"1-900" Response

          In Richard Bausch’s story “1-900,” there are no descriptors like “in frustration” or “exasperatedly,” but those characteristics are made clear through the structure of the dialogue in the way Marilyn continues to try to loop it back to its assumed intent. There is also the frustration that can be read into her short, blunt reply of “An education” to his faintly patronizing question of what she hopes to “get out” of college, and his assumption that she is unaware of the meaning of “lethargy.” Behind these gestures we can guess a variety of reasons, none of them ever explained. Is she worried she’ll receive a bad review if she doesn’t perform her usual purpose, and thus risk her job? Is she reluctant to share personal information for fear of harassment or exposure (and has this happened before, to cause such reluctance?) 

The fact that John has called a phone sex service in itself can give us certain clues about him, beyond even what he reveals himself. Though the time setting of this conversation is unclear (besides being post-Vietnam war), there is a certain quaintness in phone sex, as now it has been rendered largely redundant by the internet and its profusion of porn. Is John put off by the frankness and unabashedly explicit nature of online pornography? Is he seeking only a willing listener for his discussion of his marital and family troubles? This hypothesis is strengthened by the identity of “Marilyn,” as a female conversation partner with an obligation to please (though not in the way she had suspected.) He could desire to “start over” with a woman he paid to listen to him, to hear his side of the story, with a desperation reinforced by his constant reminders that he has paid for her to converse with him. 

Though this story consists of pure dialogue, over the course of the story I developed a clearer and clearer picture of the two characters at the time of the conversation: her, sitting in a nondescript office building in a cubicle like several other girls, looking exasperated and confused as she holds the phone; him, sitting on a faded couch in a blank apartment, holding a drink (though he professes to be sober) with his head in his hands as he talks. I have no factual basis for these images, but the power of the dialogue to invoke them speaks to its efficacy.