Charming, but single

For more than a week I have been getting a lot of random calls on my cell phone from numbers I don’t recognize. As a proponent of call screening, I do not answer numbers I don’t recognize on my personal cell. And I have a longstanding policy against returning strange calls if someone doesn’t leave me a voicemail. They come at odd times – like at 11 p.m. and 1:30 a.m. and then 2:30 a.m. on the weekends. And they’re not local calls. Today, I got three during the day. And I was livid. So livid that I almost answered and yelled at the caller. But I was at work and I just wanted to leave and so I silenced the phone and finished up my e-mail and left. As I was about to make a phone call when I saw that a voicemail was there. The mystery caller had decided to reveal him or herself. “Hi, [Charming],” said man who sounded kind of unsure of himself. “This is [Drunk Lawyer]. We met at [Bar in New Orleans] a few weeks ago and you said you would be coming into town again and, you know, I wanted to see when. Please return this call.” Thankfully I had not left the parking spot or I think we would have had a dangerous situation on our hands. I cackled at the thought of me going to meet Drunk Lawyer in New Orleans for a night. This was the same Drunk Lawyer who was a terrible kisser and tried to unzip my pants in a bar. Who was not so cute and terribly dorky. I immediately saved his number in my phone and scrolled back through my call history. He had been calling a lot, but this was his first message. He was getting braver. So I called one of my friends who’d been out that night. “Oh! A boy called,” she said, always the Polyanna. “I don’t remember him. Was he cute?” “That night he asked me to go see his Historic Courtyard, which I think was code for his penis,” I deadpanned. “And he was a bad kisser and he tried to unzip my pants in the bar.” “Oh.” She was dejected. “He’s been calling a lot,” I said. “A LOT.” We discussed options for getting rid of him and his mass calling, ranging from saying I was married to faking my death to (and this one is my favorite) having a man answer the phone and yell, “Why are you calling my girlfriend! STALKER!” In the end, we decided call screening was the most humane option.