the Bucky Four-Eyes Cotillion

Friday, March 04, 2005

Like a broken record

Third shift was a fact of life for Jim when I met him, and for a few years after we were married. He was head of night stock in a grocery store, and I was pretty resigned to the fact that he wouldn't be there at night. I bounced around between all three shifts at Meijer when we were first married; the really fun weeks were the ones where I would work all three shifts within five days. Tell me that didn't do some permanent damage to my bearings.

A lot of nights during the summer, I'd come home from second shift and just sleep on the couch. That way I wouldn't have to tear myself away from Nick at Nite as I fell under the sandman's spell. I'd often drift off to dreamland with the theme from Mr. Ed swimming laps around my fishbowl mind. I never could figure out why I used to have those nightmares about giant, speckled penises talking to me.

On one such night, and I'm not sure if I was having the speckled dream or not, the phone rang not long after I'd gone to sleep, maybe 3 a.m. or so. It wasn't uncommon for Jim to call me from work, so I just assumed it would be him on the line when I picked up. This was long before we had the greatest invention of mankind attached to our phone, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you that I mean Caller ID. But this was the olden, blind-faith-in-the-fucker-on-the-other-end phone answering days, and I answered with a sleep-roughened "Hullo?"

A husky whisper on the other end made a rather blunt sexual suggestion to me. Aha, I thought, waking up ever so slightly, Jim wants to be cute. So I played along.

"Yeah, baby, that sounds great, uh huh," I replied in my best imitation of bottom-of-the-barrel porn acting. Uh, you know, or so I've heard.

The husky whisperer, obviously heartened by my cooperation, kept repeating the same request over and over, and after a few iterations, I was frankly tiring of the game. If you're gonna wake me up and talk dirty, at least be creative, fer chrissake! My patience for the whole thing was waning, and I snapped, "Okay, what did you call for?"

Same whispered blunt request.

I realized, late as usual, that this was not Jim on the other end of the obscene, and to be brutally honest, unimaginative phone call.

After I hung up on the lonesome noodle plucker, I realized that I was more offended by the utter lack of preparation than anything else. Really, guys, if you're gonna call a woman, disguise your identity, and talk the filty talk to her, please at least write up a list of talking points before you take the phone in your left hand and the mayonnaise in your right.

It's the right thing to do.

14 of you felt the overwhelming need to say somethin':

Blogger Susie said...

Etiquette, graciousness, these things are so important. I'm glad Martha's out of jail. She'd straighten his ass RIGHT out.

10:31 PM, March 04, 2005  
Blogger Dang Cold.. said...

I always picture guys who do that as being chubby, middle aged, balding, with a thick pair of glasses and stinking of urine. The one's that go to strip joints and sit by themselves nursing 1 beer the whole time they're there. I know this only from stories I've been told. I'd never enter a strip joint. Nope. Never.

dc

10:54 PM, March 04, 2005  
Blogger Candy said...

The club I used to work at had a guy who would call, sometimes several times a week. We called him The Breather. He asked the same questions every time, who's working, are they naked, are you the bartender, are you naked, if I bring my wife in can she get naked.

We started to get really creative with our answers, soon we were telling him the men were all naked, one girl told him she had a carrot in her puss. We always ended it by being really rude and hanging up.

He used to call the club I had worked at before that one too with the exact same lines.

He would hang up on me as soon as I said my name because I was just rude and mean to him.

Myself, I am always well prepared when I make a dirty phone call. My whole life has just been one big prep for dirty phone calls.

11:17 PM, March 04, 2005  
Blogger LadyBug said...

Um, Bucky, I just want to, um, formally apologize for my, um, utter lack of preparation, and my, um, deceptively deep voice.

*hanging head in shame*

12:51 AM, March 05, 2005  
Blogger Mr. Bloggerific Himself said...

Yeah, same old story. "Men can't express their feelings and needs" but as soon as you get one that does so, repeatedly, repeatedly, he gets hung up on. Yeah, it's all his fault.

What? Oh! Coming Mommy!

6:46 AM, March 05, 2005  
Blogger Susie said...

You know, your post troubles me, and I realize it's because of its sociological significance. This is exactly what's wrong with our society today, a major deficit in what we used to call "home-trainin'," as in "Ain't you got no home-trainin'?" Your gentleman caller's mama failed him, and he, in turn, failed in his responsibility to you. Clearly his mama never told him, as mine did me, and as I'm sure yours did you, "Anything worth doing is worth doing right." Or as Abraham Lincoln said, "If you're going to be a ditch digger, be a GOOD ditch digger." People take no PRIDE in their endeavors anymore . . . OK, I'm gonna go get a life now . . .

7:30 AM, March 05, 2005  
Blogger Katy Barzedor said...

You know, Mr. B, your note makes me think maybe I should have been kinder to the poor chap. Maybe I could've offered to help him with his vocabulary and phrasing and all. Now I feel like a heel.

Just another man to crush under my heel. . .

9:17 AM, March 05, 2005  
Blogger Katy Barzedor said...

LadyBug -- you can use your "get out of the doghouse free" card on this one, but in future phone calls, I expect you to use at least three separate and distinct synonyms for "copulation."

9:18 AM, March 05, 2005  
Blogger Katy Barzedor said...

Oh, and Dang -- this "never going to a strip joints" that you do. Are you also denying that you are a stripper?
Because that's the roomer 'round the water cooler.

9:24 AM, March 05, 2005  
Blogger Katy Barzedor said...

Or, you know, "rumor."
Or, alternatively, "rumour."

Ahem.

9:27 AM, March 05, 2005  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Holy buried memories, Bucky! I worked at an answering service in college. "Sweet Sadie" would call the social services office we answered for. We could hear her dentures clattering while she said, "Suck me! Fuck me!" She was a broken record, too. eek

9:36 AM, March 05, 2005  
Blogger Dang Cold.. said...

Bucky, I shudder to imagine the audience that would want to see me strip. How much do you suppose I'd make showing off a beer gut anyways?


Yikes Cathi!! YIKES!!

dc

11:04 AM, March 05, 2005  
Blogger Katy Barzedor said...

Ugh, Cathi, sorry to be the one to make you think of that again! Can you ever get your mind clean again?

Dang -- did you want estimates in Canadian dollars or American?

8:12 PM, March 05, 2005  
Blogger Dang Cold.. said...

I deal in love bucky baby. the universal currency. **snap**

11:49 PM, March 05, 2005  

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