Somebody Loan Me a Dime

'I'm in a phone booth baby... got your number scratched on the wall...' The moment we all radio-heard Robert Cray sing those lyrics over two basic minor chords... well... it was an instant urban classic... so good even Albert King had to do a version.  I had to run out and buy that album-- not just because Robert sang those lines with authority and played like he meant it,  but because every one of us in the 1980's had had a phone-booth moment.  The vintage, 10-cent variety from the song.  

Not a few of us mourned the recent removal of the last public phone in the city.  The booth thing-- well it had been 21st-century minimized into a sort of 3-sided metal stall-- no glass, no funk, no soul. Not much privacy... not much use.  You could bet on some discarded lunch-garbage or worse on the little shelf.  You could also bet the line was dead-- cord vandalized, coin return mangled by some desperate junkie hoping to retrieve some change.  Not an appetizing thing to put the plastic receiver to your ear, especially with pandemic awareness.  In its favor, the thing was still weighty-- solid.

The very first time I made a pay-phone call I had to stand on the phonebooks to reach the dial.  Yes, there were phonebooks placed there in the old days... sometimes with chains, sometimes without. Who would steal a phone book?  They were free.  My Mom put dimes in our little penny-loafers so we could use them in an emergency.  I knew a few numbers in case she wasn't home-- there were neighbors, aunts and uncles.  You didn't call your father at work-- ever.  

The best booths were inside buildings... the train station-- airports... they had wooden sides and a little seat.  The door folded in and didn't fog up so much.  I got my first job acceptance from a phone booth...   there was even a free number you'd dial to get the exact time and still get your dime back.  Information was free.  When I ran away from home in high school I called my boyfriend and wept inside a phone booth.  I learned the sex of my baby boy from a payphone call... in Italy I learned to use gettone to wake up my secret lover six hours behind.  The studio where my first band rehearsed had no bell; you'd call from the street and they'd come and let you in.  I knew the number of the backstage phone at the Beacon theatre; the stage hands would let me in to see a show.  I sheltered from hurricane-force rain in one on Madison Avenue, collapsed there after being mugged.  I witnessed a pervert press himself against the glass while I was talking...  a girl change her entire outfit, like Superman... make-up and all... and yes, once in the UK (the best booths of all) I had sex with my husband in a phone box. 

I've personally written a small pile of songs about making calls from the street... I still don't carry a cellphone and for years have noticed the lyrical malaise of songwriting in general... the aching, the separation- the voice.  It's heartbreaking, in a way.. the things that are missing.  Hello, Baby?  Or the Muddy Waters... Sounds like a long distance call... and Here Comes my Baby flashing her new gold tooth... just to rhyme.  The Primitive Radio Gods song would never have broken hearts in this day of mobile phones.   

I, too, have written the poems-- from the Chelsea Hotel to 125th Street-- short stories and vignettes... witnessed infidelities, confided and confessed... I could have given a tour of the city from downtown to uptown with a caption for every phone booth.  I wish someone had made a film-- like Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer where he goes from pool to pool in Los Angeles.  No more.  The Colin Farrell movie remake will have to be re-staged; the next generation won't 'get it' anyway.  And when you see someone on the sidewalk you want to avoid, there is no hiding place.  

Noir films will never be the same... the streetlamp-light and the desperate tearful hang-up with the metallic ring-echo in the slam. The sound of coins dropping.  The little bucket that held your change.  One of my friends had a Twitter post... about how it was a little sad to see the last public phone be removed.   Me-- I'm deeply grieving... watched Manhattan the other night... in black and white they look especially good.  Poor old Woody Allen had his share of not just cinematic booths but undoubtedly real-life phone-drama.  And these calls were not traceable.  Drug deals were often completed... meetings set up.  People banged on the door after 3 minutes and lurked and threatened.  

When I lived in the UK a record collector asked me to get him a pay-phone from New York.  We had the whole thing shipped over and he set it up in his studio.  It cost a small fortune but he loved it.  I wonder if it's still there... if he's still alive, if that phone-box on the corner of Acton and Graham is still there-- the one where I sat up all night trying to decide whether to leave my British husband, waiting for the morning church bells and for the endless London rain to stop. 

Deborah Harry knows what it's like to be desperate in a phone booth... but maybe the all-time killer is the Fenton Robinson lyric, immortalized by Boz Scaggs among others... 'Somebody loan me a dime... I need to call my old time, used to be.'  If it were only that simple.