email for pics

Cross-posted at Cobweb because I had nothing else to post there for today, and people will howl if I don’t provide content.

Now and again someone will mistakenly ring my mobile. Usually it’s someone expecting to hear Spanish on the other end, and the conversations are brief. Once I exchanged several text messages with a guy who hoped (in vain) to score this person only two area codes away. (In LA, that’s not a great distance.) Last night, however, I had the strangest conversation with a stranger I’ve ever had.

I didn’t mean to sound friendly. I really didn’t. But, you see, I was waiting for a call from my uncle. So when the phone rang in the late evening and I detected a caucasian male voice through the pop and static of appalling reception (T-Mobile seems contractually obligated to leave service holes in places where I live), I cheerily kept the conversation up until I could figure out what was going on.

What was going on, evidently, was that someone was calling for “Simon.” Someone had also sent “Simon” a picture message, which I found out a few minutes later I could access from the T-Mobile website. Apparently “Simon,” a “big black football player from PCC,” had called this nameless individual from this number the night before last and they chatted for 45 minutes. I told the individual that the number had probably been spoofed (and heaven help “Simon” if I find out he hijacked my account and used 45 of my expensive weekday minutes talking to this person). The individual assured me that “Simon” would have no idea how to do such a thing. I bristled at the stereotyping and told him that something fishy had obviously happened, and he might want to entertain the notion that “Simon” could indeed spoof a phone number. I didn’t say, though I did imply, that he might want to ponder why “Simon” had done such a thing.

I know “Simon,” a PCC [American] football player, did not make any phone calls from my phone the night before last because my phone and I were both in West LA. That, and the only numbers in my call log were numbers I knew. Certainly not any calls to these Spokane, WA morons.

The caller changed his tack, and said that since I’d seen pictures of him and his friends, I had to send them a picture. That it was unfair otherwise. I told him he was an idiot and bade him good night. The icing on the cake was when he called for the third time and I let it go to voicemail (the one with my voice on it announcing my phone number and my unwillingness to pick up the phone). The message started with, “Simon. Some chick’s got your phone.”

Astonishing.

I received several more pictures over the course of the evening, none of which were obscene (thankfully). The caller did have poorly done tattoos, which did not endear him to me. He’d have been better off just talking.

A friend commented during this, “Interesting things happen to you.” I told her that it wasn’t really that, it was that my personal curiosity leads me to have conversations with random morons who are trying to reach out and touch someone — anyone they can find — instead of launching four-letter epithets in their direction and breaking the connection. It’s not because I’m lacking contact with my fellow human beings. It’s certainly not because I’m interested in forging a relationship with this individual. It is, pure and simple, curiosity. It’s been getting me in trouble for years, and shows no sign of going away.