I am sitting across from Miranda, slowly, methodically picking stray hairs out of my arm. The screamlike ring yanks me out of my hair-pulling trance, but for a second I continue to indulge, unable to look away.
There is a panicked hesitation between Miranda and me as we rush over to the phone on the desk, a silent debate over who will pick up the receiver, who will quiet it. We decide, with shrugs and pointed fingers and nods, that it will be me. I feign competence, even to my shaking self, as I pick it up.
“Hello, Nightline?” I say it stupidly like a question. There is very little doubt who it is on the other end of the line. I am hoping against hope for a standard third party eating disorder call (“Hi,…um, my friend Jennifer? Well, she’s kind of not eating?…And, well, we’re all really, um, concerned about her?”), or maybe a nice freshman-depression call (“I just — I hate it here, and you know, it’s just…not like I thought it would be.”). These I can handle. These I can offer some kind of service. Validation, Reflection, Referrals: our motto. Stephen, another counselor, likes to say them as an aerobic chant when the phone rings: “Validation, Reflection, Referrals, whew!” “Validation, Reflection, Referrals, whew!” “Validation, Reflection, Referrals, whew!” On the whew! he’ll wipe his forehead in mock exhaustion.
But it is not a third-party eating disorder, or a freshman depression, or even a good old my-parents-are-making-me-insane. It never is, lately. It is Him, again, on the other end of the line, breathing His soft, heavy breath. The phantom release of air into my ear makes me flinch. Of course it’s Him: the clock says 11:30. He’s as consistently regular as a several-apples-a-day eater. We’ve nicknamed Him Fiber Man in a nod to His regularity. At meetings we all laugh politely at our weak attempt at humor and then lapse into thick, sad silence, thinking about Him.
“Hi,” He says, hopefully. And then again, less earnestly, as though He is slowly deflating, “Hi.”
“Hello,” I say, lamely. I roll my eyes at Miranda and start doodling apples on the legal pad in front of me. She sits back in her chair and shakes her head.
His voice is enigmatic. Older, but so saturated with uncertainty that it seems juvenile; dense with a low-class Boston accent but slyly manipulative; full of shit but pathetic and open and raw. I wonder, every time He calls — which is all the time — who He is. Where He works, where He comes from, how He reconciles his habit of calling our University Hillel hotline nightly with whatever else He does in his life. I talk to Him more often than I speak with my family. “How are you?” He asks. My parents never ask.
“Fine,” I say, although I am not supposed to answer Him. I am supposed to remain silent and passive and let Him exhaust Himself with no encouragement. This is supposed to get Him off the phone as quickly as possible. (Another group joke: “How long did it take you to get Him off?”—giggle giggle—“the phone!??!” We relish our feeble stabs at jocularity where He is concerned, they are our linen armor.)
I wait for a while, unfolding and settling into a familiar silence. Soon He will tell me that He is lonely, and I will say, “Hmmm.” Miranda is sitting back in her chair, still shaking her head slightly, reflexively. Join the club, asshole, is what I want to say, but I won’t.
“I’m lonely,” He tells me.
“Hmmm,” I say.
“You know, it’s hard,” He says then, covering the whole of his emptiness with a plush, vague blanket. I am well aware.
“Yes,” I say. “It can be very hard.” Then again, He may not be talking about the living of His life. He may be talking about His dick, enveloping it in His coarse hands even as we speak, as if they were my female voice. I clear my throat. He always hangs up the phone when male counselors pick up. “Life,” I say, to clarify, “can be very hard.”
And at this point I want nothing more than to launch into a monologue about myself. About all about the disappointments and the failed friendships and unrequited love and the crying myself to sleep and feeling safe only in the methodical pulling of stray arm hair. Isn’t it? I want to ask Him. Isn’t it just impossible to get through this life in one piece? Don’tcha think, mister? Life sure is a bitch. What a pair we would make, the two of us, with our penis and arm hair; we could meander off into the sunset, mollified and finally fulfilled.
“Yeah,” He says, drawing out the word like He’s making a sweeping gesture with his hand over a barren and battered landscape.
The possibilities of who He is are so endless as to be overwhelmingly manifold and finally, impossible. Is He sitting in a La-Z-boy on orange carpeting from the seventies with only His shabby self for company, or is He calling from a mahogany desk in a room lined with windows, while the wife and kids sleep? Is He the bagger at the supermarket? A university administrator? Someone’s dad? Well, he thinks every night, looks like it’s time to check in with my girls. He unzips his pants and dials as if it were the most normal thing in the world, sandwiched between a late dinner and Letterman. The ‘Who is He?’ drives us all crazy.
“I saw Him today, in the square,” said Jennifer once at a meeting. “He was caressing a pole and talking to it with His cheek pressed against it like they were going to dance.” Or another time, when someone had gotten back an unfortunate paper from a notoriously harsh professor: “Come to think of it, Prof. Williams does have that accent, and I heard his wife left him.” Stephen said he bet it was the glassy-eyed janitor from the student center, the one who asked all the freshman girls for their phone numbers, but Miranda told him that was just classist and to shut up. I don’t say a whole lot in meetings, to any of them.
He sighs now, a loaded “Huhhhh…,” hoping I will take the bait. Miranda is staring at me. She scribbles a little note for me: “Get him off the phone! Someone else may be calling!” I nod as if I have every intention of ending this, but instead bite firmly down on His hook and ask Him how He’s feeling right now. Miranda shakes her head at me again.
“Oh, you know,” He says. “Frustrated.”
Again, whether by life’s circumstances or the mounting blood and pressure in His member, He doesn’t specify. I offer another of my I’m listening noises and give Miranda a Sue me shrug.
All the other girls avoid talking to Him. A girl named Marisa had refused to answer the phone if it rang at His usual time. Eleanor and Rebecca both dropped out altogether, each citing some touchy-feely crap about taking care of herself before she could take care of anyone else. Miranda came up with a little speech: “I know you’ve called before and I don’t think we can help you anymore. If you’re in an emergency please call 911, Good-bye.” Everyone agreed this was the way to handle His calls. Miranda is pointing to the words now, written out in hazard red stop-sign capital letters on a piece of construction paper taped to the wall. She draws her hand over her throat in a horizontal line, mouthing, “Get off.” But I can’t, or don’t want to, or both. He is lonely and He needs me. Me. I gesture Miranda to back off. She shakes her head and jots down, “Have it your way, going to the bathroom.” Then she leaves. I feel like an unsupervised child, justifying what I am about to do with the awareness that I was inappropriately left alone in the first place.
“What do you mean when you say you’re frustrated?” I fairly whisper into the receiver, sheepish. I hope Miranda has to shit.
He is confused by my indulgence. “Well,” He says carefully, not wanting the call to end, “it’s kind of like a build-up, you know? Like, I’m desperate, you know?”