I just found a document called MEMOS.doc, 83 pages and 39,989 words I wrote while not working at my first real job in New York. I was some kind of coordinator at Avon Products, the cosmetics company, and from the looks of this I had all kinds of time to burn while soaking up what was a decent salary in those days. It started on January 14, 1993, but I don’t know when it stopped.

Have I always been a geyser of text? I guess so. I think even my 4th grade English teacher commented on it. Here’s a strange excerpt from 1993 that I’m not sure I understand anymore:

David told me a truly screwed up story last night. His family has not heard from his brother Danny in over a year. He is living at their grandparent’s house, and they let him have the place on the condition that he maintain the grounds and property. After he moved in, no one heard from him again. So yesterday was his birthday, and David decided to call him at that old number, not knowing if it was still the right number or not. When he called, a woman answered. David thought for sure it was their sister, so after he heard “Hello,” he said “Crystal?” She said “No.” He said “Oh, is Derek there?” She said “No.” He said “Is this still his phone number?” She said “Yes.” Feeling like he may have been asking too many questions, he said “Well, this is his brother.” There was a long silence, and after several seconds she sort of whined “It is?” her voice growing smaller and smaller. He said “Yes. Who is this?” She said “I’m his daughter.” Suddenly David realized that this person was about 10 years old, and that she seemed very surprised and hurt to learn in this manner that her father had a brother. David is now afraid that she might be pretty disturbed by the whole event. He called their mom, saying “This is not a medical emergency, but you have to call me tonight.” What a bombshell of a story!!

I’m vaguely relieved to have happened across this story because I’ve thought of it a number of times across the years without being able to actually remember what was so shocking about it. I thought it must have been shocking to David that Danny had a daughter, but I guess the shocker was that the 10-year old didn’t know her father had a brother. Whatever. I guess I’d be surprised if my nephew did not know I existed, but in the case of David and Danny there was a lot of borderline estrangement among extended family so I guess this was just another tale of dysfunctia.

Something else I notice here is how I used to put two blank spaces between sentences. You probably cannot see it because of how HTML handles blank spaces, but that was how I was taught to type on a typewriter, by putting 2 blank spaces after every period or exclamation point or other sentence-ending symbol. Web browsers, since the earliest days I think, have always ignored consecutive blank spaces in typewritten text, unless the spaces are contained within PRE tags.

I don’t remember saying all this about Apology but it sounds about right for where I was with that project in 1993. I later became a little disenchanted with it all but I still keep some tapes around
(now digitized) as something to listen to once in a while.

I am now good friends with a fellow who for two years was known to me only as Mr. Apology. He is quite an interesting gent, I do say, and our collaboration is developing into interesting pursuits. His wife is very nice, as well, and the three of us get along very nicely. We think we’re creating a magazine based on the tapes from the APOLOGY LINE, and in fact we seem to have quite a bit in order. We also have a few subscription orders. We’ve made $50, which is $50 more than I expected we’d make. My sister, Diane, has offered to help in any way she can to get the thing printed, and I am waiting to see how that will work out. She may be able to get the actual printing onto the fancy magazine paper done for very cheaply, even free. That’s really our biggest expense at this point. Of course, with $50 in the bank, we still don’t actually have a magazine. Most of it is done, but there’s still no finished product. We’re getting there. It has become very time consuming for me, and Mr. Apology isn’t helping much by never working on it on his own time. It’s his deal, after all. But he only works on it when I’m around. But the tapes and the Apology Project and the whole situation with Apology becomes more and more interesting to me every single day. The tapes become more fascinating, the stories more alive, the concept becomes more and more strong. The dirty work is getting to be a grind, though, especially since I’m not making a nickel off of it yet. I’ll look into advertising some time, since Mr. A. offered me a fat commission off anything I pulled in. Also, I hope that the magazine really does start to sell. I really want this to work, and I really want it rather badly. Sometimes I forget this, but it’s true. Apology has meant a lot to me from the day I got to NY, practically. When I first read about it in the NYPress, I was depressed and down-and-out almost to the point of doing something stupid. It was a strange sort of salvation, the Apology tapes; hearing these other ragged, tired voices muttering across the floors of these vacumous telephone lines gave me air to breath for that short time in my life. It fed an empty, starving void in my lonely soul, and there was no commitment to the thing. There was no identity, no pain, no bond with the legion of anonymous voices who saturated that vapid space with the darkest, most painful tales I had ever heard spun. I have truly learned how to listen to people speak by listening to the tapes. The sound of people’s voices now spellbinds me. The tapes mean something different to me, now. I am doing well, but I still call the tapes to invest a little more of my soul into the dark heart of the Big Apple. Since I have become involved with the project, I seldom call the line. I have access to the complete archives, and now have a dozen or so tapes lying around with all sorts of moribund and stirring stories. And now, having met the iconoclastic Mr. Apology, I may have the opportunity to meet another caller, a fellow who had called himself JC, and who I now find is an entertainer/musician calling himself JOHNNY CONTINENTAL. He would be an interesting fellow to meet, because for the time he’s called the line, he’s revealed that he is into pain and abuse and generally violent sex. He also talks about lusting for young girls. He says these things repeatedly and with great sincerity, and yet I feel that he is a kind, gentle, and tender human being. It’s a strange way to feel about a masochist, but he strikes me as very sensitive. I’ve always suspected that bondage and S&M would and could be a sensuous affair. Maybe it is. Maybe the pain is an artfully crafted, orgasmic thing. I do not know. I think that there is a certain vapidity in me (fed by the Apology tapes) that would exalt in perverted sex and bestiality, or in murder or bondage or whips and chains. Then there’s the surface, which twists these desires into scorched, mangled branches lying on the floor of a particle rain forest. My latest fantasy is to live in a bullet proof cube a few hundred feet above Times Square where I will live my daily life as I normally would, but everyone who wanted to watch me could do so. I guess I would shower and shit in private, but the goal would be to wake up every morning with the eyes of 2 million upon me. The cube would be maybe fifty square feet, or whatever space I needed to sleep and eat. There would be a microwave. And I would have a special restaurant where I was the only person who ate there. It would hover above 5th Ave and 57th Street, and I would only invite very special guests there. There would be one table and a fully staffed kitchen, and they would be continuously prepared for my arrival, whenever that might be. I would pay them handsomely, and they had better be ready for me when I do show up. I wonder how much of a billionaire I would have to be to live that fantasy. I think that this whole idea stems from my general lack of respect for myself. I tend not to like myself that much, and I will probably take the worst job on earth simply because I don’t carry myself for what I’m worth. I’m worth a lot, you see, but no one needs to know about it. An Apology call once from a guy who wanted to be raped and sodomized and pissed and shit and come on by older men exemplified a lot for me about how I feel sometimes. If I had lived in much of a city growing up I think I would have gotten into some painful situation like that. And I would have loved it. I read that tape with no moral problem whatsoever.

I obviously didn’t know much about S&M, but I do now, and it doesn’t interest me anymore. I don’t think it ever really did except as a curiosity, or as an interest that I thought would distinguish me as being more interesting than I really am.

When I say I “read that tape” I guess I’m referring to the fact that I was transcribing Apology tapes for the magazine.

I’ve been thinking about Apology again, but more in passing than in depth. My earliest adventures in New York City payphones revolved around Apology, which was something like my best friend in those early days and nights at the Parc Lincoln. I think I first discovered Apology around the end of 1990, or else early 1991, when an article in the New York Press caught my attention. Allan Bridge, who to most people was known only as Mr. Apology, told me once that that one New York Press story had far greater impact on the project than all of the big media coverage combined. The number of new callers from that story was significant but not as much as the number of those callers who actually stayed around, some of them for calling in for all the remaining years of the project. I was among that crowd and here I am still talking about it.

Apology, along with PRAY, as well as some of my own sordid experiences involving payphones seemed only to fortify my belief that payphones were a singular focal point of obsession, and a gateway to connecting with the darker side of society’s fringes from a discrete distance.