Phone Etiquette
Late one Friday night while pursuing my undergraduate degree, I received a strange and terrifying phone call.
Alas, I wasn’t home to hear it in person.
Upon hearing the message left on my answering machine, I believe it was meant to be threatening; however, for a communication directed at a writerly person, it was oddly lacking in the qualities a person nearly in possession of a degree in English Literature would notice most.
Let me explain by repeating the text of the call. Before you read, I wish to warn the easily offended and faint of heart that this is a script of vulgar and demeaning language. Even after being censored for printing, it retains a surprising amount of acidic potency:
“What’s up, <female dog>?
“I’m coming for you, <Oedipus complex-sufferer. >
“I’m coming for you.
“I heard you like <homosexual relations>, you <active homosexual>,
“I don’t like that so much, you <alternative word for homosexual>.
“I’m gonna come for you,
“I’m gonna beat your <buttocks>, <female dog>!”
I think this is clearly coming from a very confused person. Look at the first line, where the speaker (lets call him “Dope”) used a word meaning “female dog” to address me. Am I supposed to be a girl? Did he have the wrong number? Is this meant to be sexy: a playful, growling prank?
Let us not jump to conclusions too soon.
Later, he not only referred to me as engaged in an Oedipus complex, but as a full homosexual. We now know he did not mean to contact a female of his acquaintance, but that he is confused about my identity as a sexual entity. Apparently, he’s not only confused to MY gender role, but seems to be questioning his own, since he stated that he would “beat my <buttocks>, <female dog>” after clearly placing my sexuality in the homoerotic sphere.
This not only leaves me confused as to where he places me, it makes me wonder if “Dope” is trying to sort through some complex internal issues. Could this phone message actually be some sort of backhanded, misunderstood valentine?
This would seem the case, since I have trouble finding the detracting element; that is, the condition that so prompted him to make this call. He only implied that I am homosexual (I suppose it could be seen as an insult, but only in some sort of imbecilic, ancient, utterly troglodytic kind of way).
Once homosexuality was established, Dope turned to the second part of that assertion, where he claimed I’m good enough to be quite popular as a sexual partner. Said he, “I don’t like that so much.” I now find myself in an even MORE embarrassing position. If this suitor ever makes himself apparent to me, is he going to ask me to “be exclusive?” To “go steady?”
However, I find the choice of a term referring to me as a female DOG to harm this particular theory. After all, if Dope was attracted to me, even subliminally, why choose “dog” as a term with which to distinguish me? (“Dog” being a term not known, despite those animals’ grace and value as partners, to be used when referring to someone of great beauty.)
If this is enough to remove the “Valentine” theory, let’s go back to “Inept Threat” theory. I mean it when I say “inept,” too. If this is a threat, it has no didactic purpose. To be an effective threat, there has some sort of reference to the action that precipitated this call. Example: “Keep talking to the judge, Tony, and you’ll sleep with the fishies.”
The only item that could be seen as such in this particular communication is that I am gay (which we’ve already discounted) or that I have an active sex life (which brings us back to the valentine.) I suppose it could be coming from an outraged Catholic Avenger with a halo and cape permanently affixed… yet I am somehow reticent to follow this line of thought.
Maybe Dope simply had a grudge against a female dog with a telephone. Maybe he was trying to hit on a member of Snoopy’s family, since that beagle always seemed to have a fairly complex living arrangement with several amenities. I seem to recall that in the eighties we were told he had a number of equally complex and varied siblings from his litter. Should I contact the estate of Charles Schultz for pending legal action, or at least warn them to petition for a restraining order? It was a drunk-sounding voice… What if this is the voice of someone whose steroid-addled visage becomes enraged while intoxicated?
Some might say this is just a facet of college life and that these things “happen all the time.” And, indeed, this may be true.
My response to such a line of permissive extrapolation is to state that I am attending an institution of higher education. All life experiences here should serve as educational, and I feel that if I can not only learn but also spread learning to my fellow students I have succeeded in enriching their college careers.
If there is one lesson that I hope is gained from my experience, it is an example of how dangerous it is to screw with a man who is studying deconstructionism.
© 2007 MattYoung
