Storytime!

Alright folks, sorry about the late post this morning still. As it turns out I didn't get my office cleaned yesterday...don't get me wrong still, I got a really good amount of cleaning done, it's just that I have these R.A.S.S. research papers to sort and punch and put in folders. Now, I must say that you all are a bunch of slackers you know! Imagine of all the beautiful things I said in yesterday's post the only thing that you all picked out of it was Porn and Programming!! Slackers! :D

Anyhow, as stated yesterday I'm gonna give y'all a likkle story to read still. It's called Telephone Lovers (no, I not talking about phone sex Dr. D. Mad Bull, JDid, Stu and Scratchie!!!). It's a story about young love and all that stuff--and it's not fodder for a chick flick either! (though it wouldn't be too bad of an idea still). Anyhow, let me stop rambling like an idiot and present you with my latest creation: Telephone Lovers. (Note: it's not edited as yet, so it might seem a bit choppy...I'll edit it when I get the book deal!).

{arf,arf}

Telephone Lovers

When I was a wee lad of about 14 or so, I fell into a sordid love affair that cost my family quite a bit of heartache and stress, not to mention quite a bit of money. You see, this love affair was not of the normal sort. You know the normal sort of love affairs that I mean, right? Boy and girl meet at some social event, mutual attraction develops, phone numbers are exchanged, calls are made and movie dates are arranged. If everything goes well, kisses are swapped and pledges of eternal love are made, and then broken after a few weeks when the next hot item comes into picture. Nope, I was just a bit too unconventional for that sort of romance headache, so I had to find alternative ways of meeting girls. Nowadays, kids can hop on the Internet and find millions of potential suitors, but in my day the Internet and the World Wide Web weren’t very popular or accessible to average folks. Therefore, out of sheer necessity, the vehicle for my vicarious romantic escapades became the telephone!

The telephone was the perfect device for quasi-romantic interaction. Because you had little or no knowledge of the physical attributes of the person on the other end, you weren’t confined to basing your opinion of the person solely on their physical attributes and you were in fact able to mask your own physical insecurities and be more at ease with the flow of the conversation. On the other hand, the fact that you were unable to see the person you were talking to made it quite difficult to gauge how well the interaction was going, since you really weren’t able to see their facial expressions, though sometimes if you were astute enough, you could actually tell how well you were doing based on the tone of the person’s voice. Unfortunately this didn’t work in all cases, since many folks were really good at hiding emotion behind their voice. Sometimes the telephone could sometimes become much more expensive than going on an actual date, particularly since the evil telephone company used to charge both parties regardless of who had called who. Oh well, perfect or not, the telephone was a very useful tool for helping me through those lonely, awkward adolescent years.

Now, getting phone numbers was not a very difficult task in those days, in fact it was the easiest thing in the world if you had the right contacts. I was blessed (and cursed) with the good fortune of having friends who were self-proclaimed “ladies men” and, as such, telephone numbers for girls that were interesting but “less than their standards” were in abundant supply. So, if one was willing to swallow his pride and try for a girl that his friends had deemed as below par, one could have a very happy and healthy romance life. I am not ashamed to admit that I swallowed my pride on many occasions and was rewarded with stimulating conversations with quite a few sweet, intellectual young ladies. In fact, most of them were either too sweet or too bright for a shy dimwit such as myself to ever handle in real life. No wonder my crass, boorish friends weren’t interested in these women! I never met any of these girls in person, nor did I really care to. I suppose it was partially because I was shy, but I think it had more to do with the fact that I grew weary of telling girls I’ve never seen that I loved and cared for them or trying to keep up with them as they mentally solved 4th order quadratic equations that were about three or four levels above my mathematical abilities. My activities could be considered mundane by general standards, but most adults simply chalked it up to youthful exuberance and good, wholesome fun. Well, it was all good fun and a great way to interact with other teenagers, but all that changed when I met Raquel.

My friend, Booker, gave me her telephone number and told me that she was really nice and extremely pretty (a mixture of Latina and Indian he said), but her parents were extremely protective of her and she was rarely let out of the house to go anywhere and he simply couldn’t date a girl he could never see. Well, taking his advice, I went home and immediately dialed her telephone number. I could hear my heart beating in my ears and I felt a tingling sensation down the back of my spine. I always felt this way when I was nervous. After about four rings a soft, musical voice came on the other end and said “Hello, Rodriguez residence.” “Hi, may I please speak to Raquel?” was my nervous reply. “This is Raquel, who is this?” I quickly gave her my name and explained that I had gotten her telephone number from a friend of mine at school. Of course, I had not considered the fact that maybe she wouldn’t have taken too kindly to having her phone number distributed to strangers and I suddenly felt a nervous sensation in the pit of my stomach. To my surprise, she was very open and seemed genuinely excited to hear from me. In fact, we hit it off so well that we ended up talking for more than five hours that afternoon. She was just the right blend of sweetness and intelligence that I had been looking for. She was nice, but didn’t expect me to tell her that I loved her and she was really smart, but never undermined my intelligence. From then on, Raquel and I spoke on the telephone for at least six hours every day. We sometimes called each other multiple times during the evening because someone on one of our sides had to use the telephone or we had chores that needed taking care of. Hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months, yet Raquel and I still spoke to each other with the same frequency and intensity. Looking back now, I find it amazing that we both managed to find such diverse topics to discuss on a daily basis!

As the months passed, my family became more and more concerned about my seemingly utter devotion to a girl I’d never met. They told me time after time that the lengthy telephone conversations were getting out of hand and I had become negligent of everything, including my schoolwork and my friends. In addition, they became extremely worried about the thousands of dollars I was accumulating each month as a result of my phone calls. In fact, my uncle showed me a 10-page bill that had Raquel’s number listed over 100 times. I knew that I was addicted, but the girl was just too sweet for me to give up. Raquel was my drug.

Raquel told me that her family was complaining about the same things as well and they had even told her that she needed to get a job to pay for the bill. Finally, we decided that the unfair pressure that our parents were placing on us was simply too much to bear and we decided that we needed to meet face to face instead of talking on the phone. So, one day we arranged to meet at Mothers on Constant Spring road after school. I arrived about an hour early for the meeting and drank a large bottle of water to calm my nerves. Finally, the appointed time came and I saw a tall, beautiful girl that had just the right proportions of Indian and Latina to give her an exotic appearance. In all my years I had never seen a girl that looked as lovely in the gray and burgundy St. Andrews uniform as Raquel did. She came up to me and said, “Are you Devon?” to which I replied, “Yes, and you must be Raquel.” She smiled and we walked toward an empty booth and sat down across from each other. Five minutes passed, then ten, and neither of us said a word to each other. Finally, after fifteen minutes of silence, I said to her “this isn’t working is it?” and she replied, “No, not really, you sounded a lot better looking on the telephone.” We made several futile attempts at finding some conversation, but to no avail. Finally we stood up to leave and she hugged me briefly, not the genuine “glad to have met you” type of hug, it was more along the lines of what we boys liked to call a “mercy hug”. And so Raquel and I parted company, she hopped on to a number 22 bus toward Harbor View and I found my way to the number 70 and 75 bus terminus.

Raquel and I never spoke again since the day we met face to face, but I see her from time to time in television ads and the occasional billboard. She’s a famous Pulse model now, one of Kingsley Cooper’s top models as a matter of fact. I, on the other hand, have settled into a life of mediocrity and earn my keep as a computer programmer for ScotiaBank. I suppose that physically we were never a match, but for those few months that we were telephone lovers I will always remember with a smile. Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out had we had the same chemistry in person that we did on the telephone, but some things are better off being left as unresolved. After all, isn’t mystery the thing that adds intrigue and adventure to our otherwise monotonous lives?