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Show FEAR OF THE TELEPHONE When, after all those years of being afraid, you suddenly realize that those telephones endlessly ringing are only the sound effects in this, the soft, weird movie of your life, you can finally relax and begin to enjoy it. Now, when the telephone goes off like a cliche, each ring a clean white row of teeth, you rush to it smiling even if you're dripping with bath water or out of breath from love. It may be one of those "funny" calls you always hang up on, like the job offer from New York too good to be true or, at four in the morning, the frightened, childlike voice at your ear of a woman you don't know who confesses her love for you and then pulls the trigger. Ha! What a good story, you say, though your ear is still ringing. You are really beginning to appreciate this. You become polite to wrong numbers even if they've called before and when your friends come whispering their worst fears to you through the black wire you agree with them, "yes," you conclude, "suicide would seem your best bet." And when your brother calls, in desperate trouble bleeding in a highway phone booth, you tell him to stay put, that you won't waste a minute, then slowly you take off your clothes settle into a steaming hot bath and later drift off to sleep in the television's soothing light. (continued, stanza break) |