BEEP

I received a very long phone message yesterday and I have no idea who it was from. The caller was some guy in an Area Code I didn’t recognize and he thought he was leaving a message for “Jesse”. “Hey Jesse.” he said in a deep musky voice, ”it’s Me.” I hate when Me does that.

I admit I don’t give much information on my message. I figure the less I cop to, the less I’m responsible. People who say on their message that they’ll “get back to you as soon as I can” are liars. There are a million reasons your call could be a low priority, not the least of which is a memory like a sieve which would be my biggest crime. I don’t even say I’ll get back to anyone. Its not being rude, its my reluctance to make a promise I might not keep. One less drop in the bucket to feel guilty about.

Apparently I sound enough like “Jesse” that the guy just rambled on and on. Jesse is going on a vacation somewhere with some other guy, blah blah blah. “Me” was sorry he missed him and hopes “Jesse” had a great time, blah blah blah. It was more like a State of the Union address than a phone message.

You’d assume “Me” and Jesse are close, the one had so much information about the other. However I could tell the caller was using his “Phone Voice”. I know because I have one too. Ok, several actually. This caller was using his “sexy/hey baby/you so fine/wanna get freaky with you” voice, the voice from a Remy-Martin commercial. Men sometimes use their Phone Voice in person as well but the phone is preferable since using it to someone’s face just makes most men look retarded.

Men who have any fear of their voice sounding slightly effeminate turn to the Deep Message Voice. Many times I’ve called a machine and burst into laughter when a friend’s recording sounds like they’re coughing up a huge amount of phlegm while they’re talking. My friend Gary used the DMV because he said he got tired of people leaving messages for a woman. His DMV however was nothing like his normal voice which is where I would think the plan would fail.

Continuing the charade isn’t easy, trust me. Years ago in San Francisco I met a bartender and for some unknown reason turned on a long repressed Southern accent. Granted, I was good - after all, I actually am from the South - but we began dating and I felt compelled to keep drawling and saying Country Bear Jamboree things like “Shucks.” It was worse because he always commented on how charming I sounded, making it even harder to wean off. He was living some Farmboy Fantasy while I felt like a cheesy spy in a movie. We finally separated and I was relieved when my friends stopped looking at me like a Beverly Hillbilly.

Women’s Phone Voices are just as bad in my experience, sounding as if Marilyn Monroe was a switchboard operator. Helpful yet sexy, busy yet available, prompt yet teasing. My mother was the master of the technique, going so far as to smile broadly when talking on the phone to anyone she’d never met as if they could feel her hospitality seeping through the lines. You could always tell who was talking on the other end since the rest of humanity, like family, were given the Women’s Prison Voice.

Messages like the one I received yesterday are morally problematic. Should I call back “Me” and tell him I’m not Jesse? For all I know, Jesse might have made up my number in a bar just to get rid of the guy, news I’m not thrilled to break. “Me” may feel like he’s done his part, made the call, left the ball in “Jesse’s” court. He’ll eventually realize, as we all have, his call will not be returned and hopefully by then will have moved on and gotten other, more accurate numbers. He may even think Jesse’s message wasn’t quite what he’d expected and after all, Jesse never said he’d call back.

8:04:19 PM    sro home /