Phone hex

Love in the time of telecom

by Kris Frieswick

One snowy night, my friend Carl and I gathered to console my dear friend Paula, who was having man problems bad. The object of her lust had thoughtlessly, contemptuously, and stubbornly failed to call her for an entire week following a particularly passionate mash session. Poor Paula was smitten, however, and in her smit-induced haze, she had broken cardinal rule numero uno: never call the man first.

Problem was, she hadn't just broken cardinal rule numero uno, she had smashed it, pulverized it, jumped up and down on it until it was reduced to zillions of tiny, shiny shards of cardinal rule numero uno -- she had called, and called repeatedly, over the span of several days, hanging up every time and leaving no message on his voice mail. It was not typical of her, but he apparently was quite a kisser.

Back before our friends in the telecommunications industry came up with the many new and interesting caller-service options, my dear friend's psychotic episode would have drifted into the mists of time, a secret between her, Carl, and me. But Paula was about to learn a new and horrifying truth about dating in the 21st century.

"You better hope he doesn't have caller ID," Carl said. Paula's face turned ashen.

"If he wasn't there, he wouldn't be able to see my number pop up, right?" she asked hopefully.

"Oh, no," Carl said. "Those boxes record every number that comes in. You can check through it and see who called while you were out."

This information is new to no one except my sweet, Luddite friend Paula, whose home number is the only one I ever dial that gives me a busy signal. In a way, it's her own fault for not fully understanding the technological landscape into which she was venturing. Yet my heart filled with pity as she began rocking back and forth in her chair, gripping her mug of beer like a baby's bottle.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," Paula chanted. "He thinks I'm a stalker."

"Well, you kinda are," I offered in my typical sensitive, helpful manner.

---

Paula spent the next half-hour trying to figure out how to explain the flurry of phone calls to her crush. It was hopeless, she realized, and she proceeded to get stinky drunk. It was the only thing she could do.

Paula's love object never mentioned the incident. She should consider herself lucky. Just a week later, at a bar near Boston Common, I witnessed the devastating endgame that gets played when you actually get caught. That night, I sat listening -- eavesdropping, really -- as a young woman tried to convince her newly former boyfriend that she had always given him plenty of space, and that he was wrong to assert otherwise.

"You call me all the time," he answered as calmly as he could, considering he was calling her a liar. With an indignation I found impressive, she replied, "I do not!" To which he retorted, "Well, this week alone I had a barrage of blocked numbers stacked up on my caller-ID box, followed by a bunch of calls from your cell phone, which has a pretty distinctive 415 area code."

She was bagged. She did the only thing she could do, considering that she was already stinky drunk. She began to sob uncontrollably.

---

My bet is that the telecom industry has no idea what it has done to modern dating. Between call waiting, caller ID, voice mail, and *69, all of our time-tested dating rituals are being thrown, one by one, out the window. Caller ID alone has probably caused more heartache than any single invention since the chastity belt.

The hang-up call, for instance, is now a part of the past. The hang-up call is used when a suitor wants to talk to his beloved, but doesn't want to leave a message and look desperate. Instead, the suitor calls, and calls and calls and calls; when the intended finally answers, the suitor says something like, "Oh, gee, I just had a minute from my exceedingly busy workday, and I thought I'd just call and say hi," as if the whole call were a whimsical, spur-of-the-moment happenstance instead of a sweaty, compulsive, manic ritual that had taken up a good chunk of that workday. Today, thanks to technology, the response to the hang-up caller is as likely to be a restraining order as a "Hello?"

Then there's voice mail. Remember back when you used to hang out in your lover's apartment when he stepped out for smokes so that you could accidentally hit the "play" button on the answering machine to see if anyone else was playing in his sandbox? Because of Ma Bell, that crucial relationship detective device is gone forever. Of course, the upside is that your lover will have to find a new way to determine who's playing in your sandbox.

And what about call waiting? It has replaced stag parties as the most accurate way to gauge your lover's commitment level -- plus it's quicker, less expensive, and much less dangerous. The next time a call beeps in while you're on the phone with your honey, notice whether he or she picks it up or lets voice mail answer. If he picks it up, what he's really saying is, "Dear love of my life, I have absolutely no idea who's on the other line, but I'd rather talk to whoever it is."

By far the most pernicious technological advance, though, is *69. It is an unprecedented weapon, especially for those times when you drop in on your lover unexpectedly, and the first thing you hear as you open the door is, "Oh, she's here. I gotta go. I'll call you tomorrow." More than one marriage has dissolved after strategic use of *69. (Do you think it's just coincidence that they chose the number 69? I think not.)

In the big picture, however, we should be grateful to Ma Bell and all the technological advances that are making dating so much more difficult. They're forcing our lives into the fresh air. One day, technology will advance so far that we'll have nowhere left to hide. Then we might actually have to deal with each other openly and honestly right from the start. And that would be the biggest communications breakthrough ever.

Kris Frieswick can be reached at krisf1@gte.net.