51 David and I were out one night recently (yes, we rode there) celebrating our friend’s birthday. At my request, my friend gave me a demo of her iPhone. A veteran thumber, she flipped through a bible’s worth of apps before I could nod in awe of the first one. In her quest to find a particular app, she announced that the very contraption cradled in her fingers had, indeed, changed her life. At first, I was a bit terrified at the thought. I broke out in a cold sweat, trying to figure out how to reply, as I could not decide if I was terrified for her, me, or all of us.
However, the horror lasted all of ten seconds, which ended with me biting my tongue—funny what looking at yourself can save you from. Before I could spit out snarky jests that imaged my friend’s hellish decent into phone douchedom, I had recalled the moment that I admitted the very same thing to this very friend about my bicycle. Now watching my friend expertly navigate the neon glow of her phone, I became reacquainted with the cold feeling of judgmental assholedom. Cooing attentively at the app she had been digging for and was now loading, I realized I’d rather be a phone douche any day than an asshole. It was a moment of epiphanic clarity: one can be a phone douche without being an asshole! “Nice,” I responded to my friend’s thoughtful demo, as if tallying up a point in her favor. Smartphone, here I come.
I realize my beef is with the inability—or refusal—to share or, importantly, receive space that is exacerbated by things like, um, personal technology (arg, that term). I realize not everyone grew up with 6 siblings crammed into a house run like the Pentagon, but, really, what is the psychology behind the phone douche/asshole combo? I was in a bookstore the other day, and I almost went whoop ass on this dude who was carrying on an extremely loud conversation. I customarily read chapters of books before I buy them, and, hello, it was tough to concentrate with this blowhard going off at volume eleven about what an expert he is on Italian cooking. Dude, it is a bookstore, for fuck’s sake! Ah, kinda like a library. The poor person on the other end of the line—I imagined them going, “But, if…” and “Wha…about,” not being able to wedge in a gasp, much less respond. A Bitch of the first degree when called for, I moved in closer to him and started reading books out loud. Soon, I broke out into an English accent, which, much like Keanu Reeves, I can’t pull off for shit. Annoyed that he no longer had an audience, he left. In other words, he could not be ignored, and that is the whole point. Ah, attention. Okay, so, then, what is missing for/within you that you need so much space? And, true that, there are folks that just cannot control the compulsion to constantly check their phones. It is as if you are competing for their presence with Facebook and Twitter posts, like virtual intimacy is safer emotionally than real intimacy. Tough truths to tackle.
So, I get it: if a bike can change my life why not a smartphone my friend’s life. In the hands of a mindful and conscious phone douche, these gadgets can offer as much freedom, joy, and convenience that my bike offers me. While she can access GPS coordinates and maps, I can ride by expensive parking lots and park my bike for free. A wicked killer guitar player, she can track an idea, not only recording it, but fly an app that can identify the chord pattern that just erupted from her fingers. I, by comparison, am flooded with ideas for paintings and writings while riding and do most of my photography from the seat of my bike. I can just imagine what a phone with a decent keypad and a-list voice-recording app can do to sweeten the process. A savvy LA smartphone fuck in the making, I’m off to compare prices on my future telecommunications accessory. And, like my bike, maybe I’ll even name it.
copyright Tess Lotta 2009/WGA
