"Terrible gibberish. Splintered memories looming up out of the timefog. Just press PLAY".—H.S.T.

I have a shitty memory. Not for everything, obviously, but for some things. Okay, I have a shitty emotional memory.

Movie quotes? Shipboard or pioneering knots? Pet Shop Boy's lyrics? The recipe for the world's single-greatest bowl of chili (don't even bother, child)? Sure, THAT I got down. Trivia? I can recall trivia to a pathetic degree. I'm a wiz at (the sadly well-named) "Trivial Pursuit" and held my own during ‘Knowledge Bowl’, the HS equivalent of the old ‘College Bowl’ (GO TEAM EBULLANA!). The only blind spot I have mnemonically is for person's names. For some reason I can remember almost no one's name after about 6 months of non-interaction. Apart from that I see much, and remember most.

But remembering emotional states, not so much. Chalk it up to a childhood overshadowed by a singularly emotional brute (think Robert Carlyle in "28 Weeks Later" (don't wake daddy!)) and my genetic predisposition to stepping back and observing my situation & environment (always and continuously) and you end up with a fractured man who exhibits little emotion & remembers even less of them.

Which is why I keep everything that has ever had even a chance at some emotional resonance. Think Leon’s ‘precious photos’. This hoarding extends to answering-machine messages....

A friend complained recently that they could not leave a message on my machine ‘cuz it told them its memory was full (join the club, silicon). I hadn’t really noticed it filling up, but his annoyance piqued a moment of my attention.

What follows are most of the messages left languishing on my machine for the last 3 or 4 years. Some I don’t quite remember, some have a sort of annoying familiarity, some have a broken-glass sharpness still.

All names have been reduced to their chromosomalogical minimum, i.e., 'X's or 'Y's. And don't waste time trying to suss out who's talking, or whom they are talking about. If you know me well enough to be still reading this I suspect, on average, you'd get slightly less than half of your speculations correct. Keep in mind many of these were kept because they were unusual considering their source….

But that's not the point here. Just listen to what's being said, try to (as I have recently done) imagine why these specific messages were saved. They were either (on the day, at least) emotionally important, or were amusing enough to warrant keeping. These are authentic messages....
Nabby writes of a character who writes a book called "The Prismatic Bezel". To me these reflect the same sort of reflections. These are echoes, glints, facets of me, of refractions of me (that line sucks but I'm keeping it), and taken as a whole, add up to… okay, well nothing really important…. The shadowy facets of part of me? Yawn.

In the interest of personal growth, yadda yadda yadda; I erased all of these after transcribing them. I will one day find the transcriptions and reflect back on my reflecting back….

Sidebar: One aspect of these messages I find delightfully amusing is the curious fact that my answering-machine cheerfully provides you with the day-of-the-week & the time of the recording, but neglects to bother with the month, year, etc. Or any real context, actually. Which gives these little ‘dispatches’ a strangely Robbe-Grillet feel; detailed descriptions with an excess of frustratingly useless information.
Just press PLAY:


Monday 9:41 PM: “Hey motherfuckers, it’s X! Uhhh, I’m bored, I want you to come drink with me, but you’re probably fucking, ‘cuz it’s Valentine’s Day. As you should be. Alright, talk you later, guys.”

Friday 8:10 PM: “Paul! Paul! Paul! Paul! Paul! Paul! Paul! Paul! Paul! Paul! Paul!
Uh, Paul! Paul!
Paul? Paul? Paul?
Paul! Paul?
forget it.”

Saturday 12:15 PM: “What’s up, nigger!? What’s up, nigger!? Come on nigger, smoke some wiff your dogg, nigger…come on nigger. Nigger, come on nigger. Nigger come on, come on nigger. Shit nigger, come on nigger. Damn nigger! Nigger come on! COME ON NIGGER! Nigger!? Come on. NIGGER come on! Come on nigger! Nigger! Come on…. Nigger come on! Come on nigger! Nigger! Nigger? Nigger? nigger nigger nigger! Come on!”

[I am bludgeoned enough by my own PollyCorrect thoughts to feel the need to state the FUCKING OBVIOUS, which (if you know me even in the slightest) is that I am the least bigoted whiteboy you will ever meet. I couldn’t care less about somebody’s race, religion, sex, etc. I hate ALL humans equally. This message was clearly left by somebody who knows I GET THE FUCKING IRONY! So just relax, don’t flame, and step off, nigger. Ahem.
Also, if you know me at all, you know it's not a word I use casually. I only wip it out to be offensively 'edgy', yo!]

Thursday 6:50 AM: “Good morning, I’m sure you’re still sleeping after your 12 hours of Hell yesterday. Um, let me know what your schedule is coming up, I want to go shopping. So let me know what the deal is.
And I’m kinda sick, and I blame you for that. You made me cum too many times; broke down my resistance, now I’m sick you son of a bitch!”

Saturday 5:56 PM: “Hey Paul, it’s me. Um, Y is giving me a smoke break before he takes off. I’m like, totally making myself sick again. I don’t know what is wrong with me, what is wrong with Y. I don’t understand how everything was great yesterday and now today he won’t even call me back. I called him & he won’t pick up his phone. You know, I don’t know how to interpret everything he said, and you know, text-messaging is evasive. I guess you’re not home yet, but if you get home in the next 10 minutes I’m probably gonna still be smoking, so…yeah, call me back. Bye bye.”

Sunday 12:51 PM: “Hey sweetie it’s X. Um, it’s like almost 1pm. [You’re] probably getting some rest before work. Um, just wanted to check in with you, and make sure you’re doing okay, and um, thanks for the ride, and thanks for the good times, and, um, yeah, all that stuff. And let’s not tell anybody that I did all those drugs. Okay, I love you, bye.”

Monday 9:51 AM: “Hi Paul, it’s X. I was actually just calling you to find out if, well I wanted to talk to you about the ‘X’ situation. You know, I was just talking to, um, X and Y the other day, and, um, I think it was X that told me that X had said something about, um, you know, her reasoning for leaving […..], ‘cuz she’s told me, I don’t know, four stories now, or something weird. I don’t know, she’s been really weird lately, and so, um, I was wondering if you could just give me a call back. You’re probably off today, and sleeping, hopefully. So, I’m at work, so just, um, I’ll try & talk to you later. Okay bye.”

Wednesday 12:09 AM: “I can’t believe that you actually left me here, and took a cab home. Because now everybody thinks I’m crazy and, uh, you’re in a cab.”

Sunday 3:04 AM: “Paul, it’s X, are you awake!? I know its 3 o’clock in the morning, but I need some help! I’m gonna start walking to your place, if you don’t answer…Paul are you awake!? Okay I’ll be there in a little bit okay!? I’m gonna start walking over there okay!?
It’s like 3:06 in the morning, I know he’s awake.”

Wednesday 9:30 AM: “Um hey Paul it’s X. Um, I’m actually just calling to see if you’re doing okay. Um, I got a really messed up call from X the other day? Um, so I don’t know exactly what happened, but she thought that I would be like, I don’t know… .Something happened with you guys at the bar last night, I know that much, and um, then […..] let’s see, hold on a second. I need to get somewhere where I have just a little more privacy.
Anyway, um, and then, she said something about, you know, how they got you on the ground, like, outside the ‘Bank of America’, and how you were okay, but you know, you were getting yours.
And she thought I would be happy, or something ‘cuz of all the shit that you put me through’. Now these are her words; I was just like, "What are you talking about?! Any of the stuff/crap that went on between Paul & I was years ago, and, you know, we’re past it now." You know, I’m like, “Why are you calling me & telling me this, you know?” Anyway and then, I hung…basically I was like ‘whatever’…
Then she called me back again & I just, like, laid into her, like “Y’s the one who should be in jail!” and she’s like, “Well, Paul pulled a knife on us”.
I’m sure that there’s more to the story than what she was saying, and I was just so pissed off, so anyway, I just wanted to make sure you were okay, ‘cuz um I don’t know where you were or what was going on, but she acted like you’d be okay, but she was doing something to, I don’t know, to humiliate you, I don’t, I DON’T KNOW!
So, give me a call, if you can, and uh, just let me know you’re all right. Okay, bye.

Saturday 2:12 AM: Paul, where the fuck are you, man!?! Y is about ready to call the cops and…I don’t know where the FUCK you went….
FUCK, PAUL! Call me!
fuck...

”End of Messages….”


Once again; many of these I don’t recall why I saved. Some are familiar, explicable. Some have a nostalgic resonance. Some I swear I’ve never heard ‘afore. They’re all gone, now. Except for here….