Remember when you used to spin your rolodex, dial a number and either get the person or get a busy signal? It was called making a phone call. Now, you get an email that asks when is a good time to call. Or an email that asks to set up a phone call. Or my favorite, an email that says: call me. Call me? Or a text that says you can’t talk right now. Or a text that says you’ll call later. Remember pink message slips? Those adorable boxes you’d check off: returned your call, will call back, eat me, and so forth. In L.A., assistants say, “I don’t have him right now.” Or, “let me see if I have him.” And by this I believe they mean they can patch you through to their boss who is pulling his Porsche out of an In and Out while shoving a few burgers down his throat. Or am I projecting? A call is no longer something you can just make. YOu have to email first, then text, friend, tweet, run the receiver between your breasts and paint the ceiling sky milk glass blue. Are you there god, it’s me Betsy. My mother has a cell phone she can neither dial nor field calls from. A lady on the train has a ring tone from a Barry White song.
When I was a little girl, I’d visit my dad’s lumber yard. A lady named Ann Esposito was the switch board operator. When a call came in she’d say things like “hold the wire please,” or “please allow me to connect you,” and pull a snake like cord from the switch board and plug it into a hole and push a lever; I found the whole thing insanely exciting. And because I was the boss’ daughter, from time to time I’d get to sit on her lap and pull the snake-like cord and plug it into the big board. Heaven!
Why has calling someone become such a freak show?
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It looks like I qualify for some ads on WordPress. I have no idea what they’ll be. I’m hoping for double dildos, fur purses, Camel Lights, Cartier “Saphire” blue lacquer pens, Betsey Johnson intimates, Ben and Jerry’s Mint Oreo, Showcase Cinemas, Apple, Trident Layers, and Lancome Porcelain Concealer. I want to be clear: I have always been in favor of selling out if it’s for money. If I make billions with these ads, I should add, I will use it for good. If I make fifty bucks, I’ll probably buy a quaalude and go to a movie. And buy Milk Duds.
Do you ever feel like you’re fucking insane with this writing shit? Or totally alone. Or happily alone. Or jerking off more than a teenage boy? Or bff’s with the dental technician because you can’t stop grinding your teeth. Or spending a writing weekend organizing your ribbon box. Or imagining yourself in a three way with the dry cleaner and his pretty wife. How many notebooks have you lost? Filled. Did you drink the Dead Sea? Did you explode a balloon of red blood? Hammer your foot to the floor. Did you cry out in aisle six because you could not find Product 19? Could not name the states and her capitals. Her birds. I watched my wife wipe the table with a sponge and wondered if I still loved her. How many novels stopped dead in their tracks at page 60, 30, 10, 1? How many days do you get to you enjoy all the flaws on your body? What were you doing at sixteen? Making love with boy who wanted to be a writer? Was that a found poem or a lost cause? Why do you think you’re special? Gifted? Talented? Deluded? Sad? No one gets out alive. I wish I were here with better news.
In a recent New York Magazine story about Michael Lewis called 
America has voted. The most popular opening line: 
Dudes, you really know how to throw down the first sentences. You are one big group of generous motherfuckers and I love you all. But enough of that. As anyone who reads my blog and then submits work to me knows: there is Betsy the Blogger, full of sunshine and light, and there is Betsy the Agent, cruel taskmaster. And as an agent, these are the sentences that most interested me (not in any ranking), and that made me want to read more. I want to say that I’m not necessarily prone to simple sentences, though all of these are simple on the surface. Each of these openers set a stage through tone, voice, detail, mood. They make a statement. That’s what I’m looking for. I want a first sentence to take me somewhere.
I went to the Pumpkin Bowl at my daughter’s school today. The kids were decked out in their costumes and totally pumped. WHenever I go to any school event, I always feel weirdly fragile and often on the verge of tears. It’s hard to locate the feeling exactly. I think it’s from some combination of seeing so much joy and of watching people participate so fully that I can’t take it in, as if all that life were a tidal wave threatening my shore. I think it’s also because I couldn’t partake when I was young, and in part because I still can’t. Then they played this game.
Hello,
Betsy Lerner 