Read Online My Heart Is an Idiot: Essays by Davy Rothbart - Free Book Online Page A

service road, looking for better reception on his cellie so he could call his girlfriend. After the third ring, I picked up. “Hello?”
    There was a silence, then a woman’s voice, half whispering. “Hey there.”
    “Um … hi.”
    “What are you doing?” she asked. This sure wasn’t Peter, and it wasn’t that desk clerk, either. I felt the hairs on my forearms prickle upwards.
    “Well,” I said, “I’m watching the Providence-Niagara game. I think it might go into overtime. Who is this, by the way?”
    “I’m Nicole.” I could hear the push of her breath on the other end of the line, as though her mouth was pressed close to the receiver. I went to the window and peered through the curtains—the parking lot was dark and still. Was this someone’s idea of a joke? Maybe so, but I was just bored and lonely enough to play along.
    “Hi, Nicole. My name’s Davy.”
    “I like that name,” she said.
    “Yeah, it’s a … uh, it’s a good name. Listen, where are you?”
    A pause. “I’m in your motel.” The room seemed to slowly whirl backward, like a carnival ride catching speed. “What are you wearing?” she whispered.
    “Well,” I said, “I’ve got on gray mesh basketball shorts with, let’s see, three thin white stripes down each side, and a Bell’s Pizza T-shirt.” I was quiet for a second, then rushed to fill the silence. “It’s blue. I used to deliver for Bell’s Pizza. We made these shirts for our rec-league basketball team. Hey, I’ve got a question for you. Can I ask you a question? What are you wearing?”
    “Nuh-thing,” she breathed.
    There was a stirring in my gray mesh basketball shorts with the three thin white stripes down each side. Nicole explained that she’d hit the bars all night with her friends, and that now they were drunk and passed out and she was bored. “Pretend you’re here with me,” she said. “I want to tell you what we would do.”
    I’d never had phone sex before. Not that I was opposed to it—it was just one of those things that never came up. I guess it had always seemed sort of strange and silly to me. Real sex was so much more appealing. And in times when that was hard to come by, well, the Internet’s tawdrier recesses offered workable substitutes.
    “If you were here,” Nicole said, “I’d lick your lips. I’d lick you everywhere.” She moaned a little. “I’m fucking myself right now. Tell me what you’re doing.”
    “Umm, touching my privates?” I started touching my privates.
    “I’m sucking your dick right now. Oh yeah, I’m sucking you good . I want you to fuck my mouth like you’re fucking my pussy.”
    Nicole’s dirty talk was both ridiculous and oddly arousing. But a part of me wondered if this was all being recorded, if out in the parking lot, staked out in the back of an ice cream truck that had been pimped into a mobile surveillance unit, friends of mine were listening in, wide-eyed and gleeful, headphones clamped to their ears, having a laugh at my expense. It was hard to be serious. “Nicole,” I said, “I’m grabbing on to your titties! I’m kissing you with reckless abandon! I’m pumping in and out of you, like, well … well, like an oil derrick! Or a piston? I’m the sword, baby, and you’re the scabbard!”
    Eventually, I grew less bashful and got into it for real, and a few minutes later we came to a happy ending. Soon after, we said good night. The basketball game on the TV had ended long before, and I had no idea who’d won.
    At seven thirty the next morning, the phone rang again, jarring me awake; my brother, too. He lifted his head from the pillow and said, “Who the fuck is calling?”
    It was Nicole. “Girl,” I said, “I’m sleeping. Don’t you know what time it is?” I was about to hang up, but then, remembering our little moment of shared bliss a few hours before, I softened. “Look, here’s my cell number. Call me later, okay?”
    *
    A few months earlier, I’d published a book and