Operator
011
I always wondered what was wrong with me. I mean, why was I so nice, so easy to walk all over, to take advantage of... why was I so fucked up? My dad always blamed my mother, claiming that it was ‘those damn kiddie shows’ and that I should’ve watched wrestling. He says that I should’ve hung around the boys more, they would’ve roughed me up a little, that I would’ve toughened out into a real man. He says it’s because I never had a brother.
And then, I wonder why the hell I’m thinking of this. I turn my head to the right, where my eyes are met with Gerard attempting to count EVERY SINGLE ONE of the crystals inside of the salt shaker, and I finally realize why.
“What are you doing?”
Gerard looks up and gives me a long hard stare, before smiling cheerily and going back to his task. I roll my eyes and divert them back to the black coffee that I ordered some time ago. I grab the mug and taste it, cringing at its temperature. I call over a waitress in a roller derby costume and the attitude that came with it, asking for a new one.
She rolls her eyes and cracks her stupid poodle pink bubble gum, giving me the old ‘I hate my job and I’m only doing this for you because I have to’ sass. I know exactly how she feels.
“Nothing,” he finally replies, brushing the tiny little specks of salt into his hand. I screw an eye up as he dumps it all onto his napkin. He looks up and stares straight into my eyeballs. It creeps me out. I tell him this.
“Why are you staring at me?”
No answer. He just keeps on doing it and I begin to fidget.
“Gerard? Dude, stop.”
Zilch. So I decide to say something sarcastic instead.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer—”
“You have really pretty eyes,” he cuts me off, “Like, really really pretty. They remind me of my goldfish.”
I open my mouth to say something, but again, his voice over powers mine.
“You know, like the colour of goldfish?” he says. “But not like, the actual orange colour, like the yellowy orange. ‘Cept your’s is mixed with some... brownish tint or something.”
I don’t have anything to say to that. Let’s just hope that he has a fucking hot goldfish or else it’ll be just weird.
-
Gerard’s gone home for the night. I’m happy because as soon as I managed to haul him out the door, I start jumping around my apartment and blasting some crappy pop music on the radio up to thirty until I hear the ‘thwump-thwump’ noises of a broom being rapped up against the ceiling to tell me to shut up or die.
I flop onto the couch with a jar of guacamole and I dig the remote out from under my butt. Squirt jumps on top of the couch and finds his way onto my lap, digging his claws through my jeans and into my thighs to show that he loves me. We watch the food network until I realize that it’s past midnight and I almost feel disheartened that Gerard hasn’t called yet.
Wait, no. I feel absolutely joyous that I don’t have to hear about his constant depressing drivel about his dead past and his lost future. Like I really give a shit about what he plans to do with his life, he could go jump off a bridge for all I care.
I get up off my sofa to the small liquor cabinet I have in the corner of the den. I like opening it up because even though there’s usually never any alcohol inside of it, just the thought that it COULD’VE been there keeps me grounded. But what surprises me isn’t the fact that there’s a bottle of Yellowtail wine and a 14 pack of Player’s curled up in a neat little basket inside of the cabinet.
It’s the fact that there’s a bottle of Yellowtail wine and a 14 pack of Player’s curled up in a neat little basket inside of the cabinet from Gerard.
-
Sometimes, I wish I was a dad. When I was little, I used to be a girl and fantasize about having children. Not the giving birth part, I’ll leave that to the ladies, but the whole... responsibility of being trusted to take care of another being.
However, now I cower at the mention of any type of responsibility. I think that’s why I have no real friends. They’ve trusted me to do things—like water their plants while they’re on extended vacations, feed their gerbil while they visit their dying mothers in hospitals—but as usual, I’d forget and I’d fuck up yet another relationship.
Today’s gonna be a bad day. Do you ever get those feelings? Where you wake up and outside, it’s raining and you’re tired as shit from some late night movie marathon of James Bond? Yeah, they’re not nice.
I pull on this oversized red hoodie that has ‘DEVILS’ embroidered on the front in black thread. I got it from a home hockey game, even though no one even knows of the NJ Devils. I don’t even follow hockey, so I don’t remember where I got it from.
I walk to the kitchen, grab a bowl from the cabinet and a spoon from the drawer and a box of Cookie Crisps. I go to the couch and sit in my usual spot, where the material has sunken in from the constant weight of 120 pounds being rested upon it. I flip the channel to Spongebob Squarepants and stuff my spoon into the sugary cereal, before I bring it up to my mouth.
My phone rings its stupid ringtone and I pick it up.
“Yo,” I say through a mouthful of dry Cookie Crisp. “What kind of toothpaste do you use?”
Gordon has totally re-organized the entire line. It’s based on one number and people call it, getting directed to one of our numbers by random. We have to say something (namely ‘what are you wearing?’) and we work with them for the next five minutes. If they don’t like any of us, they press pound to get redirected to someone else who’s free.
But then again, whenever am I one to follow the rules? I’ve tried to ask ‘what are you wearing?’ to the men who call and after awhile, it got repetitive. So I just decided to spice things up a little.
A small ping sounds through the receiver, meaning that the fucker pressed pound. I shrug; cunt.
I continue to shovel the cereal into my mouth and watch the yellow sponge with pants laugh his obnoxious laugh and create problems for other sea creatures with his stupidity. The phone rings again.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
“What brand of toothpaste do you use?”
There’s a silence and I almost hang up on him before he has the chance to do so first.
“Colgate.”
“Oh really?” I ask. “Why not something like... Crest or Freedent?”
“I don’t know,” the stranger tells me. “I just like the minty freshness that lingers in your mouth after you use Colgate. It lasts longer than either of those.”
Another brief moment of silence.
“So why did you call?” I ask.
Oh dear god, please let it not be—
“I just wanted someone to talk to.”
—another Gerard.
And then, I wonder why the hell I’m thinking of this. I turn my head to the right, where my eyes are met with Gerard attempting to count EVERY SINGLE ONE of the crystals inside of the salt shaker, and I finally realize why.
“What are you doing?”
Gerard looks up and gives me a long hard stare, before smiling cheerily and going back to his task. I roll my eyes and divert them back to the black coffee that I ordered some time ago. I grab the mug and taste it, cringing at its temperature. I call over a waitress in a roller derby costume and the attitude that came with it, asking for a new one.
She rolls her eyes and cracks her stupid poodle pink bubble gum, giving me the old ‘I hate my job and I’m only doing this for you because I have to’ sass. I know exactly how she feels.
“Nothing,” he finally replies, brushing the tiny little specks of salt into his hand. I screw an eye up as he dumps it all onto his napkin. He looks up and stares straight into my eyeballs. It creeps me out. I tell him this.
“Why are you staring at me?”
No answer. He just keeps on doing it and I begin to fidget.
“Gerard? Dude, stop.”
Zilch. So I decide to say something sarcastic instead.
“Take a picture, it’ll last longer—”
“You have really pretty eyes,” he cuts me off, “Like, really really pretty. They remind me of my goldfish.”
I open my mouth to say something, but again, his voice over powers mine.
“You know, like the colour of goldfish?” he says. “But not like, the actual orange colour, like the yellowy orange. ‘Cept your’s is mixed with some... brownish tint or something.”
I don’t have anything to say to that. Let’s just hope that he has a fucking hot goldfish or else it’ll be just weird.
-
Gerard’s gone home for the night. I’m happy because as soon as I managed to haul him out the door, I start jumping around my apartment and blasting some crappy pop music on the radio up to thirty until I hear the ‘thwump-thwump’ noises of a broom being rapped up against the ceiling to tell me to shut up or die.
I flop onto the couch with a jar of guacamole and I dig the remote out from under my butt. Squirt jumps on top of the couch and finds his way onto my lap, digging his claws through my jeans and into my thighs to show that he loves me. We watch the food network until I realize that it’s past midnight and I almost feel disheartened that Gerard hasn’t called yet.
Wait, no. I feel absolutely joyous that I don’t have to hear about his constant depressing drivel about his dead past and his lost future. Like I really give a shit about what he plans to do with his life, he could go jump off a bridge for all I care.
I get up off my sofa to the small liquor cabinet I have in the corner of the den. I like opening it up because even though there’s usually never any alcohol inside of it, just the thought that it COULD’VE been there keeps me grounded. But what surprises me isn’t the fact that there’s a bottle of Yellowtail wine and a 14 pack of Player’s curled up in a neat little basket inside of the cabinet.
It’s the fact that there’s a bottle of Yellowtail wine and a 14 pack of Player’s curled up in a neat little basket inside of the cabinet from Gerard.
-
Sometimes, I wish I was a dad. When I was little, I used to be a girl and fantasize about having children. Not the giving birth part, I’ll leave that to the ladies, but the whole... responsibility of being trusted to take care of another being.
However, now I cower at the mention of any type of responsibility. I think that’s why I have no real friends. They’ve trusted me to do things—like water their plants while they’re on extended vacations, feed their gerbil while they visit their dying mothers in hospitals—but as usual, I’d forget and I’d fuck up yet another relationship.
Today’s gonna be a bad day. Do you ever get those feelings? Where you wake up and outside, it’s raining and you’re tired as shit from some late night movie marathon of James Bond? Yeah, they’re not nice.
I pull on this oversized red hoodie that has ‘DEVILS’ embroidered on the front in black thread. I got it from a home hockey game, even though no one even knows of the NJ Devils. I don’t even follow hockey, so I don’t remember where I got it from.
I walk to the kitchen, grab a bowl from the cabinet and a spoon from the drawer and a box of Cookie Crisps. I go to the couch and sit in my usual spot, where the material has sunken in from the constant weight of 120 pounds being rested upon it. I flip the channel to Spongebob Squarepants and stuff my spoon into the sugary cereal, before I bring it up to my mouth.
My phone rings its stupid ringtone and I pick it up.
“Yo,” I say through a mouthful of dry Cookie Crisp. “What kind of toothpaste do you use?”
Gordon has totally re-organized the entire line. It’s based on one number and people call it, getting directed to one of our numbers by random. We have to say something (namely ‘what are you wearing?’) and we work with them for the next five minutes. If they don’t like any of us, they press pound to get redirected to someone else who’s free.
But then again, whenever am I one to follow the rules? I’ve tried to ask ‘what are you wearing?’ to the men who call and after awhile, it got repetitive. So I just decided to spice things up a little.
A small ping sounds through the receiver, meaning that the fucker pressed pound. I shrug; cunt.
I continue to shovel the cereal into my mouth and watch the yellow sponge with pants laugh his obnoxious laugh and create problems for other sea creatures with his stupidity. The phone rings again.
“Hi.”
“Hello.”
“What brand of toothpaste do you use?”
There’s a silence and I almost hang up on him before he has the chance to do so first.
“Colgate.”
“Oh really?” I ask. “Why not something like... Crest or Freedent?”
“I don’t know,” the stranger tells me. “I just like the minty freshness that lingers in your mouth after you use Colgate. It lasts longer than either of those.”
Another brief moment of silence.
“So why did you call?” I ask.
Oh dear god, please let it not be—
“I just wanted someone to talk to.”
—another Gerard.