1-900: Deep truths from a convoluted mind

When I finished “1-900” by Richard Bausch, the overwhelming feeling that filled me was disgust or annoyance toward the protagonist caller, John T. Bailey. I think his separated wife was correct when she said that he “twisted things around in [his] head,” coming to conclusions that hurt himself, leading to him blaming her for all their troubles. She also said he was a “morbid, convoluted son of a bitch,” which I also must agree with after finishing the story. At the end of the story, when the phone sex professional “Marilyn” says bye to John, he tells her enthusiastically that that was the sexy tone he had been searching for the whole time. Nothing turns him on more than the poor woman saying goodbye—surely John is a morbid, convoluted s.o.b.

Nevertheless, he brings us through some meaningful reflections during the course of his exchange with Marilyn. He opens the eyes of the reader to the twisted, backwards reality of professional sex. Like a normal person, John is not comfortable with being sexually involved (“intimate,” he says) with someone before even remotely knowing anything about her. Marilyn, in a complete ideological reversal of thought, only feels comfortable doing sex with someone she doesn’t remotely know. To her, comfort is found in the non-emotional, business-like way she handles her sex phone calls. When John says he wants to get to know her a little before they become intimate, she laughs and says, “Intimate? You’re kidding, right?”

Bausch uses these two characters with opposing ideologies to point out that sex can mean different things depending on the context. While, as John points out, Marilyn’s profession is completely unconventional, I find it hard to sympathize with John personally, because his thoughts are convoluted. At first, it seems like he is full of wisdom, and like he is leading us in a direction of important revelations and personal sexual ideas, but the story leaves us puzzled by John’s strangeness. While I completely agree that sex should be intimate, and should “mean something,” I can’t sympathize with John.