Whatever the reason, my telephone fell off the wall regularly, and I used tape and gum to effect repairs. When the handset gave up, I used my stereo headphones for the receiver. The phone wouldn't ring anymore after I hard-wired my cassette player into the thing.

I had my reasons.

Eventually, there was no other option but to call NY Telephone and avail myself of the free service call, which I had been putting off for seven months.

So, the telephone repair guy comes by and sees what should be a telephone but isn't anymore hanging on the wall by a push pin. It's not as if I could polish this turd, and I was embarrassed because of my bourgeois upbringing and the idea that everybody was judging me. Boy, was I wrong about that.

There was a short pause before he said anything.

"What color do you want, red or black?" "For what?" I ask. "Your new wall phone, I gotta get it out of the truck," I told the guy that I had 10.00, and the rest wasn’t liquid. I was sure I had no money to buy a new phone. "Was there some sort of payment plan?"

"Have you ever had a phone in your name?" He asked, and I had not. "Well, it doesn't cost you anything for the repair and replacement." After a brief pause, he added, "What you did to that piece of equipment, you shouldn't be allowed to have another."

I began explaining the nature of the performance art but stopped when I noticed him staring at the dick in the picture just to the right of the phone.

I had made the image for a media studies assignment, "The Body as Architecture." I took an image of the Empire State Building and did a paste-up with the dick image. I got an A. I think it was a bit too obvious to deserve that grade.

I want to take a picture before you take it," I said. The telephone man said nothing as I took two snaps with my Polaroid Pronto. I handed one to the guy and said, "Maybe show your buddies at work?" He laughed and took it.

He moved to take the phone off the wall but dropped it, which caused the two small steel bells that made up the phone's ringer to break off from the chassis and roll off somewhere... My cats loved those things.

Next time: The Refrigerator