A court-room guide to courting:
When and how to expose your contradiction


A Ramblin' Gamblin' Willie story by Greg Swann


"Judge Wright's office," the not-quite-functionary voice said
over the telephone.

"Is this the office of Judge Susan Webber Wright? The judge in
the Paula Jones case?" I said that.

"That's right. How may I direct your call?"

"I'm not sure. Without intending to pun, I'm trying to get a
handle on the new rules."

"New rules?"

"It doesn't do to cross the feds, does it? What I need to know
is, am I _expected_ to expose myself? Is it required, or just
excused?"

There was a dead silence on the other end of the phone, a
silence thicker than an appellate brief.

I said, "It's a hard problem, isn't it? Oops!--I punned again.
But we're raised with the expectation that certain kinds of
conduct are not just boorish, not just offensive, but criminal.
Then poof! All that's gone. What do I do now?"

"...Why can't you do what you've been doing all along?"

"Well that's an argument, but the entire history of American
justice is that everything we've ever done has to be changed
overnight because some judge says so. So what I want to know is,
do I have to expose myself?"

Again the silence, with maybe just a hint of suppressed
laughter.

"If I have to do it, do I have to do it more than once? And if I
_do_ do it more than once, is that a crime? What if I do it only
once with each different woman? Is that a crime or am I just
being ham-handed, so to speak?"

The spitzing sound of concealed laughter was unconcealed. Game
girl, this not-quite-functionary.

"What if I expose myself to you over the telephone? Does that
count?"

"How can I know if you're exposing yourself if I can't see you?"

I said, "That's a good question. But _I'll_ certainly feel
better about it. How about this, though? It occurred to me that
the laws I'm thinking of are against _public_ exposure..."

"Yeah. So?"

"So what if I expose myself on a conference call? Is that a
crime?"

She laughed out loud. "How did you get this number?"

"On the internet. Where else? And that's another question. I
think the subject matter of this call is technically obscene,
but I'm not getting any pleasure out of it. The truth is, I'm
embarrassed that I have to ask these kinds of questions. Is it
an obscene phone call if I'm not enjoying myself?"

"I--uh... I--uh..."

"Take your time. Laws and sausages, all that stuff. Oh no,
another pun."

She said, "Is there a number where I can reach you?"

"I'm calling from a pay-phone. Deliberately."

"I know that; we have caller ID. Is there a number where I can
reach you?" The not-quite-functionary's voice was
not-quite-sultry. "You know... after hours."

"This is making me uncomfortable."

"You have a strange outlook on things. I'd kinda like to... get
to know you better."

"This is making me uncomfortable. That's sexual harassment, at
least by the old definition. If I feel harassed, I am harassed.
Unless you're the president."

"I'm not the president, hon," she said, not-quite-sultrily. "But
I _am_ exposing myself..."

"Oh. Great."

Throughout this whole mess, I've heard one pundit after another
spouting about the end of the day. "At the end of the day--blah,
blah, blah." "At the end of the day--yak, yak, yak." The true
fact is that at the end of the day--it's dark. And when it's
dark and you're assailed and assaulted and harassed, you have no
one to fall back on but yourself. So I did what I had to do: I
hung up.