Longing, the Beloved, and the Phone

I recently taught Dorothy Parker’s hilarious paean to longing: “A Telephone Call.” The premise is as brilliant (and relatable) as it is simple. A narrator awaits a telephone call from the man she is dating. Because it is the 1920s, she must remain at home near the object of her capture and potential release.

The story is structured as a prayer. “Please, God,” she begs, “let him telephone me now. Dear God, let him call me now.” The narrator thus externalizes not only the absent beloved, the one with the power to pick up his damn phone to call her, but also her idea of God, “so white and old,” surrounded by His angelic posse.

In this geometry of desire, only three routes are visible to her . . .

Go through the threshold to learn about how transmuted longing can become a portal into divine flame.

If you wish to reprint (part of) this or to engage for another reason, feel free to reach out here.

Image: Still from Pedro Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), in which several women wait for a man to call them. (Spoiler: he is playing all of them.)