TO-WIT: INTO THE VOID (PART TWO)
There was no doubt about it, I was hooked on the fax machine. At first I thought it was infatuation, but ooh, it lasted so long. I was enchanted by it, I revered it, I even fondled it on occasion. There is, however, no substance to the current rumor that I bout it a present.
Offering first one lame excuse and then another, I snuck out of the house every evening and went down to the office where I faxed myself into a state of exhaustion. The night seemed to heighten the pleasure as the darkness cloaked my rapture from too many prying eyes.
It stuck me as significant that this could be purely a unilateral pastime, a primal act of contact requiring no one else’s consent. Unlike using the modem of a computer, it did not require someone or something to be actively receptive, switched on, in the mood, as it were. The simple presence of a passive, mechanically disinterested receptor at the other end was all that was actually necessary to insure a satisfying conclusion of the link-up. It was not at all unlike several relationships I have had, the primary difference being that, after a hard night at the fax machined, next morning at least I could eat breakfast alone in peace and quiet. Isn’t technology swell?
In short order, the fax machine became my principal means of communicating with other lawyers. To one opposing counsel with whom I had a dispute over an arcane matter of procedure, I photocopied and then faxed off seven complete volumes of Standard Pennsylvania Practice the better by which to make my point. “Now what do you think of your position,” I wrote mockingly on the cover sheet.
He called the next day and offered as how he thought I might be right, but would I mind faxing him the remaining thirty-two volumes of the set, just to seal off his last lingering bit of doubt?
To another colleague with whom I had been negotiating a marital settlement agreement in a divorce involving people of extremely modest means, I ebulliently faxed off copies of dozens of different agreements that I had used in previous cases.
“Pick whichever agreement best satisfies your client,” I all too generously instructed, trying to maintain the spirit of friendliness which had heretofore characterized this litigation.
He followed my directions to the letter, picking the agreement that provided monthly alimony payments twice in excess of my client’s annual income. I had a good laugh about that one until he filed a petition to enforce the agreement.
You’d think all of this might have caused me to become substantially daunted, but no. To the contrary, still enraptured by this newly discovered power to project myself willy-nilly into the ether, I persisted with devilish abandon. Then one night, right in the middle of yet another nocturnal transmission, this time the faxing off of all forty-three pages of a recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion to a colleague I thought might possibly need some enlightenment on the subject of Indian treaties, my fax machine went on the warpath. It shut down completely and no peace offering that I could conjure up seemed to placate it. I checked the plug, I checked the breaker box, and then, having exhausted my reserve of things I knew to check, I fell back on old habits – I kicked it.
Now there were two things wrong with that course of conduct, completely aside from a deficiency of logic. First, the machine was at desk height, obliging me to put my leg through a range of motion it had not experienced since many years before when I had tried to impress a date by telling her I was Garo Yapremian. Second, like other machines it has been my misfortune to know, it did not at all take kindly to being kicked, and it evidenced its displeasure by separating into several distinct pieces.
“What exactly happened to this piece of equipment?” the repairman inquired of me the next day.
“It fell down a flight of stairs,” I told him.
It is my earnest suspicion that the repairman did not fully accept my explanation, for a few days later, my secretary came into my office to announce that I had an unscheduled visitor. Before she could utter another word, the stranger had elbowed past her and stood glaring at me from across my desk.
“I am Miss Ogenist,” she informed me, “and I am from your phone company. We’ve had a report that you’ve been abusing your fax.”
“Hey,” I replied, “I’m a lawyer, that’s my job.” You could always count on me for a clever retort, even under fire, but she ignored my little play on words and continued.
“Mother Bell does not approve, and if it happens one more time, I will personally remove your fax forthwith.”
With that, she swooped up her considerable girth and was gone, pausing at my front door only long enough to pass some remark about how cads like me ought to be excluded in perpetuity from any link in the reproductive chain.
With that threat hanging over me, it was hard to find any joy in self-extension, and I have once again receded into self-containment. As if it had come full cycle, the same childhood memory that triggered this reminiscence has returned. While I can hazard a guess as to how Ma Bell found out, I will never know for certain how my own mother learned of my effusiveness. Despite the differing circumstances and the passage of many years, it seems remarkable to me how similar their responses were, the essential difference being that, if I absolutely had to, I could live without my fax.
© 1989, S. Sponte, Esq.