Flash Fiction.
Not just anyone can master The Phone Voice.
We can’t all disguise how we feel — can’t hide disappointment, anger, angst or any of the other more intense emotions, really, all that well.
Some of us are better at faking it than others — can turn it on or off based on almost any given situation.
It’s something of an art. A skill. Or maybe a personality defect that can be in some instances actually admirable, depending on how you look at it.
But we all know someone who is capable of pulling off the perfect Phone Voice — the kind of person who can be in the middle of a raging screaming fit so frightening it’s capable of inducing one of those fabled Fear Boners while also making you feel like you want to run away weeping, maybe piss your pants (which is usually awkward but would probably be even more awkward if you did so while you had a horror-induced erection). And then they can completely compose themselves at a moment’s notice (in this instance a moment is, give or take, one-and-a-half traditional phone rings) to pick up and adopt a saccharine tone and cordially engage with the person on the other side of the line.
My parents were both masters of The Phone Voice, and I learned mine through osmosis.
Since it takes one to know one I can sometimes tell if someone’s using theirs, if I pay enough attention.
And this time I did, even though I’d never heard even her regular phone voice before, so I didn’t have grounds for comparison beyond the tone she most often used when we were interacting in person.
In hindsight, I should never have actually called her — but I was trying to mix things up. A friend who I will never trust again told me people in this day and age enjoy being called on the phone old-fashioned-like every now and then, and I was like, “Sure, I guess that makes sense,” even though I’d find it super weird if someone I’d been dating for only like a month decided to just ring me up to make some dinner plans, which is what I was doing.
When somebody who is not your grandmother answers the phone sounding so happy to hear from you, the chances are certainly there that they’re actually irate about something but are around other people and don’t want them to be able to listen to one side of a conversation where someone is getting their fuckin’ hide ripped apart. So they keep The Phone Voice going until they can make their egress to somewhere private where they can then really let you have it.
“Hello, this is Beth,” she said in The Phone Voice. I could hear background noise that sounded like a bar. Then: “It’s so great to hear from you! Just give me one sec.”
I think she even put me on mute.
She came back with a fierceness, this time in a voice very far on the other side of the spectrum from The Phone Voice. I had no idea what I’d done wrong, but despite my ignorance still felt that Potential Fear Boner Twinge and that burning feeling in my shoulders and the back of my neck that occurs during times of extreme trepidation. (You know what I’m talking about.)
“You went on a date with my best fucking friend last night,” she said.
Well, shit, I thought, having gone on a date the night before with someone I’d met on one of the apps — a move I’d only made because my instincts had told me Beth wasn’t that into me and that things would soon be coming to an end. (I should never, ever trust my instincts.)
Small world, I thought, wondering what the chances were that something like this would happen.
Guess I missed that conversation where we became exclusive, I thought, acknowledging that sometimes those things occur tacitly, at least in the mind of one of the people involved.
Pretty sure that usually comes after one tells their best fucking friend about the person in her life, though, I thought, which raised the question of whether or not her friend did know and went out with me anyway, which would be kind of diabolical.
“Don’t ever call — or contact me again,” she said, then hung up.
Tough but fair, I thought, vowing to never again call anyone again and stick instead to text, a forum where the words had a way of hurting, if only slightly, less.