“There’s a phone call for you,”

“What? How could that be?” I was staying in a boarding house on the corner of Poplar and Atlantic in Wildwood, NJ. No one but my best friend Debbie knew I was there, and Debbie was there with me. Two adventuring teenagers in total control.

“Are you sure it’s for me?”

“Yes, they asked for you by name,” said the proprietor, a near worn-out lady of Irish descent who looked to be in her fifties, but was probably only thirty. Irene was tough, but cordial. I could see she was annoyed at having to walk up three flights of stairs to inform me of the call. There were no cell phones, no texting, back in ‘75.

Feeling guilty and very apprehensive, I followed Irene down
a back staircase into the kitchen where a pale blue dial-up clung like sky to earth on a wall of peeling paper, browned and yellowed from cooking grease and smoke. All around lay Irene’s secret garden; messy with dirty pots and pans, strewn newspapers and ashtrays filled with crushed cigarettes. It was from this space that Deb and I received our daily buttered bread.

Back home, I was not permitted to speak on the phone unless the call had something to do with school, and even then it would have to be very brief. My parent’s telephone, a lifeline for my mom’s incessant gossip, doubled as my father’s business horn and had to be kept open at all times or so I was told. That story, I’d later surmise, was probably man- ufactured as a way to prevent me from having any sort of social life. All along, the business had a separate line.

I ended up in Wildwood after high school because it was re- quired (in my family) to leave home, at 18, either for college, a job or marriage. Considering I hated school, had already been working since age 12, and never wanted to marry, I opted to va- moose with my best friend to the Jersey shore and never look back.

Apprehensively, I picked up the receiver. I knew it wouldn’t be either of my parents. Even a family emergency wouldn’t warrant a costly long distance call. It wouldn’t be any of my siblings. We weren’t close enough to speak with each other except for an occasional grunt. And although I met a few people on the boardwalk, it never occurred to me that Irene had a phone so I couldn’t possibly have given the number out. And I don’t recall telling anyone where I was staying. This call was a genuine mystery.

The connection was clear and clean, but what came over the line was a shock that echoes in my ear to this day. It was a long string of high-pitched almost human-like gibberish that sounded like a tape-recorded voice played backwards at fast speed, and there were no breaks in the delivery. The experience lolled me into a trance and completely curtailed my ability to speak. I don’t know how long I was on the line. But finally, something deep inside said ‘just hang up’ and with a slow and heavy arm, I placed the receiver back into its cradle, turned and walked upstairs.

I never discussed the call with anyone, not even Debbie; it was too scary, and yet the incident never left me. I can still recall clearly its eeriness and over the years, I’ve tried to figure out what the call might have meant; who exactly it was on the other end, and why me? Was it some kind of joke? With much contemplation and some recent online searching, I’ve come up with only one possibility, something even I find hard to believe.

According to New Scientist, if you want to contact an extra-terrestrial, it can be done today by phone. For a premium rate, you can dial up an alien from central Connecticut via www.Talk-ToAliens.com. It’s only $3.99 a minute. In ‘75, I may have gotten connected from Wildwood for no money. Those crossed wires cost me a lifetime of mild but gnaw- ing paranoia. Was I about to be abducted? Or had I already been abducted and let loose, and was this the check-in? Is there some sort of tracer in me? And will that call or something even worse happen someday again?