Reading Response to Bausch's "1-900"

  This was a tremendous good read. Going into it I knew it was all dialogue and the basic idea of how it was laid out but I didn't expect the plot to be like that. The general plot is this man John calls a phone sex hotline. His lady for the night is Marilyn, or Sharon. When she picks up, she goes through the traditional motions of her job but keeps getting stopped by John because he just wants to have a "conversation". Finally things pick up and they are actually taking, both sharing personal things about one another. Soon after though, John jumps into wanting to have the phone sex, since it came across naturally but Sharon is freaked out by this and ends the conversation.

  This was a very interesting read. Since the whole premise is taking place in phone wires we as a reader have to imagine where they are. We kinda learn that Sharon is in an office doing this job and we can only imagine where John is. I imagine John in his living room with no furniture. He mentions that his wife took a lot of the furniture in the settings of a divorce. But I just imagine John sitting on the floor with various food containers and a little beaten up, hence being thrown down a flight of stairs as he mentioned in the text. As for Sharon, she is in a cubical. All throughout the story she is hesitant to say anything against her jobs protocol.

  I feel as though this story is trying to show the reader that people really sometimes just want to talk. That talking is enough to fill all pleasures a person desires. John and his wife got a divorce mainly because they couldn't talk to each other and Bausch is also stating that have a conversation has become "unconventional". Bausch wants us as a reader to try and get us to break that comfort zone and be unconvention and talk to some people or someone.