Call and You Shall Receive

“What we desire and what we have lost. Are they not always the same?”
- Laura Purcell, Bone China


Call and You Shall Receive


+1 (***) *** - 6750 | A Live-In Confidante | 1 month, 3 days ago 

8:20 AM Outgoing Call

18 seconds

Are you leaving the dorm yet? Can I borrow your God hoodie? The purple one. Yeah, it says, “He is For You, He is With You.” I think I lost mine. Great, yeah, thank you. I’ll meet you in class. Just running late ‘cause I can’t find God anywhere. Sorry, God hoodie. Bring my Dunkin, okay? 


+1 (***) *** -9093 | Ryan | 9 months, 26 days ago

8:25 PM Outgoing Call

45 seconds

I placed an Amazon order. Can you approve it? Yes, I mean, I technically need both types of mascara. Yes, Dad, there’s a difference. It looks better, okay? Jesus, you ask this every time. Just approve it please. 


8:26 PM Outgoing Call

9 minutes

Sorry, that was rude. How was your day? 

I think to myself that in a minute, I’ll need to hang up and call back because good things can only happen in threes. A few examples:


  1. A good conversation,

  2. A good metaphor,

  3. A good daughter.

No, never mind. Best to play it safe. Stick to mascara and the edge of the cliff hanging over a pit of Things I’m Too Scared to Cry to My Dad About. I’ll hang up after 9 minutes and I won’t call back again because this thing I call trying is as good as it will get. 


My next Instagram caption: #rockbottomgoesforever


+1 (***) *** -7554 | A Boy I Loved In A Bubble | 1 year, 5 months, 2 days ago

7:51 PM Outgoing Call

12 seconds


You out of practice? Come hang. Yes, we can order food!


A daily scene, at this point in time: two kids listening to R&B and pretending on many fronts. We are:


  1. Choosing each other.

  2. Asking too much.

  3. Huddled together against beating waves: the world. 


“Life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater, as I say, and it is certain that I underwent a sea change there.” 

David, from James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room.


When I read Giovanni’s Room three months down the line, I’ll think that I want to write a book and call it Tina’s Room, because I know what it’s like to play house with a man who leaves.


But I am not gay, and my reality is honestly much less harsh than Giovanni’s (when David leaves, he loses his job, loses himself, loses to the system and faces capital punishment), so I’ll scratch this idea because it is a shameful appropriation. But then again: love is love.


So here’s the scene, once more: two kids listening to R&B and pretending on many fronts. I am freshly showered and flannel-pajamaed; we are in the midst of playing cards and eating dinner and I am rummaging through drawers for a hair tie to band mussy, overgrown curls out of that poker face. My space is a post-nap mess and the pursuit is nearly fruitless. When I finally mantle his hair, I remember that his mother prays over him when he sleeps, and I feel something like God in my hands. I know, I know. Kyrie Eleison. 


The game resumes when I settle crisscrossed. All noise outside muffles and then dims, and I am certain right now that the sea is the limit. 


+1(***) *** -7278 | Someone Waiting | 4 months, 1 day ago

12:42 AM Cancelled Call


I am awake still. My jeans are wrinkled and begging to be replaced with sweats, my face is sticky and ready to be relieved of makeup, my friends have only just taken leave from my room. I decline the call anyway. Tomorrow, I’ll tell him that I had fallen asleep, and he’ll say it’s alright, and I’ll pretend that I don’t make him grin and bear it. We’ll sit together at breakfast, sandwiched between our friends, and we will leave unsaid the unfortunate truths about us:


  1. I am not ready.

  2. He is too late.

  3. I am Giovanni if he survived, maybe.


1 (***) ***-8756 | A Reminder That I Am Young, Dumb, and Broke | 2 months, 4 days ago

9:05 AM Outgoing Call

1 minute


This call will be monitored and recorded, and your voice may be used for verification.

Welcome to United Credit Card Services! Para español, oprima el asterisco.

Please enter your full sixteen digit credit card account number.

——————————4804

Your current balance is: one hundred and eleven dollars, and eleven cents. 


$111.11. Enough for the overpriced vinyl I want to buy that should probably stay unpurchased, and a lucky number, by all divine accounts. My wish: for the music to never stop playing, for the rhythm I once had to come back. Please! I beg. I didn’t know how lucky I was then.      


+1 (***) *** -0771 | A Girl I Should Lose | 1 year, 4 months, 2 days ago

7:49 PM Incoming Call 

6 minutes


G: Are you going to dinner with the girls tonight? Can I come?

T: …

T: I’m sorry, we already left. 


+1 (***) *** -0771 | A Girl I Should Lose (Reprise) | 1 year, 3 months, 21 days ago

10:23 AM Missed Call

Voicemail


T: Hey! I was just wondering if you’re still down to go get dinner with me? I know you're busy and probably have plans, but I’d love to work something out between us. Just give me a call back whenever.

 

5:39 PM Incoming Call

5 minutes


G: Hey, I got your message. 

T: Hey, great! If you’re down, we can go now or whenever. Just wanna talk.  

G: Yeah, I mean. I’ll see.


When I am home for break, I decide to be a bit of a recluse. I decline enough plans that the flow of invites has ebbed, though I don’t particularly care. When I tell a friend that I am embarking on my “peace and wellness arc,” she scoffs and says that this won’t last. Apparently, I have a hard time saying no. But I don’t know how to tell her that I am too afraid of myself these days. A scene, to demonstrate:


Myself, accompanied by my childhood best friend and four girls I’ve just met, dicking around a defiled backyard in San Jose, California. My brain is barely catching up to my eyes; I am missing someone who loves to see the world in blurry technicolour like me. When a familiar silhouette passes by, my feet follow my head; I am drifting toward her before I can think. She turns and I stumble. Her nose is less sloped, lips less smirked, eyes less impish than those of the face I am expecting.


Ah. See, I know it’s my fault, but I am not ready to leave the sea and all its creatures behind. 


+1 (***) *** -7554 | The Boy I Loved in A Bubble (Reprise) | 4 months, 2 days ago

10:47 PM Cancelled Call

10:46 PM Cancelled Call

10:46 PM Cancelled Call

10:45 PM Cancelled Call

10:44 PM Cancelled Call

10:44 PM Cancelled Call

10:42 PM Cancelled Call





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Introduction

“All the world began with a yes.” - Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star M ore than six years ago, sometime in early 2020, I began a blog out of sheer pandemic boredom. I was freshly eleven, insufferably pretentious for my age, and totally impassioned with a zeal for Social Justice©. Most posts are now archived, but you can see my former page, Tina’s Typical Tuesdays , here .  Despite its admittedly corny start, I remain proud of that endeavour. It was consistent and unburdened by the thought of readership numbers or critical reception or social cringe in the way that all pandemic-era digital content was (seriously, let’s talk about those same-person P.O.V TikToks—if you know, you know). This sort of freedom, combined with the boldness of an eleven-year-old not yet chastened by that thing called Rejection, was a lethal combo. So there I was, writing feminist think pieces and advocating for brazen gun control. Don’t get me wrong—I still believe in all of those things. But my last...
Read more

Iphigenia Reimagined

Image
"Let's admit, without apology, what we do to each other." Richard Siken, "Detail of the Fire" from War of the Foxes                                                                                                                IPHIGENIA REIMAGINED The first stitch of The Oresteia’s three-act tapestry begins with eagles. Two of them, circling wingtip to wingtip above the beaches of Aulis, sharpening their sight towards the scene below.  In the BBC version of Aeschylus’s famed tragedy, the throng of soldiers at Aulis itching to sail to war against Troy are beginning to brawl within themselves. Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and the man who has stepped up to marsha...
Read more