elizaskinner.net – the jambox

We had gone on a date on Saturday, it was now Friday and still no word from him. I was completely stumped, because this guy was nuts about me. If our last dates had been about shoving a gyro into my hands and jamming his fist down my pants while he watched TV, I’d get it. But this guy was all skwooshy lovey dovey talk – staring into my eyes and shaking his head with disbelief. Then each week he kept waiting until the last minute to ask me out again. So…was his phone was broken? Or…of course, I know! He was so busy at work he hadn’t gotten a single minute to pick up the phone! Well, I am a modern woman, I can help us out – I’ll call him. I did, and he was thrilled to hear from me – we made plans for that night.

After the movie that night I brought up his inconsistency, telling him that it was hard for me to read him since when we were together he seemed really into me but once I went home I never heard from him. He seemed confused yet alarmed to hear this, and assured me that I was quickly becoming very important to him. Again we were shocked at the luck to find someone so special right on the street! Where you usually just find trash!

The next morning I was woken up by a phone call from a very chipper Peggy. “Just wondering where you are…you’re not here…it’s Saturday.”
“I told Joan I’m not going to be able to help anymore.”
“I told her you had made a mistake, that you know how much the cats need us, so you would NEVER quit. How soon can you be here?”
“What? Uh, no – I am not coming. I quit. I’m sorry.”
“You can’t do this!”
“You’re being inappropriate, Peggy.”
“Listen, you little bitch. You made a fucking commitment–”
“No, actually, I didn’t. Where is Joan?”
“Whatever!! Shut up you, bitch! You’re a fucking–”

I hung up. And didn’t answer the calls over the next few hours as she called again and again. After that day she only called me one more time, to ask me to come “hang out” in Long Island with her and her husband. I couldn’t make it, she half-heartedly called me a bitch and that was that. I mean, who DOES that kind of shit?

But the guy didn’t call all week. At first I thought maybe I had missed his call while I was ignoring Peggy, but I figured he would have left a message. The “too busy at work” thing didn’t seem plausible either, especially after I had told him that it was uncomfortable and confusing when he just didn’t call me at all. He must be doing this on purpose. Oh.
Oh.

By the next Saturday, I was devastated. He had clearly chosen to not want to see me again, EVER. Or maybe just for now. Or maybe, you know, maybe he WAS busy all week at work and I was being a jerk by not calling. Yes! You never know, right? What kind of wackadoo hoops was I throwing at this guy, that he had to “call me” on the “phone”, I mean, come on! You’re playing GAMES, Skinner. This poor guy didn’t get your rulebook! If you want to talk to the guy, you should call the guy. Why not right now? Sure, now, on Saturday night. Why not? You know what, it makes sense, since you happen to be in his neighborhood in a anyway. Just walking around in a cold sweat. Call him! Hm, well, then call him again – maybe he was in ths shower! Hm, again! Maybe he was getting the mail! AGAIN! MAYBE HE WAS ON FIRE! AGAIN!MAYBEHEEXPLODED!CALLLLLL HHHIIIIMMMMM!!!!!!

I think I called him 30 times. It felt like that at least. Whatever number it was, it was embarrassing. It was a landline, and I was crossing my fingers that he didn’t have caller ID, but the next day I seemed to remember him screening calls while I was over there. Probably calls from other girls. Perhaps even girls wise enough to realize when they are playing a game with someone who is – in all ways – in a much different league. Not understanding that people – even very charming and pretty people – are not always totally honest about how they feel snapped my tiny young mind in two. I had gone crazy. Batshit crazy. Cat lady crazy.

P.S.

Years later the guy and I developed a networking kind of email friendship – I told him about my first shows when I started doing comedy, and he told me when his work started being published. I read his writing and discovered that it was online erotica – the type of erotica in which a fella can refer to a woman’s vagina as feeling like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (a metaphor that made me glad to not be his woman, or his sandwich.) Oh. So that “not having sex” thing WAS a big deal, huh?

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