Chatty Cathy and Aunt Bea and harassing phone calls

Someone using an unidentifiable 925 area code places calls to me now and then. Whenever I answer, the caller hangs up so I don't pick up. This number called me at 6 a.m. a few days ago. I wondered if the anonymous phone harasser had read about my Chatty Cathy twenties and thought they might test my willingness to pick up at 6 a.m. I would pick up at 6 a.m. for anyone I know but never for a restricted number. I'm not that much of a chump. I texted that number and got a response, that they had dialed the wrong number. WTF are you and why is my number in you 925 phone?  Sure I could call that number in middle of the night, and yeah, 6 a.m. is middle of the night for me for I tend to stay up very late most days, like 3 or 4 a.m. or even later.

In law school, I was pals with a guy who hated law school as much as I did.  He had the good sense to drop out after our first year but, rigid thinker me, even though I hated law school, law students, legal arguments presented as legal reasoning and the sense of doom I had as I faced the prospect of being a lawyer, I trudged on.  I had only gone to law school because my dad bullied me into it, bullying me out of the doctoral program I wanted to do in Anthropology. I was going to write my first book about the primitive tribe high in the Andes I visited while studying in Colombia. For the dissertation, I envisioned living with that tribe for two years so I could write a thorough story of their culture.

Shoulda woulda coulda.  Hey reddit dirtbags. Doncha wish you had my number so you could harass me by phone instead of being limited to cyberstalking me?! 

Anyway, Wes, my law school buddy, and I didn't socialize in person, except during class hours at school. We each did what most first year laws do:  we studied every waking minute and only allowed ourselves some  phone calls for study breaks.

We were one another's support for that hellish, unhappy year.

I guess we stayed up late studying because we had a habit of talking to one another very late at night, like 1 a.m. and, sometimes, later.

Wes often joked to our classmates that I was a Channeler for Chatty Cathy. He would say "Call her up at 3 a.m., and even if she was sound asleep, she will be instantly awake and chattering away."  I knew Wes teased me good naturedly and I don't think I gave him any push back. He seemed to admire my chatty Cathy capacity. And I valued his friendship and support.  I was a little proud of the nickname. And I knew he loved being able to call me any time of the day or night, confident he would hear a friendly, caring connection.

Another law classmate, Mary, began to get threatening phone calls in the middle of the night. She was living alone, a couple blocks from me. She would call me when she got those calls, at 2 a.m., 3 a.m. This was before caller ID.  And I'd talk to her as long as she wanted to talk. She was frightened. Her plan was if her phone stalker turned up at her door, for in this long ago age, neither of our apartment buildings had security so anyone could just walk into our buildings and up the stairs, I could hang up and phone the police. She talked until she got tired. I once asked her why, when she had many close friends and she and I were not particularly close, she called me. She shrugged and said "I called you because I thought you would behave just as you did, that you wouldn't be angry that I had awakened you."

Fast forward to 2006, when I was the registrar for a five day residential event.  After that event, I struck up an email friendship with a guy I met there. We were never friends, as he once put it, just two people who met at a conference, but I thought we were friends, believed he was my friend. I imagine Chatty Cathy also naively trusted people to be friends. I am proud of how readily I trust other people. I am proud that people who know me trust that they can call me up at 3 a.m., as this conference guy did, and that people expect me to show them kindness and caring.

Speaking of late night phone calls, I tried to call conference guy late at night. Twice, I think.  Just as he had once called me at 3 a.m. because he was upset about some interaction between us, I made my two late night calls to him because I was upset. I also called late at night, once, because he was screening my calls for a couple days, I was upset and I trusted him to treat me as I had treated him when he awoke me from a sound sleep at 3 a.m. and I had been kind and caring.

He was infuriated and he didn't pick up my calls. He claimed the ring interfered with his work the following day, which, the one time I am thinking of, was a Saturday. What work?! I didn't understand why he was upset. He had once called me at 3 a.m. and I had responded to him just as I had to Mary and Wes back in law school. He began his call by apologizing for having called but, he went on to say, he was very anxious about something and wanted to talk to me. I spoke as soothingly and as caringly as I could. I said "I am glad you called if you were upset, I am happy to talk, the time doesn't matter."  I may not have said it but my actions were intended to convey "I care about you more than being awakened. Your call is my idea of friendship." Why would it be okay for him to call me when he was fretting about some exchange between us but when I called him late at night because I was fretting about some exchange between us, I had done something he considered utterly over the line.   I don't get it.  If he had not called me once at 3 a.m., maybe I wouldn't have done called him late at night. But he did.

Shortly after the retreat where we had met, he wrote to me that I reminded him of Aunt Bea.  I was stung. Insulted. Aunt Bea was a fat, asexual female whose entire life comprised of serving males without getting any romance, intimacy, love, sex, support for her own goals. True, true, she was fictional but she embodied a male fantasy of the all giving, safe and asexual woman.  Obviously being called Aunt Bea in 2006 stung me for here I am, in 2015, writing about it.

I don't want to be a channeler for Aunt Bea. I don't have anyone in my life to nurture these days, although I would be the all nurturing, devoted caregiver that Aunt Bea was if I had anyone to nurture. I am not asexual. I desire emotional and physical intimacy. And although I am eager to love and nurture a man who loves me, I want to also be loved and nurtured.  I know that not everyone wants this but many, if not most, do. And I am so not an Aunt Bea. And so not asexual. Do you catch that being compared to a fat, old asexual tv character insulted me?

Aunt Bea had once found a man she was in love with but he did not choose her. I am Aunt Bea, suffering from unrequited love. She never loved anyone else in that way and so she remained a spinster, conveniently available to selflessly tend to Andy and Opie, with no romance, no partnership intimacy and no sex.