I was in a cranky mood for the early part of the day yesterday. A session with Jae and one of our favorite guys improved my outlook considerably, but if you didn’t call me yesterday, you’re a lucky man, because I was feeling bitchy.

Not everyone was lucky.

I was sitting in traffic when my public line rang. I never answer that phone anymore, as I’m sure of you have noticed. Sorry, I just let it go to voicemail and deal with it when I’m in the mood. Which I admit often takes a couple of days. Sometimes I don't get it for longer than that, and then the message is two weeks old, and it seems silly to answer it. Yes, I am that busy.

But there I was, crawling along in traffic, bored and bitchy, so I looked at the phone, and I recognized the number as someone who had called me multiple times over the last 48 hours. Now, calling and calling and calling, when I haven’t called you back, is most often a bad idea. Two, maybe three time is the max. True, occasionally the phone misbehaves and eats the messages, or the message gets scrambled and is unintelligible. But in general, multiple calls = weirdo.

(I know there are guys who can't leave a callback number. I suggest you get a private email account and go that route instead. It just makes us ladies less nervous than seeing the same number popping up on the caller id.

And if I know you, and I haven’t called you back, then it’s not you, I’m just insanely busy. Email would be better for that, too. I’m really shifting over to email, it’s just much easier to track everything, and I can read and answer to a hundred emails faster than I can even listen to - let alone respond to - thirty-plus voicemails a day.

So I looked at the phone and thought, He’s probably a whack-job. But then I answered the call. I don’t know why. Perhaps I was looking for someone to be bitchy to.

I got my wish.

Me: hello?

Caller: Did you get my message?

Oh, were you calling Mistress Marvolo The Mind Reader? Or did you think you were on a video-phone? I pause lengthily and then say:

Me: (in an acidly-sweet drawl that could eat through steel) Well, I don’t know if I did, since I don’t know who I’m talking to, now do I? Who is this?

Caller: Joe.

I wait for him to add some other identifying information. He doesn’t. He just says:

Caller: I left you a message.

In a manner that implies he’s the only person in the world who could have left me a message, ever, and thus, nothing more need be said about that. However, even over the phone, I can tell that he is just quivering with the need to say something. I have no idea what it’s going to be, but I know this: it’s going to be odd. He just has that sort of whacko cadence to his voice.

So I open up the door for him, since he’s clearly not going to stop calling me until he asks me for whatever it is.

Me: What is it you want, Joe?

Caller: Will you take a swim with me?

For a moment I think he has said, “Take a swing at me”, which would be a sort of gauche way of asking for a scene, but which would be comprehensible coming from someone who didn’t have any BDSM vocabulary.

But no, he said swim. Which, I have to say, is the first time I’ve been asked for that. Points to Joe for originality. Some kind of bathing suit fetish? I have met lyrca/spandex fetishists who liked swimsuits before, although none of them felt the need to actually get into a body of water. Or maybe “take a swim” is some obscure slang that I don’t know about, for something kinky/sexual. Golden showers? I don’t know.

But when it comes down to “Do I want to be in a room with Joe”, I know the answer, and the answer is…

Me: No. Goodbye.

I hang up, and program him into the phone. SWIMGUY. Sorry, Joe, it’s not wet enough around here for that.