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December 06, 2004
Sex on a Submarine
I got a cell phone not too long ago. I used to have a "land line," but as a result of technological innovations and the like the cell phone option became significantly cheaper, and I went wireless.
I thought of the great possibilities and advantages of cellular versus traditional phone service. I thought of all the great things this cell phone would allow me to do. How I could call ahead to say I was going to be late. How I could call to get better directions because I don't think I'm going the right way having passed that Catus Joe's restaurant four times now. How I could get extremely drunk and call friends and acquaintences from any and all environs.
I got all those things, but I also got a constant reminder. I hold this hunk of [what is it actually? plastic? silicon? metal? Definitely some metal. Is there more? I don't know] in my pocket all the time and it rarely rings (or more specifically, rarely plays some booty shakin' disco tune that came compilmentary with the phone). There it is weighing down my pocket, keeping me from spontaneously jumping into and immersing myself in pools of water, never ringing, reminding me that no one ever calls.
So I call. Whether they like it or not, I call. I leave messages, sometimes witty, or what I think is witty, sometimes rambling, sometimes both, often incoherent to the intended receiver. I have minutes after all. "This stuff is free. Why am I not using it?" I think.
Sometimes the target of my aural assault acknowledges my calling, often times not. My brother is pretty good at picking up. Perhaps he keeps forgetting my number and getting it confused with the escort service calling to verifying his credit card again. Perhaps not.
I don't know exactly why he picks up, but he does. I call him a lot because of that. I call him to ask him if things are funny. He is, for me, like the operators in those bad cable TV channel commercials. The ones where people call up to see if it is ok to laugh at something they've just seen. They give their stories and the operators on the other end verify, always verify, they never deny, that the incident was indeed funny.
However, I haven't been able to reach him for well over a week.
Apparently they don't have cell phone coverage out in the carribean, or where ever he is on a cruise that required him to buy several suits and pink shirts to participate. So I haven't been able to ask him whether or not the middle-aged guy walking down Eastern Avenue in some sort of denim (urban) cowboy outfit stretched taught over his pot belly wearing an oversized cowboy hat drinking some diet cola and blasting Christmas tunes from a boom box this weekend was funny.
If I had been able to call him I think the conversation would go something like this:
So he was middle-aged, with a pot belly. Was he white, black, hispanic...?
White.
With a boombox?
No, not a boom box really. A cassette player, like the one I used to use to tape Billy Idol songs off the radio.
The little black on with the tape deck and one speaker?
Actually it was white, like the one you used to use to play Iron Maiden on in the middle of the night... and those Pink Floyd tapes you stole from Dad.
I didn't steal the tapes.
Yes, you did.
No, I gave them back. I just borrowed them.
Whatever. You know he'd have freaked out if he ever found you had them.
Whatever, Dick.
Well, the librarian thought it was funny.
What? The Christmas Cowboy?
Yeah.
What do I care? If you think it's so damn funny why don't you write it in your stupid-ass blog.
Fuck off, bitch. You know I only call because I have to use my free minutes. Besides, you're the one that thinks he's a "creative writer."
No, I don't.
Dude. You were telling me about writing all those porno stories for the guys on your boat. How they loved them and all that shit.
It was a ship. Boats are smaller. Dumbass.
Jerk off.
etc.
I'm not sure whether or not he actually considers himself a writer or not. I think not, because when I was sure that he thought he was a writer I convinced some people at an online magazine-thingy I used to work for to let him have a column and he never went through on it.
I was interning at playboy.com, which meant that I sorted magazines, looked through old copies of magazines, occassionally ogled playmates (who were almost always chubbier and uglier in person, in that still very hot sort of way) that made their way down from the part of the building that housed the actual magazine to the part of the building where folks like me did data entry and maintained the web site, fast forwarded through hours of video of parties on Hef's boat looking for the part where he was surrounded by his triplet girlfriends wearing gold lingerie so that we could post it on the web and pretend that people actually cared to look at video clips of eldery men standing next to hot young women, and got a corner cubicle abandoned by all the salaried employees not because of its great view of Lake Michigan, but because it was right next to the open conference room.
No one there ever talked to me, even though we had parties every Friday because once Hef's daughter came to our floor and decided we looked too bored and they couldn't have bored poor people working for them, everyone that worked for them must be jovial and poor, and mandated weekly brainstorming meetings/parties until we figured out a way to make the floor less boring.
I always clocked out late on those days, and I actually stayed usually getting myself too drunk to ride my bike home and would have to ride the L instead. Still, it was the geek floor and no one really
talked, and if they did it wasn't to me.
So I was extremely surprised when some people allowed me to interrupt one of their meetings.
"Turn that crap down!"
"Who me?"
"Yeah. What is that crap? Turn it down."
"It's the Nerves."
I turned down the music and heard that they were talking about adding some new columns to the web site.
"Let's do another one on gadgets!"
"Yeah, gadgets! I'll do it!"
"No. I want to."
"You were going to do the 'fast forward' porno review one."
"Ok. So that's 2 more gadget columns, a bourbon tasting column, and the porno scene review. Any other ideas? How about masturbation?"
"We'd have to get someone from outside. We're all busy with gadget columns."
"If you don't mind...I think my brother would like to do something like that. I think he'd work cheap too."
"Your brother?"
"Yeah. He's in the Navy, on a submarine. I guess they masturbate a lot on the sub. That's like all he ever talks about these days. And he writes."
"That doesn't sound exactly like what we're looking for..."
"The stories are really funny. Besides, don't you think a lot of Navy guys would identify and read it? You could call it like 'Sex on a Submarine' or something."
"I guess we could make room. Have him send something to me..."
I told my brother and he never sent anything in. So maybe I'm all wrong. Maybe I made the whole creative writer thing up. Sure, he took the class and has some story in a book, but I guess I'm the one that really created something - a delusion.
Posted by calculatoronfire at December 6, 2004 09:58 AM
Comments
can you take pictures with your phone? I bet people would call you more if you sent them semi-naked pictures of yourself.
Posted by: emma at December 6, 2004 02:43 PM
Unfortunately I cannot send nor take pictures of my phone.And it truly is a shame...you do have a point. If it works for free beer, it should work for a phone call or two.
Do you suggest I send them out at random, to like 202 753 6616? (I just made that one up!), or people I know?
I could send out a picture with a message like, "Hey. Wanna chat?"
Of course people would think, "why is this guy sending naked pictures of himself? I bet that's not even him. It's probably his girlfriend or something trying to get guys to talk to her."
Posted by: brian at December 6, 2004 03:18 PM
Let's hear it for retouching photos!
http://homepage.mac.com/gapodaca/digital/digital.html
My phone is fairly waterproof. I stepped out of my car and over a puddle only to forget that my phone was safely nestled on my lap. The phone saw what was coming and tried to jump over the puddle, but failed miserably, belly-flopping into the 4 inches of water that abutted my car. It turned on its backlight as if to scream for help and several seconds after lifting it out of the water, it indignantly shut its backlight off and continued about its business. I gently cradled it and attempted to dry it off, whispering soothing, dry words near its microphone until I realized that it was fine and was just trying to give me a scare.
You can probably test your phone and submerge it in water. Rinse it off in alcohol when you're done and let it air dry if it shorts out.
You can send photos to e-mail addresses as well as other phones, so if you got one, you could start posting naked pictures of yourself from anywhere at anytime.
That would not be great.
Posted by: argyle at December 6, 2004 05:55 PM
I'm a little scared to look at the link you put up there.
I don't know why I hesitate before jumping into pools of water with my phone in my pocket. I've dropped it into buckets of water and nothing has happened. I guess I just like using it as an excuse, "No I have to go naked because I have a cell phone in my pocket."
And if I had a phone with picture capabilities, like it sounds everyone suggests I get, I could take pictures of that.
Posted by: brian at December 7, 2004 03:37 PM