The Fantasy Years

THE CRACKLING TIDE OF VOICES SURGED, they frothed. Although the clamoring mass drew on many voices, the choice in conversation topics was singular, unified. The topic was freedom because who didn’t like freedom? The AM radio hosts liked freedom. Listeners liked freedom. Even people who didn’t listen to AM radio liked freedom. Freedom was like a cold Slurpee on a hot summer’s day: everyone loved it.

And what truer measure of an American’s freedom than his or her right to call their neighbor whatever they damn well pleased? But something was getting in the way of this freedom, people learned. Something sought to circumscribe their liberty. It was called “political correctness.” Political correctness, they learned, wanted to stop them from saying what they damn well pleased. The sole existence of something called political correctness threatened their freedom. First it was not saying ‘lady’ or ‘Mexican’ or ‘colored’ or ‘cripple.’ Next it would be them giving up their constitutionally guaranteed rifles and shotguns. The price of liberty was eternal vigilance and the more listeners heard about political correctness, the more their anger grew, the more it was stoked, massaged, egged on, inflamed, irritated and finally vented by the same radio hosts who did so much of the talking.

But AM radio hosts didn’t need to probe the American soul too deeply to find irritation. Americans in the early 1990s had plenty of sources of frustration, just then emerging, silently, but strinkingly.
An exasperated voice said into a telephone somewhere in America: “Let me just say that your service sucks! Do you hear me? It sucks!”
“Yessir,” Jenny said. Jenny was a customer service representative, working on the outskirts of Des Moines, Iowa. A CSR. She’d already finished canceling the angry customer’s magazine subscription. Somehow, strangely, it had automatically charged his credit card for a renewal he didn’t order. “Anything else, sir?”
“You heard me.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Thank you then. Goodbye.”
Bing! Just because Jenny couldn’t take the headset off didn’t mean she had to let them yell in her ear. She left a finger on the volume control box. As soon as they started yelling, she turned the volume down. Like now, for example: “What kind of fucking customer service is this where I have to fucking wait on fucking hold for fifteen fucking minutes to make the address change?”

With the volume dial, Jenny brought his unhinged screaming down to a distant roar. Usually, a customer would yell themselves hoarse for ten or fifteen seconds, then their voice would edge down and she would thumb the volume dial up in increments.
“I’m sorry sir, could you repeat that?”
“I said sorry for yelling.” He was just getting it out of his system, she knew.
“Oh, well.”
“But fifteen minutes? A fifteen minute wait to do a two-second change of address? Ah, I suppose you’re used to it.”
“We are. In a way,” Jenny said.
“So a lot of people are frustrated when they call?”
“Some are.”
“Doesn’t that tell you there’s something wrong with your system?” His voice became icy, clear.
“Sir,” she wanted to say, “I just work here” but her supervisor could be listening in and Jenny knew that wouldn’t sound like a real motivated thing to say. “I don’t get to choose how the system works, unfortunately. Believe me, if I could, I would make it so that no one has to wait.”
“But let me ask you a question: what do you think of customer service that makes you wait for twenty minutes to cancel a subscription but only a couple seconds to order one?”
“I’m not paid for my opinion, sir.”
“I understand that. But I’m the customer. You’re supposed to give me good customer service and if that means I have questions you should try to answer them.”
“I am trying, sir.”
“Then tell me what you think about the customer service system!”
“Nothing.”
“You don’t think anything?”
“Well, I…”
“You’re being recorded for training purposes. That’s what it is, isn’t it?”
Jenny assumed that even admitting that would get her in trouble. But yes, she was being recorded for training purposes: “I can’t really go into that.”
“The recording I listened to for twenty minutes said you were being recorded. Or are you going to tell me you’re not being recorded?”
“I don’t get to hear what the recording says.” What if others were listening? Not just her supervisor, Beverly. But others? Others she didn’t know? Others who didn’t know what a hard worker she was? Jenny broke out in the finest sheen of sweat.
“But you’re being recorded. If you weren’t being recorded what would you say?”
“Sir, can I help you with your subscription problem?”
“This is my problem. I want you to answer my question. What do you think about customer service that makes you wait for twenty minutes to cancel your subscription?”
It was like he was trying to pin her down. Trying to get something out of her. The line went quiet while she thought of an answer. Any answer that wouldn’t get her in trouble.
“Sir, I’m not paid for my thoughts.”
“Obviously,” he said and then got quiet, Jenny supposed, to embarrass her.

A minute later, after she finished the call, the word “obviously” stuck in her mind. The way he scowled it. Obviously, you’re not paid for your thoughts. Jenny wasn’t even sure how she was offended. She just knew she was. She took a deep breath, then she pushed the button bing! and another voice broke onto the line. “Well, it’s about time!” an angry woman muttered into her ear.

Nestled among the bustling urbanity of the Pitt college campus, a couple sat in a converted attic of a coffee shop. Layer after layer of yellow paint covered the walls of what used to be a firehouse. All the room’s third story windows were open, as if to air out the madness of college conversation. The young man ignored the buses, the faces, the people passing by outside on Forbes Avenue below:
“I didn’t mean to offend you,” the young man, named Ben said to his female friend sitting before him.
“Well, you should think twice before making such assumptions,” the young woman said.
And things had been going so well, Ben thought. He was halfway back to her dorm room with this conversation, saying all the right things about politics, about power, about justice. Everything a doe-eyed, vegetarian beauty could want to hear. He even believed the better part of it himself. Then he let slip a mention of “girls” when he should have said “women” and now he was in a conversational penalty box he couldn’t find his way out of.
“It wasn’t my intention to offend you.”
She stared at him mistrustfully. She was feeling her ideals strongly. His chances of going to bed with her were dwindling by the moment. Suddenly, the possibility of the day, so rank and humid outside, seemed frozen and hopeless at the table.
“Oh, it’s all apart of the patriarchal structure. You’re indoctrinated in ways you don’t even understand.”
“If I am, then I want to learn better.” Even Ben was put off by his own groveling.
“Don’t you understand how deeply embedded it is?”
“Maybe you can explain it to me.” He’d been so close to closing the deal. Their knees had been touching, he’d brushed her hand meaningfully, she kept grasping his wrist when she wanted to emphasize an idea she was getting at. Everything was before him. Like a feast.
“I don’t think so,” she said and he recognized in her tone how unappealing his pleading must be.

Whoosht! , went Dennis’ inhaler “It’s infuriating,” he said, surveying the Country Kitchen from his booth. It was his booth. Or he thought of it that way at least. He and his friend Will often met for breakfast before going to work in the morning. “It’s exasperating.”
“It’s galling,” Will said, his longish, forlorn face impassive, even as he expressed complaint.
“It’s appalling. That’s what it is. Who are these people who expect something special just because of their ancestors’ history?” Dennis asked.
“It’s unbelievable,” Will said in a monotone. His mouth hung open slightly for breath, a side effect of his deviated septum.
“I mean they get into college easier than we do. They get special dispensations for being black. Where’s the equality in that? Where’s the justice?” Dennis took a sip of his water. The waitress—Meg—approached the table with their plates of food. “You ordered the three eggs, hash browns, bacon and toast?”
“Thanks, Meg,” he said.
“Oh, and when you get a chance?” Dennis said, holding his tumbler.
“More water?” she asked.
“Thanks, hon.”
“What the hell do they expect, these people?”
“I’ll tell you what they expect. They expect something for nothing.”
“They do,” Will intoned.
“I work hard for everything I have. I never ask for anything. But these people, they have affirmative action.”
“And race-based admissions to college.”
“And quotas in the office.”
“I know we got one where I work.”
“And they got welfare.”
“And food stamps.”
“And WIC cards.”
“And Medicare.”
“And Medicaid. And it’s all a give away by the liberals. And it’s all because their liberal guilt. And they wouldn’t feel guilty if they worked for their money like I work for mine.”
“Damn straight. I work for mine, too.”
“Pass the salt, would you?”

Will passed the salt. Dennis dashed it over his eggs and began eating. Meg, the waitress, moved to and fro in the corner of Dennis’ chomping vision. One day, he thought. One day. Meg was plump but only in the healthiest way. Her curly hair dyed a sumptuous auburn. She smelled like both a peaches and roses. Always had time for a joke with him. Always glanced at him significantly when he paid his bill at the cash register. Dennis ate with a manic appetite. He ate with ferocity, as if the eggs and bacon might wander off if he didn’t gobble them down first. A piece of egg even clung to the goatee that circled his fleshy lips and covered his nearly double chins, like a kind of shag bib for his mouth. Once satiated, Dennis sat back in the booth.

“Man, you got a piece of egg…” Will gestured to his own chin.
Dennis felt for it, then placed it on the side of his plate.
“See that guy there?” Dennis nodded to Will. “The guy with the blue cap?”
Will turned to the side in the booth.
“Yep,” he said.
“That guy was in Vietnam.”
“Um-hmm.”
“I talked to him once. He said he used to fly out in a Cessna, you know, the little prop plane? They’d fly over a jungle area where there was enemy action and they’d radio in where the enemy was so the fighter-bombers could come in and napalm them.”
Will watched the customer.
“Takes balls of steel,” Dennis said.
“That reminds me,” Will said. “I got that catalogue of Vietnam patches. My cousin gave it back to me. If you’d like to see it.”
“Yeah, I’d like to see that,” Dennis said. He held up the check. Meg came and took the check with the money. You were supposed to pay at the counter at the Country Kitchen but once, a couple months back, Meg told Dennis she’d take it at the table. He never forgot her kindness at tip time, and although it wasn’t a relationship with a woman, it was an understanding at least. She did something for him. He noticed. He did something for her. She noticed. It was something.

“All done?” she asked Dennis.
“All done.”

When he got up to leave he left $4 on a $12 breakfast. Dennis said goodbye to Will and they both got in their cars to go their separate ways to work.

Talk radio blared from the speakers in Dennis’ LaSabre. Voices of irate listeners called in, condemning the current state of affairs. Dennis could only get Rush Limbaugh during lunch, so he listened to other talk radio hosts in the morning. They crowed that freedom was under threat and Dennis was inclined to think so. Dennis didn’t agree with everything Mr. Limbaugh said but he agreed with a lot of it. And just hearing the voice in the car, so animated and engaged, so palpable and real, was like having a friend along for the ride.