I just love pretending to be someone else. I am required to be myself very nearly every day of my life, and boy, does that get boring. It’s a sheer delight and a big relief to get even a tiny break from the nonstop “Joyness” of it all every once in awhile.
I’m talking about minor character appropriations here. My husband’s signature, for instance. I’ve been forging it on documents for decades now. I feel certain that it is my version of his John Hancock, as opposed to his own, that would stand up in court as the legal one, if it ever came to that. I commit this forgery on things like checks and credit card receipts that he’d sign anyway, so I think of the transgression as the “little white lie” of identity fraud. I’m not taking out big loans or life insurance policies or anything nefarious like that. Even with stakes this low, though, I am titillated when I hand a teller a check for cashing that is made out to my husband, endorsed by yours truly, and then the teller BUYS IT. Is this how an Elvis impersonator feels when he zips up the sequined jumpsuit?
I pose as my daughter a few times a year, too. This masquerade is usually related to a tricky, health insurance issue that requires a two-hour-long conference call with the pharmacy/insurer/drug companies during which I’m usually placed on hold for the time it takes to fold a load of clean laundry, and then transferred to half a dozen different customer service representatives. The insurance people think this shuffling around of my call will break me, but on the contrary. I enjoy the opportunity to repeat all of my daughter’s personal details multiple times as if they’re my own. I am solidly off-book with my lines. I really try to inhabit the role, too, using what I imagine…hope…sounds like the voice of a privileged 20-year old college kid who is still on her parents’ insurance. I do sometimes find this particular ruse slightly anxiety-inducing. What if I’m found out? What’s the punishment for this deceit? Would they drop our coverage? That would be very, very bad, and my pharmaceutically-bolstered family would be sunk.
My experience with phone deception is long, of course, because I was a kid in the 70’s and making prank calls is basically what we did for indoor entertainment during the summer back in those Kodachrome days. My buddy, Tammy Butler, had a phone in her bedroom—oh, how I envied her—and we’d spend hours a day back there twisting our skinny little fingers in the rotary dial until they were chaffed from calling our friends, crushes, and random people from the phone book to prank. We’d drop our voices low to ask nonsensical questions about toilets, or pinch up our adenoids to get a nasal tone with which we’d notify our “prankee” of some supposed sweepstakes win. Something about that nasally voice—I don’t know who we thought we were impersonating, but we sure thought it was hilarious.
Tammy and I went on to become great frenemies in high school, an ordeal that served me well later on in college. One summer, I got a job making calls for a political candidate in some sad, sorry local race. Solicitation calls and the people who make them are a vermin, and all I can say is that I must have been seriously hard up to take that job. But don’t you worry. The universe got its revenge on me by making that call center the bleakest place on earth. 99% of my time spent there was in agony. The calls I made were painfully scripted. If some unlucky schmuck answered their phone when I rang, I was to identify myself, query them about their voting plans, and if they were even a little on our team, ask for a donation. The only thing that made this job tolerable at all was the decision I made early on to adopt the persona of one, Tammy Butler. Oh yes, the diabolical glee I got from playing the part of Tammy, shameless southern marketer with her own phone extension, carried me through right up to the election, which our guy lost by a landslide.
As an aside, one day during my shift at the phone bank, I dialed a number—it was my habit to dial the number first, then look at the associated name while the phone was ringing—that belonged to a James Dickey. I thought, “The James Dickey? As in Deliverance James Dickey?” I was in Columbia SC after all, and he was a professor at USC, so it made sense he might be registered to vote in the county. A woman answered, and when I asked to speak to James, she politely asked who was calling. I panicked and gave my very own name. I may have even said the whole thing—like, what’s on the birth certificate. To my surprise, she got the James Dickey, beleaguered and/or drunk-sounding, on the line! I sort of fan-girled-out and stuttered, in my own true voice “Um, Hi. I liked your book. It spooked me.” He took a beat and answered, “OK. Thanks for letting me know.” Then we both hung up. That was the best day of what was otherwise a miserable employment experience. I have no idea who he voted for, though.
My biggest impostering as of late is related to the collection of covers I’ve just recorded and seemingly won’t shut up about. This isn’t a case of straight impersonation, of course. I’m not actually pretending to be or in any way presenting myself as the original penman of the songs. I’m just someone who, like the actual songwriters, can play them. Somehow, though, during the months I spent dissecting the creative work of others, l felt myself existing as someone other than…myself. To be dramatic, it’s like I’ve walked a mile in another’s shoes. A vacation, of sorts. At a few points, I literally may have forgotten that I didn’t actually write these songs. I became the author. Maybe that’s how method acting works. Or maybe I’ve finally slipped over the edge. Wait. you hear those voice, too. Right???
Anyhoo, I’m releasing another one of my something-borrowed-something-new tunes, “Sound and the Fury,” May 28. But you, dear Substack reader, can hear it here today! I love this song, because like all the best ones, I have no idea what the lyrics mean! I can tell you, to get from the original arrangement to my new one, I put this mystifying little ditty through every pace. You might say I drove it like I stole it.
“Sound and the Fury” was originally written and performed by The Reivers on their 1985 LP, Translate Slowly, which I encourage you to search out on your streaming service of choice and listen to on repeat. My reimagining of Translate Slowly, titled, Legendary, is out summer 2025, which I also encourage you to listen to on repeat.
If you still dabble in the dark arts of Meta, I beg you to follow me on IG @thesteelgemini for updates.
The irony of ending up working at the call center is great! When I worked at the copy center in college our "phone voices" were a running joke in the office. We all had different ones but very distinct from our own. This also reminds me that I was mistaken for a woman while on the phone until well into college. Great read!
This is so great as usual! I love that you talked to Dickey. My first job was phone solicitation. I was 14. I cold called folks on behalf of the “lawn doctor” offering “free” lawn evaluations. 10c per lead. It sucked. Haha