Are You Still There?

I'm sitting outside having a smoke with Hendra and Hendra is on the phone with Ratih, his girlfriend. Ratih is always either here in person or on the phone--which these days is almost in person, since you can see the party you're talking to. That was just a fantasy when I was young--like something from a science fiction story. I never really thought that one would be able to see the person he was talking to on the phone. So much has changed. But some things have not changed--things like needing to talk with your love as close to 24 hours a day as possible. I am reminded of how it was with my first girlfriend. When we weren't together, we were on the phone. We were connected through that plastic receiver, pressed to the ear. We could hear each other breathing. We would talk and sometimes we would run out of things to say, so we would listen for a while and then one of us would say "Are you still there?"