Enlightening Nonsense

Whenever I hear some bozac’s phone go off with a song I think of slamming him against a wall and shouting, “You may think it’s cute but everyone else finds it completely annoying!” As a result of this strong feeling, as well as the fact that in between being microwaved I like my balls to get a little humming, I have always put my phone on vibration mode.

Two cel phones ago, I was attempting to make a call in my bathroom when my phone slipped out of my hand and plopped into the toilet and even though there wasn’t a floating log in the crapper, due to my unsanitary home it was still not a pleasant “bobbing for apples” experience. With 20/20 hindsight vision, I should have just flushed the fuckin’ thing, as it ended up being water damaged beyond repair.

I went in to the Verizon store and said that I am rough on my phones and need one that could take a serious ass kicking.  The girl showed me a phone that she said the construction workers use and even added that, “If you dropped it into water and grab it out quickly, the phone should be okay.” Twilight Zone music started to play as Rod Serling stepped in from out of nowhere and said, “Picture if you will a man dropping his phone into a toilet. What would happen if what he thought was his own little secret he would soon find out was broadcast to his whole community?”

I got the kick-asser and because I pay by the month with no contracts, I had to pay full price, which was about $400. It was way more than I had intended to spend on a new phone—let alone should have—but I had fallen in love with the orange tank. I had hoped that Verizon, unlike our government, would provide its service men and women with tanks that were reinforced and wouldn’t allow a bullet or toilet water to pass by and leave its insides unprotected.

That phone had problems and after one replacement, they were unable to replace it and gave me a different phone, less capable of abuse. I wasn’t into it but they told me I had no other option. Exploring my new phone, I looked at the ringtones and actually found a few of them, well, quite groovy.

So I was in a quandary: if I put a musical ringtone on my phone, I would be just like one of those pricks with the disco beat ringtone who I want to slam into a wall whenever I hear their phones ring. And so I compromised: I kept the phone on vibration mode for everyone…but made this Zippety Do Da whistling song as a special ringtone for when my girl called me.

I went to listen to some music and poetry and decided to treat myself to a slice of my favorite vegan pizza afterwards. It was about 11:30 when that fruity whistle started bellowing its tune against my balls who would have much preferred, in the words of the Beach Boys, some “good vibrations.”

“Was anything screwed up with your email when you last checked it?” she asked.

“Uh, no,” I confusedly replied. She went on to tell me how her psychotically stalking ex- had hacked into my email account and checked all the emails she and I had sent each other.

Now for a little background, I value my privacy almost as much as I value watching an episode of “South Park” with my panties around my ankles and an economy-sized bottle of baby oil by my side. Some of this is due to the fact that the Government is a bunch of eavesdropping pieces of crap and I don’t like the idea of two coffee-saturated FBI agents getting wood every time I talk or write about how we should kill the President or something equally rebel-utionary. And another part is that I don’t like anyone knowing my business, government or not; half the people that I know don’t even know my birth name.

Let’s go on a Wayne’s World time travel back in time… <BRRRR> <BRRRR>

I dated Celeste for two years. After we had broken up, we were riding the rollercoaster of “We can be friends—no, we can’t be friends” for awhile. One time I had gone away and gave her the keys to my apartment so that she could take care of my dog while I was away; I had picked up Abandon from a shelter while Celeste and I were dating and she really loved my four-legged girl. After ten years in my apartment, only about ten people have been inside of it and about seven of those are members of my immediate family who, incidentally, won’t step foot in my house again until I at least clean out the green growth that has birthed in my fridge and who I suspect eats some of the food that “mysteriously” disappears as well as leaves the toilet seat in an upright position despite my constant requests to, “Just put it down! Last time I sat down unsuspecting I nearly fell into the toilet!”

Celeste called me up and was crying. She told me how while I was away, she had brought a guy over to my apartment and that Abandon had barked at him big time. I thought, That bitch! She really defended the apartment! I told her that what was done was done, quoting from Lady Macbeth who used this to tell her husband, “So you killed him. Get over it,” and also knowing that nothing I did now would change the fact that, knowing how I am regarding privacy, she still allowed a stranger in my apartment. Mostly I didn’t want to see her upset.

It was only after I hung up the phone that I started mulling it over and seriously felt that she had betrayed a trust and respect for my wishes and I started sharpening the meat cleaver and was ready to hack her into little pieces. She knew better and for all the stereotyping about guys and how they constantly fuck up, this was a doozy.

So now my girl is telling me that her ex- had gotten my name by going through her phone records and now hacked into my email account and read all the emails we’ve exchanged and even that gay, happy-go-lucky whistling ringtone wasn’t enough to “Wish him into the cornfield, Anthony.” She was trying to convince me that he got what he wanted, namely knowing who this guy was with whom she was interacting, and that it would be best to just forget about it. This served to reinforce to me that Big Brother can come into your home and fix himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, provided you had the necessary accoutrements, and there was little you could do to prevent this.

I considered myself a pretty open boyfriend. I never set rules or told her what she had to do on anything. When she was telling me how she would periodically talk with this obsessed ex-, I was responding like the “South Park” stoner, Towely, with comments like, “Dude, you gotta do what you need to do for your process. You wanna get high?” I mean, even if she came back with two black eyes and said, “He beat me into unconsciousness,” in my pussyated, everythings-for-our-growth, yoga poser way I might have still responded, “So, what did you learn?” But when he went into my home and snooped around my business, it’s time to take some Visine and clear out the red of my stoney eyes—this Towely wasn’t going to just remain hight and dry!

I told her that I wanted his email address so that I could write him. “No.” I felt that unsatisfied feeling, like a guy who had just come home to find piss and shit all over his apartment’s floor and when he inquired as to who left this defecatious mess, he was told by his spouse, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll clean it up.”

Was there a touch of male ego wanting to lash back? Maybe. But even while seeing red, I knew there was nothing I could really do regarding what was done. “That was very wrong of you, young man!” would probably serve as much use as when my parents said that to me when I thought putting the goldfish in the blender would give him a cool “whirlpool” experience. In hindsight, a couple of bananas and it might have made a decent shake. I did want to voice to him something, though, perhaps only that while I understood his obsession—and on a level even admired his perseverance and ingenuity—he had to cease and desist.

“I want his email address.”

“No.”

Jees, this was getting me nowhere. I figured we’d talk about it in person when next I saw her. I gobbled down the rest of my vegan pizza, not with the same relish but with a little sauerkraut instead, and headed home, rehearsing our soon-to-be discussion in my head the whole way home:

“I want his email address.”

“No.”

“Okay. You want to listen to some music and dance?”

In hindsight I saw how any situation can be used to bring people closer together…or push them further apart. While I had my privacy issues, what I needed more was to be included in decisions that would affect us as a couple. It didn’t take her more than a single talking before I realized that it wouldn’t serve our best interests if I were to write him an email—and I dropped it.

Well, mostly. I did insist she still give me his email and after awhile I received a text message from her which contained it.  I wasn’t going to write him but this was an important gesture that showed me she trusted me enough to know that not only wasn’t I an irrational jackass, but that I valued our relationship more than anything and wouldn’t risk upsetting it by letting my ego get away from me.

I wish I had the same detached control when my emotions started to get away from me. Unfortunately, this led to me sending a metaphoric email to her that resulted in a metaphoric psychotic ex- killing our metaphoric relationship. And as much as I like metaphors, I would trade them all for another day with her. Of course, I would still keep a couple of similes and curse words tucked away as seasoning for my otherwise bland writing!