The Phone Bill

I had moved from Powers Street or Avenue back to Winfield, where I spent a number of years sculpting in ceramics. The cafe Commons had opened down on Mission Street and I spent seven years there every morning with a cappuccino, a couple of cigarettes and many friends. And it may have been around the seventh year that the phone harassment began.

Some guy would call the women every ten minutes. The women would change their phone number and have the new number mailed to them. The mad caller would be calling them again before even the women knew their new number. Now what does that suggest to one ? Somebody at the phone company ?

But what the women did was accuse their male friends who would have to go before their inquisition and plead innocence. Meanwhile the latest victim of a whispering campaign - Carl is the mad phone caller - and suddenly no one talks to one and Carl knows not why. And I was guilty myself and didn't speak to Carl until the next victim was chosen and I should have known better. The kind of thing the FBI would do to Martin Luther King.

Well at the time I was living in a little hut on the patio at Winfield and had no phone. So I wasn't particularly concerned about it. But then I went fishing with MonaLisa, eldest daughter of the Professor, who had always been in love with me, and I called her up and her younger sister answered, who I always liked better, and the next day I was accused of being the mad phone caller, and was not allowed to call MonaLiza any longer.

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