A Few Fish Swim Near the Hook

Last night I had my first phone call, with one to come. The phone exchange reminded me, unfortunately, of why talking on the phone to these dudes is the absolute worst part of this for me, irrational as that is. It bores me to death, which isn't necessarily their fault. You'd have to have exceptional social skills to make a cold phone call to a stranger interesting, and you'd have to be a natural comic to make it fun. I don't pretend to be in the least good at it either. After two minutes I want to get off the phone or die, in that order, though in daily life I could talk forever to people I actually love (you could count those on one and a half hands, though).

I'll call him A: we talked about that ever-popular First Phone Call subject, where we live. Except we mostly talked about where HE lives, which is in a trendy area of Brooklyn. I wasn't entirely bored when he reminisced for a minute about living in that area forty years ago, before it was fashionable. But I can't say I wanted to spend my time doing this. Again I'll use a dental simile: I tried to think of it as brushing my teeth, something tedious you just do even though it's not fun. At someone's suggestion, I forewarned him that I like keeping first conversations brief, and he was pretty good when I said awkwardly after a pause, "Okay,that was nice, but...". That is, unlike others I have known and not loved, he didn't take offense that I was trying to end the conversation.

On the other hand, he wants to meet (and I agreed, because I couldn't think of why I wouldn't, not having much sense of him) next week. I have my doubts: he sounded nice but kind of odd. And since he lives in Brooklyn, I'll probably be trekking downtown to meet him, which means a good-sized chunk out of my day. Sigh. Brushing the teeth, on the other hand, takes only a minute.

Then too there's another phone call with another guy scheduled for this evening. This is B, who has a friendly face and actually emailed me first and lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. My doubt: he's 75, and while I'm not a spring chicken, I have to admit that sounds old to me. I picture getting into bed with bones and wrinkled chicken skin. Double sigh.