Saturday, March 12, 2005

Phone story segment

So, said Sadie, so maybe everybody is not Beethoven.
This seemingly offhand remark drove Jake into frenzy. “Yeah, and maybe everybody is not even Liberace.”

Dolling, God forbid I should break you the news but Liberace is dead, and at least he was a nice boy, good to his mother.

MOTHER! He was SO gay, not that you noticed, and further, not a very good musician, which you obviously missed and which is why I mentioned him . Thank you so much for padding the blow but God forbid, Beethoven is also dead.

Nonsense dear, just yesterday he was on the radio; I don’t know why you insist on trying to upset me all the time.

This has been a lovely chat mother. I ‘m so glad I called you in my hour of need; maybe I should have called Liberace’s mother, she would have made me a bundt cake or something and told me was a wonderful guy. Yes, I know she passed form this earthly vale before the death of her beloved son. Thank you for your support. He imagined the defunct Bartles and James deadpanning the remark from their T.V. porch, and goodnight! He slammed the receiver back on to the phone. I am so grateful that technology has not bypassed this receiver angle. Pushing that tiny dot on the cell phone just does not allow one to vent his emotions.

Jake used to have great heart rending phone slamming arguments with his girlfriend Nory. Both of them would bang the receivers down on their respective rotary phones. Sometimes Nory found herself banging the damn thing about 12 times before the crashing crescendo finally ending the call.
On one particular occasion he called her back, shrieked “You can’t do that to me!” and then he slammed the phone as hard as he could. On her end Nory threw the whole phone across the room until it jerked short on the 20 foot cord. Then she lay exhausted and furious on the bed until that beep beep the phone is off the hook noise drove her nuts and she crawled across the floor to replace both pieces quietly upright on the floor.

Jake’s cat came and rubbed against his legs. Phinny, as the cat was named this week was tiger striped and came from a farm with another impossible name. Actually, he, like all cat owners, changed the cat’s name as his fancy chose, and the cat chose whether to respond. Actually Jake had two cant but the other one (Elizabeth) was a surly grouse who only responded to the sound of cat food poured into a bowl. Elizabeth was a gift from one of his exes and no named by her although it was a male. “Angel, he said, I know this animal is only 8 weeks old, but it definitely has testicles”.
“Well, I don’t care, it looks like Elizabeth to me” she insisted. Calling the cat by a misgendered name may have made the cat grousy, and perhaps it was just in the animal’s makeup. Meanwhile, Jake’s vet has a field day with the misnomer, calling in colleagues for consults, asking whether the cat had cross -dressing tendencies and so on.
So Phinny the cat was his only real ally at the moment but it did help to have someone, and he pulled the limp feline to his lap where it settled until her next hyperactive impulse.




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