On Picking Up the Phone

I dream of the version of myself who looks cool taking a phone call. That suave type of effortlessness, a little lean in my stance that would cause an onlooker to think, “That’s a guy who knows how to talk on the phone.” Maybe it’s a desire rooted in a bygone era, when leaning at a payphone or coiling the wire of a landline was an easy signifier for attractiveness, but damnit, I still think it translates. (It also makes me think about how inherently uncool the modern smartphone has made communicating. Every person who you stroll by having a public FaceTime or phone calls looks like they should be stuffed into a locker on principle.) Part of me does suspect that the version that I’m dreaming of is out of reach, that I just don’t have it in me to give off the devil-may-care facade through the sound waves.