January 16, 1996 9:33 PM
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Wow, I'm like over there on the bed just now and I'm just about asleep, but then the phone rings and I hear this message coming in from my ex-therapist, who I haven't seen or talked to in several months. She tells me that her number is "the same as before," but it's too dark in here for me to find the little phonebook I keep, so I was just trying to remember the number. And I'm dialing up or at least starting to dial up every number I know, but I'm too tired and just ain't happening. Like I just tried 734-0910, but that wasn't it, and after listening to it ring and ring and ring i realized I'd not dialed anything close to her number, instead i had dialed the first 3 digits of my number at home and the last 4 digits of my number at work. So I tried 633-0185, but hung up when I realized that that was the first 3 digits of The Apology Line, and the last 4 digits of an ex-girlfriend, who I know is not at that number any more.
But I've remembered her number at the strangest times. Once, soon after I got my first faxmodem, I called a friend to see if I could try it out on his machine, I only had one phone line at the time, and I was not figuring out how to fax amything too quickly, so there were a lot of calls back and forth, mostly me asking "Did the fax go through?" After finally faxing successfully I picked up the phone to call him and confirm the good news but instead of dialing his number I dialed her number, my ex-girlfriend, and hung up when a woman's voice answered, only realizing later whose number I'd called, and realizing further that it was not my ex who had answered, it was a woman answering for a company, so thankfully Susannah has no way to know I had called like that, unless she's reading this right now. Hers was the first number in New York that I ever memorized, because she was the first person here I ever had to talk to, and the first one who would even listen. so now, i start dialing more numbers, thinking i'm sure i can remember my ex-therapist's number if i just keep poking away, and I wonder if i didn't call everyone I've ever known in this borough of Manhattan, either in whole or in part, with half their phone number or all their phone number. maybe the people i reached understood, and through sophisticated caller-id technology could tell that I'd dialed not only a wrong number, but a number which was half one number and half another, creating a line of communication so tenuous that some kind of understanding was called for, some kind of compassion and some kind of conversation, and maybe we two could make contact and make each other happier in some way. but the people who answer would still remain rigid and terretorial about their phone call, and they would say in a sharp voice "No, you've reached someone else. This (pause) is a Different Person." well, i'm not having any luck in finding this number, and it's only now occuring to me that i should be able to dial *69, which is supposed to activate automatic-redial, and get the answer that way. But it never seems to work for me.. but if i don't hurry, someone else will call and ruin it altogether. or it will be too late. not that i have anything particular to say to her, in fact the only reason i can think of for her to call is that i still have the box for her Bill Moyers videos. the *69 deal didn't work, i knew it wouldn't, it never does. the number is "unavailable, for profit." the lights are on now, but i can't seem to spot my address book, and my fever is getting to be too much. i should lie down again, go back to sleep, let the calls come pouring in as i lie desperately asleep. . . O lost!
OK, I think i'm going to return that call to my ex-shrinky-dink who called last night. the more i think about this, the more i wonder why on earth she would call like that. Now that I've found her number in my rolodex, and now that i've seen it again, i'm finding it impossible not to remember it. when she and I were still hacking depression, she would call and leave the longest messages on my answering machine and on my voicemail, and no matter how long the message she would insert her phone number into the monologue almost with a rhythm. depending on the length of the call, the number of times she stated her number ranged from at least twice to over a dozen times. it was always "Hi, Mark, it's Sarah, 734-5722, just calling to see how you're doing and to confirm our session for Saturday. Uh, 734-5722, Sarah. Call me back. Hope you're doing well. Bye. 734-5722." This one time she went off about the internet, and she had all these questions for me about how to go on-line, and she called and left this message that was so long my answering machine ran out of tape. She read the specs for some computer she was looking at in a catalogue, and I swear she read every single line of the specifications. Now, if I'd had a copy of what she was reading, I would bet that she had interjected her phone number after every 2nd or 3rd line. Well, that's probably an exaggeration. OK, I called her, and we talked. She annoys me, always did, but it's depressing, you know, to touch base with someone when there was a time in which you placed some hope in them, and those hopes never came through. I could hear her moving around in her office, sorting papers and opening drawers, and when I heard her doing that I shut my eyes and the sounds of her paperwork felt like I was flipping through the pages of my sanity, trying to find the answer to my sadness listed in an index or mentioned in a footnote. I remembered her room and our sessions, how uncomfortable and terribly angular were our conversations. this one time i went in there with an agenda of things to talk about, but i made the mistake of mentioning a woman I'd been seeing and that we'd had sex that morning and several times the night before, and Sarah thought this was terrific news (why therapists think like this is out of my league) and spent the rest of the hour telling me about her Kama-Sutra sex videos, saying she'd lend them to me so that my girlfriend and I could watch them and learn to have a really fabulous time with our sex, because that seems to be all anyone really wants in life is rump-raising sex and lots of it, and therapists are there to talk you through every second of it. I got so pissed about that whole course of conversation that I almost got up and left, but instead I just sat it out and told her the next day that I couldn't see her again, this was just too elementary for me. And she complained and implied things about my character, but I ignored her well enough that to this day I can't remember what the hell she said in those closing moments.
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