I was in love with her voice and didn’t want that call to ever end

By David McElroy · January 31, 2020

I was already in love with her voice, so I would have done anything to stay on the phone with her that day. I didn’t care what we talked about. I just didn’t want her to hang up the phone.

But that was more than five years ago.

I find myself in an unusual part of town right now. It’s somewhere I rarely come anymore. But as I exited I-59 and turned down a street that felt quite seedy, I wasn’t thinking about why I had come or even about the dangerous neighborhood. I was having a flashback to the last time I was here.

And now I‘m sitting in a darkened parking lot. Waves of emotions are washing over me as I experience what I felt that day. If I close my eyes, I can imagine she’s still on the phone with me right now — just as she was that day.

I was in love with her. I was in love with her voice. Everything about her intoxicated me. And I would have done anything for that call to last for the rest of my life.

We talked about personality theories that day, especially in relation to working styles. We talked about something that had happened to her at work that day. We talked about a dozen things. Maybe more. I didn’t care what we talked about. I just wanted to hear her voice.

I had never told her that I loved her, but the love I had already developed for her kept bubbling over in me. As I listened to her beautiful and mesmerizing voice — a voice that was smooth and beautiful and soothing to my heart — I kept wanting to whisper to her, “I love you.”

She could have been talking about power tools or international trade or the plot-line of a television soap opera. I didn’t care. I just wanted to listen to her. I wanted her to listen to me. I wanted to be a part of an exchange of hearts and minds which I hadn’t felt for years.

As I sit here tonight, it’s as though she’s here with me again. Just because I’ve been driving on streets where this conversation happened, it’s as though part of me is in 2020 and part of me is in 2014 — like something that might happen if a time portal opened up and held me halfway between the two points in time.

She hadn’t yet told me on that afternoon that she loved me, either. I wanted her to love me. I needed her to love me. I longed for her heart to feel the same things that I was feeling. I ached for her to want to touch me, to hold me and to build a future with me.

I needed her to love me as much as I loved her. Nothing else mattered.

I don’t want to leave here right now. I’ve fallen into a time bubble where I can still hear her voice and she still wants to talk with me. I don’t want this call to end. I never wanted that call to end.

The part of me which is in 2020 wants to reach out to the part of her which is in 2014 and beg her not to ever hang up that phone.

I’m sitting here cold and alone in the dark tonight — with my warm heart overflowing with burning love from that day — and I still don’t want this call to ever end. I don’t want her voice to go away.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

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Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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