves connote something severe, punitive, and Prussian. I became privy to macabre slave auctions involving "nice ladies" with names like Mistress Raven and their "bad little boys,” complete with explicit souvenir photographs. I met a frustrated dominant called The Artist who spanks an inflatable blow-up doll with a Kevlar tushy "because he needs an outlet." Masochist-in-training, Stungun, was sore because his jealous fiancé had administered electric shocks to his genitals: "I like to cheat with little girls on B & D first thing in the morning. It's like my cup of coffee for the day.” I asked B & D aficionado, Naughty Girl, what, other than personality traits, "dominant" and "submissive" mean here: "You either like to spank, or you like to be spanked." This is a party line on the edge.
Surrender, a lifestyle dominatrix, governed the explosive, early morning, Marquis de Sade interlude. She wanted to know if John, a nursing home night attendant, ever got hit with a switch: "No, ma'am." "Uh oh, John! It hurts!" John, an obsequious, aspiring head slave, quaked under Surrender's crossfire; he promised to amuse her if she would call him at work and humiliate him. Corporal Punishment also cozied up to Surrender as penance for his unauthorized, annual, four-week vacation from the line. Obstreperous and disobedient, he went to sleep at 4:15 A.M. and then dragged himself out of bed exhausted at 7:00 A.M. for a pre-suit and tie, sucker's pitstop on B & D. Pedantic and erudite, Corporal Punishment wryly accepted me as a temporary S & M sojourner, along with my puzzling author persona and grating, "ex-mother-in-law" voice.
CORPORAL PUNISHMENT: If I wasn't so happily married to this wonderful submissive, I'd be with Bianca every moment of the day. I'd be torturing Bianca now, and she would love it. I'd have her off her walker and back into her wheelchair in twenty minutes!
SURRENDER calculates as docile listeners laugh theatrically: What's your electric bill this month, Vinnie? It costs a lot to electrify that metal floor. It's only comparable to the cost of your rubber boots. And then there's the cost of the little Puerto Ricans who come in and scrape the rubber off the electrified metal.
CORPORAL: Oh, yeah; it's astronomical. I go through four or five pairs a day.
MARY ANN lets the wounds coagulate: Hello!
CORPORAL: Little Mary Ann, where else did you get punished in Catholic school, other than your knuckles? Where else, Mary Ann? I love Catholic school kids. Did you tattle on me at school, Mary Ann? Did you wear patent leather shoes and a pleated skirt?
SURRENDER moves to bring this man under control: The Bishop's calling you, Vin! Oh, you need discipline! Come closer, Vinnie! I think Cassandra’s the only one that could straighten Vinnie out. She'd cut him to the quick!
Surrender gives Corporal Punishment a searing visual flashback when she reminds him that tonight is pay-up time for all the hired help: "Uh oh! Its old nightie night night!" Surrender waits for this night all week long.
SURRENDER boasts: Everybody always wants to know how I could do scenes like I do in my house and nobody ever complains. And you know my big black chair over against the far wall? And Headmaster beats Naughty Girl on it? And I beat my guys on it? And I get beaten on it? I have a dominant, Morning Marvin, who beats me. And everybody screams in this house. And nobody ever complains. You wanna know how, Vinnie? They took the woman's body out Saturday morning: the cops said to me she's been dead a long time. My dog was going for bones.
CORPORAL hears a randy, unforgiving click: Read my lips: "I'm DOMINANT! I'm fucking DOMINANT! That's why I have this chair!"
SURRENDER: And the woman downstairs is stone cold deaf: she's got a hearing aid and she reads lips. You can't qet a better pair of neighbors! Once she came up and knocked on my door to see if my shower was flooding, and I was all dressed up. I mean, I was ready, but she didn't look at me twice.
Police sirens wail down Second Avenue through my speakerphone.
CORPORAL laughs: There's another one! They just found another one!
SURRENDER has a twinkle in her eye: There's one more. I'll have to knock on her door and see if she's dead.
On the B & D Line they break the sexual ice upfront by asking if you are dominant or submissive: they have very specific preferences, and they don't take no for an answer. In contrast to other lines, where intricately balanced relationships subsist on phone contact alone, callers to the B & D connection actively and regularly meet to beat rather than just talk. Since their unusual sexual habits bar them from the mainstream singles scene, they use the party line as a beacon to locate like-minded devotees of erotic pain. B & D conversations serve as an open casting call for bit players in Surrender's weekly home theatre of blood.
B & D has a large, medieval coven of soft-spoken, alluring dominatrixes; the ladies purr together and fawn over each other behind padlocked dungeon doors. The flexible men--self-declared masters, sadists, and servants alike--humbly and respectfully take their turn at a biting telephone tongue-lashing. We observe additional mental casualties and unwanted by-products of American Catholic school education. A puritanical childhood of rigid discipline and systematically inculcated guilt can breed a confused blurring of the nurturing caregiver/punishing mother/fornicating lover female roles. These psychosexual disturbances manifest themselves in a quirky, closet culture where every act of intimacy is fraught with peril and is consummated in the Freudian shadow of violated taboos. Love and chastisement go together; pain heightens pleasure.
The bondage and discipline line has its fascinations: I could learn to enjoy this. The only problem is, I wouldn't get any sexual satisfaction from dominating strangers over the phone. I want to torture the men I know: I'd love to put a few of them over my knee and spank them--with a nail-studded baseball bat! Then I could stuff them in a tiny steel cage and make them beg to get out: usher them into their very own "Room 101.” (Any English lit majors out there?) The possibilities here are endless. Speaking of punishment, I've called Robert up every single night this week at 4:00 A.M. to annoy him with more silent crank calls. He needs discipline!
Max, my first and only phone lover, is always ready to abuse the family jewels with tough, raw, skin-grating masturbation. I ran into him on the Fantasy Line again early one morning using his real name (Tony), and rapping Billboard charts to several headbangers who knew him well. He got extremely angry when I wouldn't call him back at home. Tony figured held finally hit the 900-number jackpot with me: I would be a permanent, renewable source of free, cell phone snatch talk at his beck and call. You make a man ejaculate once, and he thinks you owe it to him to "put out" every time you talk! A single measly handout of meager sensations, and he'll scratch and howl at your back door for the rest of his life! When I did call Tony three weeks later (just about the Cathouse), I somehow also reluctantly wound up talking to "Spike the Penis" again and made the little "feller" come to the rocky sound of my voice. Tony half-joked that a handjob will gain me free admission to his club (worth a whopping $5), free drinks all night (at $2 each, worth a staggering maximum of $8), and introductions to any of the band members playing that night. For a blowjob, he will introduce me to any star I want! Tony admitted, though, that he's never really exchanged feminine favors for dressing room privileges before. I smell shyness, loneliness, and decency here--right smack dab in the middle of showbiz decadence!
My pilgrimage to the Cathouse began with a thirty-minute ride on their luxurious, chartered "Majic Bus": a state of the art speaker system bludgeoned us with pounding music while a mobile, on-board bar lubricated a select clique of creepily beautiful, chalky-complected vampire boys; thigh-high-booted strippers; and collagen-rich, nose-ringed Lolitas. We even had our very own rock n' roll driver, Frank, who broods over his weekly flock of regular riders like a heavy metal mother hen. Blistering Ozzy Osbourne music reached right out the front door to greet us like a rolled-out, red VIP carpet: I instantly sensed who Tony was, but I fortified my hair with spray and my nerves with alcohol before I approached him. The classic, V-shaped male physique is built on substantial upper body strength: virile, muscular shoulders and a hard, expansive back whittle their way down to a narrow waist and pelvis over hard, high, ball-in-socket hips. Tony, toweringly too-tall at 6’5”, rather resembles an Egyptian step pyramid. A broad square waist leads upwards to a little pot belly and very narrow shoulders; two long, scrawny, limp arms dangle down unimpressively from the summit. Longish, wavy brown hair; bushy eyebrows; and a large, tapered moustache accentuate a sickly, Mediterranean, "Snoopy" countenance. Dressed in a navy tee-shirt and jeans, he looked like a gory, gangly, two-hundred-pound Jolly Blue Giant.
Our meeting was unromantic, brief, and business-like, with a fleeting reminder that the terms and conditions of his free drink offer still stood. There was no sense of connectedness or closeness in spite of our previous, serial spoken intimacy. Tony ran around the premises all night playing manager to six hundred people plus staff, while I played with several of his adorable, long-haired customers. What a friendly group! Two potent black Russians, some free hotdogs and potato salad by the open air back grill, and some smooching on the lap of a cute little drummer made for a very successful club evening. At the end, I found Tony to say goodbye, and he pointedly ordered me to call him. To hell with him--let Tony order in another phone whore! I'd rather rustle up the brass balls to dial B & D; it's my quarter, so sit up straight and pay attention!
CARLA: Have you been to the Vault or to Paddles?
SCARLETT: No, I've never even heard of those clubs.
CARLA: What about the Till Eulenspiegel? It's and S & M society. Till Eulenspiegel was a court jester in Germany who was hanged for one of his jokes. They have parties in which the fantasies are lived out.
SCARLETT: What do the people do?
CARLA simpers: Well . . . bondage, whipping, covering a person's head with a leather mask and then going through these dungeon things in a group. Spanking, whipping, making someone your slave. Make someone submit. You can tell which end I'm on.
SCARLETT: Which end?
CARLA: Obviously, if I say make someone submit, I'm dominant. With gorgeous legs. Oh, it's wonderful for a guy to submit to my beautiful, black-stockinged legs.
TOM: Did you say make a quy submit to you?
CARLA: A guy.
SCARLETT: How do you dress up?
CARLA: Sometimes I wear a leather mini-skirt; spiked high heels; long, over-the-elbow black gloves. Sometimes with masks, sometimes without. I sound like I'm on the wrong line. I thought I'd dialed 550-2222.
TOM: That might be this line, but you're like major motion! That's pretty interesting, wouldn't you say, Scarlett?
SCARLETT: Yeah. That's why I'm asking him questions.
CARLA: Go ahead. My phone number, in case you wanna call after this, is 555-1206. I've given parties, so my number is in the Village Voice. I get all sorts of kinky calls, anyway.
SCARLETT: You give parties?
CARLA: Yes. Sometimes my parties are without S & M. They're just transvestite parties. Sometimes straight parties.
VINCE: You really enjoy wearing women's clothes, huh?
CARLA: I'm 5’7”, the prettiest legs you've ever seen. I look like a Marlene Dietrich, German cabaret type.
Tom (a 220-pound chef) laughs loudly: Oh, my fucking God!
CARLA: You know what that is? That's an embarrassed laugh.
TOM: I'm embarrassed for mankind!
CARLA drops her voice to a whisper: Most guys find me pretty sexy.
SCARLETT: So how do you categorize yourself--as a TV or gay?
CARLA: The first word would be the best: it's a special category.
VINCE: Do you play hide the salami?
SCARLETT: What about with women?
CARLA: Really, I have fun with all kinds.
VINCE laughs: Including animals?
CARLA: Yes, anything that is soft, sensitive. . . .
TOM: Oh, man, this is sick! Mooo! What kind of animals?
CARLA: Really, that's not intelligent enough for me to spend money to keep talking! You must be a very dull person.
TOM: You ever met anyone off this line?
CARLA: Yes, I've met people. We get together if the person is warm, sensitive, bright, submissive, intelligent--and that I'm not meeting right now.
SCARLETT: Could I ask how old you are?
CARLA flares up: No, I've answered enough questions.
SCARLETT: Are you all dressed up right now?
CARLA: Yes: black negligée, garter belt, black stockings.
TOM: With hair popping through the top of it.
CARLA: Oh, isn't that funny?
VINCE: Oh, you mean you shaved that off.
CARLA: Bye Bye. It really wasn't very qood tonight.
MIKE laughs: Sorry you didn’t get off! Usually there's a cadre of regulars on this line. It's a good line: the people on it are into fairly kinky stuff, but they tend to be bright. My real kink is the lingerie. I like the outfits and shit. The children may go hungry, but my wife will have great lingerie.
SCARLETT wants attention: If I had a boyfriend, I could get into wearing sexy underwear to turn him on.
STEVE barks a hostile challenge: Why don't you wear it for me?
MIKE: The guy in the background sounds like a real winner.
STEVE: Scarlett, you like to be tied up?
SCARLETT chases calamity: I've never tried it.
STEVE: You should check it out; it's fantastic. I love it, don't you? I like girls to tie me up, stomach down, and fuck the shit out of my ass with a hot dildo.
SCARLETT is aghast: That's what you like?
STEVE: Yes. I'm fully clothed with my ass up in the air.
SCARLETT: And then what do they do to you?
STEVE: I'm all theirs. They can play with my cute ass.
BOB clicks on: Hey, Scarlett, are you on the right line? Do you have any idea what this man just told you?
STEVE: Would you like to call me, Scarlett, and talk about it?
SCARLETT: Okay. What's your number?
STEVE: And, Scarlett, you will not be disappointed. I have a very nice body and a cute ass. What do you look like?
SCARLETT: Like a mini-Joan Jett: I'm five feet tall.
STEVE: Wow! I went out with a girl 4’11” last night. She was adorable. Would you like to be in control of a guy a foot taller than you?
SCARLETT: I do like big guys.
STEVE: I'm here to please you. Bubble bath. . . .
SCARLETT: What do you do in the bath?
STEVE: I don't get in the bath. Only if you tell me to. I'll do your laundry. I'll sniff your panties before I put them in the wash.
SCARLETT: What do you sniff for?
STEVE: Scent. I'd do anything you want me to.
BOB: He wants to be your slave.
SCARLETT: Well, I am Scarlett O'Hara, after all. All men should be women's slaves--instead of torturing us!
STEVE: Oh, no, no, no! You could torture me!
SCARLETT: How do you like to be tortured?
STEVE puts his genitalia in harm's way: Cock torture, ball torture, tickling. Call me and I will give you details.
BOB: Why don't you call him up, already?
DAVE clicks on: Call him--you got a slave there.
STEVE: I'll dust, do the blinds, do the floors, change the sheets. I will eagerly be your houseboy. You won't be disappointed, Scarlett. This could be your chance.
SCARLETT: Who’s the guy laughing?
STEVE: I'm fun and I'm funny. I'm an educated professional.
DAVE: Call him up already. This poor guy is really putting himself out here, and you're just. . . .
STEVE: Yeah, call me, and we can get a little more personal.
BOB: Scarlett, if it doesn't work out, call me!
STEVE: You have something within your reach that is as good as you can get.
BOB: You have two within your reach.
SCARLETT: Well, what's you number, also--in case he's not a good slave.
STEVE: Anybody could tell you they wanna be your slave after they already hear you say you want one.
BOB: 555-4823. Scarlett, call him first, please. Bye.
DAVE: You have another one within your reach.
SCARLETT: I have too many slaves tonight.
STEVE: Scarlett, please call me! Please!
DAVE: Do you want another number? 212-555-1000.
SCARLETT laughs and lilts: Okay, I do have a large plantation!
STEVE: Scarlett, if you take any more numbers, you're never gonna get off the line to call me.
BOB: Call me second, Scarlett!
DAVE: Bye, call me third, Scarlett!
Ready, everyone? I’m sitting here nursing a martini (What am I, an alkie? Ha, ha, ha!) in my blue checked flannel nightgown with nubby, maroon knee socks and thick red eyeglasses, but I'll still sound like a hot naked vixen in fetish gear with huge, iron-mail, silicone Penthouse hooters!
SCARLETT: Hi, Steve!
STEVE: This was meant to be, Scarlett!
SCARLETT: Where are you?
STEVE: The Northeast Bronx. I could be there in fifteen minutes.
SCARLETT: What kind of work do you do?
STEVE: I'm in sales: pharmaceuticals.
SCARLETT: What do you look like?
STEVE: I'm 5’9”, 175 pounds; I'm an ex-gymnast. I've got brown hair, straight back on top, long in the back, short everywhere else, brown puppy eyes, real nice smile. I'm broad-shouldered, strong legs, a hairy chest, a real cute ass. Nice calves, too. Nice, nice legs.
SCARLETT: What do you do to make your ass nice?
STEVE: I jump a lot of rope; I kick for a football team. I like to stick it up in the air for a nice woman to beat on and play with.
SCARLETT: Tell me what you like in bed. What would you want me to do to you?
STEVE launches a siege on his own body: Torment me, tease me--especially, play with my ass.
SCARLETT: What should I do with it?
STEVE: You can lick it and finger it and put a dildo in. Especially with a strap on.
SCARLETT's eyes grow as wide as saucers: What's that?
STEVE: A strap-on dildo. You know, one that you wear.
SCARLETT chokes: One that I wear?
STEVE: I could eat you. I could put my tongue in your ass while you sit on my face and suffocate me.
SCARLETT: Why do you like to be tied up?
STEVE: Because then you are in control. I'm a male slut—I just love it. I'll do anything.
SCARLETT: Do you ever tie the girl up?
STEVE: Only if she wanted to be. I prefer to do whatever you want. I'd lick you from head to toe very slowly. I'd make big circles with my tongue around your breasts. Starting with the outside. And getting smaller and smaller till I get to the big nipple and then I'd stop and go to the other breast.
SCARLETT: That sounds great.
STEVE: Then I'd lick the salty cleavage and suck on it while I squeeze the breasts together. I'd finally play with the nipples by pinching them and flicking my tongue on them and sucking ‘em. (Steve makes disgusting breastfeeding and slurping sound effects.) I'd put the whole breast in my mouth and nibble on them. Would you like that, mistress?
SCARLETT: I'd want you to do that for an hour.
STEVE: Sensitive nipples, huh?
SCARLETT: Very sensitive.
STEVE: I could make you squirm. I'd suck on your clit and point my tongue real pointy and lick your clit all the way down to the bottom of your lips. I'd spread your lips apart with my fingers and lick the inside of each lip with my flat tongue--both sides (lapping sounds). I'd do anything you want me to do. I'm telling you, I have a very good imagination.
SCARLETT: What else would you do?
STEVE: I'd turn you over and put my cock in your ass.
SCARLETT: I don't like that.
STEVE: It's a muscle just like your vagina. I'd slowly press it against the hole and leave it there till the muscle relaxes. Put it in maybe half an inch. I'd pull your cheeks apart and let the muscles relax a little more. I'd grab onto your tits and squeeze them and then fuck your ass.
SCARLETT: How far in would you put it?
STEVE: All the way in.
SCARLETT: Do you think it would fit?
STEVE: Oh, yeah. Definitely. It might be tight, but it will fit. I'll make it fit.
SCARLETT: I've never done that. I figure it would hurt.
STEVE: Oh, no. It's just a sphincter muscle, just like the pupil of your eye; it contracts and expands. And then after I got it in, I'd roll you over so that I'm on my back and you're on top of me with your back to me, and I'd play with your tits and your clit and squeeze your tits, and all you gotta do is lay there and get fucked.
SCARLETT: Where will your penis be?
STEVE: Both holes. First one and then the other.
SCARLETT: Do you like it better in my ass or in my vaginal
STEVE: I like both, but I like a nice wet vagina.
SCARLETT: You'd do it from one hole to the other hole, back and forth? In what position--doggy-style?
STEVE: Oh, definitely. So I could grab your hips and pull you against me. You put one knee up on the edge of the bed or on a chair, and just leave that pussy exposed. I'm telling you, I'll do anything. I'm very good-looking, and I'm a good person. Is it getting you horny?
SCARLETT: Yeah!
STEVE: I could sit across your knees and you could spank me, and you'd feel my cock getting hard against your legs. And you could spank me harder for being bad.
SCARLETT: Would you be bad?
STEVE: Getting hard while you spank me is being bad!!
SCARLETT: How long should I spank you?
STEVE: Till I scream loud enough for you. Till you make a bull's-eye.
SCARLETT: Should I use my hand?
STEVE: A wet hand hurts more. A little sting. Scarlett, take advantage of me, please!
SCARLETT: I could make you go into your car and do it to me in the back seat.
STEVE: Oh, I got a nice, roomy car. A Taurus. You'd put your legs up high and then wrap them around my neck while I got on top of you and slammed you.
SCARLETT: That's exactly what I'd like. I'd make you do that for an hour.
STEVE: I've also got reclining front seats that go all the way back. You could put your feet up on the dashboard. I'd do push-ups right into your pussy.
SCARLETT: My ex-husband wasn't adventurous enough to do it in a car.
STEVE: Oh, I love it in the car. I have a lot of nerve, too. You should really jump on me, now.
SCARLETT: Have you ever been someone's slave?
STEVE: Maybe. Let's put it this way: I'm very good at it.
SCARLETT: What ethnic group are you?
STEVE: Jewish.
SCARLETT: You're Jewish? I'm shocked.
STEVE: But I'm street-smart. I've been around the block. I love Jewish women. I don't get to meet that many: there aren't that many Jewish women out there.
SCARLETT: You sound Italian or Puerto Rican.
STEVE: Oh, stop that! I'm very Jewish. My last name is L----. I look a little Italian, but with the brains, not the chains.
SCARLETT laughs: That's a good way of putting it.
STEVE: Please come and meet me now! Please!
SCARLETT: It's great when a man begs. They should all beg.
STEVE: Pretty please with whipped cream and a cherry on top.
SCARLETT: No, I'm not gonna get together now.
STEVE: Yes, you are! I'm so horny now. And I have a car, and I'm only fifteen minutes away. I'll lick your ears and kiss your eyes--down to your neck, down to your tits, and back up again. Massage your shoulders and your calves. I'll play with you all over. I'm very, very affectionate.
SCARLETT: I bet you'd be a good lover.
STEVE: I'm very tender, very passionate. I pay attention to detail. You should really take advantage of me.
SCARLETT: I'm not gonna meet someone in the middle of the night and go do that.
STEVE: My cock is handsome. It's fat and long, seven inches or so. Blood running through it: small, tight balls. You could probably put them both in your mouth--it's very nice.
SCARLETT: Would you come in me?
STEVE: Would you like me to?
SCARLETT: Yeah. I love it when a guy comes in me.
STEVE: I'd come in you so deep. Oh, baby, please let me come over! I'll be so good to you. I'll do anything. Please!
SCARLETT: What would you wear?
STEVE: Anything you wanted me to wear, including your clothes.
SCARLETT: They'd be too little. Do you ever dress up in women's clothes?
STEVE: I will for you! I'm very masculine. That's why I like to be at your command. Because I go through life being very aggressive at work, but I really wanna be yours. Please!!
SCARLETT: You have to be aggressive all day, so when you're with a woman, you like her to be aggressive instead?
STEVE: But that's not to say I wouldn't be aggressive if I had to be. We can hang out in the car for awhile, and we can even go get a room.
SCARLETT: Get a room?
STEVE: Yeah. Why, do you have a place for us?
SCARLETT stumbles: No, not really.
STEVE: Let me fucking come in you! Please let me take my car down there. We'll get so passionate we'll tear each others' clothes off. Don't you want that? It would be your fantasy come true. We could just go around the corner and do it. It's nice and quiet out now.
SCARLETT: I could wear a skirt.
STEVE: Yes, with no panties. I could get my cock out and feel it rubbing against that bare pussy. I'd stick my dick way in you, baby.
SCARLETT: It's exactly what I want.
STEVE: Come on, I promise you you'll be safe. You have my number. I'll give you my address. I'll give you my name, my license plate number, social security number. I'll show you my checkbook, Citibank cards, gas cards. They're all in my name. I promise you I'll treat you so good.
SCARLETT: I bet you would.
STEVE: I would. And I'm very nice-looking. I bet we'd make a nice couple. And no one would have to know I was yours to do with what you want. Just me and you. It'd be our secret. Isn't that what you wanted?
SCARLETT: I'd like to, but unfortunately I'm too cautious and rational to let myself do it.
STEVE begs and bullies at the same time: Yes you are! We're both horny, and I'm very close to you. You're gonna live out your fantasy. I'm just what you want.
SCARLETT: Like Fonzie?
STEVE: Yeah, like the Fonz. I'll wear a motorcycle jacket, tight jeans, and I'll slick my hair back with grease. Just come down and see me. If you don't like the way I look, you don't have to get in the car. But I guarantee you'll like me. I don't want you to be concerned about looks. I'm not an ugly, desperate guy you're talking to.
SCARLETT: Every guy says that.
STEVE: But I'm dead serious. You'll say, "I'm surprised I could meet a guy that looks like you on the line." Tell me where you are. We're both adults; we'll live your fantasy. I have nice cloth seats in my car--not vinyl. They don't get cold, and you don't stick to them. You can't pass up a chance like this, Scarlett. Just come downstairs and say hello.
SCARLETT: If I was still dressed and had makeup on, I would.
STEVE: I like a natural girl.
SCARLETT disengages: No, maybe tomorrow.
STEVE: Do me now!! I wanna suck your tits all night. I'm so good at that. Oh, please!
SCARLETT: I bet.
STEVE raises his voice: I wanna fuck you in the back seat now, dammit! You have to give me a chance.
SCARLETT: I can't do it tonight. I gotta go to sleep.
STEVE: You'll go to sleep after. I'll be there at 2:20--you'll be asleep by 3:00. Let's live out our fantasies. That's what you called for, right?
SCARLETT: I don't have the nerve.
STEVE grows annoyed: All you have to do is come down to the car. Period. From there, I'll take over. You want it. Why are you fighting it? Scarlett, you're a grown woman. There's no reason you can't. Scarlett, don't tease me.
SCARLETT: I don't know you. I've never met a strange guy and just gone and fucked him.
STEVE insists: Come on, come down, and we'll talk about it. No strings attached. I don't play games. You just wanna hear, "What are you gonna do to me, what are you gonna do to me?" Well, you heard it, now. Please, baby, please! I'll love you to death.
SCARLETT: I can't. I've really gotta go now.
STEVE scowls: No you don't.
SCARLETT: But I am!
STEVE: You're chicken!
SCARLETT: Yeah, you're right!
STEVE snarls: You suck!
SCARLETT hangs up the receiver: Fuck you!
What a rodent! How could I respect him as a man after hearing about the strap-on dildo? He sounded like a high-spirited huckster touting a Kentucky Derby racehorse rather than a suitor trying to interest a woman in a potential date. Strong legs? Nice calves? I must've attended a slave auction, and I didn't even know it! He deliberately pandered to my sexual weaknesses to lure me out of my house toward him--like a helpless deer frozen in the glare of oncoming headlights. I am so hungry for my fantasy--for exactly what he promised. Part of me is truly sorry that I am so timid and chaste. I ought to shed my Scarlett/Wendy/Joan Jett phone skin and re-emerge as "Sister Sexuality the Party Line Nun."
Libidinous phone interchanges may be opening up a dangerous, society-wide Pandora’s box of impulses and urges that are better off left locked in the subconscious. A certain degree of taboo and repression may be necessary for the survival of civilization lest we act out the new sexual freedom we find on the telephone and bury ourselves in a morass of sex crimes and sex abuse. What people say on the phone is merely the tip of their own personal erotic iceberg. I have a lot of questions for Steve. Is he (God forbid!) an ophthalmologist or pharmacist in a position of medical, ethical, or social responsibility? Is he gay or bisexual? Does he do windows? Has he ever succeeded in convincing a girl to meet him for bizarre sex practices alone in the middle of the night? And, if so, is she still alive? Thank God he doesn't know who or where I am! I am totally frightened to go out on a date with anyone now, knowing that these men are out on the street somewhere instead of locked in the maximum security, sexual disorder clinics where they belong! I could accidentally meet a "Steve" somewhere and not know it until it's way too late. I hope the vice boys pick him up in a squad car before he picks me up!
Steve is a classic psychology textbook case of a combative, competitive, socially prominent man who wants to act passive and feminine in private. Well-educated, upper income bracket, high-profile lawyers and CEOs are the typical clients who patronize professional dominatrixes to cater to their masochistic needs. They view sex as a vehicle for power exchange: it is a tremendous release for a successful man to relinquish control and responsibility at the end of the day and put himself in the hands of a childhood authority figure to be punished. Nun, teacher, mother, and nurse fantasies are commonly role-played to either a sexual or emotional resolution. I learned something new about myself from my contemplation of the sexual balance of power: I don't like submissive men. It is a complete turn-off. I like strong, masculine, physical men; I like to be luxuriantly receptive, pursued, and taken. Scarlett O'Hara is liberating all of her slaves: this is my emancipation proclamation.
I've also had time to ponder my first, fun brush with phone-related sex: I will not do it again. I already live enough of my social life on the line; I don't want to completely substitute the telephone for a man. A quick conversation with a willing stranger is ultimately very empty and unsatisfying; it cannot fulfill my ongoing need for physical warmth and love. I can't rub my hands all over a smooth-skinned warm chest through the Sprint Ahead 1-800-PIN-DROP calling program. I cannot feel a heartbeat on the “MCI 5 Cent Sundays” discount plan. And no telephone receiver will ever kiss me back. In the middle of the night, I want to call out a real man's name, not "Monitor, connect me to the Wett Line, please." I have scoured the collective psyche of half the kooks within a one hundred mile radius. Enough is enough! I'm retreating to the sanctuary of Jack the Wack and the relative simplicity of my old home line and the regulars: no more phone filth!
CHAPTER 16
DEALING WITH CHILDREN AND CHIMPANZEES
I am on spectacular hiatus from secretive masturbation in the sex line cocoon; I mainlined 643 for two action-packed hours, reveling at the first insect-like buzz of an outgoing dial tone and the pinched anemic trill of each mischievous, incoming call. Six-four-three has evolved into a private, members-only social club for a hundred and fifty phone patients who gather together for their pre-determined daily dose of premium grade gossip and overloaded invective. Semi-arrogant, exclusionary cliques eventually coalesce on each line over time: closely swaddled in a familiar babel of tongues, we feel safe sharing our telephones together. Regular dialers become insular and prejudiced: they don't like to mingle with other lines. On a well-known fantasy number, an elite, freshwater "fish club" emerged, spearheaded by a twenty-six-year-old sound engineer, Piranha: all participating callers adopted aquatic names and phoned ensemble in floating schools.
The complex social dynamics on 643 have even come to include canny impersonators who carve out their own distinct Jekyll and Hyde identities (an Original Rodney and a Fake Rodney, good/bad Turtles, and a rising tide of Bam Bam imposters). Linemates keep very close tabs on each other, just short of electronic surveillance and FBI wiretapping. Interested callers whose lives revolve around the phone will store and remember obscure, long-forgotten, casually divulged details about select individuals. My esteemed competitor with the frog's corpse in his throat, Mr. Know It All, was mystified: "There was some girl on the line who was saying things about me that no one knows. I don't know where she got her information, but it was right." One talented researcher even knew his precise weekend ball schedule at Marine Park.
I too, am very fixated on the tightly woven, mad inner sanctum of this particular line: if corporate ownership ever eavesdropped on their 643 free access investment, they would be thunderstruck! We no longer serve any economic purpose: bona fide customers who used to dial the 900 tie-in number have almost all disappeared. Over the lifespan of this line, we have either absorbed everyone into our non-paying fold, or frightened them away. Penny-pinching stockholders may continue the loss-leader 643 consortium of lines solely as a tax write-off! We could even be a cover for a deceptive practice known as "masking," whereby 800/900 number charges are disguised as long distance calls by billing companies that collect money for sex line operations: interstate calls placed to “212-643-1924” escape the purview of federal telephone consumer regulations.
If the 643 parent company leases its telephone lines from an independent local exchange carrier, it can earn a per-minute access charge from Bell Atlantic to complete calls made to it by customers dialing from a Bell Atlantic-operated local exchange. Divided between the 643 company and its carrier, these access charges create a functioning revenue stream out of a “free” chat line. Alternately, legitimate venture capitalists could have launched 643 to do market research and develop an experimental, core consumer group with a highly cultivated taste for expensive talk lines. We will beg to call their 900 numbers after they terminate the 643 sample teaser. If this was a dastardly plot to home-grow new customers, it backfired--the trial project attracted only the vocal but sneaky, permanently blocked set. At a dollar a minute, I'd be sorely tempted to dial--but even I wouldn't sit around and spend that to listen to Jack the Wack! (Who am I kidding?) Wise-sales managers could have even planted Jack and Rocco among us to prime the pump of an anticipated "take-a-number and wait-in-line" business boom!
Bell Atlantic, with projected revenues of $7.5 billion this year, makes a tidy sum alone on the huge volume of local calls that the line generates. Bell Atlantic has another vested interest in 643: it keeps us out of their hair and out of trouble. As long as we have this "line of last resort," we won't waste their customer service representatives' time to worm our way out of party line bills. We won't have to use phony or stolen calling card numbers. We will not alienate our friends and relatives by sneaking calls from their homes so that they have to complain to the phone company about us. Driven dialers like Wayne will not need to tamper with telephone booths to get to the line. The access line also serves a vital therapeutic purpose: it keeps Jack the Wack off the streets and on the telephone. We are supposedly no longer a standing menace to capitalist society.
Boldly defying both common sense and omnipresent danger, a chic, A-list New York nightclub offered me the opportunity to throw the biggest party line party in human history in their rear VIP room! Come on, everybody, you're all invited: we have unlimited free admission (mention Wendy's name to the doorman) and a free open bar and hot buffet from 9:30 to 10:30 P.M! Put down your telephones, put on your evening clothes, rent your limos, hail your taxis, and find out who you've really been talking to for the past nine months of your life! I let my fingers do the walking through my yellowing party line pages to personally invite every fantasy line feeler, fork-tongued Casanova, and daredevil trashmaster in the tri-state listening area. I tracked down good old Torch, but Frank's phone was temporarily disconnected. John the graphics lab production manager and "Rhett Butler" were permanently disconnected. No one had ever heard of Bob the building administrator at his alleged telephone number; Don, a randy lawyer, had also given me a phony phone number. Alex (of Alex, Maria, and Scarlett fame) had farmed out the number of a Soho restaurant management company; Anthony the peeled banana pervert had slipped me the number of a fuel company. "Footloose and fancy free" Wayne was glad to hear from me and promised to come attired solely in his Chippendale's briefs and shoes. (Hedonistic aspirations aside, Wayne just installed "ex-girlfriend" Beth as manager of his new video arcade business!) Steve from Whitestone (did I really reach EMS?) was the only one who definitely didn't want anything to do with any party line gathering!
I renewed valuable contacts with the unseen perpetrators of multiple, assorted telephone felonies: Shadow Cat dutifully took down the address and resigned himself to attending yet another formal, singles phone function. I feel sorry for the poor lonely guy: it is a mission of mercy to invite those who would never be invited anywhere else. Tom joked that I should also invite Carla, but I don't want to give the bouncer any more reason to throw us out than he'll already have! According to an ad running in the Village Voice, the Eulenspiegel Society is meeting this Monday to discuss "whipping without pain"; future "play nights" will focus on military techniques applied to S & M and the selection and care of Victorian corsetry. On Fridays, participating transvestites are invited to leave their street clothes behind and dress up at Carla's between 7:00 and 10:00 P.M.; they can change again after 3:00 A.M. for a $10 fee.
I re-approached Tarzan through Will, who happily passed the invitation on to his philandering pal. I invited Nicolle Amie during a chance encounter on the 1234 line this afternoon; the sweet cherub told the whole line that I was "gorgeous." Shortly afterwards, though, a previous date delivered her personal opinion of Nick: "You're a little bit weird." I even called Frogman up: he is coming, but is concerned about showing proof of age twenty-one at the door. Wasn't he twenty-five just a few short weeks ago? Age regression must be contagious. At least he's shaved the two twin lightning bolts off the sides of his head--what a relief!
I left engraved invitations on their answering machines for affable Jake, Eddie the lawyer, Sparrow, Derek, and Kevin and Billy from the Large and Lovely Line. Then I brought out the heavy artillery and importuned some of the insiders. Suspicious and short-tempered, DJ correctly suspected that I'd acquired his number through judicious porching. He was testy and curious as to why I'd waited three months to call him, but he soon warmed up enough to ask me if I wore mini-skirts. Satisfied and reassured by this effortlessly standard "phone-speak," he promised to make calls to the 643 girls to help the party grow. Rebel was happy to hear my phone-sexy voice but was very presumptuously and openly concerned that since I'm the hostess, "if we wanna leave, we'll have to wait till the club closes, huh?" Rebel expands exponentially on an hourly basis: he put on five pounds this week, but now that he knows about the upcoming revelry, he'll work it all off first!
I logged staggering hours camped out on every different type of talk line to promote the even: tonight I even spent two and a half hours on Fantasy and littered the entire line with invitations:
BUNNY: Thanks, Wendy. I'm definitely coming to your party. I didn't have anything to do for Friday night. Bye, now.
WENDY: Bye. I think we're about to have an orgy on this line.
CATHY: How many other people are out there? Say hello!
JOHN (in a state of neurological arousal): I'm sticking my hand into your panties. Does that feel good?
WENDY: Um, yeah. But I thought you were into baseball games, not phone sex.
JOHN continues his pattern of predation: I'm rubbing my fingers slowly down between your pussy lips. How does that feel?
WENDY laughs: It'd feel better if you were here doing it.
JOHN manipulates his loudly screaming genitalia: Why don't you tell me what you'd do for me if I was there?
WENDY: Naah, I'm embarrassed.
JOHN: What would you do?
WENDY: You'll have to come to my party Friday and find out.
JOHN (protracted silent interval): Cathy, what would you do?
CATHY: I'm thinking about it.
JOHN badgers us: Huh, you gonna tell me? I can't hear you.
CATHY: We're just breathing.
JORI (enthusiastic, perfect Bangladesh diction): So how can I meet you two girls?
CATHY: We're gorgeous. If you saw me and Wendy, your eyes would pop out of your head.
JORI: Well, when you see me, you'll drop your pants!
WENDY: Why don't you come over to our house? Cathy, we could give him our address, right?
JORI circles like a buzzard: What you two looks like? Where you live? Where's your home?
CATHY: In Queens. 279th Street and Sutphin Boulevard.
JORI exclaims: That's not too far from where I live!
CATHY: I'll give you the address. You got a pen? It's 65-12 279th Street. You take the expressway.
JORI is busy writing: Uh huh.
CATHY: Well, you'll find it. Just keep bearing left.
JORI: You two alone tonight?
CATHY: We sure are. You got a car?
JORI: Yeah, I do. What we'll do then if I get there?
CATHY: Oh, you just wait until you get here to find out. You'll love it!
JORI: I will; I know I will!
WHISPERER: I'm an immigration officer, you Iranian fuck!
WENDY: What would you want us to do?
JORI sees Heaven in between two sets of legs: Something different.
CATHY: Oh, once you find that address, believe me, it will be something different.
MALE VOICE: Cause the address doesn't exist.
CATHY laughs in an airy, cotton candy Marilyn Monroe voice: Oh, shut up! There's always gotta be one smartypants!
WENDY: He can come too--just look for the house with the neon lights on.
MALE VOICE: I'm sorry, but I know the area very well. I'll say no more.
CATHY laughs: Are you putting down where we live?
MIKE (far away voices yelling in the background): Dish him, baby, dish him, baby! He ain't got nothing.
MALE VOICE: Not at that address.
WENDY shouts: I'm having a big party line party at a club called Bedrox on August twenty-fifth, and you're invited. It's at 316 West Forty-ninth Street in Manhattan. Tell everybody you speak to on any of the lines--and bring your personal friends.
MIKE: I know where it is--Bedrox. I'm definitely coming. I'll be the one in the red carnation. What do you look like? This way I can drop by and say hello.
WENDY: A little Joan Jett. Do you know who she is?
CATHY returns from the kitchen extension phone: I certainly do! Do you really?
MIKE: Wendy, honey, I'll see you Friday. Take care.
WENDY: Alright, great! Bye Bye. Cathy, are you still there?
CATHY: I hope that little Indian guy isn't looking for the house. He got off the line.
WENDY: Did you really give him your address?
CATHY: No! I hope he's not in his car driving around. I made that up.
WENDY squeals: Oh, shit! He's probably on his way!
THERESA clicks on: Wendy, hi! Listen, I'm really upset about my boyfriend. We had a big fight tonight, and I need to talk to someone about it. Would you call me back?
I dial Theresa for some juicy, Thelma and Louise girl talk.
THERESA: Hi! How old are you, Wendy?
WENDY: I'm twenty-eight.
THERESA: I'm twenty-three. Well, I've been going out with him for seven months, and all of a sudden tonight he told me he doesn't want to see me anymore.
WENDY: Why?
THERESA: Because his dick is so big that he can't get it all the way in me, and he says he's frustrated. But meanwhile, the guy comes buckets and buckets, anyway.
WENDY: How big is it?
THERESA: It's 4 1/4 inches around and about ten inches long.
WENDY breaks out in hives: Jesus, that is pretty big!
THERESA: Wendy, have you ever had a guy say he wanted to do something perverted to you?
WENDY: I only knew this guy for five minutes in a club—he asked me to go out to his car with him so he could eat me.
THERESA: Well, this guy wanted to shave my pubic hair. Has any guy ever done that to you?
WENDY: No, but my girlfriend Lorie did that once.
THERESA: Did she enjoy it?
WENDY: No, I don't think so. And she got an infection from it right afterwards.
THERESA takes an odd turn: You know what some guys do, Wendy? They call up the lesbian line just to listen in.
WENDY: Uh, yeah, I've heard about that.
THERESA: How many guys have you had sex with, Wendy?
WENDY suddenly feels uncomfortable: Well, I don't really want to discuss anything that personal. Anyway, I'm really sleepy, so I've gotta go now. Good luck with it.
THERESA: Okay. Nice talking with you, Wendy.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, your beleagured but savvy, courtesy line nightcrawler was almost caught in a bi-curious, lesbian telephone ambush! I could hear someone squealing like an overexcited harp seal in the background. That was a close call! That's what I get for dialing Fantasy again--armchair orgiasts in long beige raincoats who've snaked their way out of Show World and slithered onto party lines, instead. A real man--or woman, for that matter, makes love in bed, not over the phone! These lines aren't sex lines: no one on here has sex. All these people want is verbal foreplay and Vaseline.
Speaking of petroleum jelly, incorrigibly horny Wayne was not so darling today when I refused to call him back at work (undoubtedly for some slimy "phone cha cha”). He growled and pouted: "I'm not coming to your party now," and hung up! I continued to call several other charter members of my rotating telephone harem: Bill, the scared medical video turncoat, has moved away to New Jersey, and John, the lascivious warehouse worker, has a new unpublished number (I could just imagine why!). Playboy has relocated to Texas with Toni With A Smile. Sean, a 5’7”, 137-pound, thirty-one-year-old "skinny guinea with a flabby tummy," has sold off his pricey East Sixty-first Street real estate holdings and now devotes all his time to talking on a CB radio which jams television transmission for miles around his Bay Ridge home. He strongly recommended that I call 550-9999, a ten-cent-a-minute transvestite line, and effused deliriously about the best noise devices (Radio Shack's "The Hummer" rates an A+) for strafing the party line!
I tried to zero in on the early morning, ex-Wild Line breakfast club, but Dr. Trash is doing his dirty musical deeds again. Cathouse Tony, Mike from B & D, Roger from L & L, and Doug, a Jewish data consultant (Staten Island's only native yuppie!), all received calls: Doug laughed cynically and accused me of making a commission on the number of people I attracted to the club! Triple A, which appropriately stands for All American Asshole (also formerly known as the Golden Plunger), is a twenty-five-year-old keyboard player in a pop rock band, Tara (named after Miss Scarlett's plantation, of course). With a 32-inch waist and 44-inch shoulders, he stands 5’7” and 175 pounds: to finance his advertising degree at NYU, he claims to have worked as an adult phone line actor servicing women callers. Triple A--a man on a mission--petitioned to see me in an hour for either a bottle of wine at my house or a cozy restaurant dinner for two. I liked his imaginative, extended goodbye: "We gotta go out--you need good sex!"
Forty-one-year-old JJ (another big new connection) used to manage nationally known rock acts and, even more importantly, does radio promotion work, owns a record store, and is friends with a SONY Records vice president: backstage parties, here we come! Too paranoid to read out his number over the Fantasy Line, we both dialed 550-CLUB to rendezvous on a private bridge; then I called him right back at home. JJ masturbated profusely on the phone while he told me that his mother is lying in bed dying of cancer tonight in Lenox Hill Hospital. That's pretty tacky. Have some respect for your mother, guy! As a matter of fact, have some respect for yourself! You can't have a normal, decent conversation with any of these party line men. They all want only one thing: they want to put their hands all over themselves!
I called Bobby, a hot-sounding, thirty-three-year-old furniture mover, sculptor, and ex-musician from Sheepshead Bay, to remind him of the party--and was treated to a long, mumbled answering machine saga in a curious Pakistani dialect! Famous for making bizarre recordings in a vast variety of voiceovers, he has even had a local gallery exhibit of his creations in "phone art." Joey, an Italian muscleman with a broken leg, wondered how he would be able to dirty dance with me since he's on crutches. Solution: I'll prop him up against the wall and we can grind together. Necessity is the mother of invention. Brad, a budding Wall Street accountant, was best: after two minutes of innocuous conversation about the address, he asked if there were any hotels near Bedrox in case he met someone! As I hurried to get off the phone, Brad harassed me about what positions I like. I didn't dignify it with an answer and said goodbye, but he continued the ridiculous, ritual phone sex attack: "What are you wearing right now?" Clothing, you pathetic psycho, clothing!
Mr. Egg Nog and his new roommates had temporarily fallen into a vast, month-long, "not yet in service" telephone vacuum of upwardly mobile, young corporate barristers-in-training. Back again in circulation, he is coming to the party if he can get rid of his dinner date early with a plausible excuse: "The lesions on my penis are itching, and I have to go home and put ointment on it." My reputedly gorgeous friend cornered me into a deal: if I can't get two hands around his brawny 16 1/2-inch biceps, I have to give him either my home phone number or the top-secret access code to 643. Deprived of his rightful due, Egg's number is blocked, and the telephone company is on strike: "I'll tell them it's an emergency. I have to have my block removed so I can call the sex lines.”
Everything looks good, except for the oddly exotic circumstance that my entire guest list is male!! I put a frantic message on the Selections Dateline to solicit women, stressing that there'll be boatloads of loose bachelors at Bedrox--with an identical invitation on the men's line offering myself as the bait! At midnight, I dialed Jack the Wack's fortified home bunker and asked him to the extravaganza. As soon as I identified myself as Wendy, he accurately read out my entire party line rap sheet to me without missing a beat. Jack was a sweetheart; he was not the almost supernatural demon that he is on 643. Just inches below the apparently glacial surface, however, a boiling geyser steamed and hissed under pressure.
I listened and learned about our enigmatic strongman: he used to invest three hundred dollars every month just to trash the Wild Line. He proudly recounts: "I was told I had the personality to bother these people.” The Gabb Line recently threatened to sue Jack in court: "One of the monitors personally called me up: 'Don't call, and we won't prosecute you for harassment. We want you to keep your record clean."' Jack loves all this attention and notoriety; he even installed an extra telephone line and number just to give out to his party line contacts. While we spoke, he had constant incoming beeps on call waiting: "They call to act stupid; they whisper." Let Jack explain: "I give out the number so they think they have an edge. They think they have a Christmas present, and they're gonna open it. They sit around planning to do bad things to me. They think they're gonna prank me. It won't rile me. I just hang up and put SONY on the receiver, if you know what I mean."
Jack philosophized about party lines: "I'm dealing with children and chimpanzees. You gotta treat them that way: I get them mentally. They wonder where I am. Is that Jack playing the music? Where's Jack tonight? But you even get bored of trashing; it's the same entities." Jack said that since I sound intelligent, I could call him during his "party line office hours," from 10:00 P.M. to 2:00 A.M. weekdays: "I'd rather talk to somebody, anyway, than be on the line." Jack was patient, gentle, and happy with the unseen 643 caller who had cared enough to seek him out. Tragic frustration, loneliness, and rejection--rather than congenital misanthropy--must have triggered his blood feud with party lines: Jack was never able to find a woman or any real friends on the phone. He hears a lot of sad stories from the people who call him up: "Some are divorced, some have children; they have romance problems." (Damn right we do!) Even though Jack claims to hate party lines, Jack needs us and loves us. And we love him; it is a symbiotic relationship. Jack would never admit it, but if 643 were shut down, no one could possibly miss it more--or be more devastated--than he.
Tonight, though, 643 will echo like an empty, abandoned telephone ghost town as Bedrox successfully pre-empts all sentient party line conversation in New York City. I, personally, will get drunk as a lord, meet the man of my dreams, and hope that no one follows me home and stalks me for the rest of my life! And, best of all, there are only four anticipated fistfights. Gino, who harasses the hookers on Tenth Avenue as drive-by, weekend recreation, swears he'll have to be thrown out if anyone makes comments about his new black girlfriend. Frogman comes to blows with his movie theatre customers daily, and mentioned that he could wind up hitting someone (no reason given or needed). Silverfish and Happy will kill each other if they're in the same room together. And Egg Nog is itching "to punch one of the greasy little guineas" who ordinarily belly up to the grandiose, oval Bedrox bar with its glass-enclosed, live monitor lizard.
At 9:45 P.M.--petite, incognito, and excited--I barreled into a VIP lounge jam-packed to perdition with people: I have created a monster! Three young guys shouted out, "There she is--little Joan Jett!," as a tall, ponderous man in their midst rose to the occasion and introduced himself as Music Man! He had healthy brown hair, a strong handsome face, and was dressed in a white shirt and navy slacks, but he seemed to have difficulty breathing and standing up under an imposing, seventy-pound spare tire. Sweatily gregarious, he was prodded on by his hometown, Brooklyn buddy squad to remain upright and make a play for me. Since they could only stay for a short while this evening, Music wanted me to meet him again for dinner. He is down-to-earth, level-headed, likable, and amusing, but how would I ever stretch my arms around his jolly, round, pachyderm proportions?
Poor, blockaded Music Man never had a chance. As we sat at a table and discussed his mother and the ingenious girl from Bayonne who had managed to have all her phone calls placed on his bill, I suddenly saw "smelly underwear" Scott smile at me from out of the crowd! I flashed back to Rick's Café: "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, he walks into mine!" Scott wore tight, bad boy renegade black; a large silver cross grazed his stiff, naked nipples. (Crosses turn Jewish girls on--it's very forbidden.) To create great beauty is an act of God: Scott's chiseled Nordic exterior is Divine inspiration gone ballistic! Why couldn't he have been a surprise, six-foot-tall guest package popping out of the party line cake tonight?
As we leaned together to talk, I smelled the sweetness of Scott's long platinum hair and breath: I was shocked to hear him say that held been in love with me seven months ago, and that he still thinks of me every night when he's alone in bed. He said I looked great: "Every guy in the room will go home and fantasize about you" (especially with this crowd!). He even apologized for what held done: "Can we start over from scratch?" My answer: "Alice Cooper's song, 'Poison,’ reminds me of you." The ice princess refused to yield, but she stared longingly after him when he kissed her goodbye and vanished out of her life once again--forever. What a delicious, trance-like moment of temptation and desire: a disciplined captain, however, never leaves her ship--unlike a certain colony of over-fed, drowning bilge water rats!
"It's my party, and I'll cry if I want to": only six known telephone callers showed up--including Wayne--who arrived early and danced to beat the band all night long by himself. Ears always pinned close to the ground on the vast line grapevine, 1234 phone monitors Baby Cindy and Cathy paid us a surprise visit. Cathy (a double couch-size, short redhead in a loose hippie-dress) padded conscientiously right behind her busty, simple-minded, blonde co-worker all evening to protect her from roving, nuisance male primates. Last, but never least, happy-go-lucky Silverfish strode into the foyer dragon lair straight from his aunt's funeral and on the lam for evading a $150 fine for smashing a subway car window. Silverfish is in another forced, painful exile from his secure home base by the family telephone. His obsession with the party line ("the phone was between us") has turned him into the missing black (Oops--touchy subject!) sheep of his family!
What happened to hundreds of highly irresponsible, unreliable men, to my "roommate" Cathy, and to friends like Ann from Bensonhurst and her now live-in fiancé, Rocket Man, who had re-confirmed their RSVP at 7:00 A.M. this morning on the 9292 bridge. (That rumbling, boombox voice suddenly rang a bell; Rocket Man was Slash the night I was Axl’s groupie!) Even Mike from Manhattan passed on the rare opportunity to singlehandedly polish off an entire, steaming, industrial-size chafing dish of pasta al pesto! It apparently goes against the very grain of party line culture to meet or be seen. People call party lines because they are damaged goods/factory seconds: if they appear anywhere, they have to exchange their perfect phone bodies for stretch-marked, distended abdominals; unsightly blemishes; and frightening social imperfections.
I made the best out of a bad situation: I cheerily approached every available man in all three rooms with the ideal conversation opener: "Are you from the party line?" Gary, who looked like a corn-fed, pockmarked, Midwestern axe-murderer--said yes--and sidled away from us. Many of the straight-laced, tubercular, withdrawn types who skulked hideously in the shadowy corners of the dance floor may have been from the line. Jack the Wack may even have been there, camouflaged as any one of a thousand people. Silverfish and I amused ourselves with "fat party line girls" jokes as we scoured every nook and cranny in vain for rogue guests like Cathy's absent cousin, "real rocker" Triple A. None of my predictions came true: I didn't meet the man of my dreams (just an old nightmare), I didn't drink anything, and the great roundup of my potential dates--the chance to screen them all in one easy, convenient, safe lineup--never materialized. Now I'll have to go through scores of talkative telephone beasts one by one, dammit! No need for a phalanx of bodyguards, either. Big, burly Silverfish guided me to a taxi for safety, but no one was even lurking around to tail me. I called up Jack when I got home, who had the best explanation for why nobody came: "People just wanna be home on the line and be nasty to each other."
Jack expounded on what happens when phone life and actual life do collide: last year people from the line threatened that they had organized a posse and were going to kill him. Jack is also wary of party line dates: "I could get set up. A guy goes to a girl's house thinking he's gonna get something, and instead of a girl, there's a gang of guys there, instead." Male 550-GABB customers were recently targeted by a hot-to-trot black girl calling from a South Bronx payphone: she would invite them to her apartment on the condition that they had a car to drive to a New Jersey seafood restaurant afterwards. Once the loverboys were upstairs and undressed, three armed men would lock them inside the crack den and steal their waiting vehicles downstairs. Jack wants me to come next Thursday night to a hand-picked gathering of his own at the San Gennaro Feast in Little Italy. Jack wants to face down his enemies: "People who've been planning to bother me can meet me.” Jack wants to meet his "Jackettes" (Simone, Natalie, Lori, Michelle, and Karen from Patchogue) all in one shot: I hope his Miss America pageant will be more successful than mine was at Bedrox! I'm worn out from all this party planning and conferencing--and I know you're craving some conversation by now, too. Shall we porch?

CHAPTERS 17-21

CHAPTER 17
DAY OF THE PHONE FEAST
Tongue kiss-and-tell is in the air tonight: two former payphone lovers, Harmony from Albany and Gary, softly and salaciously reminisced about their mutual masturbation sessions. Harmony is the 643 line's upstate mistress of long distance kink: she regaled voracious telephone curiosity seekers with uncensored tales of real life S & M whippings, steamy bisexuality, and forlorn, non-orgasmic SPRINT sex. Harmony publicly complained about a selfish phone lover who refused to stay around and talk to her after he came: "He didn't really care about me. Then he had the nerve to say, 'Well, how long is it gonna take?' He still calls me up, too. He doesn't realize that I didn't have a good time." Gary played the sensitive, hearts and flowers nineties man: "I was good to you, though, right? You were freezing your ass off that night, feeding quarters into a payphone at the dorm. I paid thirteen dollars for a call back cause you didn't have any more money! Thirteen dollars!" Gary flattered Harmony with his generosity, compliments, and happy memories: "I neglected one minor detail--Harmony, you're the best. You don't know how many times I freaked out when I thought I'd lost your number." Harmony thanked him: "Why? Cause I didn't freak out when you told me your secret?" I would've paid a sultan's ransom to have been a frostbitten fly on that withered, ivy-covered collegiate wall!
Lust is also in the air: as an unanticipated fringe benefit of my recent campaign to saturate half the civilized (?) world with party invitations, I test-drove two new men. Triple A (whose saliva still lingers on my mouth, breasts, and abdomen!) terrified me after he bragged that he has sex-starved groupies who pick him up in their cars and take him out! Then, to make matters worse, he warned, "If you don't show up, I'll find you and kill you." Mr. Egg Nog advised me to meet him for a "vending machine candy bar date" inside the l9th precinct police stationhouse. Instead, we met outside Houlihan's Bar at 10:30 P.M., where I saw a cute, broadly built, short young guy with curly, medium length black hair and brown eyes pacing a hole in the pavement. He wore a baggy khaki shirt, a bolo tie with a twisted snake clasp, tight black jeans, and black suede boots. I cut through his silly snotnose brat, rock star posturing very quickly and found a decent, reasonable, gentle person underneath. Except, of course, when he gigged as a roadie, promised a girl a backstage pass in exchange for a blowjob, and then had her kicked out of the stadium emptyhanded with sperm in her mouth!
A few "minor" details changed from the phone to reality. He went from Italian to Jewish, his alleged record contract is with Sony Music Group, not Atlantic (he slept with the publicist to get signed), and 175 pounds turned into 220 pounds: "Would you have met me if I'd said 220?” I can't imagine where he hides all that weight: he looks much lighter. Triple A treated me to a black Russian as he churned out heroic tales of his profligate sexual exploits with women: "I'm not a nice guy." Afterwards, we somehow found ourselves embracing on the street to the forceful, fetid summer stench of urine and garbage decomposing in the New York City heat. I finally agreed to step into his red jeep with him after he demonstrated that he didn't have power locks and handed over his wallet and car keys first as security of his good behavior.
Triple A has the Midas touch: I petted his stuffed, biker-jacketed, dashboard piglet, and he petted me. Dear listeners, you know my predilection for cars; it took all my willpower to resist following him when he climbed into the back seat and held out a beckoning, helping hand. I wasn't even that attracted to Triple A, but sometimes a woman has to take what she can get. And, since you can't always get what you want, when I got bored after an hour, I pulled up my zipper, refastened my bra, and trotted back home. He was sweet and gave me his black sunglasses as a permanent memento of his affection and phone number. Party line dating is as exciting as a disco: I get free drinks, cheap sexual thrills, and I can make a quick clean getaway! I couldn't ask for anything more--except for Scott's sublime kisses again in the back seat of his car!
I also tried to set up a date with Bobby the phone artist, but I kept reaching his "borscht belt comedian" answering machine message: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. As the centipede said while crossing her legs, 'No, no, a hundred times no,"' followed by a string of ribald little jokes. I know that centipede from somewhere! I cross-checked all my benched entries, and six months ago the versatile, oversized man of a thousand voices was calling himself Randy from Brighton Beach (age thirty-four, 5’8”, and a girthy 170 pounds) on the 1234 line! I suspect that Bobby is responsible not only for Hindu Maria and her missing daughter, but for a current background recording on the 643 line about a father who spanks his son for being up all night on the telephone: "Whack, whack, whack!"
Bobby, however, doesn't have a corner on the weirdness market. Frogman is intelligent, extremely obsessive, and hyper: his mind--rapid and restless--is perpetually speeding off to some unknown star cluster. It took a half hour of panicked concentration for Frogman to pin down our upcoming rendezvous to a satisfactorily specific time and place:
FROGMAN: Stand over the right side, by his right hand. When he sits in the chair to sell tokens, his right hand is the side I want you to stand on, because that side is the side I'll be coming from.
WENDY laughs: Why would it matter which side of the token booth I stand on? The whole thing is only ten feet long. Why would it be so important if I stand one foot to the left or one foot to the right? You know what I mean?
FROGMAN laughs: Yeah, okay. Alright, stand at the . . . just be there at three o'clock at the right place. Uh, alright. At three. Because there's gotta be some measure for error, here. From three to ten after three.
WENDY: Okay. I'm only gonna wait ten minutes maximum, because last time I was there a half hour.
FROGMAN: Okay. Ten minutes, maximum, yeah. But I'm saying, cause Wendy, we're talking about life here; we're not talking about a movie, man. Life--there's so much you have to do. If you get held up, man--a little anything can hold you up, man. A conversation can hold you up. Something like that. But still. I'm pretty sure, though, about this. Okay, yeah. At three. And be there from 3:00 to 3:10. If I don't come at 3:10--I don't even care if I get there at 3:11--you're justified in leaving.
WENDY: So you're definitely going to be there tomorrow?
FROGMAN: We're talking about tomorrow, though? Tomorrow is what day? Wednesday? The thirteenth of September?
WENDY is exasperated: Right!
FROGMAN laughs: Okay. It's a deal. But the only way that this can get confused is if you're in the wrong place. I mean, forget about the token booth. I don't care where you're at--the left, the right, talking to the guy, whatever. I mean, be at the right stop. There's two sides to a train station. There's two exits. You have to be at the one where there's a coffee shop to your left and a guy selling candy: "Fucking Indians, you want a Ghandi?"
WENDY laughs and gulps: What'd you just say?
FROGMAN laughs: We have a lot of Indians around here and in Sheepshead Bay. There are a lot of Indians everywhere, and I kinda pull impressions of them now and then, cause I think they're a bugged-out people. A little strange, too. So this is a biggie, man, I'm serious, with the time and everything. It's a good day to meet me, too, cause I'm in a different cycle now, you know. A really different cycle. If you can, come there early. Cause I'm gonna try to hit that early thing, too, at ten to three, cause I don't wanna miss you. But if I can't make it, I'll need that ten minutes. The longer you wait in there, the more frustrated you'll get. Stay there from 3:00 to 3:10. I hope I can plan the time out, cause I'm gonna try to get there at 2:50, 2:55.
WENDY: Alright, that sounds good.
FROGMAN: Now wait. Let's get back to the detail here. The key thing is that you're not too big on the height, right? You're short. Five feet, right? Long hair--in abundance, right?
WENDY: Right.
FROGMAN: You got me down pretty well, or what?
WENDY: I don't really know what you look like at all.
FROGMAN laughs: I'll make it easy on you, Wendy. I'll wear clothing that no one else will. Um, black pants, black sneakers, white shirt, gray dots. Informal wear. Okay? The black sneakers will give it away--right away, right away. Black sneakers, yeah.
Wendy laughs in bewildered amazement.
FROGMAN: What do you want to do? I don't know about going to the theatre--if it's a good idea. I probably will take you to the movie theatre, cause I wanna get this. . . . Yeah, okay. We'll go to the movie theatre; you got your wish. There you go! At three! And please be punctual! And just be there is all I'm asking. I was so enthusiastic last time, man, and I lost all my psych when I met an empty subway. I was like, damn, man!
WENDY: Right, but you were a half hour late!
FROGMAN: Yeah, but the place was empty, though. I'd rather--like anybody, one or two people--but it was just the guy in the booth. That was it! He was reluctant. Aah! But just be there, from 3:00 to 3:10. The magic ten.
WENDY: Alright, sounds good. So I'll see you there, then.
FROGMAN laughs: You can't miss me, Wendy. I don't know what I'm saying. People tell me I look like I sound. Cause I'll come up with a big introduction, so you'll know me. You won't have any doubt about who you're talking to.
WENDY laughs: Yeah? Have you been on the line recently?
FROGMAN increases velocity: No way! I've been going to sleep. I've been doing those twenty-four-hour days now, man. I wake up early and I go to sleep early. It's great, now. It works out for me. My energy doesn't zoom up and then zoom down like it usually does. It's pretty consistent all through the day. I'm happy that I'm gonna get to see you, finally. It's gonna be wild. I mean, I've met people before--yeah, one or two--and it's kinda disappointing. The other person wasn't disappointed. I'm sure this will work out well. Okay. I'll see you tomorrow from 3:00 to 3:10, and you better have long hair and you better be five zip. Don't gain any height tonight. What are you gonna wear, Wendy?
WENDY: I have no idea yet.
FROGMAN flips out with worry: You don't know? Oh, my God! Wear what you wore last time. What did you wear?
WENDY laughs: Who remembers? That was a month or two ago.
FROGMAN: I'd really like to know what you're wearing, because right there, I'd be. . . .
WENDY: I really have no idea.
FROGMAN: Okay. And your hair is long, right? Long, long. Past your shoulders. How long?
WENDY: Almost to my waist.
FROGMAN: What color?
WENDY: Dark brown.
FROGMAN laughs: Alright, I think we've covered it. Three o'clock to 3:10. I'll do my best to get there, and you do your best to be there.
WENDY laughs: Alright, I'll definitely be there. Bye Bye.
FROGMAN: Okay. Call me, Wendy!
WENDY shakes her head and emphasizes: I'll see you tomorrow!
At precisely 3:00 P.M. a young, well-dressed black man stepped into the drab, mint green station and said, "If you're Wendy, I'm gonna die!" Because of his West Indian nationality, I suspected that Frogman might be light tan-skinned, but I was a little shocked: he never ever hinted that he wasn't white! Very dark with short, kinky black hair and good-looking Caucasian features, Frogman has the Guido disco-rat style and "Gucci Nobile" cologne down pat--except for the bad acne (Sicilians never lets anything mar their perfect, Italian boot faces!). Frogman (reputedly 5’9”, 160 pounds) has also somehow dramatically shriveled in stature over three short portentous months. Welcome to "Fantasy Island," folks: the only place where men can zoom from five-foot nothing to 6’2” overnight and then fit back into their truncated 27 inseams again come the telltale morning light.
Frogman and I paraded up and down the block while he fretted and inquired over and over exactly what time I had to go back to the city, what time my optometrist's appointment was, and what time and where I had to meet my girlfriend afterwards. I had anticipated spending an hour with Frogman, but I cut it down to thirty minutes; he wanted us to spend the evening together. When I saw the bright red, Manhattan-bound train indicator light up, I shouted that I would call him later and hurtled up those happy, grimy stairs two at a time. Poor guy--he said everyone thinks he's on drugs, but it's a natural high. I think he needs to take a lot of drugs--in a strict, professionally supervised setting!
Harmony has her sexcapades and a vast, peeping Tom phone following, and I've got mine--including Tony at the Cathouse! After a pregnant, poignant shared moment chitchatting about the bands every Monday night, he rapidly weasels away to attend to business. I wonder if he has the temerity to either think, worry, or hope that I'm really there to see him! In light of the very personal nature of our association, it is insulting that this opportunist never even had the decency to order me a drink. The utter nerve of the man to suggest that I perform sexual calisthenics in order to meet his musicians, who casually walk around the club all night, anyway (a smiling drummer just hugged me and gave me his private hotline number!). News flash, Tony: Lone Wolf was much better!
Mike is another one of the many hundreds of furtive loners who prosper and thrive behind closed curtains. "Fuck or fight" will conveniently keep any woman exactly where he wants her--just a touch-tone away. Mike deftly torpedoes real meetings by eleventh hour procrastination and by setting up unrealistic, high stakes sexual pre-conditions. I noticed discrepancies in his story from conversation to conversation, as he shifted his stated neighborhood of residence from Tribeca to the South Street Seaport. He also consistently refused to explain his murky career in the "protection business": it strikes me that Mike was simply seeing who he could reconfigure himself as, and what he could get away with saying on the telephone. Was he seriously interested in realizing all those thorny, obsessive sexual situations, or was he just trying to impress me with the inventive outrageousness of his fantasy life? His number has now been permanently disconnected: if I ever run into him by accident, would I recognize him based on his strident voice, highly stylized description, and idiosyncratic, the-sky's-the-limit sexual personality? Mike could be talking to me in any one of a dozen familiar, dingy, Lower East Side rocker bars on any weekend night. He was very exciting phone, though; he's going to be tough to replace.
My most enduring (and endearing) relationship is with the humorous Mr. Egg Nog. I may be excessively reticent because of the line, but I still haven't given him my home phone number even after five months of conversation. Nevertheless, we've become very close--in a singularly peculiar way. Egg Nog always accords me priority treatment. He hangs up on other calls to talk to me, and scolds me if I haven't called in awhile: "Wendy, toots, what's the matter? You don't love me anymore?" I always giggle in delight when he accuses me of not considering him a trusted and cherished friend: "Wendy, I feel violated.” Why hadn't he shown up to my party? He had an airtight excuse: "My date provided me with good nugie. She gave me a good blowjob.” In his cheery, "power breakfast" voice, Uncle Egg Nog constantly tries to convince me that he is exactly what I require: "Wendy, what you need is a macho Jew with a big schlong. My pupick is so long that I have to reel it in with a fishing rod: it hits the bottom of the urinal in public restrooms. I have to use Hefty trash bags instead of condoms."
Why would two attractive people who are well-suited to each other, share much in common, and whose personalities click, hesitate to meet? Instead, we spend hours together discussing our respective dates and sex lives (or lack thereof), and my divorce litigation. Oddly enough, we always counsel each other not to have intercourse with any proposed new partners. Behind the pretext of giving and soliciting sane advice from an objective member of the opposite sex, we are both secretly and jealously heading the competition off at the pass. I would never be able to find another man who sits on the phone with a tape measure to report to me every incremental growth in the size of his glorious, greased designer pecs. I envision us talking on the phone once a week forever--each safely in reserve on a neutral backburner.
We need emergency social assistance: 643 became an open window into the ghetto as Jack amused himself with a new hip-hop brother. The sheer boredom of having nothing to do and nowhere to go forced Murray down his sagging, graffitied staircase, past the crumbling, nineteenth-century Harlem rowhouses, and into our waiting arms. The mind's eye paints a sharp vignette: I can see Murray in his fade and black Nikes standing all alone in the still of the night on a dirty, sweltering, neglected street corner. I smell his block: the spicy fried chicken wings and sweet potato pies cooking on 127th Street and Lenox Avenue in a brightly lit take out joint. It is easy to picture the generic, steel intelli-phone which eats up quarters at twice the going rate as his precious allotment of speech dwindles down on a metered display panel. Two worlds, one phone: we're all connected.
JACK THE WACK gangster-raps to an uptown homeboy beat: How'd you get this number, man?
MURRAY: A friend hooked me up with this shit. I be telling him, I said, yo, fucking at night time and shit, there be nothing to do. Shit on fucking cable, and tired of seeing the shit on VCR. Yo, call this number late at night and talk instead of just standing looking at the walls and shit. Bug out for a little while.
JACK laughs: That's it, man--laugh at people and shit.
MURRAY nods: Most of the time when I call this shit, I be hearing funny fucking noises and shit.
JACK cackles in satanic glee: Like TONES, and shit?
MURRAY: Yeah: Beebeebeebeebeebeebeebeebee!
JACK: That's that guy Jack that does that. Jack and Rocco, man. That guy Rocco got like eighty phones, man; Jack got only two.
MURRAY: Feeling kinda good now. Ain't this the shit that after thirty minutes you be history?
JACK: Yeah, but then you hit redial, you get right back in, man. You stay on for life, man.
Deafening ringing and busy signals, followed by a defunct outgoing dial tone for the next half hour: "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again. If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator."
MURRAY: I just wish I knew who them punk niggers was though, boy. He just keep playing with them numbers and shit. He won't even talk.
JACK: That guy probably trying to get another line, you know. A lot of white people, man, they're afraid they're gonna get cut. So they constantly redialing the line, man. They get paranoid, like, you know, they might miss some bullshit gossip, man. This line's like a fucking soap opera, man. You know how white people are, man, all fucking talking like they're gonna kick your ass and shit--and all they do is hold onto their prick. We got some badass white people on this line always screaming bullshit to each other.
Murray laughs: Uh huh. I understand.
JACK: You get guys that say they took on four Colombians and Jamaicans and beat ‘em up--all that bullshit. You know they'd have eighteen bullets in their head.
MURRAY laughs: Yeah, I'm gonna get outta here.
JACK: Go get some milk, man; milk good for you.
MURRAY: You know it. You play the TV like that? I can hear that shit from here.
JACK: I'm watching MTV, man. I just had "Lassie" on. I like Lassie, man; I like a smart dog.
MURRAY ("Please deposit five cents for each overtime minute, or your call will be interrupted. Thank you."): You can hear that shit? After this shit, I be out of here.
JACK: He's funny; he sounds like he's drunk, the guy that made that recording. That's one of those cheap-ass phones you're on, right? Not a Bell Atlantic, man.
MURRAY: It's one of those shits where you can see where the time is left. Right now it says twenty-five seconds, and I be out.
JACK: Yo, man, it's like a quarter to six, man. I gotta be going to work in two hours. I'm bugged out, man.
MURRAY: Yo, buddy, I'm going upstairs to sleep now. I'm glad I don't gotta go to work. When I go to work, I just stand right outside.
JACK: You selling the crack, man?
MURRAY competes with the recording: You know it.
JACK laughs: What do you make, about $250 a day?
MURRAY's entrepreneurial juices are flowing: $350.
JACK: You don't take that shit, do you?
MURRAY: Nah, I don't fuck around, man; I just sell it.
JACK warns his new friend: Don't get caught, man! Or you gotta get a lawyer: you get a misdemeanor, man, instead of a felony!
The celebrated superstars of the 643 line met tonight at 8:00 P.M. in front of Ferrara’s, a gaudily lit, Gilded Age, Little Italy pastry emporium. Speculation runs rampant that Jack is planning to retire from the line and wants to meet us now as a final, conciliatory farewell gesture. Thirteen courageous souls battled in from all over the entire metropolitan area through building drizzle and gloom just to catch a first frightened glimpse of our revered ringleader! Soon after I arrived, a gargantuan man waddled out of a nearby knot of people to inquire if I was Wendy: he introduced himself as Jack!! Praise the Lord, the bulbous decoy was only Nathan; the real Telephone Hall of Famer then stepped up to the plate with his patented, magic password: "Pusillanimous nonentity!"
Jack is 6’3”; two hundred trim pounds; with short, wavy, light brown hair; a pale Irish complexion; narrow lips; a thin moustache; and a boxy, square lantern jaw. His recessed, round blue eyes dart nervously around but never maintain contact with anyone for very long. Conservatively clad in a dark blue Wall Street suit with brown oxford shoes, a white pin-striped shirt, and a small gold cross around his neck, he could be Mister Average American Businessman. Jack behaved with remarkable quiet, restraint, and decency, and bought all the ladies cold cans of soda. We stood in tantalized, paralyzed awe of Jack; no one actually dared to engage him in conversation.
Odd couple Kenny from Ozone Park and Mike from Manhattan filtered in together an hour later, followed by blubbery-lipped Vinnie Goombahs Number Three. Vinnie notoriously humiliates women and threatens men on the line, but tonight he stood around a conspicuously sheepish and silent lardbucket in a loose white tennis sweater and baggy, beige, bowling pin body pants! Simone joined us next: short and thickset, she wears eyeglasses, has thinning hair, and looks like she is one chromosome away from Down's Syndrome. She was frightened out of her wits riding the subway here and almost regurgitated on the train from nerves. Was it the disease-ravaged AIDS victims, alcoholic gangrenous beggars, deranged bagmen, muggers, or rapists? Of course not! She was just worried that Jack would insult her the instant he saw her--but Jack was conducting himself in an orderly manner tonight. Simone has already met seventy "dogs" from the line (often in their apartments!); she only dated two of the men more than once.
We all killed time debating why Cyclone metamorphosed from an easygoing phone compulsive into the maniacal, "full of piss and vinegar" Dr. Trash. Cyclone patrolled the line while Jack was with us tonight: last we heard, he was taking down names. What else but disappointment in line love could force a grown, thirty-four-year-old man to hide inside his apartment all night and day and feed eardrum-shattering music into his telephone receiver! (Hell hath no fury like a party line caller scorned!) The latest object of Cyclone's battered affections stood him up at 11:45 this morning: "Hey, I was in work; it didn't matter to me!" After hearing that Cyclone was impotent on a recent date, we now have a credible, cogent new explanation for why he consistently bucks backwards out of every over-eager bedroom he enters!
Thirty-seven-year-old Karen from Patchogue came along cuddling with her line "inamorata," Mustang: a married woman her age needs attention from a good-looking young squeeze who buys her flowers, wins stuffed animals for her, and stared at her all night with a mixture of desire and adoration. (Wouldn't many of you millions of middle-aged, mother-of-two housewives out there love an arm possessively draped around you?) Karen was friendly and attractively dressed, but is cursed with a Betty Midler body and bone structure: big nose, full fish lips, long face, thinning frizzy hair, flat butt, and balloon stomach. Karen should stay married to her husband of nineteen years and stay with Mustang; she will have the cream of both situational crops.
A broad, wide-berth espionage movement was afoot tonight: Lori was spotted slowly, deliberately, and methodically orbiting the Feast, while Jack's spies caught The Wandering Jew ("Son of Sam's" double) nearby chaperoning his pregnant girlfriend around: "That fucking guy--another lowlife! He likes to put his hands all over girls' breasts, if you know what I mean. He molested Candy from Long Island." Jack was incredulous and excited when he later learned that Danny had been peering at him from a secret, sweaty, Grand Street tenement doorway! Jack surmised: "Billy from Manhattan was probably definitely there looking. There were a lot of people hanging around that door. I kept going up to them. How do you know they weren't lying when they said no?"
The Bronx contingent officially arrived last: Tazmania the Red Devil, his "cousin" Lisa from the Bronx, M & M, and one of Jack's favorite female toadies, Natalie: tall and stocky with an Olive Oyl face, she was dressed in a layered, figure flattering shirt and jacket to disguise 160-pounds-worth of extra-wide waistband. Dressed in black from head to toe, tall, bulky Tazmania had a curly, Italian "chia pet" pelt of protruding, ebony chest hair. Taz and "man-magnet" Lisa from the Bronx have a unique, stellar relationship: Lisa shouts out demands, and he jumps to attention. She has everything it takes to not only get a man, but to keep him! Lisa oozes sex from every ample, curvaceous pore of her being--starting at the top with an oversized white blouse whose top button is level with her cleavage, down to skin tight blue leggings wrapped around shapely sinewy calves, and white, champagne stem fuck-me pumps. She has bronzed Italian skin, brown hair streaked with blonde, glistening black bedroom eyes, a constant come-on smile, and a steroid-deep, fibrillating voice that could knock over a battleship. If you really looked at every single feature separately, she is overweight, coarse, and has bad teeth, one of which is missing. But, like any successful product, she is fantastically self-packaged and put together with superb mass-marketing. Lisa even brought along flexed porno snapshots of her party line dates, including one of the most well-developed, professional bodybuilders I've ever seen. She's going out with him and seven of his friends tomorrow!
We slogged through the Mott Street festival rain in freeform bunches to play rigged games of chance and skill; drink beer; and eat boiling hot, sugar-powdered zeppole. Jack strolled with pretty, witty M & M, and Kenny spent considerable time and money winning a four-foot-tall teddy bear with a big red bow which he gave to Natalie so he wouldn't have to carry it home (another clandestine romance brewing?). We never quite managed to sit down anywhere together all at one table--trapped face to face with each other, with our own insecurities, and with Jack. But, we were all automatic "friends," at least for the evening. It was a rare treat for me to have so much good company.
Lisa, Simone, and Wendy constituted the toxic triplets. Lisa had everyone within earshot and eyeshot panting for release. How does she do it? Picture her leaning against a fiery, sausage and peppers stand with her arms spread out and her elbows back. Her body language reads: "Open, open!" She smiles boldly and challenges every male in sight with Lust Line-busting innuendoes: she whipped Al, the toss-the-ball-in-the-basket and win-a-poster booth man, into a feeding frenzy. She even said she swallowed. Al gave her the name and address of his motel in Jersey, but Lisa prefers the Commack Motor Inn because it has mirrored ceilings and a "jungle room." She looked at me and winked: "He's do-able!" Al’s hot friend, Dave, with long blonde hair, turquoise blue eyes, and big buffed muscles, said he would rather have me. He and Al both agreed that "quiet ones do it better." Their other buddy joked: "I want the short fat one." But, nobody had anybody. Lisa gave Al her number, I told Dave I had to go home to my koalas, and Simone went behind a truck to expose her breasts to her admirer and give him a blowjob!
There was a surreal, wistful, end-of-an-era quality to this evening: “one must not touch idols, for the gilt rubs off on one’s hands.” Jack should have preserved his faceless, formless, iconic, larger-than-life mystique--endlessly ranting, preaching, and pontificating in the telephone galaxy’s stark, blind black hole. At the stroke of midnight, he kissed all the ladies goodbye on the cheek and strode off alone--human--into the billowing mist. Mustang and Karen disappeared down lover's lane, while Lisa, Natalie, and M & M ran red lights home in Tazmania’s car. Simone and I wended our way to the Upper East Side after she urinated in a locked subway entrance stairwell and tried to call the line from a phone booth. We all went our separate paths, but we are bonded by the same primordial terror that Jack will individually crucify us on the line tomorrow in harrowing, lifelike, lifesize detail. I launched a brave, pre-emptive 3:00 A.M. strike.
Jack giggled happily at Simone's social consternation tonight: "Simone, I think, was shocked when she saw me! I think she expected to see a retard-looking guy. It's no--your party line lives are over. So is mine. I met Mike from Manhattan and Simone in the same shot. Now I know what Mike looks like. He's not as big as they say. He's not four hundred pounds; give me a break. He's three hundred: it's all from his knees . . . to his ribs. He's only 5’8” or 5’9”: he's short. He's not like six foot. He's gotta lose some weight. Then you and him could hook up. You and Mike would be cute. You could go to his place for a little chicken dinner." Wendy shrieked with amusement and asked for help: "Oh, Lord! You gotta find me someone good!" Jack laughed and continued: "It was good. Nobody really trashed each other, except Simone. She don't like Mike. She came on the line and said it earlier: ‘Who is he to rank me out? What nerve! I could see if somebody else did it to me, but look at him. He's worse than me!’" Wendy corroborated: "She was shocked at what he looked like!" Jack squealed and tried to set me up with Taz: "Yeah, yeah! How about Taz? You like him, huh? He looks good for you." Wendy blurted out a natural, unself-conscious reason for rejection: "He's too big for me; he's too overweight!" Jack giggled hysterically as the sun rose ("Taz--with the big body, yeah yeah!") and then pointed me toward another rumored party: "You know, you should ask Mike; he always goes to everything. I would call him up now, if I was you: 555-9290.”
Newly porched lifestyle information fleshes out our growing profile of Jack (really his middle name!): he eats an apple muffin for breakfast, goes to work as a Wall Street sales trading clerk from 9:15 to 4:30, naps every evening for a few hours, and then resurrects himself on the party line until 5:00 A.M. Jack loves baseball; he is a non-smoking Catholic. He also recently claims to have a girlfriend. Although they spent Saturday night together watching a rented movie on his VCR, she was gone by 1:30 A.M. when he resumed his solitary, soldierly 643 vigil. With five hours a day spent with us, how could he sustain a personal life other than line? It is not Jack's purpose to pick up women on 643: acquiring and spreading Mike from Manhattan's telephone number gives him far greater psychological satisfaction. Jack's phone disease is both subtle and selective: he is addicted to trashing and pranking, the most virulent and infectious strain of the party line virus.
It's early Friday night on the Lexington Avenue subway: who wants to see a filthy, club-footed homeless man on crutches in wine-soaked pants with his one good foot in a caked, cracked army surplus shoe? I'm half-inclined to turn around, go home, and call the line--where I'm safe with Jack. I miss him already; I'm not content unless I speak to him or at least hear his voice every single day. His presence on the line is as regular and reassuring as the rising of the sun in the east. I long to hear him dispense platitudes, old wives' tales, tidbits of Americana, choice nuggets of hearsay, and old-fashioned homilies on manners, morality, and how fat everyone on the line really is. As long as Jack is there, I know that all is still right with the world.
CHAPTER 18
THE TONE TAKES OVER
Rocco--arch phone ventriloquist extraordinaire--has returned after an absence of many months wielding a diabolical, new state-of-the-art weapon fearfully nicknamed "THE TONE." Packing the forceful, keening destructive shriek of amplified Nintendo, it renders beeping, recordings, and music completely obsolete. Jack is joyfully collaborating in a subordinate capacity: "I'm his assistant. I'm TONE JUNIOR, and he's TONE SENIOR. He taught me the system, but now I'm better than my teacher. I had an idea, but Rocco taught me the principles involved--the doctrine how to do it--the proper way." Rocco also has a different, unhappily married, rancorous personality now: yesterday he insulted me for coming on the line a wee bit inebriated (come on, it was only two little vodkas!). After I kidnap and clone his 643 power base (a simple tape recorder stationed next to my speakerphone opening), his fire and brimstone will be mine!!
JACK THE WACK: In all the time that I called the line, and all the people I've ever heard who were ever sick or demented--including me--whoever that moron was that did it for five hours, has gotta be out of their mind to try and beep out that dial tone.
DAPHNE screams through the global telephone booth: You're not hiding behind your TONE today?
JACK: Like these two: you trash the line right on them. They don't appreciate music or news or sporting events, so let ‘em hear nothing. Let these vegetables go back and hear nothing. This line is for fun at other people's expense.
JAMES: But what do you do during it? That shit is loud, man!
JACK laughs fiendishly: You like it, huh, when we do it? I read magazines; I watch TV. I do what I have to do.
ROCCO elaborates: He puts the recording on for half an hour, and then he leaves and lets the timer go off automatically on his stove.
JACK: I go out for a jog or pick up a soda. Hey James, when him and I do it, we don't just come on and do it right away. If people were nice to each other, no one would bother with it, understand?
JAMES: You gotta give people a warning then, at least.
ROCCO: Well, you don't, cause you hear a girl coming on here five times a night just looking for phone numbers--like that girl tonight, right? She's been on the last three days.
JACK: You know what Mike from Bellmore had the nerve to ask Shadow? He goes, "She sounds sweet and beautiful."
JAMES: Why, you don't want the girls getting phone numbers?
JACK: We keep the line on or off--it doesn't matter to us. The people have had so many months to converse off the line, exchange numbers and meet, but they don't want to. Wendy'll vouch for that. Right, Wendy?
WENDY ponders an unidentified, milky white stain on her redial button: Right, right!
JACK: They'd rather be on the phone all day, right Wendy? They hate life so much they call an access party line and cry when it's trashed. If this line stays up another six months, James, it'll be so easy to get in there'll be no reason to trash it. There'll be hardly anybody left who pays their bill.
JAMES: But it's a regular phone call. I don't understand.
JACK: Someone like Sky, it's $3 an hour to be on this line during the day from Long Island. If she's on four hours, that's $12 a day times thirty, it's $360. She goes from $700 to $900 a month on the phone bill. You think they're gonna be around long? That's insanity. You could rent a condo out for that.
Determined sound of someone dialing a three-way.
JACK: He's porching on two lines at once so he don't miss any gossip. That's pretty bad.
DANNY's musical, mellow voice joins the telephone conga line: And he's fat; they're all fat!
JACK squeaks in delight: Hey Danny, Simone's not as bad as they made her out to be: she's not no 190 like they used to say. That's the way these people are: they just let their imagination keep running wild. She's a little dumpy--that's it. No big deal. All she has to do is get herself a hairdo and change her clothes, and she'll be half-assed. Ask Wendy.
DANNY grabs the trashing torch: Wendy, listen, this is Danny talking. You have to understand that weight looks disgusting in men. If you're over a thirty-four waist, do not live! Gross! But some girls carry it very well, and they could have a waistline. Cause I know this beast that I met on the phone!
JACK laughs with pleasure: Danny could've been number one on this line, but he didn't spend no time on it. Who did you meet?
DANNY: I'm not saying, but Jack, you know very well. These fat pigs are like quadruple. These pigs, and I stress the point pigs, that I have met on this phone! I met six fat people already. No more!
WHISPERER buzzes like a mosquito: Are you a fat ignoramus?
DANNY: Who me? Like Oprah Winfrey says, love your body. I'm 6’1"; I'm a 33, 34 waist. Now Wendy, she's beautiful. You see what I mean--Wendy, you've got a very ugly voice.
WENDY threatens to torture the airwaves: I'll play more Bruce!
DANNY: Wendy, Wendy, Wendy! The girls that don't have the good voices--they're the beautiful ones. Then the ones that got that sweet gorgeous voice. . . .
JACK: He's right. There's a girl from Rhode Island that's a fat pig. The girl who has the best voice on this line is Dana from Rhode Island--she's pushing 225.
DANNY flares his nostrils in horror: Yup. And that's dressing the point! Now listen to Wendy: she sounds horrible! Wendy, she could have my number anytime: only beautiful women I've allowed to come in my home. I don't let fat girls come in my house. I don't like fat people; they're disgusting!
JACK laughs: Danny--he's really crude. I want Danny's opinion, and this is a serious question--so don't fuck it up. What do you think of the guys that are almost forty years old and come on the line looking for nineteen-year-old girls?
DANNY screams: Pigs! Nazis! They're a bunch of Nazis!
RALPH THE WHISPERER serenades: Wendy, I want to covet you!
WENDY screws up her face: That's disgusting!
RALPH: I didn't say anything. I said I want to covet you.
WENDY: I thought you said you want to come in me.
JACK is shocked: Wendy! Danny doesn't wanna hear this shit.
DAPHNE breaks in like a NATO powerhouse: Good morning! This is Maureen. I just got out of me bed.
JACK: That's Daphne; she calls from Scotland. Danny, you've gotta be very sensitive to them; they're children.
DAPHNE's highland room is spinning: I've got a hangover.
JACK trades on 643's chic European cachet: What, were you drinking beer with Rocket Man over the phone?
DAPHNE babbles groggily: No, I was drinking whiskey last night by meself. And now me maid is making me a luvly vegetarian breakfast. I don't think I could stand it.
JACK: You love all the gossip on this line, don't you, Daphne? Daphne, did you get your phone bill yet?
DAPHNE (in a delicate Scottish burr): Yes, the bill's been and gone. Oh, you wouldn't believe it: 62 ½,000 pounds! Auntie's paying for it, the big fat bitch!
DANNY wants constant emotional reassurance: I got cut. Did you miss me? Tell me the truth.
JACK laughs: I was pissed off, Danny, when you got cut!
Phone-struck and Smirnoff-lit, Wendy has been trying to break through to an unscathed bridge from 3:45 to 4:22 A.M., but THE TONE has been wailing at the volume of a civil defense air raid siren for forty-two minutes straight. One of these days, my lazy, Burger King-scarfing superintendent is going to knock on the door to complain: on speakerphone, it sounds like the smoke detector is going off in my living room! God only knows what the neighbors think of the bizarre noises and profanity drifting out of my dwelling at all hours of the day and night. They either think I yell or whisper to myself all the time, or that my apartment is haunted. But, I'll endure anything to be in touch with the 643 party line--even this!
A KNOWING THICKET OF PHONE GREMLINS shouts out over the ear-splitting, pre-dawn TONE: You're wasted, and you just rode a bus from the Village to a club on Long Island!
ROCCO uncannily senses my silent, nightly presence: Did Wendy come on the line? I know she's here: I can hear papers rustling from her book. And she's drinking tea.
DAPHNE yells all the way across the Atlantic Ocean: Tell me what it's like to live over there and be losers!
DANNY: Daphne, shut up with your bitchy voice! Wendy, I'm gonna put somebody on the phone. I want you to rap.
JACK THE WACK places me under his stateside American umbrella of protection: It's his friend; go ahead, Wendy!
DANNY: Do it for me! Wendy, will you do it? His name is Greg. Ready? Everybody do me a favor and shut the fuck up!
WENDY pampers her phone with a fresh burst of "Teleclean" spray: I have a number if anyone wants to prank somebody. He stood me up yesterday. I think he's with the Mafia. His last name is Gotti.
JACK: Oh, shit! You believe that? Danny, if she believes that, you and I could sell her some land in the Pacific Ocean.
DAPHNE: Give me his number. I'll go out with a Gotti any day.
DANNY: She's irritating, this Daphne. That's why I can't stand her.
JACK: Shut up, Daphne! Wendy, do it! Where's the number?
WENDY: 718-555-4866. He said his name was Rick, and he was a CPA from Brooklyn. I called his house and his answering machine said this is the office of Americo A. Gotti.
DANNY: Hold on, I'm gonna three-way him in. Give it to Daphne. Let Daphne do it. Daphne! Daphne! You talk all the rest of the time. Why don't you talk now?
JACK: No, why don't you do it, Danny. Get sweet on him.
Pig snorting noises.
JACK whispers: Shh! What's the last name, Danny?
DANNY reaches his answering machine: Americo A. Gary.
BILLY FROM MANHATTAN is anxious: No, that's Americo A. Gotti!
DANNY: Probably a hitman! Hold on. Wendy, he stood you up?
WENDY: Yeah. He said let's meet for dinner in front of this Mexican restaurant at 6:00 P.M.: I waited a half hour for him on Seventy-eighth Street. Then I called him, and he pretended he’d been standing on Seventy-ninth Street at 7:00 P.M. instead. I told him he was a dick; he thought it was funny.
DANNY clucks his tongue: These guys--they lie like rugs!! They lie like rugs!! Hang the motherfucker from the treetops!
JACK: I could do it!
DAPHNE slurs: Is John Gotti on the party line now?
DANNY: Daphne's on the top of my list, boy! I just gotta find a tree big enough and thick enough to make her swing from it! Listen, Wendy darling, I'm gonna call this number again. After the recording is over, say, "Pick it up, Greg, please pick it up." Whatever you do, don't mention my name. Say you met him at a club, Twilo.
WENDY: What does he look like, in case he asks me?
DANNY: This guy is really good-looking, about 6’1”, 190, very punky, long black hair.
JACK coaches: Ask him what he's wearing and shit like that.
WENDY giggles: Oh, no! Hello! Is this Greg? It's Wendy. Do you remember me from Twilo?
GREG falters and fudges the truth: No, I don't go to Twilo.
WENDY: No? We were fooling around and drinking and dancing. If you're alone now, do you want me to come over?
DANNY: He hung up. You see now, he's calling me; my other line just rang. He says, "Fred, I had this girl call me from the Twilo. Do you know her?" I said no, no.
DEAN strokes his scrotum: Fred, Fred, you gotta call him back and she's gonna give him phone sex.
DANNY singsongs: My real name is Alfredo Daniel Z-------.
JACK: Don't give us your last name, sweetheart.
DANNY (elevator MUSAK begins): Now see, there's too many people on the line. He'll hear all this shit.
JACK: Okay, Freddy. Freddy, call him back.
DANNY is drawn to drama: Alright, listen to me, everybody! I think he's kinda gay. I got a reason to ask that question. The guy don't look gay or act gay; he should never be gay. But Wendy, I want you to try and find out if he is.
WENDY howls: Oh, shit!
STACY Q breaks in: You motherfucker! They're calling me! Who keeps calling my fucking house and ruining my phone?
JACK: Stacy, this is the party line. Just listen to this call for a second. It's really funny!
From my humble beginnings as a silent, starstruck "porch monkey" (the lowest form of life on any party line), I've graduated to a prankster's apprentice and have been stiffed by the Mafia--and all this accomplished in a shade under a year! Gutsier still, tonight Miss Scarlett embarked on her semi-annual, ultra-swanky outing into the real world! My date taxied me to Il Vagabondo for dinner, where indelicate, embarrassing capitalist prices never cheapen the chalkboard menu, and a sandy, dirt bacci ball court provides "Sardinian peasant village” ethnic entertainment. Elegantly veal-fed, we jetted connoisseur class to a "models and agents" playground on guest list, and then plowed over to the China Club for West Side rock n' roll listening pleasure and more drinks. My date was extremely intelligent, funny, exciting, urbane, sexy--and gelded. It is not nice to take a sexually frustrated woman in her prime out on a romantic date and rigorously avoid all physical contact (a wife who had left him for dead New York rock legend Johnny Thunders, cocaine and rum dependencies, and prescribed lithium for manic depression are no excuses!). Miss Scarlett was highly incensed at having a live male dangled right in front of her all night long without any tactile access or even a goodnight kiss!
I had no recourse after being dropped off home alone at 2:00 A.M.; I had to place an emergency call to the Penetration Line. I sounded like a stomping, raving madwoman with the volume turned up as I cursed my unaffectionate date out to thirty-five-year-old Robert from Brooklyn. Robert sensed a pigeon ripe for plucking: he described himself as 5’10”, 165 muscular pounds, Italian, with Steven Seagal looks. He rushed right into the city to meet me at 4:15 A.M. at Gracie Square coffee shop. By the time I got there I had calmed down and sobered up sufficiently to be frightened at the physical implications of our date. An odd confluence of events had positioned a mature man and woman across a glass bargaining table: Robert thought there was a situation to take advantage of, and I wanted to somehow escape the lashing turmoil of an angry, celibate life. Neither of us knew quite what to expect from each other, from this experience--or from ourselves.
Robert cut a handsome, left-wing figure with pomaded black hair slicked back in a ponytail and gym-sculpted muscles underscoring a black cotton tee-shirt and black jeans. I assessed Robert's character and personality as I halfheartedly picked at an English muffin. Working as a freelance photographer with nebulous income, he has a brooding, unbecoming pitchfork-full of animosity toward his ex-wife over custody of their son. When Robert started talking about the John Lennon assassination with a loose cannon gleam in his eye, I panicked: I suddenly wanted to run out the door. Anxiety in the pit of my stomach increased when he mentioned that he had taken a quick shower before he set out to meet me--obviously in preparation for anticipated sex. I wished I were at home and had not impulsively initiated this confused, hazardous, unwholesome encounter. After Robert and I finished our lunatic fringe sunrise semester, he smilingly offered to drive me home. I nervously declined the subtle offer of car-cum-auxiliary bedroom, we parted amicably, and we went home each to our own concocted, unfulfilled fantasies. The telephone truly is the devil’s playground.
DAPHNE wrinkles her nose: I'm going to get cut in two minutes.
JACK THE WACK: Shut up, you pusillanimous mutant! You dogmatic piece of crap! You're like all these other deadbeats on this line with their phones disconnected. You make me sick! You have nothing better to do than to sit there with a clock and time yourself to know when you'll be cut, you fat pig! That's disgusting! You have no life! You're one of these party line people who stays up at night and dreams about me suffering. I enjoy it.
DAPHNE bellows: It's so boring out here!
JACK overhears a BBC1 radio transmission: Daphne and Michelle, they're not talking cause they're eating again. They just finished their fourth course.
BAM BAM clicks on: Good morning, Michelle! This is your main squeeze. This is Bam Bam. I run the line now. Jack gave it to me.
JACK: Bam Bam runs the line now, Michelle. What do you think about that?
MICHELLE: Not very much. I definitely think you're the godfather. I'd say Bam Bam is the consigliere.
JACK: No, but like you said, Tony could only be a capo cause he brings his private life on the line: "It's Sky, it’s Sky--me and Tony went out with each other!" Party line girls are nice, but I don't know about going out with them. I'm not even talking about looks, Michelle, you know what I mean? You gotta build up their egos; their egos are broken. You gotta mend it for them.
STACY Q: There are a lot of lonely people that call here.
JACK: No, I'll tell you something. The men are worse than the women will ever be on this line. The men are disgusting. They don't use fabric softener, they don't use cologne, they don't use deodorant, they don't use toothpaste. Some of these guys, they go for four dollars a month on Listerine. You gotta be kidding me, Michelle. Some of the people on this line, they don't even wash their underwear. They have shit stains on it.
Wendy doubles over in hysterics.
JOHN: It sounds like you're speaking from experience.
Storm clouds suddenly gather in JACK's voice: No, I'm not speaking from experience. Let me tell you, that guy in the background there, he's so filthy and disgusting that when he masturbates, he doesn't even have enough decency to buy himself some paper towels!
Wendy chokes with laughter.
JACK: He's so fat he hasn't seen his penis in six months. That guy back there is so fat he doesn't even wear sneakers cause he's gotta lace them up. You fat cretin mutant, you! Get off my line, you predator! You fat slob looking for answers at 4:30 in the morning on a weekday and on a party line! You disgusting, pusillanimous piece of shit! You abhorrent nonentity! You have the propensity to play with yourself and that's all you're ever gonna do. You disgusting, kindergarten-mind, filthy, scatology piece of crap! Ask me again and I'll tell you all the same. You filthy, fat slob! You can't even put on a belt. You don't know what it is to wear a Bill Blass suit, you fat slob. You go to K mart. That's all you wear. You wear Fruit of the Loom tee-shirts and Fruit of the Loom underwear, you fat pig! You don't even know what it is to wear a gold toe. You don't even know what it is to have a woman next to you, you fat pig! You can't even weight lift, you disgusting slob! You don't even know if your penis is one inch or ten inches, cause you can't even see it over that big belly, you fat pig! A date to this guy is going out and getting a pizza on a Friday night and three dirty movies. That's a date to him!
EVIL WHISPERER: Jack's the biggest drug dealer on Wall Street.
JACK turns purple and wipes the spittle off his mouth: You've never even been to Wall Street, you gregarious piece of crap! You've never been to Madison Square Garden! You've never been to a Mets game! The only place you've ever been is the party line! Let me tell you, the men on this line are disgusting. The women are okay. The men are the pigs! Jesus Christ, you give them a bar of soap!
Jack belts us with a 900-number wrestling line three-wayed on at inhumane volume for the next twenty minutes.
MAUREEN (DAPHNE) dons her fake Irish accent: Hello!
JACK shifts gears in a scalding voice: Daphne, have a little etiquette. I didn't even rank you out yet. Daphne, go call Bam Bam: he'll dispense all the attention to you that you crave!! He'll read nice poetry to you.
DAVEY BOY BOTTS: Hey Jack, are those two one and the same?
LORIELLE: Daphne, why don't you send Jack a picture?
JACK: They'd probably rip it out of a dirty magazine and say it's them!!
Lingering phone atrocities aside, Jack has gotten much calmer and happier since he found a girlfriend: most of his anger and malice towards women has dissipated. Many of the ladies on the line now regret not having met him: Stacy Q and Lorielle turn to Jack for guidance and defend him against his detractors. Jack has substantially evolved from playing Caligula to playing Cupid. As the central, international switchboard of the 643 party line, Jack knows the name, size, circumference, and sexual proclivity of each individual caller: his home number is an information clearinghouse updated hourly. Lawman, a renegade from a rival 550-fiefdom, was visibly impressed by the depth and breadth of Jack's intelligence network: "I know your people, too, Lawman. Flyboy, Steve the Funeral Director--we know ‘em all." Jack even knew the three women Lawman had dated, and where he had taken them out! Jack's friend, Stacy Q, enunciated the cardinal truth of 643: "Jack knows people better than they know themselves!"
I could use Jack's help in screening out slick, overblown losers like Triple A. I am disgusted now that I kissed him and fondled his rubbery porkbelly: with clear hindsight and rational afterthought, our opportunistic ardor was very low budget, and he had lied to me about almost everything! I called him up again when I saw that his band was performing at a club, but he was very unfriendly: there are suddenly two bands named Tara, and conveniently enough, he's in the other one. I went to the show, and not an All American Asshole in sight! He had conned me into thinking that he was some kind of hot rock star--and almost swindled me out of the spots on my red leopard pants. I was gullible and he was sneaky, but not as sneaky as my 3:00 A.M. deep whisper calls to his house: "You short fat fuck!" If God didn't want us to prank people's houses, he wouldn't have given us telephone numbers, now would he?
Danny's number rewarded me with 2 ½ hours of advanced reconnaissance on Beth, his first phone date nine months ago. She invited him over for dinner--sight unseen--after talking to him awhile on the line. Danny had no idea that Beth lived with Wayne, or that Wayne was the father of their child until he was already in their apartment: "That's no respect for him or for me.” Danny describes Beth as a possessive, fat, domineering, nasty woman who sells crack to the stumbling, pigeon-toed addicts stationed at the rear alley entrance of her Greenpoint building. Danny isn't impressed with drugs: "Bad enough I look like a nut; I don't have to be a nut." When Danny later told Wayne that he had been to the house, Wayne appeared unconcerned. Do you know any other erratic set of young parents who continue to live together while they desperately plumb telephone party lines for blind dates and catch-as-catch-can, fly-by-night lovers!?? I, too, am going to meet sexually disoriented Danny next week after his bartending shift. A transient caller, Kenny, traveled out to Brooklyn to meet him in a sports bar, ostensibly to discuss their mutual interest in baseball and girls. Instead, Kenny fell madly in love with Danny at first sight; he began to call him every day and threatened to jump off a bridge if he wouldn't see him again. Helplessly smitten, Kenny showed up at Danny's house two weeks later and threatened to kill him, also!
This Saturday I took a big chance on telephone date number twenty: Brian, a twenty-six-year-old, transplanted ex-cop from Boston (Mike from Manhattan Two on the line!), currently employed as a $22,000-a-year hotel security guard. Since his home phone is disconnected for non-payment, I've called him several times at work for pleasant conversations. He was very anxious to meet a miniature Joan Jett, and how bad could someone six feet tall, 185 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes be? We arranged to meet at a coffee shop underneath the Roosevelt Island tramway at 4:30 A.M. so as not to interfere with my regularly scheduled midnight to dawn public groping spree. I look forward to seeing my guys from the line for early evening happy hour dates and post-club free breakfasts on Friday and Saturday nights. My weekends would be boring without that extra kick of sandwiching party line men around my real social life.
Brian was very nice and very homely: superimpose Porky Pig's head onto a paunchy human form in an iridescent silver sportscoat, white shirt, and black linen slacks. He treated me to eggy-wegs and an informative discussion of police work, Mace, the line, and the Cole Directory, which lists everyone's phone number--published and unpublished--and can be purchased by police departments, detective agencies, (and Jack!) for a four-hundred-dollar premium. After our meal, Brian walked me to Third Avenue, flagged down a taxi, put me in it, and handed the driver five dollars to take me to my destination. He was very polite, considerate, and gentlemanly--and hopeful that I'd call him again. The typical party line escort is uniformly much nicer on a date than a comparable man from real life: none of them has ever harmed me--perhaps because I'm so doubly careful and wary of them. They are only there on a notoriously tentative trial basis: I don't give them enough time to do anything more than briefly look at the merchandise across a speckled formica barrier.
I also became the sudden tortured object of the very accommodating Marlboro Man's convoluted fantasy life. Since the telephone is the critical, dial-to-impress pick-up currency here, Marlboro offered to three-way any blue chip 900-number of my choice onto the line. We played cat and mouse all over 465 as he pursued me from the open party line to a secluded private bridge ahead of the competition. Try as I might, I couldn't give him the slip! In a sweeping, sexually charged gesture, he dialed 958 on his keypad to play back his number for me to copy down. (If you press 958 and it's busy, your home phone is tapped!) No wonder he tripped all over himself to apologize at Playboy's party: he must like little women. I hope his fiancé, The General, gets him good!
chapter 19
“I’M ONE OF YOUR ARMY, JACK”
Modern culture is wracked by contentiousness and discontent. Psychiatrist and author willard Gaylin posits that the human species is experiencing a crisis of confidence: “We are a failure in our own eyes, and that is always a dangerous and unstable state. . . . We are losing faith, not just in our institutions, but in ourselves. We view ourselves as the polluters of the environment; the brutalizers of animals; the warmakers; the potential destroyers of the planet.” Gaylin continues: “The dominant pathology of the moment is alienation and distrust”; these negative feelings surface as the unprovoked, unfocused wrath which we increasingly encounter in everyday life. Stripped of the twin psychological ballasts of love and community, we grow more and more irascible: “The most dangerous thing in the world is to be unloved.” Our entire society is convulsed with ill-will, manifested in random violence, insolence, corporate and political venom, and a proliferation of cantankerous litigation (nineteen million lawsuits filed annually in America).
My debauched, rock n’ roll Cathouse nights ended in a hideous paroxysm of deceit and betrayal when Tony suddenly canceled our Majic Bus contract. I had the same dependable camaraderie on the bus as on the line, but the hormonal excitement was always real: my silky, red lace, merry widow bustier enjoyably and invariably pasted against a different, strapping young washboard stomach every single week. Tony personally reassured me this afternoon that the final bus was running tonight, launching me on a two-hour roundtrip journey to wait all alone on an empty, downtown street corner for nothing. I lumbered home in angry shame to deposit a hoary, “low wheeze” on tony’s answering machine: “You tall, ugly motherfucker!”
Danny, a drummer, and I, have been eagerly inching our tongues down each others’ open throats for the past three Mondays in a row by the backyard Cathouse barbecue. He took me out to the scene of our crimes the next Saturday, but Danny was very nervous during the leisurely cruise to Lakeville Manor: “I can’t believe I’m doing this!” He bought me a few cocktails, hastily suggested that we leave early--and then snuck out the exit door while the band was playing. He stranded me fifty miles from nowhere, at four in the morning, with no way home except for a $47 cab ride! Tony didn’t lift a finger to help me: our sexual sharing and conversations had meant as much as a sex tourist Thai holiday in a Patpong whorehouse. Egg Nog provided free, post-trauma legal advice: if anything had happened to me, I could’ve had Danny arrested and prosecuted for reckless endangerment. Danny, whom I later learned was married (for ten years with two small children!) must’ve done a last minute cost/benefit analysis and reconsidered both his limited sexual prospects and family man’s curfew. Ladies, never tell a man in advance that you’re not taking him home, and never trust a thirty-three-year old who says he lives with his mother, calls you from payphones during the day, drives a household-size green station wagon, and complains that Jewish women don’t know how to cook!
Numb, mistreated, and overwrought, I cried my eyes out for two hours as soon as I got home to Roger the housing patrolman, who desperately needed someone to talk to about a precinct dispute. This very nice (unfortunately Indian) man was there for me when I needed comforting, and we both got the understanding, sympathy, and emergency therapy that we demanded from our ad hoc, telephone singles support group. My formerly innocent, trusting, gentle personality has undergone a radical change over the space of a year: if someone takes advantage of me now, there will be retaliation. I will serial-puncture Danny’s roadworn, Cathouse tire set and then get his home number--fake last name or not--if it’s the last thing I ever do! I have come to identify with Jack’s hostility; it is what draws me to him. My days and hours are spent talking to profoundly enraged, frustrated people; their animosity is contagious. Six-four-three is a no-frills, no-nonsense boot camp: I’ve learned phone life/real life combat skills from the toughest master sergeant on base. It is easy second nature now to be belligerent: I walk around the mean gridlocked streets of New York like a wounded, raging bull.
Aggression and fits of pique which are appropriate--or at least tolerated--on a party line, can be dangerous when phone life spills over into real life. I curse individuals out in person the way Jack curses them out on his three-way; I see the world through line eyes. I don’t care at all what I say or do to anybody over a phone. to continue to get along in organized society, I have to remember that it’s not normal to hurl middle fingers and epithets at quality of life urban nuisances like snail-like subway conductors; speed demon bike messengers; and crabby, trisexual coat check boys--unless I can trap them on the 643 party line! you will ride shotgun with me into the familiar, privileged eye of that blazing firestorm.
SHRILL PEEP: “This is Michael Jackson. I bought the remains of the Elephant Man, and when he dies, I wanna buy the remains of Mike from Manhattan’s stomach!”
BRENDA: Hey, Trash! What is this guy’s name, this moron?
DR. TRASH: Don’t worry about it--a friend of mine. another fucking moron. Cause you’re a fucking moron, yourself. A porch monkey. You’ve been fucking porching all weekend.
BRENDA: Who?
DR. TRASH sings: You! Porch monkey, porch monkey, porch monkey! You’re a porch monkey!
BRENDA: I have better things to do with my life.
VITO: Trash, you’ve seen Wendy, right? Wendy fat or what?
DR. TRASH: She’s got a little bit of a look like Joan Jett. Where is she? she’s out there. She just don’t want men.
WENDY stops porching: Yes I do!
DR. TRASH prescribes: you do? Take it down: 555-5571.
FRANKIE: She ain’t gonna call you, Trash.
DR. TRASH fights fire with fire: You fucking phone sex idiot! Shut up before I give out you last fucking four digits!
CAROL ANN: Cyclone, are they still cranking you?
DR. TRASH: Yeah. they’re doing it right now. I’m sick of all these phone vermin.
FRANKIE flaunts his availability non-stop: Carol Ann, you sound cute.
CAROL ANN sneers: I am not cute. I never have been cute, and I never will be cute.
FRANKIE seeks genital contact elsewhere: Wendy, call me.
DR. TRASH: Shut up! She ain’t gonna do nothing for you, you fucking phone sex moron!
BAM BAM: Trash, this chick decent size, uh, bosoms? I like chicks with big tits. I’m a tit man.
DR. TRASH laughs: No, Wendy don’t have big tits . . . but she has a nice ass.
CHAOS clicks on: I’ll make believe her ass is her tits, just with no nipples.
BAM BAM: But I like to stick my face in the middle of ‘em.
KEVIN FROM MANHATTAN: not unless she’s got two pimples on them, and then we can make believe they’re nipples.
BAM BAM sacrifices himself: If she had two zits, I’d pop ‘em and I’d swallow all that pus.
KEVIN: Is she horny or what?
BAM BAM: she’s probably the type of chick that takes a Handi Wipe and she folds it real nice and neat and lays it right on your stomach when she’s jerking you off. So it’s easy to clean up.
CHAOS throws out his dating philosophy: Ah, you take the bitch--she wipes it on the bedsheet!
VITO: She wets her face on your cock, and you shoot your load down her throat.
BAM BAM: No, not with Wendy.
KEVIN: Nah, she’s a Jewish girl; she gives good head.
BAM BAM: Nah. that’s what Jewish girls do. then they like to clean up afterwards before they do anything else. then they toss the tissue across the room and ask if it’s got germs on it. that’s what they do, man, I’m telling you. then they wash their hands and come back.
CHAOS laughs: Must be a busy night uptown tonight on Park Avenue.
KEVIN: what? Whores, you mean?
CHAOS: Yeah, like fucking fancy ones and shit.
BAM BAM: the only hookers that are fancy are the ones on Fifty-seventh and Sixth. But they’re expensive. they’re all heroin addicts.
CHAOS: I would never go with a prostitute--never.
BAM BAM: they’re into blowing fucking Arabians.
chaos: Can you catch AIDS from a blowjob?
KEVIN: What? she gives you a blowjob, and you get AIDS? that’s impossible.
CHAOS: Yeah, they said you can. Now they say you can get it if like the toilet water splashes on you. I’m telling you, it’s true. Howard Stern said it. Once he says something, man, that shit is word!
BAM BAM laughs: no way!
DR. TRASH interjects: Put on channel 4. You see all the people on the party line? They’re all a bunch of dogs.
CHAOS: I was in Beth Israel and they had this guy who was fucked up by a gang--and he was wiping his blood all over the walls and all over the phone. I said, I’m getting the fuck out of here, man. You watch--that AIDS shit is gonna get so bad that if a faggot touches like a pencil or something, and you pick it up, you’ll get it.
BAM BAM laughs: Or if you get bit by a mosquito.
CHAOS: You know if you’re at west Street at the right time and the wind blows at you, you’re a goner. You better watch, cause it comes off the river breeze.
DR. TRASH inoculates himself: Shut the fuck up with this conversation. Where are all these fat women at? All you fat bitches, come out!
KEVIN: hey Doc, what night is December 2nd?
DR. TRASH drawls: Saturday. You’re just gonna see nothing but a bunch of fat fucking derelicts. Hey Bam Bam, I’m bringing a mystery guest. I’m walking in there with a solid nine. these people will turn their fucking heads!
RIVERDALE (snoring noises in the background): the Cat Club’s got alotta younger girls twenty or twenty-one.
CHAOS: Just walk in there with your prick hanging out.
DR. TRASH: Hey Bam bam, are you going?
BAM BAM: I think I’m gonna go incognito. the only one that is going that would know me is Simone or Lori from Brooklyn. I might go in and check out these people. But I’m just gonna be part of the crowd.
RIVERDALE (as the snorer snorts): You could find one of those cute little girls twenty or twenty-one that ain’t got too much cellulite.
WENDY steps out of the phone shadows: Hello!
RIVERDALE lets the bullets fly: Cunt!
WENDY dodges: What the fuck is wrong with you?
RIVERDALE displays his unprocessed pain: Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!
CHAOS: Do you shave your pussy? Cause I hate hairy pussies. they smell in the summertime.
WENDY hollers over hysterical laughter: Asshole!
RIVERDALE punches out each syllable: Shut up, you fat cunt!
WENDY: Cunt! I’m enjoying this. I’ve had enough of you cursing me out every time you hear me, you ugly dick!
RIVERDALE can’t contain his behavior: Stupid bitch! You cunt!
WENDY screams: Cunt! Cunt! Cunt! This is fun--it’s revving me up for the day. Go fucking die, you fat fucking pig! Fat, short, bald piece of shit!
Evidenced by catastrophic levels of antagonism and primal rage in their phone conversations, party line callers as a group are conspicuously failing to thrive. Author and clinician Dr. Sonya Friedman reminds us that “the first human drive is for shelter, food, and water. the second is for love and belonging. Infants who don’t get that, don’t thrive. Adult men and women who don’t get that, don’t thrive either.” Anxiety and violence proliferate in those pockets of society where love and sex are withdrawn. riverdale is only one of the many, unnurtured ticking time bombs who call just to scream “slut” into the phone. I have no idea why, but this thirty-nine-year-old, Jewish immigration officer is my sworn line enemy--I wish he would deport himself! He’s worse than the neighborhood bully, who at least has the intestinal fortitude and energy to intimidate his chosen victims in person!
Party line men are inordinately consumed with hatred toward women because they can’t find wives or girlfriends. they’re bitter and vengeful because females have hurt and spurned them so many times before. They haven’t had any love, sex, or affection in years. the hardcore callers have settled into a permanent, sexually segregated underclass: men without women. like lone, solitary, bachelor bull elephants, they live their entire lives isolated from the close-knit, familial, matriarchal herds of females and calves. As involuntary celibates, they are typically transfixed by the idea of using or of even becoming prostitutes themselves: it is their only conceivable access to the pleasures of the flesh. An unfulfilled life turns men hard and crude: they have transformed an ostensibly commercial singles’ service into a gender-bashing wrecking ball. they achieve raw, dramatic male catharsis and vindication here as a marauding, unified lynch mob.
The party line hold no cultural monopoly on cruelty, disrespect, and psychological/physical violence towards women. The phone merely facilitates abuse: it becomes the conduit through which the pain flows. In post-nuclear family America, men seldom date. Men want nothing to do with women other than to use them as one night stands. Men recoil from any degree of emotional intimacy or marriage. Women face a radical choice between long term celibacy or acting out through unbridled, retaliatory, vengeful promiscuity: detached, exploitive “hate-fucking” has become the predominant mode of intercourse for singles. Pre-determined by both biology and body structure, normal sex for women is emotional and spiritual: we invite someone else deep inside our bodies, acquiescing each time to the possibility of the creation of new life. Women instinctively attach love and bonding to eroticism, whereas sex for men is pragmatic and goal-oriented towards ejaculation. (Witness the profligate, writhing mega-orgies in pre-AIDS gay bathhouses where men did not have to contend with the reluctance of female sex partners.)
The fundamental emotional/physical needs of American women are not being met. Men have forbiddingly arrayed themselves against women in an orchestrated, ongoing conspiracy of profound damage and abandonment: they create women’s loneliness so that they can prey on it. in a brisk, brusque seller’s market for hard sex on male terms, men channel the overflowing reservoir of chronically single women into bars and onto telephone lines to capitalize on their sexual and social isolation. Unattractive, insecure, and lonely, party line ladies are all too willing to surrender their dignity and privacy just to become part of an open-all-night, on-call phone stable. Lorielle had to change her number three times after it got leaked to the unstoppable brat pack of constant callers. With a racially mixed, illegitimate two-year-old child and another baby on the way, Lorielle has no other romantic options. In return for being pranked, humiliated, and abused, however, “average Jersey girls” like Stacy Q (5’11 ½”, fifty pounds overweight) are compensated with a lavish amount of ordinarily absent male attention and company.
The line men portray the line women as man-chasing cats on a hot tin roof who call them up at all hours to beg for phone sex and a chance to molest them face to face in condominiums, cars, showers, and restaurants. I’ve heard many identical-sounding stories about Amazon phone ladies in lingerie who make intimate housecalls and strip men bare in the wink of an eye. (Doug from Staten Island’s favorite date was tall and statuesque and emerged from her bedroom “dressed only in a teddy carrying a bottle of champagne and a can of whipped cream!”) Are these really their fondest male plans and wet dreams come true, or only a lurid product of their delirious, housebound imaginations? the similarity of the sexual scenarios leads me to suspect that either management hired a corps of kimono-clad geisha girls to service the timid, bespectacled, rotund introverts that populate these phone lines, or that all the men quote bible and verse from the same “Forum” column in Penthouse Magazine.
Cordoned off from men and mainstream society five writing days a week, Dostoevsky’s horny “underground Woman” is venturing out of her cloistered, surreal “phonologist’s” mousehole for authentic visual and sexual stimulation. I will hunt down and trap an intellectually inferior sex object with a handsome face, muscled neck, orangutan arms, and overpowering aftershave. He’ll buy me a drink, we’ll make out for awhile, and then we can trade fictitious names and phony phone numbers and never see each other again. I’m going to do the same thing at next week’s party line party, but the pickings (not the people) will be much more slim. the weekend catch at Copacabana netted twenty-three-year-old Dylan Valentine, a divorced UCLA business graduate, stockbroker, and part-time private investigator, who lives in Forest hills, Queens, with his three-year-old daughter. My gem treated me to breakfast, wrapped me in his jacket because I was cold, and walked me all across Tiffany-lit Fifty-seventh Street to put me safely on my bus. He even invited me to go to Rio with him in December on a free vacation he’d won! there is nothing better than this: if you’re smart, ladies, you’ll never go near a man like this again. Then you can remember him as a sexy, impromptu dream date--and you can recreate this peak experience every single weekend with someone new: the supply of swashbucklers is endless. If you make the mistake of calling him up, it will only be an exercise in masochism. Four days later, his amused greek mother told me over the phone that Dylan is really a single, twenty-year-old college student named Gil who still lives at home! I redialed his number every five minutes, all night long (amidst police threats) until she forced the brazen psychotic to get on long enough for me to yell at him. How did “Dylan” respond now that the alcohol-induced macho man act had worn off? “I’m moving to Israel tomorrow! Goodbye!”
So, girls, if you do not intend to get yourself a little harmless foreplay for the evening (or, dare I say it, an actual sex partner), then, for God’s sake, tear up your club passes, throw away your car keys, and dial the closest party line instead! It’s much more fun, you are assured of male companionship, and you might as well get lied to, disappointed, and manipulated right from the comfort and privacy of your own home. In our cozy little pay-per-call boxing ring, men and women can conveniently continue this ongoing slugfest at each others’ expense--anatomical weapons drawn. No one ever wins the battle of the sexes--they just draw fresh blood round after round. Day or night, you can hear the war wounds clotting in both corners. Let’s see what kind of angst we can inflict on one another now.
RISK: So Sandy, are you really that big?
JACK THE WACK rubs sea salt into the incision: She’s between twenty-seven and thirty-three pounds overweight.
SANDY: I’m huge; I’m really heavy. He knows me. He knows what I look like; I’m nobody. I can’t read, too.
JACK: She’s heavy; she’s a functional illiterate. She has nothing to offer. But she does shave her underarms.
SANDY: I haven’t called in three months, and who’s on it? You call every girl fat, and every guy’s a faggot, and everybody admires Jack cause they’re afraid he’s gonna put ‘em down. And Jack works on Wall Street--Jack, get a fucking life! I can’t believe this! What do you do with your life, call the fucking phone lines?
JACK strikes a loud, responsive chord: You can’t score, huh?
SANDY (as hysterical men roll in the aisles): You make fun of everyone, the guys try and pick up every girl no matter what she’s like, and then they all try to admire you and they don’t even know you. It cracks me up. the only girls that like you are the retarded girls, and the guys that like you are the ones who are too whipped and faggotized to talk about anybody else. The guys that don’t like you are the real men, Jack. You’re the king of the losers on the phone line!
JACK rants and raves all during Sandy’s animated harangue: You loaned three hundred dollars out to somebody on this line, but I know who it is. And she listens to THE TONE for four cents a minute. I like her even though she’s fat and she’s a recurring drug addict.
Groundswell of diabolical laughter.
RISK squeaks in a coloratura soprano: I can’t believe you’re so stupid!
JACK: Put on that faggot roommate of yours that tried to pick me up one time.
SANDY: My faggot roommate is a girl, and she’s in Florida.
JACK: So when are you gonna meet Dr. Trash? He’s still waiting for you.
SANDY: I’m not gonna meet him. Get it through your thick head, you boob! I’m in Lancaster, Pennsylvania! Why am I gonna meet him?
JACK: What’s the difference? You’re paying four cents a minute to listen to me: that’s my underlying point.
CHARLIE TUNA (ChAOS) calls out: Hey Sandy, if you’re from Lancaster, I got a question for you: how’s your bush?
GUT-WRENCHING BEEEEEEEEEEPING takes its toll!
SANDY: I’d rather talk to Jack than to you. How’s my bush!
CHARLIE TUNA: You can lick my nuts. I bet you would, cause I got nuts the size of softballs.
JACK: She’s contaminated, she’s so heavy.
CHARLIE TUNA: Hey Sandy, I’m two hundred pounds, too.
SANDY: Anyone who talks about their nuts on the phone is a loser. That’s disgusting.
RISK whinnies like a horse: I can’t believe you’re so stupid!
JACK: She works in a factory. She goes to the men’s bathroom; she weighs 225 pounds. Sandy, you make me sick; you make me shiver and quiver.
SANDY: Shut up, Jack! the king of the trash. Mr. Phone Man.
SCARSDALE: I wish Sandy would get together with this Nut Man.
JACK: Let me tell you something about Sandy from Lancaster: she would get together with any man she talks to. She’s very desperate and horny. Hey Charlie, you wanna get hooked? Call Sandy: she’ll hook you!
Ed from Mt. Vernon on the 550-4000 Fantasy Line hooked my fertile, late Saturday night imagination with his rock n’ roll musician lifestyle and look. Ed is a thirty-one-year-old bachelor, six feet tall, 165 pounds, with long black hair halfway down his back. He works a sound man, has a recording studio, recently roadied on tour with a band, and his family has owned a pipe organ company for 103 years. When he found out that we were both planning to attend “Rock and Roll Church” at the limelight the next day, Ed enthusiastically proclaimed, “This must be fate!” But, when I called him back to prudently verify his home number and identity, Ed’s mood suddenly shifted from friendly and confident to apprehensive, perplexed, and nonplussed. For him the party line had just passed from an anonymous abstraction to a threatening reality pounding loudly on his front door. Ed and I made a date to meet at 11:00 P.M. at a trendy café near the club. I would find him straddling a brightly lit bar stool dressed in his Sunday best: a black MC jacket with a gold U.S.A. lapel pin, a green button-down shirt, blue jeans, and black combat boots.
Ed evidently prefers stage diving and the rigors of the slamming mosh pit to the company of women: I kept the bar under close surveillance for a half hour, but he never came. I’ve subsequently called his number several times, but there is only the muffled click of someone furtively picking up a telephone receiver as an anti-social taped ”greeting.” Two months later, Ed figured the coast was clear again, and his happy, chirpy chipmunk voice re-emerged on the machine: my reckoning is at hand. Chris from Bellevue left voice personal ads with Ed’s number and description on 970-BEEF (an all-male stripper’s line), the Bodyrub Hot Line (970-RUBU) for masseurs of all persuasions, and the Sex Connect Line’s gay men’s neighborhood bulletin board. Ed must have received lots of those treasured, solicited, incoming calls from “hot tops and bottoms looking to service straight-acting, bi, or married men”: it would have been a lot easier if you had met me for that drink, now wouldn’t it, sweetie?
It is time for guerrilla dating tactics: Anthony from Canarsie from the SWAP Line was buoyant and hungry when I called him back at 4:30 A.M. Saturday morning. He asked me to come out now for breakfast, followed by a daring little spin in his Toyota Camri. Once again, Anthony sounded like he fit my specifications: twenty-eight years old, six feet tall, 170 pounds, with long brown hair. I stood in the doorway of the Midnight Express coffee shop like a sacrificial prostitute dressed from head to toe in lacy virginal white for twenty degrading, humiliating minutes for nothing. there was no answer at his house, either, when I returned home. A friend pointed out a previously unimagined danger attached to this kind of meeting: the man could really be there all along--sitting in his parked car--silently observing me the entire time. When I leave to go home, he is primed to follow me directly to my doorstep.
Anthony was friendly, earnest, and approachable when I finally found him in after a dogged week of calling: he probably thought I was one of his sex talk ladies fortuitously dropping in for an unexpected, free bounce on the mattress springs. I got straight to the point: “So, how come you stood me up Saturday night?” Anthony asked me to refresh his memory for him and then exclaimed with a mindless, happy grin: “Oh, I fell dead asleep the minute we hung up the phone. I was out cold!” I cursed at him and hung up, but that did nothing to compensate me for the depression and lowered self-esteem I suffered subsequent to this incident. Distributing his home number to twenty panting phone sex zealots--one for each agonizing minute I waited--should right the sexual scales of justice.
After a solid month of unsuccessful attempts, I finally reached JJ at home too. What a disgusting, whiny, sick manifestation of masturbation, who gained another ten pounds in the past two weeks. Poor JJ, who used to weigh 350 pounds, is all alone now: no ex-wife, ex-girlfriend, or mother to show him how to hard boil his eggs or select Kosher entrées for him in restaurants anymore. He is reduced to a hypochondriacal shell crying on his therapist’s couch twice a week about how much he hates these three women at the other end of his apron strings. He even keeps notes on his phone ladies: “Are you the one into leather and lace, or the mini-skirts? You caught me by surprise--I don’t have my cards with me.” Bam Bam has eighty hours of Mr. Know It All on tape, Jack owns an extensive 643 dictionary, Mr. Know keeps log books, and Wendy maintains delicate, discreet, current dossiers (is JJ willing to share or swap?), but this is ridiculous!
All JJ has to sustain him romantically is his alphabetically arranged, ink-stained Rolodex. He is a relentlessly filthy pervert on the phone, but offer him my girlfriend lorie’s voluptuous body in exchange for Rolling Stones after show guest passes, and he turns tail and runs: “I was only kidding about that.” A large proportion of the men on sex lines find themselves psychologically incapable of any intimate human contact: their sole erotic outlet is masturbating on the telephone. fearful of both real sex and real disease, men like JJ concentrate instead on non-insertive sexual formats ranging from verbally induced orgasm to incessant onanism to fully-clothed frontal frottage. Sex--ever joyful--is the font of life, reproduction, and creation, whereas phone sex distorts and dissipates this priceless, purposeful sexual energy. Born of loneliness, anger, paranoia, and calculation, phone sex serves no biological function: it mimics, degrades--and then denies--the miracle of physical love.
The unwitting father of phone sex, AIDS continues to cast a deadly, skull and crossbones pall over human sexuality in the 1990s: it creates tremendous subconscious hostility and distrust between men and women. We no longer see each other as loving, supportive partners, but as possible sources of incapacitating infection: men like JJ and Joe from the Fantasy Line are so terrified of HIV that they won’t even kiss anyone! Writer Erica Jong shrewdly points out that we are traditionally a sex-negative society: we vacillate between rabid sex-mania and Victorian sex-phobia, and never more so than in the current uncomfortable climate of moral ambiguity, gender behavior uncertainty, and an AIDS pandemic. Many men and women in the 1990s feel epidemiologically, emotionally, and physically threatened by each other to the point of avoidance altogether. Sex is the most powerful weapon in the world, and it now kills without remorse--without respect for age, sex, race, or national borders--as it holds entire, compromised populations in its chilly cemetery thrall.
Sexually disturbed JJ soon gave way to Salvio from the GABB line, who wanted to buy my company along with one of my extra rolling Stones concert tickets. He met me at the corner of Eighty-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue right on time, parked curbside in his white Chevy Impala. My new, hours-old girlfriend, Andrea, got to witness this extraordinary, once in a lifetime, only-from-a-party-line event. If he was cute, I intended to sell him the seat next to mine; if not, I’d plant him six rows back. He was indeed 5’11”, 175 pounds, with brown hair and eyes, a moustache, and glasses, but he lied about being Italian. Was I supposed to not notice that he was Spanish? It’s stadium row G for you, buster! No telling what Salvio would’ve done had I been trapped with him up in the bleachers (I snuck down to the orchestra and never even saw him!). I dialed his number by accident tonight (he’s listed in between transient targets George and Sebastian) and got his answering machine: “Hi! Sorry, but I cannot come to the phone right now. I have things to do, you know. I’m not here to tease anyone. So please leave your name, number, and a brief message after the beep. thank you.” I couldn’t resist the wide open invitation: “You fucking dick!” I wouldn’t leave you hanging, though; I would never deprive you of our abundant fall harvest of telephone numbers. I truly have something to be grateful for on this snowy Thanksgiving as I eat turkey breast, jalapeño stuffing, and organic kuri squash--and listen to Jack scientifically calculate the average corpulence of all male and female phone callers at 225 and ballooning. I give fervent thanks for one magnificent year on the party line. Happy anniversary! I’ve joined your army, Jack!
CHAPTER 20
BAD MEN ON GOOD LINES
550-KISS/CLAS launched the winter telephone social season with a fifty-person-strong Cat Club party disguised as a sentimental, twenty-year high school reunion. Party line owner, Uncle Joe, welcomed the overflowing flesh with complimentary, extra-large, KISS/CLAS tee-shirts and introduced us to his two mountainous monitors, Rockaway and Rose. The back Palm Bar set a suggestive, feline, tangerine-cheetah mood, but we had very few sex kittens or strutting tomcats in our midst. The high saturated fat content of these parties is globally reviled from the chilly beaches of Normandy to the sweltering Bay of Bengal: the girls were the worst assortment of two-ton Tessies ever photographed together in any one place! I gladhanded six-foot-tall Joanne, a Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme Manson member in a summer of love era skirt with a paisley babushka tied over her head. CC, in her gold lamé dress, could have been a billowy stand-in for Totie Fields or Kate Smith. Friendly Kissing Bandit looked like a pleasantly plump, black silk bat woman from a "Munsters" soundstage with a heavily made-up, doll-like face and lacquered black hair: she enjoyed denying her much-requested kisses to all the men. Pulse the monitor lived out “La Vida Loca” in a giggling, spicy Carmen Miranda falsetto wearing an ostentatious leopard skin belt. Heartsick, boulder-shaped Joan pined over her swarthy, errant boyfriend, Mario Speedwagon (Cockroach), who religiously avoided her all night long. She's good enough to sleep with twice this week, but not good enough to be seen with in public, right, pal? Joan has to pull out the portable pressure tank, carpet bomb the crevices, and eradicate this insect problem!
Although thinner than the women, the men were in various stages of inexorable decay: potbellied, wrinkled, myopic, in need of hair transplants, and decked out circa 1975. Bobby stared at me and circled like a rabid dog marking out a fire hydrant, but was unable to follow through with an approach. Short, porky, bald Bruce tried to pick me up repeatedly and when that failed, he offered me up to his friend "Guido.” Skyscraper-tall Dave from Mineola came over to ask "if I liked big guys"; he acted like he thought he was still invisible behind a telephone line. Tonight's ghastly cast of characters also included Tony, a humongous, 6’2” bearded werewolf: one look at Wendy, and he started to howl and bay at the full, fiery December moon! He pursued your humble, nimble, scrambling narrator all throughout the crowded nightspot! Tony wasted no time with a drink or mindless chitchat: "Can we get together sometime? Can I have your phone number? Do you want my number? Are you here all alone? What time of day do you usually call the line?" He set a thick, depressing, national party line speed record for social clumsiness and gauche behavior.
Universally acclaimed to be the second-cutest catch on New York phone lines, Tony the One and Only put in a brief ten-minute appearance to assess the monstrosity factor and then rapidly disappeared. "Thunder thighs” aside, five-foot nine-inch Tony is very good-looking with stylish, kinky, black Italian hair and a thin pencil moustache. He came dressed in sneakers, jeans, a black tee-shirt, an armada of gold chains, and a black satin jacket with his name diagonally monogrammed all across the back. In the real world, Tony is a Mustang 5.0 muscle car with fuzzy white dice swinging from the rear view mirror, but to lovestruck Natalie he rolled in as a showroom-shiny, custom-outfitted cherry red Corvette!
Mike from Manhattan predictably retained his party line heavyweight title, surviving direct challenges tonight from barrel-chested, beefrolled contenders Andy Panda and Tony. Mike happily played the Coors Light Supershooter basketball game while the rest of us sat stoically drilled into our seats in two silent rows across a long black table. Steve the Funeral Director and his business partner, Rob, expressed subdued condolences (tall and thirty-ish, with pillowy, marshmallow beerbellies, neither man will ever bury me!). Roger Rabbit strutted in late, exuding style, panache, and elegant Milano fashion runway taste: 6’2” and handsome, with short black hair, he modeled a hand-knit, European wool sweater with pleated black slacks and expensive Italian loafers. Roger is a knowledgeable, acclaimed continental chef, but he contracted hepatitis three years ago from contaminated restaurant food: sounds fishy to me. (Beware of walking skeletons who have had peculiar, contagious viral diseases!) We talked for quite awhile together as Roger retailed party line tragedy tales from beyond the crypt: caller instability has assumed epidemic proportions.
Two years ago a 550-LOVE monitor went out on a date with a man she had spoken to on the line for eight months; he raped her and then killed her. Another unhinged nut, Cowboy (currently committed to a Long Island psychiatric center), dated a line girl platonically for an entire year (while spending $15,000 on prostitutes!). He would spend money on her and she would flirt with other men in front of him; when she eventually broke up with him, he took an overdose of barbiturates. Roger seemed normal until he complained that Margarita had just shown him naked snapshots of herself. She showed me the same photo album minutes earlier with pictures of her innocent pre-school children, you crackpot! At this critical juncture I escaped to the tiniest ladies room in New York City and never returned.
The party began to take on the gym sock smell of a high school dance gone bad until a 6’2”, slim, long-haired rocker in black suddenly walked over, crouched down next to my chair, and ignited every passion within me. I left the safety of the elephant herd and spent the next two hours with Terry, a band insignia designer, on the opposite, arrogantly cool side of the room. He had wondered what I was doing with people that looked like that! We joked playfully about whether or not he was secretly from the party line, but when he bought me my favorite dark assassin's drink, I knew he was from the real world. So was Warrant's studly star singer, Jani Lane, who walked through the club, took one look around, and got a bone-chilling fright! Where were all the usual Wednesday night heavy metal scene makers, East Village lounge lizards, and music industry hangers-on? Terry and I dispensed welcome social first aid to Jani, whose long, unruly blonde hair lashed my happy face every time he bent down close to talk to me.
Poor Roger Rabbit was crushed by these spontaneous rock and roll attractions: he had hoped I would eat with him afterwards at Wo Hop's. Terry and I were not the only-new, enchanted Cat Club lovebirds: Joe the Chinese Landlord hypnotized mousy, makeup-free, "New Age" Diane with his broad-brimmed, James Cagney fedora during a seductive slow dance and a head to head nuzzle at a darkened demi-table. Tall, lanky Joe, who resembled a giant penguin in traditional Hassidic gabardine overcoat and baggy jeans, holds title to thirty-two apartment buildings in the Chinatown section of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. His last party line bill was $10,000, but not to worry--he's taking it off his taxes: "I talk on the line while I do my business accounts." Wendy left Joanna still pluckily "shaking her legs" all alone on the deserted dance floor with only her pink, polished dragon lady talons for company at closing time.
After Terry drove me home and gave me three tiny angel kisses, I floated upstairs to my trusty telephone. Although I just saw first-hand that everyone on party lines is socially disadvantaged and vile-looking, what did I do the very second I got in? I dialed the line with my coat, scarf, and mittens still on--I couldn't wait! I'd prefer to be in Prince Charming's bed right now instead of on the singles' line for Dr. Frankenstein's botched creations, but let's face it: this is the only feel-good source of flattery and attention in town. Since I never have a man around on a Saturday night either, I obviously belong on the party line with them. The phone is a critical substitute for conventional sex and relationships: for those in denial it provides the semblance, if not the substance of an active, busy social life. Normal people somewhere in the American heartland have real dates and lovers, and they don't lead this crazy life on the phone. But we do, don't we?
Natalie, Mike from Manhattan, and the Funeral Directors also called the instant they could obtain a working dial tone. I porched on the old 9292 bridge where the telephone busybodies were already hard at work discussing the suddenly solo Dr. Trash. He had managed to pick up a new girl tonight and rode home with her halfway upstate--whereupon she dumped him out on the frozen shoulder of the thruway without even a lift to the train station. Mike came home to a full storehouse of these freshly minted, pivotal telephone episodes, courtesy of Lawman. Preceded everywhere by a feisty phone reputation and vindictive enemies (Radical Rick recently appointed himself "Lawman's hitman!"), he had three-wayed Mike onto the party line six times tonight on his answering machine: "I guess he was worried I might miss something."
I missed nothing tonight: I dialed CLAS next and "courtesy-hogged" it for two hours and twenty minutes on their newly installed backdoor number. As the acknowledged belle of tonight's ball, I was in hot demand. Bass had seen me at tonight's party, but said he hadn't had the courage to talk to me: "Nobody would be disappointed if they met you." Terry's girlfriend would have been disappointed, though: he dashed my heady teenage crush on him the very next day with as much aplomb and thoroughness as any 900-number man. While he deftly reneged on our planned concert date in the late afternoon (he wasn't going), by showtime he managed to bring along the tall, bleached blonde ornament I saw velcroed onto his arm instead!
There are no secrets on the 643 party line: the burnished copper wires have keen ears and gorgeous elephants’ memories. Simone (with her permanently clogged, gravelly sinuses) snitched that a nervy greenhorn caller, "Michael from Staten Island," had crept on earlier tonight to ask what Wendy really looked like: "Should I go to the Cat Club and meet her, or should I go out with my friends?" Missing Michael (the first of my three planned weekend dates) also reneged on a "Wendy and Clorissa” double date last Friday (his father suddenly had a stroke like the dog ate my homework!). And all this abuse from an over-eager guy who was willing to cancel a weekend hunting trip just to meet me after only one conversation two weeks ago. He claims to be a very cute, long-haired, twenty-six-year-old ex-Marine who teaches martial arts, is a born-again Christian, sky dives, and owns an electrical contracting business. I usually schedule a party line date like a gynecologist's appointment: I want to get it over with conveniently, quickly, painlessly, and with a minimum of anxiety and embarrassment. For Michael, however, I would sacrifice an entire, wild child, New York clubgoing night. Why am I excusing his ballsy lies and betrayals? There's heavy metal phone fire between us!
Michael had stood me up again this evening despite my somber warning that it was his last chance. I should've spotted the handwriting on the wall from his consistently bizarre phone behavior alone: night after night he’d ask me to call at 10:00 P.M. Then he’d always get a call on call waiting, tell me to ring him back again in fifteen minutes--and held put on the infernal machine and simply vanish into thin air for the rest of the evening (he claimed to be on client call twenty-four hours a day). He'll remember the two messages I left on his answering machine to his grave--along with the pesky, around-the-clock cranking regimen which forced him to get an unpublished listing two weeks later. I enjoyed degrading him on the telephone more than I ever would have enjoyed meeting him in person.
Date number two, Marc from New Rochelle, is another newcomer to my retinue: he works for the phone company and operates a Carpet Brite cleaning business on the side. Like most of his predecessors, polite, good-natured, talkative Marc (6’2”, 195 pounds, age twenty-five, Italian) begged me to let my guard down and trust him with my number. Earnest-sounding callers try to wedge a steel-toed jackboot deep inside your bedroom door; once thus empowered, I would never be able to get rid of him--especially since he works for the phone company! Each night Marc invited me to call him back one more time before he went to sleep (to phone-tuck him into bed?). These lonely hermits demand continuous verbal attention from their "telephone girlfriends": in the normal world, daily phone contact is a large component of a legitimate, love and sex relationship.
Marc and I now share a questionable history of four identically aborted rendezvous in a row: he had originally been confirmed for last Friday night, but when I called at 5:30 P.M., I got an answering machine instead of a man. We rescheduled for Tuesday, but he backed out because he was too tired and made it for 9:30 P.M. Wednesday instead--I just had to call him at 8:00 P.M. to arrange the place. Once again, I reached only his machine. I angrily pulled out of this ridiculous sugar and skank duet on Thursday; I abruptly changed tactics and sealed off Marc’s telephone escape hatch. His voice grew perceptibly unhappy when I insisted that our date for this Friday would not be preceded by a phone call--we will finalize all of our plans now--and keep them!
Marc ran a premeditated, exquisitely organized racket: he could conveniently string me along and slip out of dates simply by not answering his telephone. When I finally called his bluff--rather than his number--he had to stand me up tonight at Drake's Drum. I raged home to swear and scream into Marc’s screening device until my throat hurt. Paranoid, frustrated, abstinent, and wasted, I then called Uncle Egg Nog, who cheered me up while I guzzled a triple black Russian! Shadow from the Bronx also failed to understand this unfortunate turn of events: he is friends with Marc’s forty-eight-year-old father, Chico, from the fantasy line circuit. (The family that dials together, stays together?) Shadow insisted that Marc was "good people" and a "good-looking boy," but this recommendation comes from a man crude enough to complain that his last phone lover's vagina chronically smelled, and who lost his doorman's job for running up 900-number bills!
Date number three, Vito (Jeff), allegedly doesn't have a phone, so I pre-arranged to call him at his office at 4:00 P.M. for a lazy, leisurely Sunday brunch--and, of course, just like last week, no one answered. It is nearly impossible to reach these slippery, annoying characters again once you're off the line! Comical and snide, Vito is an instigator who regularly pokes fun at and picks on all the "fat men and slutty women" of 643. Vito dated Lorielle and Stacy Q (who both tried to maul him), "plain-looking" Sky ("she's not right upstairs"), and "toothpick thin, blonde" Star. Star's mother is so anxious to marry her off that she recently shopped Star's photograph around to grieving prospects at a family funeral. She brought Star over the very next day to meet the undertaker, who looked like an overweight Howdy Doody with carrot-red hair and a face full of freckles. With granite courage and a morbid desperation, she even shows Star's likeness to men waiting on line in the supermarket and hands them her daughter's professionally packaged contact portfolio.
I was supposed to meet Vito again one week later, but at 4:30 P.M. Friday he suddenly had to go to Philadelphia: two weeks ago the last minute, mobile excuse was Boston. Although the sun was shining and we are only fifty blocks apart in Manhattan, he insisted it was snowing outside. (Yeah, it's snowing in your nose, buddy!) My Vito days just ended; I've had enough! Even my affair with "gay Danny" petered out after four foreign language calls without benefit of translation, when a Spanish lady was finally able to communicate to me that he didn't live there anymore. Good--now I don't have to spare anymore spit on him! I would do better to meet these men within the first hour of phone contact--before they chicken out or get too tangled up in their own convoluted web of impossible alibis.
The St. Valentine's Day massacre continued with twenty-eight-year-old Bobby, a Long Island post office supervisor, on the 1234 line. Completely and utterly charming, he came across as a red hot Italian headturner: six feet tall, 190 pounds, sporting long, curly brown hair. He wanted to take me to a show at the Continental Airlines Arena, but he was already bringing his month-long phone girlfriend, Joanne. I offered to pose as his cousin and tag along as his secret second date. He was extremely worried about which one of us held kiss as he shuttled back and forth between us--and if I liked to kiss a lot. He laughed, "Wow, what an ego trip! I'm taking two girls to the concert!"
I spoke to him three more times during the week, and he sounded great. He's going to wear python boots, spandex pants, and a cut-up, white leather motorcycle jacket over his bare chest. When I called him on Saturday night to plan when and where he would pick me up, I was dumbfounded when his wife (??) answered the phone! I had a long talk with a very nice, probably battered young woman married for eight years to a demented man in a troubled household. She had overheard all our conversations through the closed door. He has no tickets; he was never going to show up. Bobby (really Tommy) is staying home Sunday night because her parents are sleeping over. Even the footwear was fake.
Con Juan locks himself in the spare room every night and lives out a fabricated, swinging singles bachelor life on the telephone: he flirts with women, makes elaborate dates, solicits blowjobs, and breaks hearts. He also insists that he isn't cheating on his wife by having these not-so-secret phone affairs. Joanne has become so enamored of Bobby that she calls to taunt his wife that she will meet him someday! Mrs. Bobby offered a crisp, memorable sound bite: "I have more important things to worry about than him right now. I have to take care of my three-year-old daughter." She quickly said goodbye when she heard his car pull into their driveway: he rips the cord out of the wall if he catches her telling his party line girls he's married.
I felt sick inside afterwards. I was very excited about this date--and here I am used and duped and almost stood up--again. I dialed back a half hour later to tell Bobby that he belongs in a mental facility, but he hung up when he heard my voice. His wife was afraid that held take it out on her if I kept calling, but I've already cursed him out five times in the middle of the night. No one is going to make me into their fiber-optic "other woman"! Brandishing double-headed nuclear dial tones, I just went on a bloodthirsty, 5:00 A.M. answering machine rampage against my entire collection of telephone flim flam men. The line was great a year ago when I was an unspoiled suckling babe nursing at Jack's knee, but I learned too much: I took the men seriously, and I got too involved. I don't respect men now; they have earned themselves a very bad reputation.
Many men have tremendous emotional difficulty with the dating process. A date is the first anxious baby step towards a possible relationship and a trip down the aisle in a bow tie and tuxedo. Each man has a different commitment-panic threshold: some scare themselves so much that they can't get out their own door. Commitment-phobic men take numbers and don't call; they stand women up; they never call the woman again even if they do have a successful first date. They become, in fact, professional first-daters. They avoid the deep intimacy that monogamous sex can bring in its wake by doing one night stands or hiring prostitutes. Men hunger for the comfort of a woman's body, and yet they want nothing to do with women--except for isolated sexual encounters. Their emotional ambivalence is commonly manifested in urological disturbances: they either fail to produce an erection and achieve penetration, or they prematurely ejaculate. They are hesitant to remain inside a woman's body for very long: mutually satisfying eroticism feels too much like love. They lead an abnormally rich fantasy life because they are substantially removed from a functional reality. All of these bumpy, pitted roads lead straight to the shameful, scarred anonymity of the party line.
The seemingly electric equation between a vast circulation of people, plentiful get-togethers, and a resulting avalanche of "dates," yet adds up to a surprising, resounding failure. I inadvertently over-exposed myself to men through this experiment with a hitherto untested form of dating: the telephone as a singles alternative introduced me to a series of psychotics and derelicts. The accumulated hurt that I have suffered because of being on the party line has been sufficient to sour me against the entire human race. But, the party line did not singlehandedly invent bad intentions: it merely mirrors the callous, shabby nature of contemporary heterosexual relations. Nostalgia for simpler times grows as baby boomers brought up with the post-war values of the fifties find themselves reckoning unhappily with both the dissolute nineties and with substandard, younger partners from Generation X. We are a far cry from the halcyon days of Ozzie and Harriet.
A good society is a society that enables every individual in it to flourish: the American dream has fallen flat on its face. Broken families, nationwide loss of community, a failing unstable economy, a crippled education system, our plummeting comparative standard of living and position as a world power, drug abuse, looming fatal diseases, lack of national health services, astronomical crime rates, racial hostilities, greed, and a devastated environment have turned us into a lean, mean, unhappy nation of lonely sinners and confidence men. We are spiritually and morally bankrupt. The communal loss of faith, ethics, and family values at the end of the millennium is reflected in each and every word spoken and action taken on the party line.
The sexual revolution of the 1960s destroyed the strict religious taboos, circumscribed courtship practices, and powerful parental restraints which successfully governed and molded Western family formation for centuries. Pre-marital sex, promiscuity, bastardy, cohabitation, homosexuality, masturbation, birth control, abortion, and divorce are now socially acceptable. These deep societal changes, coupled with the assault on traditional sex roles, have set women adrift. Historically, men and women had an inviolable, invisible social contract: a man had to guarantee a virgin a lifetime of economic and emotional security through legal marriage to enter her bed. In the 1960s, "sexual liberation" and divorce torpedoed that agreement: many women are now deeply, if unconsciously angry at a new male sexuality which offers nothing in exchange for intercourse. No longer forced into permanent sexual unions by omnipotent ministers, tongue-wagging communities, and vigilant fathers with shotguns, men are flagrantly acting out their animal instinct to hunt, conquer, pillage, and flee. They are finally doing what they've always wanted to do--and what their genes urge them to do--now that they no longer face any consequences for their actions.
Sociobiologists theorize that human behavior is firmly grounded in biological imperatives. In order to reproduce, males need only make a minimal two-second contribution of time, energy, and physical capital. Their inheritance is best preserved by scattering their seed over a variety of partners, greatly increasing genetic diversity and adaptability and producing plentiful offspring. Women, on the other hand, must make a staggering, long-term investment to reproduce and rear their young. In order to ensure the quality and survival of her offspring, it is in her best interest to carefully choose a mate with superior traits and resources who will remain with her to protect and provide for their legacy to the future. If biology drives men to love blindly and broadly, and women to love selectively and permanently, radically different gender needs are at life and death odds with each other.
We are struggling through catastrophic times as genuine love and desire are becoming increasingly obsolete and untenable. There is no American notion of right and wrong, or of appropriate behavioral boundaries: men now have social permission to move in and out of women's lives without any explanation or warning. Insincere and devious, they make certain never to get any closer to you than to a stranger--because you can jerk off on a stranger, and not even have to clean up afterwards. The telephone is simply their newest avenue of selfish pleasure and childish irresponsibility. I have found a nest of phone harassers, phone adulterers, phone masturbators, and phone phonies: I'm the only one you can trust out here. Compare the non-judgmental, always-smiling, open-hearted, welcoming peoples of Bali, Melanesia, and French Polynesia with our sample telephone population: the prevailing "American personality" is severely disturbed, violent, defensive, offensive, and dangerous.
Jack the Wack's flap-rattling, tent revival meeting bombast has been suppressed for three gloomy weeks now (Joker allegedly obtained Jack's address through a phone company informant, went to his house, and killed him!). Threats against Jack's life are spreading as the regular male denizens of 643 grow weary of his daily technological assault against the line. Challenges are being mounted to Jack's position as the Wizard of Trash; rebels chafe restlessly under the incessant, pressing thumb of co-conspirators Rocco and Chaos. A grassroots spirit of mutiny and revenge permeates conversations: callers want to resort to physical force to permanently end this circular violence in absentia over their telephones.
Struggling sound of a demi-TONE as it gathers strength and escalates in volume.
TONY THE ONE AND ONLY: What happened, Chaos, you woke up? It's 9:15 A.M. and you're TONING already?
CHAOS: I'm trying to get additional lines to do it, but they're dead.
VITO: Why do the people TONE? It's incredible. You probably know the guy, too: 555-8792.
BAM BAM parrots Jack: Hi, my name is Susie. Hi!
TAZ: Yeah, that's--that's the scumbag. . . .
VITO: He was TONING one fucking day and he gave me his number. I called him up and I said, "Listen, scumbag, gimme your fucking address." I was pissed off at this prick--I was in a bad mood.
EMS: No, you know who does it--he does it all fucking day long--Rocco.
CHAOS philosophizes: Some people call to meet ladies, others call to abuse ladies, others call to make noise.
SCARSDALE: How do they do it?
EMS: They get three lines at a time with a tone; it creates an echo on the computer so it gets really loud.
CHAOS commits seditious acts of interstate cruelty: It's 54.8 decibels. Hold on. I'm gonna three-way the California party line onto the line. There's always gang members on it saying they beat people up.
BAM BAM: Does anyone trash out there?
CHAOS: No, they don't trash, so we do it for them. I called them yesterday and me and Rocco gave them THE TONE.
BAM BAM: Tony, man, I can't believe you went out with Sky. She has a face like an ant. I met her and I thought this long green tongue would pop out of her mouth and attack me. How could you tongue her, man?
TONY defends himself: I only went out with her eight times in two months, that's it. I swear, I never put my tongue in her mouth! I swear! I tell you one thing, though: she was great publicity for me. She's on all the lines!
Wild, owlish laughter as a new caller clicks on, accompanied by static and faint voices in the background.
BAM BAM: Hello! You have reached 550-WORST, the line where you confront your deepest fears and hatreds. We'll listen to you. This is the hotline to Billy's pants.
BILLY FROM MANHATTAN loses his temper: You wanna meet me?? You want me to show up??
BAM BAM: Billy, man, we know you're gay, but it doesn't matter to us on Christmas. Yeah, come on over. Mmm! Billy, I'm gonna bend you over and fuck you with cheap olive oil. Ooh!
TAZ: Billy, what's the point of going to the trouble of beating someone up and possibly going to jail--cause you're not a kid anymore--over a stupid line?
CHAOS sits in his house plotting human sacrifices: I think everybody should kill somebody at least once in their life. Experience that fucking pleasure!
TAZ collapses laughing: The gospel according to Chaos!
CHAOS: I honestly think so. You know what we did when we were in school to this fuck who was giving everybody a hard time? We fucking got fudge and we mixed shit in it. You take fresh horseshit. Listen to this--you moisten it up a little bit, you slice it into cookie-size pieces, and you layer it with a lot of confectionery sugar. You ever eat dingleberry pie with those nasty corns in it? It's good, right?
ROCCO laughs: What the hell is wrong with you guys?
CHAOS adds fuel to the bonfire: You know what we did to that guy Mustang one time? We ordered heroes, and we made the guy put like hot pepper sauce and vinegar on it. And after he ate it, that shit was pouring out his ass. He was running with a bag full of shit coming out. He fucking deserved it. Fucking moron! He lives across the street from me, Mustang.
ROCCO: He's what, 5’5"? A lot of small guys on these lines.
CHAOS: You know what he told me? He's gonna put a bullet in my head. He told Nathan. So I told him, come on down! He didn't come down, so I grabbed him in the street and kicked the shit out of him. I left him laying in the fucking floor. He fucking asked for it, though.
ROCCO: What about Nathan? He sounds like a big fat slob.
CHAOS: Wendy, he’d probably crush you. I used to weigh almost as much as he did. Then I kinda went on a diet and got really sick and ended up in the hospital. I went down from a 56 to a 34 waist. I like to still eat, but I maintain it.
ROCCO: Now he goes out once in awhile for a meatball hero down on the corner--artificial meatballs. A newsstand where they have a little microwave.
BAM BAM (militant, staccato BEEPING!): Beeper, give us two beeps for yes, one for no. Are you fat?
CHAOS drawls with renewed gusto: The TONE's coming for you!
Chaos created a solid wall of sound; we bathed—safe and protected--in the familiar bubble of noise. Chaos is a formidable new force on the line: sometimes he's friendly to me, while at other times he eviscerates me--depending on how frustrated or disappointed he is with his love life. Chaos is on morning, noon, and night--either vituperating in a Burt Young, gruff New York grumble, or planning his TONE schedule in a thick, labored breath. Callers carry their most profound emotional baggage with them to the telephone: Chaos hates women because his wife recently walked out on him. He ventilates loudly (and expensively) all the way to our suffering sister line in Los Angeles: "I'd like to pull a machine gun on her father! An Uzi up her father's ass!"
Desperate times require desperate measures: your sick and tired telephone tour guide is loading you back up on the double decker coach for another optional sightseeing excursion to the bargain basement line. Porching is the best antidote to dating! We find Chaos calling a sleazy whorehouse posing as a bullyboy police detective from the Midtown South Precinct: "I'm coming over to raid the place, unless you wanna pay me like a thousand dollars!" The madam told him that another cop had already beaten him to the shakedown and suggested that he come tomorrow instead for "a larger selection." Chaos stood his ground: "I wanna raid it now; I'll see who’s over there myself!" He was shocked: "Rocco, somebody was there already tonight! Somebody went to pick up money; that's what happened!”
Rocco dialed up his own favorite, foreign house of ill repute at 6:00 A.M. as a fresh, star-studded improv script unfolded within the larger divine phone comedy: "Hi! This is Harvey. Yeah, I called the other night and I no could make it over. I Chinese guy from Chinatown. Restaurant shut now. So, okay if I come over?" At $135 per hour, Chaos cogitated: "Hey, could I get two girls for myself?" Harvey requested "the Oriental girl," but the madam's busy sex portfolio lacked ethnic diversity: "No, I don't have it. I have American girl. White girl, black girl, Puerto Rican girl. I have a couple girl. Four or five. I cannot a describe all. If you wanna come here, you come here and look yourself." Harvey offered to bring left-over "special Chinese fried noodle" and "the shrimp rice" for the hungry, appreciative limber ladies behind the buzz-in door at Second Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street. Harvey's resurrection brought back a year-old egg roll memory: "Oh, no. Harvey not been around. He scared to be around. But he like to bring food for the girl."
We have been sucked into a swirling vortex of whimsical, marginal, preternaturally juvenile people: the trashers of 643 trash because they have no other communication skills. The persistent, dedicated, low-IQ disrupters who TONE the party line ten hours a day as interactive extreme sport have been picked on by others their whole life: they feel impotent, downtrodden, and disenfranchised every single day. Once they're on the line, however, they are suddenly powerful and successful: the telephone is the great equalizer. Some men need to get behind the wheel of a car and drive 120 miles an hour to feel invincible; these men have learned to use their telephones recklessly. They have transformed talking on a party line into a spectacular act of social deviance and social defiance. Wendy also developed an all-consuming, above-average interest in the fine art of phone harassment as she journeyed with them deep into the fire-breathing belly of this nightly beast.
CHAPTER 21
PUSILLANIMOUS NONENTITIES
The Long Island telephone clan sponsored a KISS/CLAS/CLUB/LOVE multi-line birthday party at Riddles Pub; they came bearing such indispensable gift accoutrements of modern singles life as a penis-shaped lipstick, a glow-in-the-dark condom keychain, and a "Masturbakers" baby pink nipple cake. I met phone celebrities here whose high-risk, high-wire deeds form the romantic, tragic grist of Homeric legends: the Ultimate Warrior, one of two known Mr. Xs, and Rebecca, whose husky Israeli accent had been hiding a short, plain thirty-one-year-old in a frumpy, lilac wool sweater with muscular dystrophy in the right hand. Bottle-blonde Deborah was too Christie Brinkley pretty to be on a party line, so she, too, must have handicaps: a gritty, abrasive personality and open heart surgery.
The men were shabbily dressed and painfully reclusive in person (the bizarre "male party line personality" syndrome): nine nondescript shrinking violets lurked around the bar's periphery in adamant silence all evening long. There were also ugly, vexing behemoths like Artie, who plied me for thirty minutes with the barbaric details of his divorce proceedings. Mr. X took a fancy to me and offered me a sip of his soda--that's pretty daring and darn generous for a party line guy! He looks like cute, 1950s teen idol Dion past his prime. (What is the French beret hiding? I bet it's not hair!) Mr. X's demented lifestyle includes a bimonthly voyage from upstate to visit his children and go to the cozy Riddles parties for long distance, drop-in social intercourse. Fred from Long Beach, one of the most notorious telephone bill bandits in the East, appeared to be a nice Jewish boy with glasses--the type I dated when I was nineteen. I playfully teased him all night about whether or not he was the evil Freddy who had once threatened to behead my beloved stuffed animal collection! Two bellicose Vietnam war veterans attempted to conceal their identities: Tex (a 6’3”, 275-pound, outback bear of a man with a scraggly beard), and his sidekick, Cobra (cross an aging Fonzie in a DA haircut, sideburns, and suffocatingly tight pants with Sylvester Stallone gone-to-seed).
All I was able to scrounge for dinner here tonight were three anemic fried chicken wings: how could I possibly compete at the crowded buffet table with these gigantic, gorging carnivores? Three sheets to the wind and starving, I hid in the far stall in the ladies room to scribble down notes on the people outside; I even took color glossies of the hair-raising hurly-burly as a prudent investment in shock-art. At 1:00 A.M., Roger Rabbit swooped in like a karate-chopping crimebuster to rescue me from a joyride home in Cobra’s revving, Bronx-bound van. Roger parked his sleek blue racing car at "Gil and Ernie’s" first to show me off to his business associates and the hopping back bar waitstaff. Part of me is attracted to Roger: he's Jewish, good-natured, gentlemanly, looks a decade younger than his thirty-five years, and has a towering bedroom baritone which stands witness to the full sensual power of the human voice. Roger is sexy: deep brown eyes; narrow lips; sharp, serrated baby teeth and all. He would be stunning with thirty pounds sculpted onto his elegant lean frame. Roger's snazzy wheels, bank account, and taste for international travel are an unexpectedly intoxicating added attraction. We can have a double wedding with Jim and Iliana. They are engaged--he after forty party line dates, she after only six!
Roger related more harrowing details of his bout with hepatitis: he was quarantined for three months, spent eight months sick in bed, was hospitalized three times, dropped from 195 to 138 pounds, and lost his job, house, and fiancé. He subsequently filed and won a million dollar lawsuit over it! After two more inhibition-lowering black Russians (we're almost at puking threshold by now, ladies and gents), he whizzed me home in Grand Prix luxury. But, the second I opened the door to step out, Roger abruptly brought up phone sex out of the clear blue sky; he boasted that he can be very graphic. I guess it was the only biological move he knew how to make! My hormones aflutter, I took his number and kissed him goodbye on his pallid, thin cheek.
As soon as I got upstairs, I called heaven--only to be confronted by disturbing new recordings that some of the 643 access links have either been shut down or converted into customer service lines. Then I called the busy CLAS "party recovery line": Roger Rabbit had already raced past road traps and radar at 102 miles an hour to get back to his phone. It would be very hard to have a relationship with Roger because he can't stop himself from picking up girls on the line any more than I can stop myself from picking up guys. The phone is standing in the way of a real commitment. I would not want to give up my love for the line for the love of a man. No one is going to interfere with this luscious, opium-like habit, or forbid me my secret pleasure chest of admirers! I would gladly stop meeting line men (no great sacrifice there!), but it would be better if my lover didn't even know that I talked on party lines in the first place.
I redialed 643 again later, where I was mauled by a droning, 10,000-cycle whistle tone until Jack's political influence broke the sustained aural siege. I was thrilled to hear his trademark buckshot voice so I could curry fresh favor and privilege with select, contraband crumbs of gossip. He relished every funny, fat detail about everyone I'd seen: "Flyboy, you met? The bald guy, right? You liked him, huh?" He laughed with glee to hear that both he and THE TONE were the subjects of a heated, half-hour ladies toilet seminar. My favorable, firsthand eyewitness description of Jack carried great weight with the eager rumor mongers and paparazzi at Riddles tonight. Jack noted with approval that I was the sole representative there from 643-HELL, as our line is gingerly referred to in civilized telephone circles.
The very next day, Fred from Long Beach not only braved the unspeakable horrors of Jack's line to search for me, but he sent peppy Tina from Brooklyn in as his effervescent emissary: "Wendy, if you call him, he will be so happy!" I have become pathologically entangled with these telephone people to the point of exhaustion: I have to listen to Roger Rabbit indulging his preoccupation with night sweats and gamma globulin shots for hour after hour now every single night. He continually mentions hepatitis to explain to people why he's so emaciated--what a revolutionary anomaly on a chat line! I'm sympathetic, but Roger has transformed his disease into a crucifixion. I'd be too scared of catching it to deep kiss him without a dental dam. What a perfect camouflage for someone who is HIV-positive (Roger personally knows two prominent AIDS specialists); I wouldn't trust my life with any party line man!
Roger also loves to talk about his sizable, sophisticated cache of surveillance equipment. He has a tap detector on his phone, a device which automatically records all his conversations, and a voice-activated, six-hour micro-cassette recorder concealed in a briefcase. These items, although related to protracted court battles with his ex-fiancé and his lawsuit, confirm my hunch that Roger is a little bit loony. He's been on the lines three years too long and too often: he just spent his day off work on CLAS for twelve consecutive hours. These uncontrolled, global orgies net Roger six hundred dollar a month party line bills (the KISS/CLASies are planning to hijack the armored Brinks truck that delivers his gold embossed, personally monogrammed Bell Atlantic account!). I bet Roger used to be a really nice guy before Alexander Graham Bell's invention completely infiltrated his conscious waking life.
Roger makes it plain that he likes me ("I can't believe someone like you could be on a party line"), but he holds back: he will only flirt over his handset in a strumming "deep throat," or grant platonic visits in rotation to the various ladies of the line. He recently drove to Carol Ann's house for a home-cooked dinner; he spent Saturday night with the Kissing Bandit (who showed up unannounced at his restaurant) without touching her. He remained asexual with a certain "someone we all know" who pulled aside the curtain and presumed to join him naked in the shower. Roger also squires sour-voiced Dee Dee around on his celibate arm to posh celebrity events: he steadfastly insists that she is in actuality pop icon Vanity of Vanity 6, and that her friend Terry on the line is really Prince's Purple Rain co-star, Apollonia!
I have called him at home on Long Island a few times for two-hour sessions which afterwards left me feeling unsettled, oddly upset, and bankrupt. I find myself gripped by a set of diametrically opposed emotions: I am torn between wanting him and being thoroughly repulsed by him. Roger, meanwhile, complains that I don't call him often enough! Although we both admitted that we’ve thought about making love with each other, Roger prefers to sit on the phone and discuss sex rather than have sex. He wants me to "learn more about him": his favorite activity is performing oral sex ("I can be down there for hours!"), and he comes very profusely. Roger amplified: "If I'm on my back lying down, it will hit the wall. A woman would have to swallow three or four times cause there's so much of it. I can cover you from your neck down to your crotch." Can Roger really think I enjoy hearing about this, or that I would like this done to me? I'm going to be sick!
What was the purpose of his long, listless, unerotic soliloquy? Roger's point of view is that, "if you like me, then the conversation is okay. If I'm just another guy from the party line, then the conversation is not okay. Only you know if it's right to have this conversation." His voice took on the edgy sound of both predator and prey as he bragged again that he can be very graphic: "I find that a lot of people are attracted to my voice. And it sets up certain fantasies in their mind." I was timid and polite, but these off-color calls left a very unpleasant, resentful taste in my mouth. This kind of discussion is inappropriate and normally should not take place between barely acquainted men and women.
I would be wise to keep my telephone dating options open: tonight I was at the epicenter of an exuberant, spontaneous free-for-all between Pete, Al, Dr. Tongue, Temptation, and my old kiddie-porn pal, Lee. I publicly humiliated Lee as he pleaded with me to call him back. Pete pushed twice as hard and came on like gangbusters; he suavely invited me out for both lunch and dinner over the line, and successfully won my attention and a post-line phone call at home. At the tender age of twenty-four, Pete already owns three jewelry stores and a steel company--and is also very proud of his teeth (?!). Pete's enthusiasm and brassy self-confidence audibly waned, however, when it really came time to meet between the sheets. He was singularly reluctant to leave his Brooklyn dog pound behind and meet me alone--man to woman--over the weekend. Then the very familiar hide and seek artful dodge began. He was engaged on his other line on both Friday and Saturday nights and asked me to ring him back ten minutes later (after which he took off like a unabomber in the night!). The crazy urge to keep on calling--just to see what will happen here--is very strong: a saner person than I would jettison each one of these village idiots a lot sooner. I tried Pete's number one last time, but he continued the elaborate evasive maneuvers: "I have somebody over now. Can you call me tomorrow?" I liked telling him he was a liar, a phone fraud, and a dick. The last sound I heard from him was an infuriating chuckle.
My New Year's resolution is not to grant men the long, grueling series of follow-up phone calls they want so badly: one conversation should suffice to set up a viable date. Every time I try to make contact or meet anyone, I get angry and frustrated. Dating is not supposed to be a traumatic experience entailing pain and humiliation: no one tolerates this type of abnormal behavior for extended periods of time. Why, then, do I persist in calling if I feel so enraged and rebuffed? I dial for the same reason as the millions of other people who spend $3.99 a minute to talk on Jessica Hahn's "Love Phone" and "Rhonda's Fun Phone Club": the party line sells us hope! By calling, we feel that we are at least still trying; we feel that we are making concrete progress towards joining the rest of the coupled-off human race.
I am running out of faith, though, and it is time to disinvest financially: the days of torching greenbacks on metered toll calls to suburban sociopaths are over. Men have gone out of their way to teach me that calling them is a waste of time and money. John, a professional comic from Long Island, badgered me abnormally--and relentlessly--to ring him right back, and when I did so the next day instead, he cavalierly pretended it wasn't him. They have no use for a woman on their telephone unless they're in the mood to ejaculate. When I didn't call back Michael the Long Island architect from the 1234 line quickly enough, I heard him ricochet right over to GABB urgently searching for another female voice to talk dirty to. I redialed him ten minutes later, but Michael had already spilled his precious drops of 4:00 A.M. DNA elsewhere and gone to sleep without me. Joe the Limo Driver from the GABB line, however, woke right up and waxed very enthusiastic upon hearing my size: "I could do great things with you. I could pick you up and spin your legs around me!" My voice instantly elicits unpleasant leering interest wherever I go.
The habitual masturbators have put a terminal damper on the telephone as a dating and recreational outlet. I am always suspicious and defensive now: is "Wanna give me a call?" a sign of personal interest in me, or merely a cagey, secret sex code? I call to mingle, and I only reach men like Danny, who painted himself as age thirty-five, 6’1” tall, 195 pounds, with green eyes and a moustache: "How does that sound to you?" He hoped he sounded good enough to turn me on over the telephone. We burned up the commercial wires until I made the mistake of calling him back at home: "What kind of garb do you wear when you go to clubs? Are you still dressed now?" Once he had exhausted his cliché, come-on "phone lines”--and I didn't respond--Danny fell deaf, dumb, and mute. The only thing many of these men know how to do on the phone is have sex: other than that, they do not possess a viable, working personality. No wonder a delighted, armed-to-the-teeth Greek chorus on 643 whispered and re-whispered his number to me: he must've been trying hard to get a phone job all night!
I also called Lee back--my interest piqued by his rich, muscular cantoral voice. After Lee got over his initial surprise ("I didn't think you were gonna call me. I said to myself, she'd rather call the asshole.”), he offered a heartfelt, if ungrammatical explanation of why he abruptly sloughed me off five months ago: "Let me tell you something sweetheart. I wasn't out to get you. I was trying to avoid anything to hurt you. That's why I did what I did. I was trying to help you, if anything. I didn't want to get you involved with me when I was still messed up with her. She came to my house, and she's telling me I love you and this and that, and I'm sorry. And then you called! Oh, now I'm 'gonna fight with her. Believe it or not, I met her on the party line. She's got a new boyfriend now, so I don't give a shit.”
I prodded Lee's memory about the single-minded focus of our previous conversation: whether or not I would sleep with someone nineteen years old. Lee tried to excuse his spineless sexual machinations: "I don't know why I said something stupid like that. I probably felt because you're twenty-nine and I'm nineteen, would you ever get involved with someone like me? Then you tell me you like young guys, but then I'm young young. But I'm not slime; I'm not trash; I'm not a lowlife. I just had alotta problems and I hadda deal with them, and I did, so. I got her out of the way, finally. And you never gave me your number, so I couldn't call you. What, do you think I never thought about you? I did. I used to think I should've just told you to call me back later."
Lee resold himself to me over the phone, guaranteeing olympic triathlon sexual endurance: "It's not the size of the wand--it's the magic in it--always remember that. That's right, baby! I have a knack for it; I know just what to do without knowing how to do it. Yup. Let me tell you, you see me the first night, you would wanna jump in bed with me. I look very handsome. Plus, I have charm." Lee promoted himself as 5’6” tall with Italian looks, black hair, brown eyes, and a long lonely winter spent beefing up on Joe Weider Protein Pack drinks: "I'm 150 pounds now, but that's in bulk. I saw I was getting bigger in my chest and my arms. I've been working out. I have a big chest, more than most guys. I told you, you would like me. Girls look at me all the time."
Lee is nevertheless in the middle of a two-month dating trough: "It's cause I didn't have no time to go out: I seen some girls, but they were acting stupid." Lee attributed his recent party line binge to sleeplessness rather than necessity: "To tell you the truth, I don't really call it like they call it. They probably call it to meet someone. . . . I mean, yeah, I do--I look for somebody that's nice, but it's hard to find. Even though you don't think that highly of me, but! . . . I'm watching the TV till three in the morning; I'm twisting and turning. I have insomnia for some strange reason. I said, let me call--what the hell. I couldn't believe you were there. I thought, oh, she still calls the line. What's wrong with her? She can't find somebody?"
Wendy sidestepped the issue with a knowing, forced laugh as Lee continued to press his case for a date: "Do I sound like I'm not good-looking? I sound sexy; I'm different. You know me from before. If I made a date with you, I'd show up. What happened to me before, was a girl never showed up for me. So I know the feeling. And even if I didn't like you I would still stay with you. I would show you I care if I tried to kiss you, if I liked you. I'm sure you're good-looking, and you're shorter than me, so that makes it perfect. I like older women, alright!" Lee tried to appear off-handed as he proposed a final plan: "I'll come in. I don't care. I drive; you know that. Why don't I meet you Saturday night--I don't give a shit.” I suggested an unsavory round of fast lane club life, but Lee whimpered miserably: "You don't understand. I can't get into clubs: I'm nineteen. I look younger than nineteen, also; I look sixteen. If you don't believe I'm nineteen, I'll show you my driver's license.”
When I panned over little twelve-year-old Lee's anatomically incorrect body standing outside Drake's Drum tonight, I had a violent urge to hurl, keep on walking, and pretend I wasn't Wendy! Lee needs a babysitter--not a date! Picture a knock-kneed, splayfooted camel calf wearing black bell-bottomed pants dangling high above its ankles waiting to take you out to eat! Both the incredible shrinking boy and his hair were a lot shorter than he’d described: Lee measured a puny 5’3” at best. He is the type of squat miniature who insists that he is five feet six and a half inches tall to try to pile on every possibly impressive nose hair of height. Lee's sartorial expression consisted of a white button-down shirt and a bulky, black tweed sweater; I couldn't tell whether he was chubby or muscular--but low-to-the-ground Lee packs a mighty broad beam. In fact, he could pass for Triple A’s twin--when Triple A was in junior high school. He is also not the first party line caller to require the services of an optometrist. His left eye turns slightly inward, and there is a drooping space between both of his lower eyelids and his eyeballs. Also, too much Halston Z-14! And stop repeating, "See, I don't lie!” Cause you did lie, fatso: you said you were good-looking!
I was stuck with a disappointing blind date I had no interest in, and then I had to fend off his sexual overtures! While I considerately ordered the skinflint cheese omelette, Lee treated himself to the full-course steak dinner. Self-conscious and uncomfortable, I had to strain to make conversation; although Jewish (and he looks Jewish, too!), Lee was not blessed in the intellect or personality departments. I interrogated him about his telephone-induced escapades: Lee recently repaid his parents (on an assistant exterminator's salary) a thousand dollars for past due party line bills! Horny Lee happily flings himself from one impassioned state to another: he flew right out the door on a wild goose chase when Dawn gave him her "address" (and a disconnected number) over the line. Lee also met a Kim Basinger doppelgänger on the phone: she refused to kiss him during two expense-ridden, non-sexual months of dating!
Lee picked up the check (with tiny jokes that my part was seven dollars), and we hemmed and hawed outside on the sidewalk. He asked if I wanted to go anywhere else, but I was on my way to a pompadour and zoot suit rockabilly concert (largely the truth, for a change). Then he asked if I wanted to see his car. No, buddy, I know what a vehicle looks like, thank you. I tried to visualize playing tonsil hockey with Jailbait Junior, but there was no physical attraction whatsoever. He knew he was getting the brush-off: "See, all you girls are the same." I guess no one wants to kiss this poor schlemiel after he buys them dinner! He's a nice guy, though: he even gave a homeless man a quarter. I waved goodbye, promised to call him, and prayed that my doorman Tommy and his wife, out for their evening stroll, had somehow not seen us together. I have savage needs and sweet desires, but a casual sex partner could give me a venereal disease, a robbing, or a beating rather than a good time. And what the hell am I doing looking for a man or a sustained sex life on a party line?
I have a nerve-wracking, real life date with Taylor Dayne's tour guitarist, but all I want to do is run for my 643 security blanket. In a petrified, pressured state of telephone hysteria, I had to pull my bar worn gaze away from the enchanting public phone booth and shoehorn the fingered quarter back inside my purse. Ralph was fun, flirty, and rock and roll musician out-of-control during our five-pub tequila crawl with a 7:00 A.M. breakfast bonus at the Green Kitchen. Twenty-three-year-old Ralph has already seduced nine hundred girls (three bangs a day on the road): he never traps himself on the horns of a sexual dilemma. Ralph gets the sex and affection that he needs: I got nothing after I declined the golden carnal opportunity to become lover 901!
I thought that I was safe--just like a virgin, in fact--until I developed white pus-spotted tonsils and a 103 ½ degree fever forty-eight hours later. I couldn't eat, sleep, stand up, or even creep on all fours to call the party line for three sweaty days straight. My worried family physician ordered five throat cultures and asked if I'd been exposed to oral gonorrhea! No, but young Typhoid Mary's death kiss had contained a potent, contagious cocktail of meningitis bacteria! Intimate conversations on the party line are a lot less hazardous: I'm going to refurbish my Panasonic Easa-Phone with microchip-safe "Phone-Clean" disinfectant pads and lock myself in the phone monastery for the foreseeable future!! It is a very bad idea to tell party line men that I date men from the material world; they don't like it (Radical Rick sounded shocked and betrayed). Guys from the line don't date--they just call. It is startling heresy to meet someone from real life--or to meet anyone--period. But, my party line boys need not fear: I may find guys away from the phone circuit, but I never keep any of them for very long. I always return to my courtesy numbers like a free range chicken coming home to roost. When all else fails, we at least have each other.
I have a full platoon of new "safe sex" Bell Atlantic leading men auditioning in the wings, including a recent explosion of middle-aged academic types with names like Ezra and Mordecai. These Hebraic individuals routinely characterize themselves as "pudgy Elliot Goulds," but they sound more like "prissy Woody Allens" as they mutter and grouse in melodramatic, existential bafflement about their "horrible lives and horrible jobs." Let's bid "good shabas" to twenty-nine-year-old Marc, a fun-loving Upper West Side financier. A Jewish-boy-next-door type, it was his pleasure to take me out for a drink on the spur of the moment at 3:30 A.M. Saturday night. Marc was set to hop a crosstown cab--crash-piloted by any one of a thousand swearing illegal immigrants named Singh--until I made it clear that we wouldn't be going to my apartment afterwards. Then he decided held rather stay home, call back the line, and "get what he can," because he was horny. Go dial 1-900-ASSHOLE and rotate yourself on the receiver!
At 6:30 A.M., Bob merged right into the line from his computer job near the South Street Seaport. He portrayed himself as 5’7”, 160 pounds, in good shape--and married. As he was about to leave work, he wanted to take me out for breakfast--but only if he could pick me up right outside my building first. Many seedy, shady men hope that a party line is an outcall escort service where they can find "cheap easy women and nights of low livin’” for free. They sound like hobbled, walking dildos in perpetual search of fruition. Then, at 7:00 A.M., I had to listen to a forty-year-old Sephardic Jew from Canarsie--hell bent on a hot, fertile morning of manual sex--yammer in a Yiddish accent about his impotency problems and permanently semi-erect penis implant!
I sifted through the mounting singles wreckage on the Private Connections line at 4:00 A.M. Sunday: crash test dummy Robert from Brooklyn crawled to the surface. He has a hazy dual career in real estate and dry goods manufacturing, and seeks an "easy-going girl, not someone high strung and easy to anger." What kind of mental picture does he conjure up on the phone? He is 5’9”, 160 pounds, age thirty-four (rapidly amended to thirty-eight over the course of a half hour), with a little stomach: "If I stand straight, you can't see my stomach. I can't get rid of it, cause it's muscle." Robert has a full, square beard, blueish eyes, a moustache, and black hair: "My hair is not too full--all covered, but not high." Robert sounds like he was spoon-fed large quantities of thalidomide in utero, but he prides himself on being a "scientific-minded" man because he performs magic tricks. I got on the phone tonight with an important dating agenda: revenge. The moment Robert hinted for physical relations, I began a spirited campaign of disinformation, beginning with a totally false description of myself and an urgent, hard sell for him to hang up the phone and start driving in now!
Robert was glad that I didn't have to get up early for work so that we could spend more time together: "We'll go for a ride." He likes to "hug and cuddle gently" and give a massage. He bluntly double-checked whether or not I would have sex with someone I just met, because he's "been stood up like that before." Reassured that I was ready, willing, and able, he told me how to recognize him: he'll be wearing a brown sweater, gray pants, "preppie-type glasses," and a cap. I will see him cruise up in a locked tight black car with dark, tinted windows. In closing, he asked me to repeat back to him what held already told me about himself, "to see if it was still true," now that we were really meeting! Predatory hunter-maggots like this who ask for sex deserve to be led on and stood up. It was empowering to reverse the oppressive, demeaning karma of woman-as-victim.
As I prospected for more gold, I careened into Sweet Buns, the nostalgic first entry in my thumb-worn, legal-size, eleven-page, party line black book. He had apparently entertained the hopeful, erotic notion that I would attack him on our wintry, transit platform date and suggest staying with him in New Jersey. He hadn't had sex in six weeks (poor unfortunate soul!), and repeated like a broken record that whatever girl gets a hold of him next will have her hands full: "I'll come buckets and keep on coming." He offered to drive into the city to see me the next night: he promised he wouldn't be so shy this time around. I left Sweet Buns two messages to bring a friend for "Susan" and meet us outside the Stone Pony at 2:30 A.M. Saturday. I wanted free transport to Pat's all-night diner and free breakfast: men make women afraid to travel at night, so they have to shoulder our public safety expenses. An improvised double date should while away the hours and whittle down the bills pleasantly enough.
Sweet Buns showed up alone--and the minute I saw him beckoning by the front door, I wanted to slip out the back and forget about the whole bad idea! Susan and I ignored him and remained inside the closed club to party with the boys in the band and turn down George the roadie's invitation to come back to their cheesy, Pink Flamingo Motel room. I didn't care what had become of the sticky butt outside; I honestly hoped held left. At 3:35 A.M. we sprinted out the side exit, but he was still there, patiently waiting in the driver's seat of his silver blue Honda, one arm draped over the top of the passenger seat, fingers tapping on the headrest, listening to his radio. We snuck past the taxi we had called and hopped into his car apologetically. This guy has no pride!
"Mr. Fanny" wore the same pale gray sweatsuit, gold link bracelet, "A-bomb test orange" ski jacket, and nerdy brown topsider loafers as a year ago! We all sat down at a side booth and I ordered a hearty triple-decker sandwich (no cheap English muffin this time, pal!). But, there's no such thing as a free ride: I had to put up with this unappealing, smarmy, slimy, fundamentally creepy guy for two excruciating hours. His constant compliments and attempts at flattery made me "want to nauseate and throw up my whole dinner," as Jack would say. I didn't feel this way about him last time: not only have I changed, but I couldn't put his recent, repugnant treatise on the sad state of his yearning genitalia out of my mind.
Fortunately, Sweet Buns is too inhibited to get frisky except over a long distance hookup. He didn't even remember what he’d said to me, and insisted over and over that I tell him--whereupon he blushed, hid his face in his hands, and giggled uncontrollably for fifteen minutes in childish embarrassment. We disregarded him as best we could in his hour of shame. When Susan went to the ladies room, Sweet Buns recovered himself enough to ask if we'd like to come to his house for a few hours "to mellow out and listen to some music," and then held drive us to the train in the morning. The nerve of him to think I'd go home with him after two dates in a coffee shop! He also asked for and didn't get my number!
I didn't even thank Sweet Buns for breakfast. On the short hike to the station, he half-seriously kicked me in the behind with his foot and punched me on the arm for teasing him about his sexual revelations. His excuse was that he was "drunk, lonely, and horny" that night. Don't tell me about your body fluids over a telephone and expect me to respect you after that! I maneuvered myself away from him using Susan as a buffer: don't suck on lifesaver candies to freshen your breath for me, sugar tushy! He didn't even wait around for the iron horse; he just saw us to the glass shelter and ran off an exposed, marked man. Sweets knew he was used, but he earned it and he had it coming! I feel satisfied.
As good behavior and good will between the sexes declines, women are both silently retreating from and lashing out at the source of their abuse. Sexual politics in the 1990s revolve around the tremendous, unspoken visceral anger between men and women. The media circus and partisan support surrounding the Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas sexual harassment hearings, the Kennedy date rape allegations, the Bobbitt genital mutilation courtroom drama, and the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky adultery scandal reflects a fundamental, widening social schism along gender lines. The prevailing climate is one of either face-off or disengagement. Men and women increasingly meet not as complementary counterparts but as polarized adversaries.
The most desirable, best women retire from the singles scene early, before they've found a life partner; they sadly withdraw rather than face men who raise their hopes and passions and then leave them empty-handed. Demographic factors illuminate the dating stalemate. Each birth cohort proceeds in tandem through the predictable, age-appropriate family phases of the human life cycle: birth, marriage, parenthood, and death. Romantic coupling is hectic and successful between ages fifteen and twenty-four because the entire prime population is available for selection. Emotionally stable, loving, well-educated men with good careers and good intentions are largely paired-off with permanent partners by age twenty-five. All that is left on the singles shelf over the age of twenty-five is the picked-over, soiled merchandise that nobody wants to buy: these are the psychological and biological vagrants that we have met on the telephone. The large surplus of single and divorced women over age twenty-five have either missed or fallen off the marriage boat: they find themselves stymied and abused in their efforts to date because they encounter troubled, unavailable men who cannot and will not date. We come together at terrible cross purposes with crossed swords at mid-life on the party line.

CHAPTERS 22-25

CHAPTER 22

HI! IT'S ME, WENDY!

The 643 party line has established a legitimate, new social dialect with its own patented, peculiar phraseology; lexicon; grammar; phonetics; and syntax. Jack the Wack's speech pattern, cadence, mannerisms, and vocabulary have become the official, unique lingua franca of 643: I've even begun to think to myself in his unmistakable rat-a-tat voice and idiosyncratic Glendale, Queens accent! An inspired, loyal group of fanatical adults squeaks in Jack's high-pitched "Patty from Paramus" protocol all day long from dawn till dusk. The joyous, evolving home-grown vernacular of 643 has even come to be embellished by the extremely popular Wendy squeal, capped with a distinctive "Yeah, yeah!" at the end. Wendy gladly joined the noisy, bustling cacophony of phone chameleons, spanning the full gamut of vocal incarnations from bawdy, courageous mouse to emphatic, classic whisperer. Musical terrorism has also taken on a specialized, designer touch: signature trashing (Lone Wolf has a lock on "Blue Moon") affords the attention-starved "phone pest du jour" extra annoyance potential and clout on the line.

Jack the Wack turned down his stereo today to harass weary 1-800 television loan officials at Champion Home Mortgage for the entire afternoon. Jack's magnanimity even extends to the conscientious individuals who prank him back: he automatically forwards all calls from the ravenous huddled masses crammed cheek to jowl on his home telephone line to Nutri-System at 1-800-321-THIN! Party line people have a whole busy life that I don't understand: they get hundreds of phony phone calls a week. Radical Rick enjoys emergency interruptions from Dumbo the Elephant at 8:00 A.M. every single morning. I want to experience the agony and the ecstasy of receiving those individually tailored, predatory phone visits. Regular people can't understand or imagine this wondrous world where pranking and being pranked constitutes a reason to live.

LAWMAN generates heat: Jack, I'm on your line and you didn't introduce me to anybody. Who’s the lady whisperer? I'm on your line--you know these people.

JACK THE WACK excuses himself: The people are whispering. How can I introduce you to whisperers?

Elliot, who dwells deep within the blistered wiring of 643, produces snowballing, hiccuping hyena laughter every five minutes.

LAWMAN trumpets: Jack, I wanna find out who you are! I'm gonna bring Krowsha on this line. I'm gonna take care of all of you for trashing me.

JACK's throat constricts over a noisy, CBS News radio weather forecast: No, don't bring him on here! Krowsha couldn't handle this line.

LAWMAN lionizes the Lone Ranger: He can do amazing things, Jack. I could tell you what he did to me. I had every fag on the West Coast calling me. I had four hundred God damn calls!

JACK laughs nervously: He's a phone computer hacker: he could bust into access codes of computers. Nobody's in that league! Not even me! Krowsha thinks I got computers on my phone. He's funny. If he ever gets caught, he could get his ass kicked.

LAWMAN: They've been trying for twelve years.

GEORGE clicks on with "the wild mating call of the North American masturbator": Wendy, wanna call Queens?

WENDY publicly ignores him: No, I don't.

GEORGE: Wendy, I'd like to talk to you, but I ain't giving you my number on this line.

HIGH-PITCHED SQUEALER: Who’s the fat guy who doesn't want to give out his number? You're a fat slob. Yeah! This be Wendy! I don't want your number, you fat gutless punk. Ya pig! You gutless, putrid nonentity! You don't wanna give your number. You afraid somebody'll call you up?

HARVEY: Hi, how you doing? No sleepy-poo tonight, huh?

Jack impersonates PATTY FROM PARAMUS in an upper register: Hi! My name is Leo. I'm from Sheepshead Bay. I work in the subway tracks, and I'm a very filthy man.

"Jingle Bells" tweets on a touch-tone mini-piano.

PATTY: Where's that Theresa girl from Brooklyn--that legal secretary--that phony fraud? Whatta you been talking to Rob about for four hours at a time? Come on, Theresa, you don't have to hide.

ROCCO: Theresa went to bed.

PATTY squeals: Oh, no she didn't! Theresa?

THERESA FROM BROOKLYN: Yeah?

PATTY squeaks: I told you Theresa’s out there. I know my callers. Nobody knows my callers better than me.

CHAOS: The mutante line!

JACK: Rocco, I don't really want you to be on the line Christmas holidays. I don't want you to TONE the line out. Theresa really shouldn't be on the line, either. She depresses the shit out of everybody.

ROCCO: Jack, I don't blame you. I wouldn't be here. The only reason I'll be on the line for Christmas is I have to work. I don't care; I'm making the money.

CHAOS: We could take shifts on Christmas Day.

JACK snorts: You won't have me Christmas Day. I ain't gonna be around Christmas. I don't wanna be responsible for anybody's suicide.

"Santa Claus is Coming to Town" tinkles happily during a snowstorm.

JACK screeches: Hi, it's me, Wendy! "Yeah yeah!" You got a "rep" now, Wendy. They imitate Wendy all day long. They were doing it at 11:00 P.M. before you were even on. I told them you're on there from 4:00 to 6:00 A.M.

WENDY laughs: Jack, I'm glad those guys didn't kill you!

JACK scoffs: Some woman told Shadow that. They're all after me. Everybody's after me. They're coming to my house. People tell me it's a matter of time before I get you. There's one son of a bitch on this line that had the audacity to say that he missed his chance a few months ago, Chaos, when I made an appearance: "Oh, I wish I had my chance. It would've been a bloody mess." If this fucking guy keeps going on with it, I'm gonna find out who he is and turn the table and meet him!

WENDY punches up her phone life to fever pitch: I hadn't heard you in a whole month!

JACK: No, I go to bed at night. I don't stay up. But this is holiday week, so I don't care. I make sure I'm in bed by one, usually: I get my six and a half. Then I'm not on prime time that much. It wears you down, you know--no sleep. You get bags under your eyes. You don't feel good.

In the common parlance of the party line ("yeah, yeah!"), feel-good Wendy has two new phone dates: Lewis wins the Drake's Drum 8:15 P.M. early shift tonight while recently-revived Steve the rock musician gets sloppy seconds at 11:00 P.M. After days of conversation, Lewis only let it slip this afternoon--in a world-weary, smoky satin voice--that he had once contracted hepatitis from shooting heroin. That was a long time ago, of course--prior to his extended treatment in a rehab center in Vermont. (Uh oh, it's AIDS time, kiddies!) I felt half-inclined not to show up, but former junkies can molt into the nicest, twelve-step men around. I hurried inside fifteen minutes late and saw a tall, unkempt man with long brown hair hunched over "the Snoopy bar"; my heart sank, but he didn't approach me. Then a long sandy-haired, burned out "Keith Richards" in combat boots; tight black jeans; a scroungy tee-shirt; and a pilled, black wool sweater suddenly rushed in and asked if I was Wendy. He inquired if I'd like to sit down and have a drink with him. You bet I would, honey!

We retreated to the heart of the non-smoking section (much to Lewis's chagrin), where we nevertheless enjoyed each others' company for three black Russians and three hours at a little square lover's table. Lewis ordered only sodas, as he's in a very fragile stage of abstinence from drugs and alcohol. He claims to be thirty-six, but he could just as easily be forty-six. He looks like he's gone through a lot of wear and tear, Sex Pistols-style. A checkered lifetime of bad habits hasn't broken down his basic English/Irish good looks, though: I liked his haggard, bony face; wrinkled blue eyes; and strong, veined hands. We discussed 643 with tremendous relish; Lewis wondered aloud if my dogged, guru-like devotion to Jack was at all romantic.

Lewis was reluctant to reveal much about his current residence, career, or recreational habits other than to mention that he distributes independent record label output to retail stores. His "incorrigible youth from the wrong side of the tracks" high school dropout pedigree, however, merited a great deal of attention. My date was also nearly sentenced to seven years in Alcatraz for stabbing a man in a Cuervo-fueled blood brawl at a girlfriend's California apartment. Lewis appears decent, intelligent, and low-key, but frankly admits that he can turn violent and abusive when high. He accepts his proneness to addiction and doesn't rule out a return to street drugs and suicide attempts.

Sober and considerate tonight, however, Lewis endured hours of nicotene withdrawal just to please me. I noticed on my calculator watch that it was 10:00 P.M., but I was having such a good time that I passively let the minutes tick by until it was too late to meet Steve. A compatible companion in the hand is worth two (who never show up!) in the bush! Only eventually did Lewis and I drag ourselves out and into the subway labyrinth. I went through the turnstile first and waited on the platform while he bought his card. When he turned around and didn't see me, he thought I'd ditched him and disappeared onto the train. Lewis sighs a lot on the phone and is depressive: toss in a pinch of loneliness and insecurity to the psychological stew.

We continued to converse on the train, where he picked a fight with a passenger who accidentally brushed up against him. Fisticuffs were avoided only because they were not two of the same kind. Although I liked Lewis (very different from the typical party line man), he is too helter skelter and volatile to date any further. I could have brought him with me to meet my friend in the Village, but I don't want to be around Lewis when he suffers a relapse. I judge all new men against my ex-husband's two doctor's degrees, scientific intellect, honesty, and innocence--and no one ever measures up. I felt bad about double-crossing Steve, but now I know how it can happen: you just don't care that much, especially if something better comes along. There was also an element of retribution in it for the three times Steve failed to meet me outside the Cathouse ladies room last summer. And he broke another date with me this week with the excuse that he got a last-minute club gig. I stood Steve up at the very house of assignation where Michael from Staten Island once left me high and dry! I have a foolproof alibi, though: the hard rock/soft S & M Chelsea club suddenly went out of business and padlocked its doors yesterday!

Luckily, Steve was good-natured and laughy--and I was apologetic--when we next crossed paths on the line. He had headed diagonally across the street and waited for me at an alternative live music spot nearby. With a very hoarse, scratchy, Tony Danza Brooklyn accent, he was cute as he nudged and teased me about the mixup. (Did I close the entire club down deliberately?) Since Steve has been living on his friend's couch in Brooklyn for the past three months after losing his apartment on Long Island, he can't afford to stand on ceremony too long! Especially since he likes me and wants to be my steady.

I am experiencing a new dimension in line dating: Steve and I are now boyfriend and girlfriend after an emotionally intimate three-hour talk. He says he doesn't have to see me to like me: the sentimental foundation for love ‘90s-style has already been laid. Romance is never flashy: simple, subtle, and elegant, it breeds on imagination. Heartstrings hinge on the way someone walks, a hand held in a gloomy downpour, a hug inside a sheltering, pile-lined winter coat--and now, a description over the telephone. Steve is already satisfied: "Wendy, wanna be my girlfriend sight unseen? A little scary, isn’t it?" He's going to treat me well: "We've gotta be friends to each other." We drew up an ante-nuptial contract covering his boyfriendly duties: he'll be affectionate, protect me, and always call to check up on me. Steve and I even share the same birthday! We are enjoying our new relationship so much that having to meet each other first does seem almost irrelevant: "Wendy, you're kidding, and I'm not kidding. I'm serious!" He made me feel very safe and loved tonight.

A fortuitous twist of fate brought Steve and I together face to face a lot sooner than expected: Rockhouse Danny is booked at the Cat Club! None of my real friends (not even Egg Nog) cared enough to stand beside me when the game got rough, so I resorted to the only thing I can really count on in life: the party line. Steve was recruited into New York City on thirty minutes notice with a $9 concert bribe: very dirty deeds done dirt cheap! I had Steve, but I would have preferred to bring along plastic explosives and an M16. We searched everywhere for a parked, soon-to-be-defaced green station wagon, but no such luck. Plan number two was for Steve to pose as a record producer looking for session players: Steve acquires Danny's last name and number--and the big payback is set in motion. As we stole into the Cat Club separately and surreptitiously, Rockhouse had the stage, but there was no killer dwarf pounding the drumkit. Groomed by new management into a professional look and sound, they had kicked Danny out of the band: he is now the truckdriving nonentity that he always was and always will be. By incredible chance, Steve happened to know their guitarist from junior high school, and I pushed him over to procure confidential personnel data. Who says there's no justice in the, world!

I must be making a terrible impression on Steve, but I don't care. He's nice and accommodating, and although he's my birth mate, he's not cut out to be my soul mate. He had sounded marvelous: age thirty-two, 5’7”, 160 pounds, long brown hair spiked up on top, with a beard. Fortunately, he mowed the prickles off his heart-shaped Scott Baio face, but I should have realized that the poundage was too high. He is Deal-A-Meal chubby with an overhanging gut and flabby, meaty arms: his "Crazy Country Club" tee-shirt sleeve hugged his upper deltoid like a plump Polish sausage casing. Steve was no embarrassment, though, in his black jeans and beat-up old sneakers fashion statement, especially seen under the growing influence of several homemade white Russians on the express train downtown.

Cathouse bus alumnus/club scene promoter, Jerry Adams, freebied us into an eccentric rock-elite/go-go bar in a renovated transient hotel on the West Side Highway. The butterball turkey apologized for not having any money and for having me pay for him all night (a first in my life!), but yet managed to buy himself four beers and a club soda! Not a great courtship technique, my fellow Scorpio! We swapped spit two or three times, but it was pretty lackluster and unexciting; he feels like a plushy, padded chintz sofa. He volunteered to see me safely home if I wanted to leave early with him, but there are new men to meet, a VIP room to bulldoze my way into, and a rumored Paul McCartney celebrity jam! I still refused to give Steve my home number and promised to call him tomorrow at 6:00 P.M., which of course, I won't do. Steve has since left a few disappointed messages for me on my voice mail system, but I don't have time for him. I have wives to call, threats to make, incriminating taped conversations to mail, and married fish to fry.

By sad necessity, it is better to call, crank, and profiteer on the party line than date the party line. Risk formulated a brilliant in-house investment scheme: we can produce a record album of party line noises featuring THE TONE, the off-the-hook buzzsaw, screeching busy signals, disconnected notices, beeping, muffled radio talk shows, and "not in service in this area code" announcements--with a multi-platinum background grid of burping, dialing, salsa music, and snoring. As Chaos is so fond of saying, "This is not the phone party: it's THE TONE party!"

DR. TRASH takes umbrage: Why don't you meet me, you fool!

ISRAELI MAN: I don't want to meet you. I will shoot you if I will meet you. Why don't you call me? Trashy, I will even disconnect my fax machine for you.

DR. TRASH comes on cocked and loaded: Shut up, you fucking A-rab!

CHRIS: Elizabeth, write down my number: 516-555-3946.

SAMMY FROM BROOKLYN: Oh, I know how you Jersey girls operate: you take down numbers and call later at your own convenience.

OVERSEXED FOREIGN WHISPERER: Eleezabeth, call me: 555-1413.

WENDY MOUSE squeaks in consternation: Oh, no! It's that Israeli dick again! I don't like you; you're a very bad man! Go back to Jerusalem and steal leather jackets from American tourists!

ELIZABETH shouts: Go back to your country!

CHRIS: Hello! Hello! You didn't call. Did you get it?

WENDY MOUSE ruminates loudly: She wants to waste money on some idiot from Long Island who’s playing with himself at nine o'clock in the morning!

SAMMY referees over fired-up fits of belly laughter: Oh, don’t call him--it’s negatory. But maybe if he combs his hair and brushes his teeth he'll become a pository.

CHRIS: How'd you figure all that out about me, man?

SAMMY: Cause we know your act already, guy. At nine o'clock in the morning you're desperate to pick up. At nine in the morning! You didn't get up out of bed, yet.

CHRIS: Oh, brother!

SAMMY: She don't wanna call. Don't you get the hint? Go brush your teeth and call back. Stop wearing hushpuppy shoes, shine your polyester pants, and maybe you'll pick up--maybe.

MATT enters the laughing party line playpen: What time is it?

SAMMY tries to help: It's 9:16. Whadda ya got--a date?

MATT: No, I don't have a date. Minnie Mouse, you wanna call me?

WENDY MOUSE diva raises her voice another octave and sings off-key: I have to know how cute you are before I spend 4.2 cents.

MATT groans in mental anguish: Oh, God! That voice! I have dark hair, brown eyes, 5’10”, 150; I'm in good shape.

What kind of "phoneatic" wants a call at 10:00 A.M. on a Saturday morning from a squealing, scampering, cheese-starved mouse! Matt recalled talking to high-spirited, little JJJ the last time he was on 643: my description and voice stuck in his mind for a full six months. (I've become a no-contest candidate for the "Ms. Phone Woman of America" frequent callers crown!) Matt and I spoke for an hour and a half about his work at MGM reading new novels for screenplay potential until exhaustion rendered me nearly incoherent. I called him two more times at his Soho loft, but on both occasions he turned puzzlingly tongue-tied and completely withdrawn: knock another screaming fairy off my mid-winter social agenda!

At the expense of further, gratuitous party line perjury, I'm hunting down 643 Scott, who had hinted broadly for a heavy breathing phone session when I called him at home two months ago. Scott pestered me about the length of my hemlines and slyly poked and prodded: "What kind of dimensions do you have?" He was 5’11” tall, 225 pounds, had a forty-inch waist, sported a goatee (yuck!), and claimed to manage the band Beat Brigade. Since they were performing nearby--and his number has been disconnected--I traveled to a small, smoky East Side boîte to play tough-broad telephone detective. Scott, himself, wasn't there, but I spoke to his be bop musicians: chalk one up in the legitimate but unaesthetic column. He would've been mortified to see some girl whom he’d only spoken to once on a party line turn up at a Monday night pro showcase looking for him. That's what you get when you tell the truth--private eyes in the night who can find you!

SAMANTHA: Hello!

JACK THE WACK: Her father gave her a phone, and she's never left it.

BAM BAM: Samantha, can I call you?

JACK squeaks: Hi! You can call me. My number is 555. . . . Sam, you hung up or you still there? So Sam, when are you gonna meet somebody, huh? You got nothing to hide. Meet Lori and Taz for brunch.

TAZ: You don't meet a guy like me to meet me. You meet me so you have credibility.

JACK: Exactly. He's the social coordinator of the line. He is! He coordinates people meeting.

SAMANTHA: Scumbagface!

JACK: Don't call me scumbagface. There's young children on this line right now. Be quiet.

Beeping! Beeping! Beeping! Beeping!

JACK: Have some manners! You have no etiquette. Sam, you have very little etiquette.

SAMANTHA raises her voice: You have no education, Jack. You're just a bastard. Everyone listening on this line knows that you give their number out. That's what they're in for when someone may cross you.

JACK: When somebody crosses me, that's right.

SAMANTHA: I do! You don't scare me, Jack.

JACK: I'm not trying to scare you.

SAMANTHA barbecues Jack for his new partnership: You're a piece of shit! You called my house with your tramp girlfriend. She was on the phone a few times pranking people. The two of you were on together.

UNIDENTIFIED AGITATOR: Jack's girlfriend is the type that has a yeast infection and would let it grow.

VOICE: Samantha, are you the fattest girl on the party line?

JACK: You could get your number changed for free, sweetheart. Just call up the complaint bureau and your problems'll be solved by next Thursday. Just change the number. Then you could come on the line as a porch monkey, and nobody'll ever know you're there.

Pounding, grinding pneumatic drill: we hold our ears and push in our foam ear plugs.

VOICE: Sam, we wanna know if you're fat. Tell us the truth.

JACK: I don't think she's fat. I just think she's grotesque. She has a lot of hatred in her voice. A lot of cynicism.

SAMANTHA: For you, I do! You are undoubtedly the worst person that ever calls this line. I have heard people argue on this line, fight on this line. I have never heard anyone give out other people's numbers like you do.

JACK: Thank you. My number's out there.

ROCCO: One day Sam and Jack are gonna meet up in court.

JACK: We should meet Sam one day. I should come to her door.

SQUEAKER grasps at straws: And suck her big tittie.

JACK: No, no, no, no! Sam is very uncoordinated.

SAMANTHA: Uncoordinated! You know something? You end up making a jerk out of yourself.

JACK: Sam, you have no credibility. You never met anybody. You never met the number three and four heavy hitters of this line. Guys like me, Taz, and Chaos.

BAM BAM modulates his squeak: Hi! It's me Wendy, hi!

JACK: Gary, is that you? Gary from Brooklyn, you're on the line. Call up Sam: 555-0932. Hurry up now!

SAMANTHA stands up to Jack: You're a scumbag!

SQUEAKER (as tinny AM radio music rips through my head like a nail): What's her number?

JACK: 555-0932, 718 area code. She usually answers the phone between nine and one at night. Give her a call.

SAMANTHA shrieks: You're a scumbag, Jack!

JACK: Oh, it's only an access line--enjoy it. Sam, how come you never met anyone? What have you got to hide?

BAM BAM peeps: This is Wendy! Wendy!

DRUNKEN MALE CARCASS: Shut up with that Wendy shit!

ROCCO: Sam, did you ever give your number out over this line?

SAMANTHA: I never gave my number out anywhere. Jack did.

ROCCO plays party line policeman: How did Jack get it?

SAMANTHA: It was a great mistake on my part: I gave it to him.

JACK: Sam never met anybody. I like you, Sam. You're a funny girl. Nobody's bothering you. You change the number, and your life's changed again. You like the attention--you must like it.

SAMANTHA: You're a scumbag! You don't have a life, Jack.

JACK: Well, I'm still waiting for "dada” to press charges. We could all meet--make a day out of it. The whole line will come down to Brooklyn. We'll have lunch. Everybody'd get to see you; everybody'd get to see me. I'll say hello to the judge. He'll set bail and go home.

SAMANTHA: You sound so stupid. You really do.

JACK: You have hatred in your voice. You hate life. You're nineteen years old and you can't meet anybody.

SAMANTHA: No, I hate you, Jack!

JACK: First of all, your name's Kara, and you hate life. And you have two phones in your house. Your father has another phone. So be a good girl before you get me really perturbed.

ECSTATIC VOICE squawks in hysterics: It's Wendy!

JACK: Wendy is played out. We have Sam here: 555-0932. She's into playdough--everybody call her up and wish her a Happy New Year. So Sam, where you gonna spend New Year's Eve? Maybe you wanna come to my party. Come on, Sam, break down. All you gotta do is bring your own beer.

SCRAPPY SQUEAKER: Let's kill her!

JACK (over escalating Spanish music): Sam, if I have one of my followers call you at night now, you won't answer?

ROCCO: Sam has agoraphobia.

JACK: Sam, you could go out tonight. Don't worry about it. You could beat agoraphobia. Come on, you could do it.

ROCCO: Jack, I think she really likes you.

JACK: I think she did. I broke her heart: I rejected her, and then we fought over THE TONE. Over THE TONE, Rocco--THE TONE broke us apart.

ROCCO: Hey listen, you gonna be nice tonight, right?

JACK rhapsodizes: We were so close. And then THE TONE came and ruined our lives. We became enemies over THE TONE.

The discarded litter of my fecund telephone loins is beating an unexpected, wobbly path back home for the holidays. Brimming with confidence, Wayne from Greenpoint cheerfully cropped up on 1234 claiming that he broke into a vehicle with a car phone: with his TV in the front seat and his mobile “appropriation” in the back seat, Wayne has been parked beneath a Queens overpass for one entire week! (Skeptics say that he merely hooked up his house phone to a payphone and ran the wire into his car!) Our quirky overseas cousin, however, has disappeared permanently: Daphne had been secretly calling from a U.S. army base in Scotland, and lost communication access when her illegal card number unceremoniously expired.

The once enchanting Lone Wolf returns to the fold as caustic, argumentative, and silly: behind all the cocky demanding machismo, stands an inadequate, uneducated man. We traded pointed wisecracks for an unpleasant half hour on 643 while he ladled out nasty, puerile, misogynist jokes about women. Lone Wolf noticed unhappily that I had acquired burn marks and phonesmarts and taken him off his former pedestal. Once upon a time, I used to be his ideal, unsophisticated "phone girl": blind, naive, and usable. Simone met Lone Wolf (Ralph) recently--and uncovered capacious, crenelated layers of fat and a rapidly receding hairline! Dull, plodding Steve from Plainview also resurfaced on the Selections network still placing mumbled, incomprehensible personal ads to find the significant others in his life. (I'd love to unveil the unflappable, undaunted faces behind the never-ending avalanche of optimistic dating voiceprint.)

Carol Ann hit the season's scandal sheets when she was unsympathetically barred from CLAS for warning callers that Pops had date-raped a girl from the line. Pops was burdened by neither sentiment, chivalry, nor fear of prosecution: he confessed and said, "So what?" Another caller wrenched his zipper open and fondled himself (round Buddha rubbing tummy notwithstanding) in the dark, deserted diner parking lot after a cup-of-coffee date with the Kissing Bandit. Although he did the same thing to another woman, KB won't protect us by revealing his name--out of shame, misguided loyalty, and just plain fear! Then I heard a perplexed male voice on 643 claim he had already met me--at Drake's Drum! I only realized who it was when he said he’d rode in on a bicycle--and then he had the nerve to ask why I ran like a bat out of hell when I bumped into him at a recent rock festival! Snoopy later tried to hop onto 643 as "Frogo," but I pulled the rug out from under him with a flinty, howling whisper: "Stacy, I know who Frogo is. Do you want his home number?" Frogo cringed and hung up in abject terror as his first clear, piquant digits rolled off my acid tongue.

I celebrated my own New Year's Eve at the militantly inaccessible, kinky Mars club, where I spotted and scrupulously avoided Triple A’s stubby half-moon face! I put the occasion to good use: I personally entered the first floor men's room underneath the neon "DRUGS" sign to conduct an on-site investigation of the alleged stall where Mike once ejaculated on a girl's breasts. His story lost credibility the moment I saw the cramped vestibules, open urinals, and wet, dirty floor littered with soggy toilet paper scraps. That would be enough to turn anybody off--even Mike! Let's drink a cup of kindness to that--and to all our phone people, personalities, and fantasies. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from your faithful, fellow linemate-at-large!

CHAPTER 23

THE PARTY LINE FROM HELL

I feel happy: Lady Luck finally landed me on the sexiest 643 bridge of love with Anthony from Howard Beach! Anthony and I shared an instant, scandalous erotic rapport: he was a confident, strutting cock of the walk with a buttery, gigolo voice.

ANTHONY FROM HOWARD BEACH: It's hot-looking. I got a hot-looking cock. I'm looking at it right now.

WENDY: You check it out all the time?

ANTHONY: Sure.

WENDY: Italian guys are always playing with their balls.

ANTHONY radiates erotic energy: No, I told you I masturbate, but I don't need to do it on the phone. No way. Looking at this broad on the TV is turning me on. And talking to you, too. You're turning me on. Just thinking about what you're wearing. And the way you sound. I love the way you sound. You sound great.

WENDY: Have you ever gone out with a short girl?

ANTHONY: Yeah, I love short girls, and I'm 6’2". I love to just fuck short girls. You know what I do to short, petite girls? I kill them; I go crazy! I love to take a short girl and hold her around her waist and pick her up and put her on top of my cock. And I put her up and down for a fucking long time. Just rock her and bite her nipples so hard as my cock is going deep inside her. Because they're so easy to maneuver--they're so small and so light. I love it; they're so tight.

WENDY: I'm tight; I can barely get a tampon in.

ANTHONY: I know you're tight. I know exactly how your body is--believe me. You know what this fat Italian cock’ll do to you? Forget about it. You'll be like, "No way--stop--it hurts! Oh, my God, DON'T STOP--put it in more!" You'll be dead! Be nice to me; I don't wanna get horny now. You're gonna make me wanna go out. Lemon Tree is happening on Thursday night. Great club. Lots of hot Spanish girls there. I need a massage right now. I been working hard all week. I could go for nice hot oil all over my body and have somebody rub their whole body up against mine.

WENDY: That's messy.

ANTHONY: So, I got a nice plastic sheet on my bed.

WENDY rolls her eyes in disbelief: Oh, God!

ANTHONY cracks his penis like a knuckle: And just rub bodies. You feel a hard cock slipping between your lips while you're rubbing. No hands involved--just pull your body up and down. It always finds its way.

WENDY: It's like a homing pigeon?

ANTHONY: I got a seven-inch cock. But I could see for some whores, seven inches might not be enough. You gotta put it in sideways to get them off. But I don't want that; I want a tight, little five-foot girl. One time this Spanish girl from the Bronx attacked me. She was hot; she was married, though.

WENDY: From the line?

ANTHONY: Yeah. Cause they get nothing. And in real life, when they get something, they have to take full advantage of it. I was taking her home and I said to her, "So Alex, you been talking so much shit on the phone to me. Why don't you back it up? So, no big deal--just show me your tits. You say you got beautiful nipples--let me see them." So, she takes off her blouse. She got me so horny. I had her legs so high up in the air.

WENDY: In the front seat?

ANTHONY: Yeah, I didn't even care. I couldn't take it. I couldn't even get in the back. Couldn't take it. I was kneeling in the passenger seat. Kneeling on the floor and I had her legs straight up. Man, I was pounding her hard. It was awesome.

WENDY: Was that the first time you met her?

ANTHONY: Second time. I met her at one of these line parties, and then I went out to eat with her and for a few drinks. It was cool. She had the perfect body from the waist down. She had a really pretty pussy. She sucked my cock, too. She gave me great head. I wouldn't have did it with her, but she got me so horny, and she started sucking me off. I was driving, and she was like taking my whole cock in her mouth. I like it when a girl can give good head.

WENDY: What constitutes good head?

ANTHONY laughs: Taking my whole dick in her mouth. And getting it all the way in her throat. I'm sure you're an expert at it. I'm sure you roll your tongue right on the head and just lick it all the way down, and fuck with the balls and go back up. I can teach her if a girl don't know how to do it--I can teach her. So, come on, let's meet right now!

WENDY laughs: Oh, God! No! Did you ever see her again?

ANTHONY laughs: No! She used to call me all the time, though, begging me to see her. I was like--you're married—what is that gonna do? Her husband was a cop, and he got called in to work that night, believe it or not.

WENDY: She's fucking crazy!

ANTHONY: Why are you cursing? I told you there's a time and a place to curse. I like it when a girl says cock.

WENDY laughs: Oh, I don't say that!

ANTHONY: So, say clock. Please! Come on. Say, "I want your clock." Just cover your face and say it.

WENDY laughs high-spiritedly: No, I don't want it!

ANTHONY: But I do wanna meet you. I wanna see what you're all about. I know we're not for each other; I know it for a fact. I'm good-looking, but I don't have long hair. You might be my type, but I won't let you know that, though. I won't give you the satisfaction if I'm not your type.

WENDY laughs and adjusts her sequined halter top: Oh, alright.

ANTHONY: My ex-fiancé used to dress like you; I used to bend down and kiss her cleavage. But we hadda break up--her family were with the mob, and they didn't like me. And I got into some trouble with credit cards.

WENDY giggles: And you're a plumber now?

ANTHONY swaggers: Yeah, I got my own business; I make my own appointments.

WENDY laughs: What kind of car do you have?

ANTHONY: I rent out a Jaguar cause my license got taken away for two years--I got caught taking something across state lines. I don’t know. You sound so pumped-up. I gotta be careful with you. You sound like you love to party. You don't do no drugs?

WENDY: No, no. I like to drink.

ANTHONY: You little lush, you. What's your favorite liquor?

WENDY: Black Russians.

ANTHONY: Kahlua and vodka? They're fattening.

WENDY: I don't worry about it.

ANTHONY laughs: You don't worry about it. I just hope you're not a liar. I don't want you to embarrass me. Yeah, I'm gonna go hang out with my friend: let's meet these two girls. And I get there and there's two fat slobs there who've never had a guy in their life.

WENDY: You better not be a fat slob!

ANTHONY: Believe me, for every pound I'm over 185, I'll give you a thousand dollars. You bring a scale.

WENDY hacks out a merry, pre-inebriated giggle: I'll make sure you drink all night, since you say it's fattening.

ANTHONY laughs: I go to the bathroom a lot. So where's this night gonna end up? What after hours club are you gonna take me to?

WENDY: The only one I know of is Save the Robots, and they're really picky on who they let in.

ANTHONY: Believe me, I got alotta pull everywhere in the city.

WENDY laughs: I'll stand there and laugh when they say no.

ANTHONY brags: When they say okay, Mr. C------, you can come in with your friend, but the two girls can't, then I'll laugh at you cause you said that.

WENDY: Then we'll know that the two of you are gay.

ANTHONY: Not at all. Sometimes you gotta fake it that you're gay in the city, just to get over--you know that. They don't want no tough-looking, macho Italian guy in there. But if you're queer, they want you in there.

Wendy cackles in experienced agreement.

ANTHONY: How about places like the Vault? I was like freaking when I was in there. They have a cage where people just go inside the cage and whip each other. I mean, people getting spanked, and two girls with a guy.

WENDY: How come you went?

ANTHONY laughs to himself: Because I had a friend that used to go there. And I used to go there to drop stuff off. I used to make money.

WENDY: How did you make money there?

ANTHONY: Well, I don't want to talk on the phone like that.

WENDY: Oh, God, I'd hate to think what you did!

ANTHONY hesitates: I never did nothing with my body, if that's what you're thinking. It was with chemical substances. I was young; I was stupid then. I'm a different person now. Now I just wanna have a good time and get drunk and hang out with some hot, little five-foot girl.

WENDY smiles shyly: Yeah?

ANTHONY coaxes: Come on, gimme a laugh! You know what's fun, too, when you meet someone? Just trying to find ‘em. I wonder if that's him, I wonder if that's her? That's fun--I like that the most--more than anything. That's why I think I call these lines. Just that intrigue for that twenty-second period before you're not sure if it's the person.

WENDY laughs: You said you met thirty girls and most were bad?

ANTHONY: Yeah. But you talk on the phone, you get caught up with people, you get curious. The same way I wanna meet you. See, I just get pissed off at girls cause they talk a lot of shit. Like you. You're telling me all this, you're telling me all that. If you were what you are, why can't you just give me your number?

WENDY: Because I would never give my number to a guy unless I already met him and knew I wanted to see him again.

ANTHONY's voice is just this side of a used car salesman: But don't you realize that I'm something different? You can't tell? You don't feel that?

WENDY: No. You can't tell at all from a conversation.

ANTHONY: Listen, I'm hot, and I'm good-looking, and if we could go hang out in any club, you'll see. If I'm not your type, you could tell me which girl you think I should go for, and I'll get her: "Look at this blonde over here. She's hot." Alright. And I'll pick her up.

WENDY giggles: Then what do you do with them?

ANTHONY: I don't give them my phone number. I only give it to people that don't wanna give me their number.

Wendy laughs with embarrassment.

ANTHONY: We could have a lot of fun together, me and you. But I don't know. How are these places? Do I gotta dress like a dirtbag tomorrow, you're saying?

WENDY: Yeah!

ANTHONY: You mean I can't come and like wear a fucking awesome suit? You mean I can't do that, huh?

WENDY is shocked: A suit!

ANTHONY preens: Yeah, but I'm very GQ, baby!

WENDY: No, you can't wear a suit!

ANTHONY: That's why I know we're very different. What do I gotta do? Throw on a pair of Lee's and a tee-shirt and a leather jacket?

WENDY: Yeah, that'd be good.

ANTHONY: Come on! I don't own clothes like that. I own jeans. But I just won't wear them to the city. See, cause if we don't like each other, I'm gonna go out. And I'll probably go to 150 Wooster, and I won't be seen in that place unless I have a suit on.

WENDY: Well, you'll have to carry your suit with you.

ANTHONY: Oh, no way. If you can't accept me for the way I am, too fucking bad. Believe me, everybody looks the same with their clothes off!

WENDY shrieks: Jesus!

ANTHONY laughs: Listen to that laugh! I love it: "Jeeees!”

WENDY: I'll call you tomorrow and let you know where we're going to be at midnight--unless you wanna meet at 4:00 A.M.

ANTHONY: Ooh, where we gonna meet at 4:00 A.M.? You gonna leave your key under the mat?

WENDY: Nooo! We could meet at the Kiev.

ANTHONY: What's that, that diner shit place? I ain't going to that place. I won't be seen in a place like that.

WENDY laughs: Where will you be seen?

ANTHONY: I'll probably be seen in the best after hours place. My friend Joey B---- owns it. And at four o'clock he closes it down, but it's an after hours place to people he knows. In the middle of the bar it has that snake or lizard--a live animal in a glass cage. What the hell is the name of it? It's in the Forties. They had a shootout there a few years ago--mobsters. The look of it is all black inside and kinda punky.

WENDY laughs in her sleeve: Bedrox?

ANTHONY: That's it! Listen, hopefully we could hook up. I'm looking to have a good time. I just wish that we would be into each other. You know what I'm saying? I think it's like a 2 percent chance we're gonna like each other. I'm gonna get my hair cut tomorrow real short. Otherwise, I gotta put a whole bottle of juice on it, and it's too cold to go out like that. You get sick that way.

WENDY: I bet you spend four hours in front of the mirror.

ANTHONY: No, I wet my hair, run my fingers through it, put on a little cologne, and I'm out of here. I mean, I used to get all dolled up. I used to get a manicure; I used to get my nails cut.

WENDY: A manicure? Why?

ANTHONY: Because. I used to be very very hot. Now I just can't do those things no more. I have to change my lifestyle.

WENDY: Why?

ANTHONY: Because it's bad to do that--to flatter yourself like that. It's too expensive. And I used to go to sushi houses three, four times a week for massages, bodyrubs. I used to flatter myself, pamper myself, like a little baby. But no more of that. Now I gotta get a nice, five-foot, ninety-one-pound girl to do it for me.

WENDY laughs: To pamper you?

ANTHONY laughs: I should get a wig and put a wig on my head tomorrow night.

WENDY: My ex-boyfriend did that for me. He knew how much the hair meant to me, so he bought this long blonde wig.

ANTHONY laughs: Get outta here! You're sick in your head. Let's dial the line now--I'll meet you out there.

WENDY: That idiot TONE'll probably be on. Guess what the number is to order a local calling card? 1-800-THE-TONE!

ANTHONY laughs: Get outta here! You know what's even more funny? One morning I woke up and I hadda go in the shower. So I figure, let me call the line first. And I get through, and it was THE TONE. It's always on THE TONE. I go in the shower to use the soap, and what kind of soap do you think I have?

WENDY howls and squeals: Oh, no! Tone!

ANTHONY: It was great! It was like the fucking TONE follows me everywhere I go. I'm in the shower, I gotta get fucking TONED! I call the phone, I gotta get TONED!

Wendy is hysterical.

ANTHONY: How much was your phone bill this month?

WENDY: I was proud of myself: it was only forty-nine dollars.

ANTHONY: That's all? You don't call every day?

WENDY: Yeah, but it's not expensive if you call at night.

ANTHONY: Ooh, we better get out there; it's a bargain!

Anthony, however, was no bargain: his hot Italian "clock" would've stood out like a sore thumb on Saturday night--had he and his buddy shown up! I took the betrayal in stride as a big joke, but by Monday morning I was seething. At 7:45 A.M. a sex pest stranger on 643 asked if he could call me up: Anthony's home number just became my private party line answering exchange. Torturing GQ-boy could become a new cottage industry! Ten minutes later my grumpy, sleepy cancelled date clicked onto the line--and then THE TONE set in--and the real phone party picked up steam. Neutral observers quickly became heated adversaries and vested participants in the spreading public altercation. Personal integrity and social decorum are non-existent on 643--partly because of the particular individuals that are on it--but largely because men rule the phone world with a clenched bionic fist. Masculine culture, power, and superiority are celebrated in brutal, irrational orgies of male bonding: women intruders are an unwelcome thorn in the side at this revolving, Friday night stag party. Females are treated as second class citizens in an entrenched system of apartheid: our sole, flimsy power base is as the critical gatekeepers of their phone sex paradise. Leave your civil rights at the door, all ye who enter here.

ANTHONY FROM HOWARD BEACH: You skank! What are you out here trashing me for?

WENDY is primed and ready to detonate: What do you stand people up for, you fucking asshole?

BAM BAM: You're stand-upable.

ANTHONY: Listen to me. If you didn't give me your fucking number, I ain't going to meet you, simple. . . .

WENDY: You never told me that. It's just a fucking excuse you're making up now. Why did you make the date, then?

SQUEAKY VOICE: I'll meet you, Wendy!

WENDY: The only reason a party line guy doesn't show up is if he's lying about who he is, and he's ashamed of what he looks like.

SQUEAKER is surprised: Oh, shit! This is true. This is true.

HARMONY laughs: It sounds like my third grade teacher.

WENDY: So why didn't you show up, Anthony?

SQUEAKER: Is it not possible he found out what you really looked like and backed out? Good man, Anthony!

ANTHONY: Fuck you, you little shkank! You fucking little dirtbag! Come here, I'll put some come in your hair.

Guys laugh themselves sick.

ANTHONY: I'm gonna get together with something like you? Get the fuck outta here. I'm not desperate. I'm not begging people to meet me.

WENDY: I never begged you to do anything.

ANTHONY: What's the matter? Why are you getting so pissed? Get a fucking job, buy your own fucking food, and then you don't have to worry about getting stood up, you little fucking whore! You hear me? You soaking wet, five foot, ninety-two-pound rat motherfucker! I was being nice to you. Now you wanna talk shit?

WENDY shrieks like a banshee: How were you being nice to me--by standing me up? Dickhead!

ANTHONY turns dating into a criminal activity: Don't come on this fucking line! You hear me? You hear me? You fucking little whore who gets no cock! You're a desperate fucking whore. Take me out, spend a lot of money on me, take me out. Gimme, gimme, gimme! Get the fuck out of here! I'm glad I didn't have your fucking number, so I couldn't waste a fucking penny on you.

WESTERN DRAWLER howls hysterically: Hi! Hi!

WENDY screams: I didn't ask you to spend anything on me, you dick! I said meet me inside the club.

HARMONY: Are you guys through, now?

WENDY: No!

SQUEAKER: Hey, call me, Wendy! I won't stand you up.

CHAOS: It gets crazier every morning.

SQUEAKER squeaks: Wendy got emotional problems.

WENDY: No, I don't have emotional problems. I just don't fuck people over, and I don't like people fucking with me!

SQUEAKER: You never saw him. Don't get so uptight about it. You'll probably kill yourself. I think you been beat around too much by men or something.

WENDY: And I don't like it, and I'm not taking it anymore!

CROAKER: You skinny old piece of bitch! You old geezer, you!

DR. TRASH: I think I'm the only one out here who’s normal.

CROAKER: Wendy, get a dating service. Give it a call. For two hundred dollars they'll come with a big long pole. They can't turn you down.

TONY THE ONE AND ONLY (as Dr. Trash yawns loudly): Uh, Trash, what's a matter?

DR. TRASH: I'm not getting involved in any of that. I'm definitely not getting involved in the middle of that one.

SQUEAKER: You're a frustrated bitch, Wendy. Calm down.

MELODRAMATIC WESTERN DRAWL (Chaos): I need you! I need some emotional comfort. Don't you love me? I thought you loved me. You told me you loved me. Oh, tell me more!

VITO laughs hysterically: Doug, you're fucking wacked, man! Oh, shit!

CROAKER (a beeper goes off): Another crack deal going down.

HARMONY whines dejectedly: I think Anthony hung up.

VITO: Oh, Harmony--Harmony with the wet panties.

DR. TRASH: Yeah, Harmony. You should meet Vito, Harmony.

VITO: Get the fuck out of here. I'm not meeting anybody, anymore.

DR. TRASH: Vito, I told you how to do it--no picture, no meet.

CHAOS: You gotta be out of your mind, even with a picture, man. Think to yourself like this: why would a girl who could get a man be on a fucking party line?

WENDY: And why would you be on the party line?

CHAOS: I'm not trying to get a woman. You don't hear me rapping to some fucking bitch, do you? You don't hear me throwing a rap to you: "Oh, Wendy, call me. Oh, meet you." I want no woman on this line. I get a woman no problem off this fucking line. I didn't give Harmony my number, even though she was talking like "dick" and "pussy" and all that shit.

VITO laughs: Chaos, it's time to go kill some cats.

CHAOS: Listen, you can't get ‘em now. You gotta wait till the night time when they start screaming. . . . Like I wait till they're fighting-and shit, two or three of them. That's when you can get one of them qood. Cause like they're going around in a circle. Then I sneak up on them through the side.

HARMONY: That's terrible.

CHAOS: Wendy, I heard you calling out Chaos's name yesterday: "Chaos is a dick! Stop that beeping, Chaos!" I had my spies calling me up. You know what you need, Wendy? A big long dick to split you in half. Straighten you out. Make that pussy sore, and then you'd keep that dumb mouth shut. That's what you need. A dick to ride you all night long till you can't walk. You need one in your mouth and one in your ass. You need a fucking tree trunk, Wendy, is what you need. A fucking fire hydrant--split that shit in half.

WENDY's skin crawls: You're disgusting!

CHAOS pushes: You sound like you're hard up. Are you?

WENDY flinches: I'm not hard up at all.

VITO: Yeah, you are. How old are you?

CHAOS: They told me you look like you're forty-nine, fifty-nine. An old fucking buzzard, old degenerate raincoat buzzard. Fucking Forty-second Street with the peepshow place gonna take you. Lock you up in the closet or something!

WENDY: That's alright, Chaos. You've never been seen!

CHAOS: You'd be surprised how many people. . . .

WENDY: I bet I would be. How come you've never been seen?

CHAOS: Talk to the people who've seen me.

WENDY: And who’s that?

CHAOS: None of your fucking business! I'm just telling you what you need. You know, you trash people left and right who you don't even fucking know. You have anything in the house like nine inches or something?

SQUEALER laughs: Yeah, yeah!

CHAOS: Wendy, how many guys stood you up in a row? Fifteen or sixteen? Tell me, why is that? Huh?

WENDY cringes in horror: In the past year, three or four guys have stood me up from the party line; that's it.

CHAOS: Not in the past year--in the past three weeks.

WENDY stammers and lies: I haven't met anybody in the past three weeks except Anthony.

CHAOS: Do you ever think maybe why I don't meet anybody is cause I don't wanna meet anybody? You ever hear me trying to get a girl's number? Very rarely, huh?

WENDY blinks: Right.

CHAOS imitates Harmony: Hello! I wanna meet that Vito; I heard he was hot. Harmony: I suck dick, I suck pussy. I like this, I like that. I'm horny, I got big tits. Come visit me.

ANTHONY returns as the off-the-hook chainsaw works on our last nerve: I never did one thing bad to this fucking girl. Believe me, if I had your number, I woulda called you. But fuck you, man, you wanna get on here and talk shit!

CHAOS (ringing sounds): Wendy, hang up so I can get a line.

WENDY: What would you have called for?

ANTHONY: To tell you I wasn't coming. How could you call me at three o'clock in the afternoon and expected me to change my plans because of you--someone I never met?

WENDY: You said to call you up and tell you where to meet me.

ANTHONY: I didn't make it definite.

CHAOS: Put your fingers in there.

ANTHONY: Hear me, Wendy! Fucking talking shit out here! Little cunt like you. Just because you're skinny, doesn't mean you're nice-looking.

Bright plunk of bells and chimes ringing in the foreground.

ANTHONY brags: I was with a nice thirty-two-year-old lady that night that had meat on her body; she was about 120 pounds. I spent a lot of money on her.

WENDY: Congratulations, Anthony.

ANTHONY: Honestly, you wanna know the truth why I didn't come? I heard how you looked. That's the God's honest truth. I heard how you looked, and I said fuck it, I'm not going. You little fucking dirtbag! You hang out in sleazy bars where people are wretching their fucking guts out. Get the fuck outta here! Listen, what do you have in your apartment? I wish I woulda met you. I coulda taken you home and seen how much dirt! . . .

WENDY interrupts and goes berserk: Don't you call me a dirtbag, you cocksucker! I wouldn't have let you come back to my apartment, you dick!

ANTHONY: I guess this happens a lot, huh?

WENDY screams and tries to saves face: Only by ugly, fat party line assholes--no one in real life!

ANTHONY: So go in the real life and get some.

WENDY boils over: I DO!

ANTHONY mock-whines: So what's the problem, then? Aw, poor baby! Fucking dirtbag! Dirt! You know what dirt is? Hey Chaos, cut that fucking ringing out! You wanna trash me, baby, that'll be the last fucking time. . . . This is the only free line left!

WENDY: That's alright. I'm not blocked--you are!

ANTHONY gets angrier: What line do you wanna meet me on? I'll prove you wrong. What line do you wanna meet me on, you little whore?

WENDY ruptures a blood vessel: Whore! Whore! Whore! Whore!

ANTHONY (fake crying noises): Yeah, yeah. Poor Wendy, yeah. Listen, I'm gonna go smoke a joint, so you wanna hold on?

WENDY hollers: You fucking drug addict, you! He has to smoke a joint at eight o'clock in the morning.

CHAOS: Wendy, I want you to make my joint smoke, Wendy. You hear me? I'm gonna smoke it in your ass. I'll stuff your face and fill your cheeks. You old buzzard, you!

WENDY: We'll put it in your fat ass, first!

ANTHONY opens a running wound: Yeah Wendy, that's another thing. How old are you? I heard you're thirty-nine. Is that true, you dirtbag? A thirty-nine-year-old whore who wants to suck a twenty-five-year-old guy's cock? Get the fuck out of here!

Boisterous, amused laughter as ringing noises continue.

WENDY: How dare you even think I would suck your cock? Is that what you think a girl goes out on a date for--cause she wants to do that?

ANTHONY: And you're thirty-nine. Ain't you ashamed of yourself? Go get married. Do something successful in life instead of talking on these party lines your whole fucking life--sticking your fist up your cunt! Yeah, I'm writing a book. You ain't writing a book. You're jerking your clit off all fucking night.

TONY: I don't believe it. Only yesterday you were apologizing to her.

ANTHONY yells: You'll be able to stick your fucking head up there and your foot, you shkanky, fucking, cunt dirtbag! Yeah, yeah, yeah. How old are you, Wendy? Fifty years old? I'm forty years old: I need a fucking twenty-five-year-old. That doesn't say too much about you, baby! Come on, Wendy, I'll come take you out. I'll fill up your refrigerator for you. You want me to put some food in there, or you want me to go to the Pink Pussycat and buy you a dildo? Whatever you want.

WENDY: What is your hangup about money? A lot of girls use you for money?

VITO laughs: When are you two gonna get married?

SCREECHER: Yeah, I'm Wendy, spend money on me! Yeah!

MIKE FROM MANHATTAN clicks on: Is this fun, or what?

ANTHONY: She brought this upon herself, Mike.

WENDY: You brought it on yourself, asshole!

TONY THE ONE AND ONLY pirates back on again: Hello, Michael. Good morning!

ANTHONY: Hello Tony, how are you? Is this incredible, this fucking whore?

WENDY is apoplectic: Don't you dare call me a whore!

ANTHONY: I'm giving myself a bad name for trashing you, but I don't give a fuck. It's worth it, cause you're a cunt, you hear me? Put your finger in your fucking pussy, because no one else is gonna do it for you.

WENDY shouts angrily: You fucking Italian piece of shit!

ANTHONY: Get the fuck out of here! Going to these punk rock $1.50 joints. Go spend thirty dollars to get in a place. Go ahead, spend thirty dollars to get in a fucking club. It's not like party lines; they don't have courtesy numbers to go in doors. It's not like that. You gotta pay money. You gotta understand there's a difference between the party line and real life.

WENDY: I'll go anywhere I like!

ANTHONY: If I have a chance to go out with a hot broad I know what she looks like, or some skanky broad who wants me to spend money on her, it's an easy choice. Obviously, you saw what I did. You must've got stood up a lot. I mean, if I'd known it was that bad. I'm sorry, but. . . . Get the fuck outta here!

TONY: Well, if you woulda gave him your number, he woulda called you and told you he couldn't make it.

WENDY has a tantrum: No! And then held give my number out to everyone on the line.

TONY: He wouldn't give your number out.

ANTHONY: I'm a fucking nice guy, you stupid whore!

WENDY: You gave a girl's number out on the line last week.

ANTHONY lunges forward: Who’s number did I give out?

WENDY: That girl from Long Island: Mongo.

TONY: Everybody has that girl's number.

WENDY: Yeah, but it wasn't your business to give it out.

ANTHONY: Believe me, you coulda had yourself something real hot, and you blew it. It's a shame. . . .

I was outnumbered and outmaneuvered: I desperately needed Jack in my corner, but he's been away on another prolonged phone sabbatical. I hate Anthony--not as much for standing me up, but for calling me a whore for an hour and a half. A once magnetic phone attraction between a cunning street rat with a smooth telephone style and a trusting woman with a fourteen-month resumé of accumulated abuse degenerated into a vicious bloodbath. Worst, and most painful of all, Anthony and Chaos were dead right about almost everything they said about me. I feel so shamed and humiliated. A plague on both their telephones! Anthony may have won the first round, but I hold the ultimate, seven-digit doomsday weapon: pick up your receiver at the witching hour and weep! I will turn the party line into the Ho Chi Minh trail!

CHAPTER 24

THE END OF THE INNOCENCE

Anthony and Chaos have effectively chased me off the 643 party line. I have been reduced to producing nothing more audible than an occasional, plaintive, touch-tone peep to let the line know that a banished, unknown soul is out there. All week long I've tiptoed onto the phone as a silent, festering porch monkey or a cowering, shrouded whisperer in constant fear of verbal attack. I've been on this line longer than Anthony has--I have seniority! Let him whisper! Tonight I was very relieved to find the sexual odds stacked peacefully in my favor. Stacy Q, Michelle, Simone, and I belittled DJ for being a liar until a raucous beeper came along and spoiled all our fun: token women terrorists cannot compete against well-trained, world class, male chauvinist phone hackers.

Thanks to an overheard recorded invitation on the 550-CLUB line, I did some rabblerousing at a party on Saturday night at a disco inferno in Astoria, Queens. The secret password, "Maria the monitor," got "Susan" and I in free after we were carded, inspected, and frisked by surly, lounging Sicilian goons who looked like extras from The Godfather. I was amazed to find Lisa from the Bronx (alias "Simone"!) now employed as one of the happy, chummy CLUB monitor crew. Lisa and Mandy pitched their hush-hush courtesy number to me in the ladies room, from which stronghold they also took flying potshots at their rivals from other lines: "You know why KISS has to have its party in a big club in Manhattan? Cause their monitors can't fit through the door!"

There were many attractive callers, including VIPs like Radical Rick and Lawman, among the sixty or more people. Lawman was a very nice, restrained, six-foot two-inch, 210-pound, fifty-year-old-man (!) with a wide Groucho moustache and a black "Beatles-era" toupée--the exact jolting opposite of his Wyatt Earp, telephone tough guy image. Radical Rick is KISS/CLAS's irrepressible star personality: tall, sturdily constructed, and Chinese, he is blessed with the playful, bratty bravado of an entire South Bronx SWAT team. His sarcastic, rapier wit; clipped Asian accent; and annoying Jewish-rich-kid-in-college sneer are exquisitely funny. Tonight, though, Radical Rick wandered around silent and alone; brilliant freshman repartee completely eluded him. Party line callers only relate well as synthetic, invisible telephone personalities; it is stressful, perplexing, and disappointing to deal with each other face to face. Because of the forced intimacy of the party line, we know each other both all too well--and yet not at all. In order to preserve this painstakingly constructed status quo, we dare not step outside our cartoon characters to venture into the dangerous, dysfunctional terrain of our real private lives. Once we are back in our normal wired environment, however, we will suddenly be fully re-animated and thick as thieves again--with the phone in place to both safely separate and connect us.

Radical Rick brought along his friend Bobby, who had recently told me he was an attorney and a fellow Upper East Side resident and had invited me out for lunch. "Trusting me" dialed the daylights out of "Mr. O'Connell's" office number the next day, only to reach a beauty products manufacturer! I snapped at Bobby (who really just works in a bank), and moved on before I got too riled up. Listen to this ordinary, scrawny phony's defense: "I thought you knew I was being facetious." He added without hesitation or regret that he thought it was okay to lie to me. Other familiar faces fleshed out the room: The Lord, EMS, Mario Speedwagon, and Rebecca. Tony the One and Only (with young, beautiful Kelly under his arm) looked handsome tonight as baggy, white muscle pants successfully concealed his only figure flaw. I, myself, had a very arousing time with Mike from Brooklyn, dressed à la Mafia in a gray, double-breasted silk suit with slicked-back black hair and a gorgeous, olive-complexioned gangster face. He wanted to drive me home later, but not just to protect me from the MTA mugger's snakepit. When I protested that I don't get in cars with guys I don't know, he shook my hand, said, "You know me! I'm Mike from Brooklyn!," and invited himself to stay at my house for the night!

While Mike asked if I worked out and stared greedily at my firm, round buttisimo, I noticed a tall, squarely built man with dark, undercircled brown eyes; a jowly Baby Huey face; black hair in a ponytail; and a black leather jacket. Female intuition told me it was Anthony from Howard Beach! Mike volunteered to go over and flush him out into the open: what a relief that Anthony saw me slung across the fertile quadricep of someone far better-looking than he! I marched directly up to him and demanded an apology: Anthony scowled, bared his teeth like an angry dog, and barked out a savage "Aaahhh!" I shoved him hard on the arm: I never wanted to slug anybody so badly in my life! My new friend, Theresa from Queens, warned me to back off: "He looked like he was going to hit you!"

If dirty looks could kill, Anthony would've been dead, but he maintained his distance and stayed glued to Tony the One and Only; I sequestered myself with the girls. Mike from Brooklyn eventually migrated to the other side of the room when he realized that he wasn't getting laid tonight. I had even offered to take his number, and I definitely would've called him up! The one night stand morons are just the same as the phone sex morons! I don't even want the Italian hitman type anymore, after musclebound Mystery Man rudely pushed me aside to get to the bar. I almost decked him, too! Don't elbow me, you overgrown thug! The party's over!

I went home to boldly go where no man has ever gone before--deep into the blackest, foulest, extraterrestrial bowels of this party line land. I was scared of Jack, but I'm not going to be cowed by Chaos and his cabal. Jack knew enough to capitalize on our fear of the unknown: he erected and maintained an impregnable wall of numbing, terror-inspiring secrecy about himself. Chaos slipped up: he allowed us to find out that he is a social failure with an eating disorder and a spouse who abandoned him. The Tonemaster is just a little tin god.

CHAOS lashes out at everything in his path: Wendy got left at the Aerosmith concert one weekend cause the guy took her out, bought her popcorn, and split. Left the popcorn by the seat, right, Wendy?

WENDY shows Chaos "The Holocaust": Chaos, why do you hate women? Because your pregnant wife left you?

VITO: Oh, shit!

WENDY: That's why Chaos is so mean to women. He resents them cause his wife left him.

CHAOS: Grow up and stop listenin' to stories.

WENDY: You need a psychiatrist, Chaos.

CHAOS: Why? You know where I'm at? I'm at 415 Grand. Why don't you come down?

WENDY: I'll come down right now.

CHAOS: You will? Hey Anthony, I would meet her. I'd fucking slice her right up.

WENDY tries to remain calm: That's alright. You'd be put away for the rest of your life, and you could get butt-fucked by big black homosexuals every night.

ANTHONY FROM HOWARD BEACH: You meet these skanks, man.

VITO: I was supposed to meet Wendy. No way, José! She never gave me her number. And every time, she would call me when she felt like it. I said, fuck this shit! I gotta be available for her?

WENDY: No, I called you exactly when you told me to.

CHAOS: She must need a big dick real bad: "Your wife left you, this one's that, Anthony's fucked up, this one's the other one.” Man, nobody wants to meet you, Wendy!

WENDY: I don't give a flying fuck!

GIRL: Anthony, what would make you want to meet her, anyway?

ANTHONY: I never really wanted to, to tell you the truth.

WENDY: Oh, yeah?

ANTHONY: Yeah, you know why? Because I'll tell you. The bitch don't give out her phone number, it's hard to get in contact with her, it's always gotta be by her rules. Fuck that! That's besides the point. Even if she gave me her phone number, and gave me money, I still wouldn't fuckin'. . . .

WENDY: Anthony, don't insult me on this line! Just you keep quiet, and I'll keep quiet!

ANTHONY threatens: I'll meet you in the street.

GIRL: She doesn't wanna be insulted.

ANTHONY: I'm apologizing to you. This is my apology to you: fuck you! Every time I hear you on this line, I'm gonna call you a fucking skank.

WENDY: You're a real gentleman, aren't you, Anthony? You must've been brought up in a sewer.

ANTHONY: Who the fuck came up to me in the club all God damn night asking me for an apology? I shoulda smacked you with the back of my hand.

WENDY: I asked you for an apology once!

CHAOS: I woulda hit her in the eye and dropped her right there. Break her ribs!

VITO: Whipped out your dick and pissed in her face.

WENDY: I woulda been happy to press charges.

ANTHONY: I don't touch females like you. I don't associate with you. I'm finished! Dismissed! Out of here!

CHAOS laughs: I'll take my cock, and listen, Wendy. I'll rub it against your face and I'll stick it in your mouth. And I'll grab you by the back of your head, and push it all the way into your fucking mouth!

WENDY yells: You're disgusting! You're such an evil, disgusting, ugly little man!

VITO: Oh Chaos, she uses her teeth, man.

CHAOS: I'll break her teeth as I'm pushing my cock in.

Vito laughs hysterically.

CHAOS clubs me with his cruel cock: I'll push her lips out like a fish, that bitch!

WENDY counter attacks: Why do you sit here and insult women fifteen hours a day? Why do you hate women? Tell me.

CHAOS: Why not?

VITO: Hey, I don't hate women.

CHAOS: I just hate you, because you're a bitch! Shut up! Any lesbians wanna do a skinny old nag named Wendy?

MOUSE VOICE: Wendy, you're a cunt!

WENDY's telephone temper ignites: Don't tell me to shut up, you fat, five-foot-eight, 230-pound little man!

CHAOS laughs: Two hundred and thirty pound little man! I'll put my dick in your nice, hairy black twat.

WENDY: You used to be 450 pounds, Chaos!

CHAOS: Yeah, but I have a fucking eight-inch cock, and I'll stick it in you and split you in half!

WENDY rips her vocal cords: What do you think your fucking dick is--some kind of weapon? Why don't you fuckin'! . . .

CHAOS hits below the belt: Twenty-nine! When was the last time you had a piece of dick? When was the last time you got that pussy opened up? You better put some dick in there before that motherfucker dries up and never opens up again. It's like a clam.

WENDY spits: Your pregnant wife left you! Do you know how bad it must be for a woman to leave a man when she's pregnant? I can't blame her--you must've done something pretty awful to her!

CHAOS: Hairy cunt! I'll crack that pussy in half, Wendy.

WENDY screams at the top of her lungs: You cracked your wife's pussy: that's why she left you, Chaos!

CHAOS twists the knife in: If you greased a candle, you couldn't get it in there. That thing is closed up like a zipper. Just shut your eyes and hit it with a hammer, and get it open! You know what's gonna happen? You're not gonna be able to piss, and you're gonna fuckin' blow up. Better open that shit up before it's too late.

WENDY wants to spill blood: You should be locked up before you wind up killing someone!

CHAOS mocks: Maybe you, you old bag! Kill someone! I'm violent; I'm vile, violent, disgusting.

WHISPERER: I'm out of it. No arguments from me.

CHAOS: What's that shit you spray, like loosens up a nut? You know, that's what we need to spray on Wendy's cunt and get it open.

ENERGIZED MOUSE: Wendy! I'll call you now!

CHAOS: You want Wendy's number? Ask her; she'll gladly give it to you. Tell her you wanna fuck her, and then she might give it to you. It's alright, Wendy, he's a good friend of mine.

WENDY gets cut and clicks back on chuckling: You want my number? 718-555-7562.

GIRL: Did you do that? You really are a little skanky girl!

WENDY: Who are you, Harmony--you whore!

GIRL: No I'm not, Wendy the witch! What right have you to give out phone numbers?

WENDY: I'm not the one who has phone sex with all these guys and lets them piss on my face and beat me, Harmony.

GIRL: I'm not Harmony, you little witch. You don't know what you're talking about. Listen to her, Chaos.

SCREECHER: They're both bitches.

ANTHONY: Oh Wendy, you keep giving out my number. I tell you, I'll catch up to you. I'll put a bullet in your little, fucking skanky head.

WENDY: Good! You'll be back in state prison--where you've already been!

ANTHONY: Keep it up! I'm gonna say it one more time and that's it. Just keep it up! I'm telling you right now. I'll find you within a matter of twenty minutes. I'll get you out of your misery.

CHAOS: Wendy, you're in the city. I could take you out.

GIRL: I was gonna do the same thing, Chaos.

CHAOS: You know where? Right in the East River. I'll put you in one of those dumpsters; they'll never find you.

GIRL: Wendy, why don't you hang up this phone and forget about all these people and the line.

WENDY: Who are you, Harmony bitch?

MOUSE: Harmony, oh Harmony! Call me, Harmony!

CHAOS: If she woulda been tappin' me, man, asking me for an apology at that party, I woulda punched her right in the fucking chest.

VITO: I never gave Lori that crap: I met her one, two, three!

LORI: That's right. Nobody ever stood me up, little Wendy witch.

CHAOS: Wendy, you call the police up and say someone from a party line is after you, they're gonna laugh at you and hang up. You know what they'll tell you? Call the monitor.

LORI: Where’d the little weasel go?

CHAOS: She's there. She likes abuse.

WENDY (violent beeping shakes my handset off its cradle!): This whole thing is none of your business.

LORI: Oh, yes it is. Cause these are my friends, little girlie. You start giving out my friends' phone numbers, it becomes my business. Wendy, an honest question. He stood you up, he was an idiot--whatever the story is. Why do you have to come on the line and continue it?

WENDY bites back on her anger: Because he keeps calling me a skank and a whore! No one should ever speak like that to another human being!

LORI: It's only a phone; it's not real. You understand?

High wattage, off-the-hook buzzsaw signal knocks out the line.

The anger and carnage continue. I would rather switch than fight: I have temporarily deserted 643 for the congenial, year-old KISS and CLAS lines, where "rudeness is not tolerated." CLAS is classy: the technology is excellent, the sound is crystal clear, and Rockaway can individually pump up the volume to accommodate callers with soft voices or weak connections. On other lines like GABB or 1234, the equipment is substandard: talkers are often accidentally cut off, it is hard to hear, conversations get scrambled when bridges cross, and too many people are on at once. Most of their monitors (except for zippy, cheery Microwave) are cranky and insolent; they maintain a low profile and only reluctantly come on the line when beeped for by irate callers who have reached the end of their wits. KISS and CLAS are a refreshing new breeze, but a structured line with a heavy monitor (no pun intended) presence is maddeningly domesticated: they even dub their "porch monkeys," "couch potatoes!"

Line owner, Uncle Joe, opened KISS/CLAS with a long list of proscribed non-payers and trashers (including chest-pounding Lawman), whose injunction was only eventually lifted on the condition that he "behave himself." Belligerent callers are immediately eliminated: Connector yanked Hot Tamale right off the line for making offensive sexual comments. She also located and zapped the porch monkey who three-wayed the emergency operator onto the line five times within a half hour. Even the gentlemen sound nice here because the monitors force them to be well-mannered and courteous. The primary virtue of a monitored line is that callers can be pulled up onto a private link to exchange phone numbers confidentially: this prevents the snitching and snooping so common on 643, where nothing escapes the roving antennae of Jack and his protegés.

Party line monitors (usually female) are hired to entertain, flirt with, and keep the largely male clientele talking and spending money until women callers are available. On the pioneering 100 lines, monitors faced dismissal for fraternizing with or meeting the customers; they were required to be neutral, businesslike, and anonymous. But times have changed, and the KISS/CLAS monitors are our beloved, trusted confidantes and relationship counselors. They participate in and follow the intricate social plots and sub-plots on the line almost as devotedly as Jack does. My new friend, Jesse the monitor, told me about her party line date with a producer from the “20/20” television show, who also taught a seminar at the New School. He fell in love with her at first sight; he even tried to forcibly prevent her from leaving the restaurant. Flowers and candy began to arrive at her apartment, followed later by suggestive lingerie and nipple clamps, phone calls from a dominatrix--and a siege of terror as he repeatedly lurked outside her building. He was also stalking a second woman: when her boyfriend called to threaten him, he had Jesse arrested fifteen minutes later, instead, for aggravated harassment! She also called the police, and the three-month nightmare only ended when he mysteriously stopped pursuing her to move on to a new victim.

Party line monitors require nerves of steel, a nursery school teacher's license, and the forbearance and patience of a saint. Yesterday the police burst in on Connector in the KISS/CLAS business office with guns drawn to look for a dead body based on an anonymous tip. I wonder which disgruntled, socially maladjusted caller did that? Connector--phone instincts always finely honed--also has to contend with Wayne's ingenious new plot to propel himself onto various courtesy lines with pre-recorded dummy tapes of a woman's voice: "Hello! May I be connected to the GABB line please?" He quickly shuffles cassettes if the line is full: "Well, is there room on 1234?” All conceivable telephone contingencies are fully covered.

I was instantly accepted into the happy, normally tranquil KISS/CLAS phone potato fold, where I've found familiar friends like delightfully ingenuous, powderpuff-toned Sky. We discussed her date and my ongoing nine-month relationship with Egg Nog at great length: "He is such a doll; he's a sweetheart. He's gorgeous, too. The guy is beautiful. He's got dark hair, he's built . . . the guy is a fox. I was shocked when I met him! Wendy, you don't know what you're missing!" Since the "Egg Monster" consistently limits the scope of his romantic relationships to a single encounter, he always choreographs a generous, memorable adventure: Egg Nog capped off their gourmet Mexican food and margaritas with a train trip and a fifty-dollar car service ride to take Sky safely to her door. His duty done, Egg disappeared and refused to return any of her five subsequent phone calls to him! When Egg Nog took out Frankie from the One Line, the well-wined and dined, star-crossed drunken duo spontaneously taxied out to La Guardia Airport to hop a plane to Florida for a twenty-four-hour, friendly flying skyride for two. All flights being fully booked, he escorted her home, kissed her good night, and never called her again, either!

I still have my new love interest, sweet KISS: Radical and I call up to be children together. Wendy dials to frolic with the late night courtesy clique, not to pick up men. The sole annoyance here is Melissa, who is good-hearted, but holds court every night from her United Nations apartment in a drug-drenched, indecipherable, soft babble. Her brain and her tongue are fried, but Melissa enjoys carte blanche conversation privileges as the most lucrative paying customer next to Radical Rick. Played out as a provincial, moralistic, "mom and pop corny" family sitcom, KISS/CLAS serves its targeted population well.

RADICAL RICK: Will you stop pressing the buttons? What, do you have mental problems? It's seven o'clock in the God damn morning! What is wrong with you people? I gotta get some sleep. I pick up the phone on the fiftieth ring; it's the party line!

WAYNE (cushioned in his parked car): Radical, I heard you have a phone in every single room of your house.

RADICAL snorts: Yeah, I have twenty-five lines. My phone bill doesn't even faze me.

MELISSA clicks on and dithers in response to a ringing phone: Patrick, I'm asking you a very serious question. Did you wake up my children?

RADICAL sings symphonically: Yeah, I'm on an eight-ball frenzy! Melissa, I woke up your daughter. I smacked her with a johnson.

WAYNE croons a doo wop song in a pitch-perfect, angelic acappella: Melissa! Melissa!

RADICAL snickers: It's the Pointer Sisters on crack! Connector, where are you? Hey, bulldyke! Wendy, you think Chaos is a jerk, right? You have his phone number?

WENDY savors her revenge: 555-4363.

RADICAL: Read it again--4363. Alison and I have plans for that number. God damn it, hold on! I'm getting multiple cranks on my call waiting.

UNCLE JOE: Wendy, why would anybody want to call 643?

WENDY looks the devil in the eye: We call out of habit, and cause we hope Jack or Chaos will come on and cause trouble.

MARSHMALLOW belches loudly: Hi! Who’s this?

RADICAL: She just rolled off the potato chips bag. Wendy, come over. I have Chinese food here. I'll spray cologne on my penis--sweet and sour scent.

RAMBUNCTIOUS WHISPERER: His daddy's name is Kwan Mo!

RADICAL wears a customized, monogrammed “Whoremaster” logo condom: More racial jokes. Wendy, I'm going to lie face down on my bed and masturbate. What are you wearing?

JOEY BAG OF DONUTS buzzes for Uncle Joe as a dormant dialer taps out a resounding Tchaikowsky beat on his belly: There's been a big fat bastard laying down and slapping his stomach for the last two hours!

RADICAL whines: Barfed out--give me a spoon and make me gag!

CONNECTOR exercises her authority: Radical was put on his own bridge before: he had to talk to himself!

In order to escape the big bad wolves on 643, I've continued to experiment on other lines, but there's no new meat to meet: I have exhausted the social possibilities in the insular, incestuously small, party phone dating scene. The same five hundred repeat offenders turn up everywhere, supplemented only occasionally by new, one-time, or casual callers. We have begun to inbreed and cross-pollinate: we merely recycle each others' discarded blind dates and used telephone lovers. I developed tremendous new respect for fellow veteran Fred from Long Beach, however, after he pranked the Long Beach police department at 6:00 A.M. last Sunday morning. We are not supposed to three-way other lines or law enforcement agencies onto KISS/CLAS, but since it was Rockaway's last night, the courtesy menagerie wrestled their keypads to the ground and speed-dialed digits like safecrackers set loose in a big city bank vault. Uncle Joe is transferring our clinical phone charts to the wary new zoo keeper immediately: forewarned is forearmed.

Freddy boy's complicated exploits deserve top billing: yesterday he hacked a code on Diane Keaton's answering machine and accessed all her messages for us. Fred is permanently banned from the Wild Line and the Love Line for teaching their customers how to beat the system: "I used to tell everyone not to pay their phone bills." Fred applies for a new telephone every month under the same name and address but with a different apartment number: the bills never reach him, his phone never gets turned off, and he's never paid a party line charge yet. Fred loves Bell Atlantic, but he was a little snide with Wendy: "Thanks for not calling me!" (Who says I ever wanted to, especially after Roger Rabbit warned me of his bad reputation as a hobby telephone masturbator!) Fred's response: "Yeah, so what? Better than getting diseases from sleeping with all the girls on these lines." We kept the shocked, gaping spectators on CLAS well-entertained while Lawman and Melissa engaged in a nasty public brawl of their own on neighboring CLUB.

Wendy fiddles while Rome burns--this time at a funky, energetic downtown grotto, Cave Canem, on a KISS/CLAS Saturday night. My self-imposed seclusion since the conflagration with Anthony is over: tonight, I will have Roger Rabbit! Uncle Egg Nog delivered a constructive, lucid, pre-party assessment of Roger: "My cracked detectors just went off." But, my heat detectors went off, instead: Roger was a glitzy, exciting item in his emblazoned, red and black lambskin motorcycle jacket. Desecration of the flesh was unfortunately confined to a posed picture on his lap and a five-minute conversation which ended when he got nervous because people had noticed us together. I boldly told Roger that I wanted a date, and he asked me to call him tomorrow at midnight to make plans. Roger giggled like a jangly, pimple-faced pre-teen as he voiced his one misgiving: "I only go out with aggressive women." I felt jealous because he was supposed to have met Wolfie at the party: it also upset me that I couldn't dissuade him from going home early. Why can't he act like a man, throw me down on the floor, and mount me already?

Roger abandoned me to the mercy of pitiful men like Steve the Israeli, so recently demolished by wild Wendy the Mouse in her chalkboard screech. He looks alright, but loses several points for obnoxiousness--and for being an Israeli. Pierre, a graying, hyperopic, stooped-over prune of a man, circulated like a hound from hell gathering our signatures on his handcrafted get-well card for hospitalized, paralyzed caller, Arizona. He pursued me almost as doggedly as Mike, the friendly bank teller from Far Rockaway with a broken leg, who has enshrined himself on KISS all during his six-week, workers' compensation convalescence. A regular "dinner at McDonald's" man, big time spender Mike hoards Houlihan's ten-dollar hamburger special for decade-turning birthdays and landmark anniversaries! Mike complained that I was. taller than I'd described myself (one-inch boot heels, you shrimp paste!). Where did your 5’5”, go? He looked truly gnarly, from his coke bottle eyeglasses to his diminutive, Pillsbury Doughboy physique. Mike's potent sexual appeal rested solely on a virile, tuba-deep phone voice: his visual impact instantly demolished my fantasy-born, sound-sight-lust equation!

My yellow leopard spot pants and black studded, Victoria’s Secret bra, however, attracted lots of attention: Radical Rick issued multiple soused orders for me to flash my jacket open and "scoop them." I collected numbers and pleas to call from Wayne, Mr. X, and The Lord, who confided to me that he's famous for such distinctive, porno-Flintstones catch phrases as "Dum Dee Dum Dum" and "Yabba Dabba Do Me!" No wonder he's had to spend over $100,000 on the telephone to try to find a wife! The Judeo-Christian universe already has a Lord: do we really need a second one who works in extremely mysterious ways on a dating line?

The girls and monitors hugged and kissed each other hello like long-lost relatives: Shana was a sweetie-pie, but with long, velvet-black, "Wicked Witch" hair parted straight down the middle, she could permanently traumatize children on Halloween! Radical’s loyal accomplice, Alison, was a delight, but Chinese Heather glowered at me icily: Rabbit competition. Big-sister Kissing Bandit was dressed to the nines again in the same garish, fire-engine-red lipstick and "Addams Family" gown: her waiting company limousine took hungry public insomniacs Wendy; crooked-toothed, frizzy-haired, Maria; Rebecca; and Vampire to the comforting, turn of the century Kiev afterwards for potato pierogen, kasha varnishkes, and homemade cheese blintzes.

I have slowly developed a deep emotional dependency on and a warm bond with these pear-shaped people, even as I religiously kept them at arm's length. I don't really know any of the nightly regulars any better than the day I first heard their voices. They remain treasured, but one-dimensional, telephone line stick figures. I didn't like the men, and I didn't trust the women enough to let myself be sucked all the way into the sect: I had heard too many lurid ghost stories sung around the telephone campfire. I envy their close personal relationships, extra-telephone social activities, Sunday softball games, and weekend bowling alley tournaments: they have formed a quasi-familial support network. Most of the callers are attending Rose the monitor's upcoming wedding. When Frank underwent a long-awaited cornea transplant, not only did he dial the line from post-op, but half of CLAS stayed overnight with him in his hospital room!

Roger Rabbit had a revealing sucker punch and a dear-John speech in store for sister Wendy, however! Although his jittery personality, sour and cynical tone, and red-light topics of conversation bothered me, I had been willing to give our date with destiny a shot. He likes me and enjoys talking to me, but he doesn't think we should go out: "I don't know if I want a romantic involvement right now." Why lead me down the primrose path with compliments and sex talk then, you pathetic phone wuss! I heard enough material from Roger for an entire psychiatric conference on emotionally crippled Jewish bachelors over the age of thirty. Scarred by a boyhood of Dickensian abuse, he is scared of women: his mother used to beat him as a child and lock him in the closet. Roger apologized for "misleading me" and hopes I don't "hate him." Skinny sad sack of semen! Go stick your hepatitis, rabbit hutch, and party line gossip up your ass! I was a very poor judge of character: Roger was simply tossing me a well-worn sales pitch for his "phone services" from the very beginning. Now I understand why he once griped that I was too "prudish" for him--I didn't pounce on the bait. As bizarre as it is, all he must have ever really wanted from me was phone sex!

CHAPTER 25

GONE WITH THE WIND

Confession lines are the hot new fad for the criminally insane: in the 1990s, the telephone has replaced the parish priest, the psychiatrist, the sex therapist, and the arresting officer. I branched out onto the Apology Line--the devi’ls most reviled combination of digits--to distract me from the burgeoning social, emotional, and economic problems on 643. Apology (continued as "Apologia" after 1996) was conceived of by artist Allen Bridge as both an art project (Apology Magazine publishes verbatim telephone transcripts) and as a communion of the weak ("The Church of the Apologetic Predator"), where Bridge (a former shoplifter) and other criminals could publicly relieve their guilt and share feedback about their anti-social activities. With palpable devotion and quasi-religious zeal, Mr. Apology offers his penitent family of conscience-stricken callers stern rebukes, vital absolution, commentary, and pop psychology. In 1998, Evolution Online Systems expanded the Apology Line concept via the Internet at www.apology.com.

Sinners can repent around the clock: "This is Apology, founded October 1980, the 187th in a weekly series of programs. The purpose of Apology is to provide a way for criminals and wrongdoers to apologize for their misdeeds without jeopardizing themselves, in the hope that this will help them turn over a new leaf. Do not identify yourself. To prevent tracing, call from a payphone if you're tape recording a confession of a serious crime. Describe in detail what you have done and how you feel about it." Countless anguished, guilt-ravaged callers expressed profound regret and confusion about their persistent exploration of atypical sexual arenas: "Hi! This is Tom. On the previous tape I mentioned getting turned on by seeing or by talking my girlfriend into giving her children enemas. I have not been doing it or convincing anybody to do it to their kids, because I realize that it's quite dangerous: that's over a couple of years ago. I've been seeking the outlet by having it done to me instead--by going to the dominatrix: the stern nurse or the stern nanny and the naughty boy getting spanked and given enemas. But it hasn't been too satisfying because the women were obviously professionals and doing it to make the money.

I've also taken out ads in some of the gay magazines, although I'm not gay, advertising for a stern daddy willing to potty train a naughty boy. This could be a little bit dangerous, but most of the times it hasn't. I've been doing this once every two or three months, and have had a few encounters, which seems to take out a lot of the desire. It would be nice to find a woman with whom I could share it. I particularly get off on being the helpless little boy who’s gonna be subjected to this treatment. I know it stems from my childhood experiences, and I'm trying to channel it into a proper outlet. I'll be anxious to hear what other people have to say or what their experiences, if any, have been. Thank you for running the line, Mr. Apology. Have a good one." Mr. Apology offered Tom additional, private listening material on the subject: "Tom, you get the Apology seal of approval. It takes a lot of nerve to confess those kinds of things that most people would find so incredibly embarrassing. And you have an attraction for younger children, but you're not victimizing younger children anymore--even though that means a diminution of your sexual satisfaction. You're going to professionals, to adults. That's very good!"

The torn and tattered Apology Line recorder accidentally cut short a disquieting suicide note from one despondent long-time caller: "Mr. Apology, this is the last time you're gonna hear from Shamus. I'm tired, and I'm going tonight. It was a straight summer; I tried hard. I lost six friends this year: I lost my brother, and I'm back on the rack. I started getting high and I don't have the strength anymore. And my health ain't what it used to be, either. That's something for someone who’s about to be twenty-three to say, right? Mr. Apology, this is the last time you're gonna hear from me. I've decided to take my own life with a nice OD. . . .” Mr. Apology sorrowfully and respectfully aired Shamus's last spoken words: "Shamus, if you're still alive, call in and let me know. Meantime, I'm gonna try to find out if Shamus did, in fact, die. When I ascertain this, I'm going to have a special program and play back a selection of his recordings."

There is an embarrassing, bloodcurdling wealth of eccentricity, transgression, and remorse in greater New York: one young man confessed to continuing, unrepentant anal incest with his teenage sister. An apologetic fast food worker at McDonald's struggled hard to get out the abbreviated words of his confession: he gets angry when customers ask for special orders and retaliates by spitting on their burgers all the time! Another peculiar caller had a picayune compulsion to frame innocent drugstore, bookstore, and supermarket customers for shoplifting as revenge for his humiliation when a sales clerk forgot to remove his purchase tag. John now surreptitiously transposes extra bar code stickers onto shampoo bottles or hides plastic anti-theft buttons inside clothing to trigger exit door screening devices. He lurks around to watch unsuspecting shoppers apprehended by security guards on their way out: "I get a little bit of entertainment out of it." He does it "every weekend and at least once or twice during the week as well." My horror grew after listening to a tortured, thirty-minute melodrama from a distraught man who had been imprisoned against his will in a Greenwich Village hotel room by a biker boy pickup thirteen years ago. He was tied spread eagle to a bed and progressively gang-raped by dozens of men over a three-day period. He is guilt-ridden because he partially enjoyed the punishment, and longs to locate his tormentor again.

A somber professional escort ventilated feelings for an hour on Mr. Apology's extended play annex line about how she had slashed an abusive john's penis and left him jackknifed in bed, hemorrhaging on the sheets. She reiterated in a petal-soft voice: "I am a good person, though, and I never wanted to hurt anyone this way." Another fevered/ frantic man described in sickening detail how he shot a sleeping homeless man in the head at point blank range because he "wanted to know how it felt to have power over someone so completely isolated that they no longer mattered to anyone." He intended to prey on any other flotsam and jetsam--drifters or loners who looked like they were without family or friends to notice their absence. An HBO movie, Apology, was based on another self-acknowledged serial killer, regular dialer Ritchie. Apology is the party line that God created in anger: it is a dark moral chore to listen to these chilling, repellent, hellish outpourings.

Silverfish steam-rollered out of telephone retirement with an Apology Line bombshell: he strained all of Mr. Apology's ethical and mental resources to the limit for the next two months. Silverfish sounded hostile, wired, and guarded as he publicly confessed that he had just killed his mother. Silverfish requested to speak with Mr. Apology privately; Mr. Apology waited by his recorder to intercept Silverfish's next call. In a forty-minute conversation taped for broadcast, Silverfish dug up all his family skeletons: "My mother blames me for my older brother having run away and for the death of my other brother two years ago. She tells me every single day that I am no good, and that I will never make anybody happy. She just keeps nagging me and bothering me. She humiliated me in front of everybody: I lost a couple of relationships offa her. I heard it since I was a child, and one day I couldn't take it anymore. The house wasn't that big, and there's not many places I can go except outside. I'm more or less anti-social; I don't have many friends in New York. I was seeing a therapist but that hasn't helped, so I figured I'd solve things on my own."

Silverfish nervously monitored the clock and hung up every three minutes to prevent tracing: "Because of my safety, I really don't trust anybody, anyway. I'm taking a big risk doing this." Silverfish asked if the phone was tapped by the police, and if Mr. Apology had a Caller ID system. When Silverfish finally decided he could trust Mr. Apology, he elaborated on the matricide: "One day she went one word too far with me, and I said, 'I'm gonna shut her up.' I punched her, and she seemed to shut up. I said, 'Ah, this is good!"' Silverfish hit her again, stuffed her in a walk-in closet, wedged a broomstick against the door, and left her for dead over the weekend. When he returned, she was weak and starved, but still alive. Then he suffocated her with a pillow: "I may sound like an evil bastard, but like I said, I had no feeling. I can't exactly remember quite well where I did place her body at, because of the fact I've been going in and out of blackouts a lot. Faints and cold sweats and forgetting things that happened the night before. It's in the New York area, I know that."

Mr. Apology was calm, inquisitive, and intellectually transfixed by the grisly details of Silverfish's confession. He wondered how Silverfish would cope with what he's done: "I'll block it out, or else I'd be sweating, nervous, or drinking right now." Silverfish plans to move to California and put all this behind him: "I let all the anger out. I have no regrets. I can live my life the way I want to now." Silverfish felt that his mother needed to be punished for torturing him all these years. Simply leaving home would not have solved the problem: "I'd know she's still on this earth, screaming at somebody else, and I'd keep thinking about that and I would have nightmares about it. I feel more at ease now, and it's quiet. It is very quiet, and that's how I want it.”

Silverfish made an unusual request: he wanted to meet with Mr. Apology to show him that he's not "a devilish kind of person" and to dispel any lingering doubts that Mr. Apology might have as to whether or not he really committed the murder. Silverfish offered: "I know this is really sick and twisted--I would take pictures of the body, and I would show you. Cause all my life, they call me a liar. And just once, I feel like I'm practically on top of the world in a way. To be honest, I feel good . . . I feel like a ruler. I actually did something that I was in control, and that's all I wanted--to be in control." Mr. Apology was apprehensive about his safety and the possible legal ramifications of a meeting: "I'd become an accessory after the fact by knowing who you are and what you did." Mr. Apology concluded the conversation by telling Silverfish, "You might give me bad dreams tonight!" Mr. Apology declined the encounter (he has only met two of his callers) but was sufficiently riveted by Silverfish to transcend the legitimate boundaries of his role and pass through the appointed bar late at night incognito.

Silverfish continued the relationship he had so carefully cultivated with his new friend, Mr. Apology--to the extent of giving him his home phone number! Mr. Apology called him up, empathetic and concerned about his well-being: "The important issue is how people are emotionally, not whether or not he really did it." Mr. Apology informed his enraptured, cliffhanging community of crime buffs and recidivists that he believed Silverfish had in fact killed his mother because he was exhibiting "a high state of paranoia" over telltale clicking noises on the phone and Mr. Apology's disturbing, nervous snickers. Mr. Apology sounded paternal and wise, like a social caseworker: "You may not like to hear this, but I was thinking that maybe the best thing for you was not to be in a prison, but to be in a mental institution where you could have therapy and plenty of time.” . . . He urged him to surrender, get a lawyer, and go for an insanity plea.

While they were on the phone, Mr. Apology heard Silverfish's "grandmother" talking to him in the background: "She's right here looking at me, and she's giving me the finger. She's a real nag, too. She reminds me of my mother in a lot of ways. She makes me very nervous." At this juncture, Mr. Apology felt compelled to violate caller confidentiality and intervene in Silverfish's life. He contacted the grandmother to see if she was aware that her daughter was missing: "I was worried for her safety." When Mr. Apology found himself talking to the murder victim, instead, he warned her: "Your son has a fantasy of killing you." Silverfish nevertheless still insisted that he had killed his mother: "I'm gonna wait by the PO box (Mr. Apology offers his callers a mailing address) and bring you the body personally. I'm gonna wait for you every single day until you pick up your mail. You're pissing me off! I'm gonna go out there and kill more people. I trusted you. But you're a living, conniving bastard just like everybody else who wants, wants, wants, and then when they've had enough, they cut you off!" Mr. Apology lapsed into an uncharacteristic, shellshocked silence.

Silverfish's final concern was that Mr. Apology would embarrass him and expose him as a fraud to the agitated Apology Line listening audience. As we gain insight into Silverfish's reckless psychology and the shrewish nature of his mother, we notice also that Mr. Apology is as sick as the sum of all of his callers combined. He has dedicated fifteen full-time years of his life to the cause of this confession line: his only role in society is as a venerated authority figure within a crowded, cloudy fishbowl of chronic misfits. Silverfish's final analysis of Mr. Apology (who subsequently died in late 1995) is as poignant an indictment as any that Mr. Apology, himself, could hand down: "I think you're a lonely man who just wants to hear people talk." This, in a nutshell, is the essence of the party line.

The 643 party line, however, is imploding: a sudden series of unexpected, monumental seismic shifts rocked our once invincible world. Six-four-three's traditional half hour talking period was stripped down to a highly unstable, five-minute window!! As a consequence, the line has grown dramatically more expensive: day time conversations that used to cost 20.4 cents an hour now cost $1.22 an hour, while night time costs have mounted from 8.4 to 50.4 cents an hour. Several of the twelve bridges have been shut down completely with a cold, curt, dead-end recording: "Hello. Please leave a message for Chinese Wong Chong take-out restaurant. Serve egg roll and fried rice. So please leave message. Thank you." (TONE-hungry "Harvey" penetrated and plundered 643's Empire State Building computer storage banks!)

Pricey and proud, five-minute 643 still provides the best psychotic sleigh ride for the tongue: it rages hot, sweet, and bitter all at the same time. Freedom reigns now that Chaos and Rocco can no longer maintain enough dial tone frequencies to create THE TONE; providence has finally liberated us from their grinding psychic tyranny. The titans of the trash have been untoned and dethroned: they have disappeared from the line completely, along with all of their sound effects. With easy access and constant caller rotation in and out of the system, scores of new voices have materialized. I came out of hiding for six relaxed, joy-filled weeks until the ultimate, unspeakable tragedy cut us down: "Hi! You have reached our local lines. Sorry, but these lines will be temporarily disconnected for repairs on Monday, 11:00 A.M. Please call 1-900-999-9292 or 1-900-999-9393.” Like age-vanquished Aschenbach in Death in Venice, we dream with hopeless, futile passion of sweet-limbed young Tadzio as the foul, spreading cholera stalks its quarry. We face silent bridges, stunned desolation, and the decay of everything we once held sacred.

Six-four-three may have been a doomed line from the very start. The evil specter of its antecedent, the Wild Line, loomed over us from day one like the thick shadow of a hangman's noose. I have come to believe that it was time for the 643 leper colony to die out: the line had collectively reached the end of its rope. The formerly utopian society that existed over the party line had disintegrated into an accumulation of long-standing feuds, furies, and flying flack. The inflammatory language and turbulent social relations had come to a head and exacted their price. Our bad reputation caused us to be ostracized everywhere else: our regular callers were quarantined and blacklisted from respectable lines. Even diehard stalwarts like myself were forced to defect to 550 lines because of the relentless abuse on 643. We had climbed the craggy twin peaks of hostility and horniness and left ourselves with no way down.

The sad heart of the 643 party line was broken by disillusionment and a stepped-up, sophisticated TONE terrorism campaign which increasingly wiped out all opportunities for conversation. Crushing bills knocked off callers one by one as their phones were disconnected. Prominent personalities like Stacy Q and Natalie voluntarily took early retirement from the line. Jack was threatened with personal violence and lawsuits for his telephone activities. Melissa was admitted to a hospital and passed away from cirrhosis of the liver at age thirty. Marilyn was killed in a tragic car crash driving home alone on the Long Island Expressway at age forty-five. Krowsha, 007 counter-spy files still intact, was tracked back through his computer and incarcerated (as was celebrity hacker, Phiber-Optik, who served ten months in Federal prison for breaking into the computer system of Southwestern Bell!).

Profound past disappointments with dating had largely halted all non-telephone socializing. Everybody had already met everybody else. I, too, became exasperated with being avoided, stood up, and constantly approached as a verbal masturbation toy. Creeping cynicism about the phone sex factor effectively curtailed freedom of speech: women hesitated to dial, and men ridiculed each other's stale pick up lines and attempts at callbacks. In the end, Jack the Wack and Bushwick Bob were right--jaded, jaundiced, but poignantly in touch with the brutal realities of telephone dating. We have been looking at a collection of men and women who have been single too long. The telephone line offered them a panacea, but it failed to offer them a solution. As an evolving social scene and social unit, it played itself out: we self-destructed.

Confidences were betrayed and shocking personal secrets were revealed as Judgment Day approached. Simone choked mid-mono-syllable and disconnected herself in shock when Vito suddenly materialized right in back of her phone booth in Central Park: a mild-mannered reporter lurked behind the fabricated wiseguy vitriol and macho mobster moniker. Chaos, with all his uncontrollable rage (voted most likely to wind up in the state penitentiary for mass murder without 643!), is apparently blind--as is Theresa from Brooklyn, our gentle friend with the feathery, little-girl voice. The sightless can achieve instant, miraculous social equality in a medium without visual clues; we all played high stakes blindman's buff in our wondrous, sacrosanct domain of pure sound.

Today, however, is the last hurrah of 643: old quarrels were forgiven and forgotten--and friendships were cemented--as we spent our final hours and minutes together on the umbilical cord. In a deep, blood-kin spirit of auditory reconciliation, I made up with Vito, Lori, and even Riverdale, who apologized to me and gave me his number. Billy from Manhattan and Bam Bam covenanted to refinance 643 to continue their customary, nightly sniper fire and overheated bountyhunter rhetoric: Wendy wants to adopt the newly orphaned 9292 bridge. I need Jack's 300-minute tirades and eloquent, inspirational filibusters: his unique cult of personality sustained me through every season of my discontent. Determined to witness the bitter end personally, Dr. Trash squeezed in one last trash at 7:00 A.M. Bam Bam played some loud music later on so we'd have something negative to remember him by. Wendy (on an all-night deathwatch) indulged in her last sublime moment as a porch monkey as they pulled the plug on our lifeline to the outside world.

BAM BAM: Hello, Fat Line! Can I help you?

OPERATOR: Hello! This is the operator. Am I reaching 643-1926? Ingrid is making an emergency interruption. Will you give up the line?

BAM BAM brightens up considerably: Operator, fuck you!

TONY THE ONE AND ONLY: Bam Bam, stop it! Twenty minutes left!

SIMONE: Hang up! It's only twenty-five to eleven.

VITO: Don't listen to that kaka over there. It's twenty to; this girl's watch is totally fucked up.

SIMONE: Would you shut up! It's twenty-five to eleven.

VITO: We ain't got twenty-five minutes left. You want me to three-way on 976-1616 and see what the time is?

SIMONE sings happily: "I eat the Twinkies.” Tony, I wanna hear the song you made up about me eating Twinkies. Sing, God damn it! I wanna hear my Twinkies song. Tony, remember the phone massage?

TONY: Simone, stop trying to get me to come.

SIMONE's voice cracks as she laughs: You fuck! I want you to sing, not come! I heard you made up a song.

TONY: That's rumors--lies. You believe everything you hear?

SIMONE whimpers: I miss you so much. What am I going to do without you, Tony?

TONY offers a hopeful social alternative: You'll retire to the closest Carvel!

SIMONE has one morbid eye on the graveyard: We've got fifteen minutes left: fifteen minutes and counting.

WENDY: I wonder if they'll do it precisely at eleven or not.

SIMONE: They'll probably play the "Star Spangled Banner," and then we'll get test patterns like on TV at three o'clock in the morning. Watch--I betcha this turns out to be a hoax, and they don't turn it off. Then I missed an hour of work for no reason--I stayed home especially for this.

CONGESTED MALE VOICE snorts: Simone's a fat bag of shit!

SIMONE: Oh, you talking about your mom again?

MALE VOICE: Shut up, you fat bitch!

SIMONE: I might be fat, but I can lose weight. You're ugly--there's no hope for you!

MALE VOICE: You fat bitch! Everyone met you off the line.

SIMONE: Everyone met me? No one met me, you scumbag!

TONY returns: Will you stop, already! Will you two stop these childish games that go on. We got ten minutes left; let's make a little peace over here.

MALE VOICE: You bitch, you fat ugly bitch, you fat bitch!

LORI clicks on: What's a matter, fat boy? They ran out of sesame cakes down at the deli?

SIMONE (repetitive, ragged repair recording trails in and out): The line comes down forever.

MIKE clicks on: You said you're going down?

SIMONE: No, the line is, not me. Oh, I would, too, if you gave me a good reason to. We only have ten minutes to discuss it, so you could give me your number or, we can chalk it up to a passing fancy.

MIKE: Give my number out on this line? Are you crazy?

SIMONE: Oh, come on. You think anybody's gonna call you?

MIKE: Well, it's already happened once, so.

SIMONE sniffs: I'll have to cry, then.

MIKE: I've got my beeper number, but it's up to you.

SIMONE: Yeah, I could do that, but it'll definitely be a little later on. And when you call me back, you could give me your real number, cause I hate beepers.

MALE BULLHORN VOICE: Guy, you're wasting your time!

SIMONE: Uh oh, seven more minutes! Watch, watch--I get cut--and in the last five minutes, I can't get back.

KEVIN: Who else is out here? How about my buddy Chaos?

SIMONE: No, he left already; he was on earlier this morning. He was playing some tape of some guy fucking some girl, and then he hung up. He said it was Anthony from Howard Beach, but who knows.

WENDY snarls in sleep-deprived delirium: Oh, God!!

KEVIN: Another one of those pain in the asses. He'll have to get a life now. Simone, how old are you?

SIMONE: Twenty-four. I'll be twenty-five in two weeks.

KEVIN: Happy birthday!

MALE VOICE: Cunt!

SIMONE: Thank you. Yes, I have one. Wanna see it?

RIVERDALE emerges with a click: She's gone.

LORI: Riverdale, I haven't talked to you in such a long time!

RIVERDALE: I love you, honey.

LORI gets a telephonic hug: I love you, too. What time is it?

CLOVER (the wire sizzles and hisses): Five after eleven.

LORI: They lied. We've all been anticipating the break of this line, and they lied. They're playing a joke on us. They're probably sitting there listening to us, laughing.

CLOVER: There isn't a date on it, you know.

RIVERDALE: Maybe they meant next Monday.

TONY breaks back in: Holy shit! What's up, Riverdale? They told me this line is getting disconnected.

RIVERDALE (noisy knocks and pings in the machinery): It is.

TONY is in denial: It is not. It's false advertising: it's 11:12. They're not gonna close it down. It says right on there: for repair. It's gonna open up again; they're just gonna close it for twenty-four hours to repair it. Hook up a new computer.

KEVIN: Yeah, but you never know what they say.

TONY: Nah, if they were gonna shut it, they'd just shut it. This line makes too much money; this is busier than 550.

Popping noises and crackling static appear in the background.

TONY: Where's Bam Bam? Hey, did he get evicted, or what?

RIVERDALE patches himself back in: What's his real name?

TONY: Irving. Rabinowitz? Rockowitz? Rosenwitz, yeah, I think it is. Irving Rosenwitz.

RIVERDALE laughs: Holy shit! Who put the recording on?

TONY: Somebody called him up and heard it and taped it, and played it over the line.

WENDY: Why was he getting evicted?

RIVERDALE: I guess he couldn't pay the rent. He has no job.

TONY: He works, Bam Bam. He's got a night job: he works the sex line from 12:00 to 4:00 A.M. He does: on 550-GAY. He's been doing it for three weeks now.

RIVERDALE laughs: Where’d you hear that from?

TONY: Serious shit! He'll tell you, too. He was on there the other day giving phone sex to Ira.

It put up a brave, prolonged fight, but our beloved 643 was finally severed without a warning during a devotional, 4:00 P.M. TONE Requiem Mass: the party line company outdid Jack with the final trash of all trashes. I don't have 643 to turn to anymore: I may have flirted with other lines, but my heart always belonged to you--my faithful late night friend. Two of her former bridges survive, but they were always a one-on-one connection plus the odd, maverick 900-link caller. Two others bear a spine-tingling warning from beyond the grave delivered in a gnarled, Boris Karloff growl: "The party line is dead! Listen to what I say! THE PARTY LINE IS DEAD! And that number again is 1-900-872-2770. Call now!" The remaining bridges still carry the 11:00 A.M. repair slogan, followed by a soft regular pulse every few seconds--like a faint, prayerful heartbeat!

Universally rendered blocked and homeless, the men are left to the finicky phone charity of strangers (lady friends three-way Dr. Trash onto paying lines), while the women grovel for fly-by-night courtesy handouts. All the back door numbers are chock-a-block busy now, as the displaced refugees and expatriates pour or sneak onto hushed 550 lines in the throes of their monthly business slump. Metro Regional Calling Area customers just received their phone bills, and many get blocked--or temporarily shocked--into quiescence, until the urge to call again grows too great to resist. I, however, need a new line to cling to and a new pied piper; I want to become part of Radical Rick's entourage. He calls up to abuse people, and I call up to listen to him abuse people. Radical is cool: I can obsessively revere him. And at least I don't have to hear Roger Rabbit anymore: he stopped calling CLAS right after our last conversation. I must have taken a heavy toll on the mortified hare's eggshell-thin psyche.

I can't remember what my life used to be like before the party line, and I could not adjust back to mainstream society. I could clean my house or keep up with world events if the phone didn't dictate my entire schedule, but I get all the news, stock quotes, and sanitation I need on the sex lines! (I just got an insider's tip on AIDSGUARD, a new bacterial freezing agent for defoliating people and toilets, from a bleary-eyed investment counselor on B & D!) Some people place blocks on their phones not so much to curb their galloping bills, but to regain control over their runaway time! Like a ticking biological clock, I eagerly begin every bright day in a monogamous, committed relationship with my telephone: I'll admit to hundreds of breakfasts, lunches, dinners, midnight snacks, and cups of tea quaffed and sipped on the sly to the soothing intercom echo of 643.

I have learned to perform all bodily functions while talking on a party line. I've exercised, dreamed, gotten drunk, and orgasmed; I've even defecated while the line politely stood by on open speakerphone. Nothing is sacred. Calcutta-on-the-Hudson may be cursed with a bitter cold climate, air pollution, rampant crime, appalling filth, declining municipal services, a crumbling infrastructure, the ever-present teeming homeless, and an uncaring citizenry, but Peter Stuyvesant's brave little colony still has God on its side: we have 550 numbers here! I would be happy if I could stay on them twenty-four hours a day. It's only when I hang up the receiver that life gets depressing.

The end of 643 is a real social tragedy for its callers. The central core of my personal, professional, and social life is about to be ripped away. We will be more estranged, isolated, empty, and unhappy than we ever were before the fortuitous advent of this line. We are going to be back behind four solitary blank walls talking to a television tube on Saturday nights. This was the only place in the entire world where being single felt like a whirling dervish of disco strobe lights, Caribbean weekend getaways for two, flowing Dom Perignon, Cinderella stories, and eye-popping tabloid romance. We enjoyed lifestyles of the rich and famous right in our own living rooms. Disconnected from 643, we are disconnected from the human race. The complex, richly textured culture that we meticulously created together over time will crumble literally overnight. We leave shared laughter, unconditional friendship, and the fierce esprit du corps forged in the noisy foxholes and blasphemous, crimson trenches of the party line for the inhospitable vagaries of the real world. We had learned to love the somehow heartwarming misery of each others' company. All of these magnificent, vivid voices are going to fall silent forever. We have lost our families.

Next Tuesday I am going to escape the phone debacle with a month-long adventure junket to Southeast Asia. I am bringing the KISS/CLAS access numbers with me; this is what American Express really means by, "Don't leave home without it!" I'll pine for the nirvana of the party line as I feast on custard apples, Vietnamese dragon fruit, and garlicky durian wedges in a malarial mosquito-infested hotel room in Kuala Lumpur. I already cautioned Connector to expect the time delay and distortion of salubrious, direct dialed, international phone calls from eight degrees below the Equator. As I ride majestic elephants in Chiang Mai, becaks in Jakarta, and speedy tuk tuks in Bangkok, I'll also be plotting some way to get 643 back on again. We will not hang up quietly.

EPILOGUE

The beautiful world that I created on the line will be destroyed when my subjects--used and mocked for all the world to see--realize that I was a mole in their midst: I played judge and jury based solely on jack’s volcanic aesthetic criteria. The telephone itself, however, along with its modern evil accomplice, the answering machine, is the real master deceiver. Because it is a non-face to face communication medium, telephone technology lends itself to fraud, misrepresentation, and abnormal social behavior: it enables shoddy, non-committal friendships and love affairs to be passively conducted and sustained over extended distances and periods of time to avoid genuine physical, emotional, and family intimacy. A dehumanizing implement of miscommunication, the telephone gives us a false sense of social connectedness and popularity as we progressively mean less and less each week to the habitual, largely estranged “voice relationships” in our solitary lives.

but, I will never forget or regret those glamorous, forbidden nights spent on the telephone till dawn. they transformed me into much more than a certified party lineaholic; I became a party line professional. I carefully examined the power relationships, gender relationships, group dynamics, and social structure of this exotic, aberrant subculture. I even conducted vast clinical trials to isolate a highly endangered species: attractive, eligible bachelors on telephone talk lines. In a twelve-year quest for sex and higher knowledge, I talked to over 1,500 men both on the line and at home, met 119 in person, and dated 24, and yet I never found either a boyfriend or a lover on this swirling singles merry-go-round. Conversing on the line itself is what is so wonderful--not the individual people who are on it. The phone doctor’s final diagnosis: party lines are a dismal way to meet someone.

Mass-volume, anonymous blind dating does not work in any present format: from party lines to personal ads to video dating services to voice bulletin boards to on-line cyber correspondence. Most participants have a social handicap and something sad or sinister to hide: on the party line, they are particularly preoccupied with weight, because that’s usually their biggest problem. the psychological profile of the typical romantic phone prospect is poor: many are either brain dead bigots, pathologically shy, or are pathological liars. Devout dialers form the upper echelon of America’s Least Wanted List. no one ever graduates from the party line to a stable relationship or marriage: we are all still here, year after year. The party line becomes a natural funnel for unhealthy impulses and uncontained behaviors: on this “Loveboat,” men do not even necessarily want to meet women for dates, romance, love, or sex. They are only looking for phone sex partners, phone friends, or phone victims.

The dating problems that party line callers face are the problems that all contemporary singles face, only writ large. the normal dating process has, for all intents and purposes, completely broken down in the United States in the face of hedonism, pervasive social anxiety, decadence, and lack of sexual self-control. the gloomy specter of AIDS haunts and scars an entire generation, planting fundamental, primal distrust and fear: AIDS forms the inescapable, persistent backdrop to this book. the party line is a scorched world of moral and sexual anarchy: it is both a metaphor for and a commentary on the state of the nation. Every facet of American life is manifested on the phone lines: an alarming, society-wide decline of honesty and accountability; a growing culture of sexual and social anger; the collapse of law and order; the dissolution of the nuclear family; and the seductive spread of obscenity and pornography. I have not been able to paint a pastoral Norman Rockwell landscape of a slice of late twentieth century life: the party line is not feel-good American art. It sprang out of the brackish well created by rootlessness, alienation, and anomie; it is a safety net for the multitudes of garden- variety psychopaths, chronic malcontents, and extremists that our society has spawned. we have reached deep into the domestic heart of darkness.

displaced, hormonal tidal waves rule each and every caller, regardless of their size, shape, or dialogue. there is an overly bold urge to “reach out and touch someone,” or, if that fails, to touch oneself! Searching for anonymous erotic pleasure has become the national pastime and primary form of social recreation Our founding fathers never envisioned such rampant libertinism and degeneracy in the body politic. And they certainly never foresaw sex lines, where total strangers ask other strangers what kind of genital torture they prefer over a telephone! Even more bizarre, half of America will masturbate to this book (and I know which half you are, you bad boys!). No girl is safe from voice lust--even in her own home! Any woman who uses a telephone, even on the pretext of a normal conversation, is risking a sexual encounter. Party lines have created and unleashed millions of phone sex aficionados and sex addicts, and the mere sound of a female will set them off. Witness one innocent conversation with a friendly neighborhood mailman about the weather: “I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I’m masturbating while I’m talking to you. your voice is so sexy. I can’t believe I’m doing this!” Rover, go get him! Good pitbull! Atta boy!

Ladies of America, be very careful the next time you place a call. Your accommodating airlines reservation agent could be spanking his monkey while you try to book a seat with extra leg room on your flight to des Moines. the hot-blooded owner of Ray’s Original Pizza parlor just shot his wad when you ordered him to pile extra gorgonzola and anchovies on your large pizza pie to be hand delivered to your door. the Home shopping Club warns its female customer service representatives to expect a large volume of obscene calls, especially late at night. the toll free, 1-800 order number flashing across the television screen leads right to the wholesome “salesgirl next door,” attracting such pillars of society as “The Panty Man” and “The Toe Man.” operators are trained at an orientation session to either politely hang up or call for a supervisor when confronted by inappropriate customer language.

Now that men have discovered that they can get what they consider to be good sex from something other than a live woman, their appetite for verbal phone stimulation is insatiable. when High Society originated the first pay-per-call sex lines in 1984, those numbers pulled in 500,000 calls daily--including a one-time bill of $68,000 from the Pentagon! American servicemen stationed in Seoul, Korea, ran up four million dollars in unauthorized phone charges over a nine-month period in 1988/1989 when someone leaked the official army communications access code. who did our boys call? they called mothers, fathers, wives, sweethearts, and fantasy lines back home! Playboy Magazine reports that half a million commercial phone sex calls are still being placed every twenty-four hours in the United States in 1998.

Due to market demand, the telephone program industry has shifted away from party chat lines to concentrate almost exclusively on the intimate fantasy trade. Along with burgeoning strip clubs and topless bars, which have doubled in number between 1987 and 1997 (U.S. News and World Report states that “Americans now spend more money annually at these clubs than they do at the theater, opera, ballet, jazz, and classical music concerts combined.”), sex lines are one of the few strong financial growth areas in an otherwise contracting economy. Phone sex may be the most popular form of sex in the United States today! Celebrity writer Jackie Collins observes that because of AIDS, we have lost “this freedom of sexuality, of going out and picking people up and jumping into bed with them and having a great time. And so now, a lot of [Hollywood personalities] are confiding that they will call these 800 numbers and have great phone sex.” Even bimbo-gorged rock bands like Poison, Aerosmith, and Motley Crüe have written panting odes to both erotic dancers and phone sex on their multi-platinum albums. Superstar Kenny Rogers was publicly pilloried by an unforgiving tabloid press when it uncovered his hidden taste for “dirty phone calls.”

Susan Block reports that “whole networks of affairs are going on on the telephone lines of America that are just incredible. It’s sometimes on wrong numbers. And women are really getting turned on to it, too. It’s because of the safety, not just in terms of the spread of disease, but of being sexual and not being thought of as a fast, loose woman.” gynecologists often recommend that unpartnered women masturbate, particularly as they grow older, in order to keep their uro-genital tracts healthy and lubricated. In the end—in the final end—masturbation is the best, most loving sex of all! You can take anyone you want—any way you want them—against their will and without their knowledge or consent (Sylvester Stallone gave me my first multiple orgasm!). voyeurism, pornography, pillow talk, and very hot solo sex have replaced the one night stand in the age of aids. you never know who is observing--or listening--or ejaculating--to you!

Even worse--look around you! Look to your left! Look to your right! Jack the Wack could be your mutual fund stockbroker. Scarlett could be smiling lasciviously at your bouncing penile outline as you walk down the street. Silverfish could be your teenager’s new best friend. He may be sleeping right under your very roof--near your unblocked telephone--with his itchy dialing finger. Roger Rabbit could be the chef at your favorite seafood restaurant. Anthony from Howard Beach could be snaking your toilet early tomorrow morning. Frogman might usher you to your seat the next time you go to a double feature. Dr. Trash could be dialing your unlucky number right now! Steve may be driving down the road right behind you in his Ford Taurus! Never, ever, accept a ride from anyone in a Ford Taurus! We are all around you, wherever there is a telephone, flourishing and fomenting mayhem right under your very noses. Like a spreading computer virus, we are nearly impossible to identify or to stop.

We are left with many other unresolved questions about our productive, busy band of perennial dialers. How many party line men will Wendy date, and will she ever have sex with any of them? Will Robert get over his wood fetish for Veronica and turn to Wendy instead? Will Wendy and Mr. egg Nog eventually meet and fall madly in love? Will Little Joan Jett’s true weight be exposed on the Large and Lovely line? Will Wendy recant and check herself into The Love Hotel Line for trendy, international telephone sex? Will Mr. Know It All know if she does? Will Scarlett O’Hara ever find her Rhett Butler, and if she does, will he give a damn? Will the Almighty Sentinel ever return to Earth and take Wendy away from all of this?

Will the mysterious Krowsha penetrate our line if he escapes custody? If 643 comes back on again, will Wendy turn into one of Jack’s fanatical beeping groupies, or will she defect and become the dastardly Dr. Trash’s musical understudy? If Jack doesn’t return to us, which of the pretenders to the phone throne will prevail? Will Wendy ever burn all her “bridges” behind her and stop calling party lines? Is there even such a thing as a life after the party line? Ring up again next time, folks, for part two of the continuing adventures of Wendy and her telephone. Finally, and most important, how many of you have dialed the party line? Come on, now, don’t be shy--raise your cordless units high in the air and let me count! I’ll meet you all out there: call 1-900-999-WENDY right now!!

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