my friend jocelyn called me at 1 a.m. the other night while her mind was blasted into space on account of a certain kind of mushrooms she had eaten. she was walking home from temescal back to lake merritt and needed someone to comfort her. i am the person to call, i think, because i would never judge someone for ingesting a controlled substance. i mean, come on. we talked for about an hour, her speaking abstractly, and me trying to reassure her that she would not die.

anyway: at some point she said she had to go, and so i hung up. i tossed my phone onto my bed and kept working on this here website you’re reading. she called back a few times, but i couldn’t hear the vibrations from my phone because they were being absorbed into my mattress. she left me a really good voicemail, which i sent her the next morning. she apologized and we both laughed like hell about it, because what else can you do?? sometimes you just get in a State Of Mind, man . . . and then you get out of it, and it’s funny.

this is the transcript. keep in mind she was all mushroomed up and walking through pitch-black mosswood park, which i am sure had imprinted itself onto her soul as well. and also . . . her tone is jokey. god i love it:

I fucking hate your voicemail. I feel like you set it up just to talk shit to me, and I need you the most right now, and you’re ignoring me . . . and you probably have like nine million voicemails left from a million other girls on drugs and that’s fucked up too and I-hate-you-bye.

my voicemail message, by the way, sounds like this (and it might be loud so crank that shit down low at first):

 

. . . and i’ve had it for probably four or five years! it is polarizing. as you can see, jocelyn didn’t go for it, at least right then and right there at that point in time and space. who could blame her!!!

AN ASIDE: i use the royal “we” in my voicemail message to hide my numbers. y’all don’t even know how many of me there are, and you never will!!!!!!!

jocelyn, i’m glad you made it home OK. i’m sorry i missed your calls!!