Sarah Lawrence College has had no figure perhaps more legendary than the It’s Me Guy, a prank caller whose moniker came from his opening line-“Hey, it’s me.” His hope was that, upon reaching a female (70 percent of the campus), his voice and manner would resemble that of the most prominent man in the target’s life: boyfriend, best guy friend or, God help us, philosophy professor. After luring the callee into a false sense of familiarity, the It’s Me Guy would steer the conversation onto a decidedly more sexual path, until the victim realized who she was talking to and hung up.
I don’t remember when I first heard about the It’s Me Guy. His reputation was so synonymous with my college experience that I wouldn’t be surprised if a warning about him arrived with the orientation packet sent to incoming freshmen. No one knew the It’s Me Guy’s identity.The school’s phone system routed all calls through the switchboard, making tracing impossible. Though we joked of solemn rituals performed in dorm-building basements in the dark, or the passing of the campus phone directory from departing senior to promising lower-classman, most likely he was someone who lived off campus, knew the basic pattern of our dorm phone numbers and never tired of his own gimmick.
Because aside from the initial statement, he wasn’t a clever prankster. Eventually, the It’s Me Guy wanted to know what you were wearing. But the thing that makes Sarah Lawrence unique—supported even by its motto, “You are different, so are we”—is its relentlessly anachronistic student body. Far from fearing the It’s Me Guy, most of the girls I knew wanted to hear from him. We listened in breathless silence as a classmate described a 45-minute session before realizing she wasn’t speaking to her boyfriend. She may have shrugged afterward like it was no big deal, but she glowed with the smug reassurance of the chosen. The It’s Me Guy was so vaunted, he should have been the campus mascot. Instead of the mystical gryphon, the basketball team’s jerseys could have sported a telephone with the receiver held by a black silhouette with a question mark over the face.
My first encounter with the It’s Me Guy came through my roommate, when he called our room during our freshman year. She realized within moments who was calling and waved in our hall mates. He asked her, did she know him?
She played along. “Are you that guy in my French class who’s always asleep?” We giggled.
He murmured assent.
“Yeah, you sound tired,” she replied. It was too much. Her hand clamped over the receiver could not keep out our laughter, and the It’s Me Guy, disgusted, hung up. He wanted no willing participants, no indulgences.
It would be two years before I’d hear from him again. In the meantime, there had been a play, written by a student, examining his psyche. My roommate received a hostile but juvenile voicemail of someone chanting “bitch” into the phone while a kid laughed in the background. A local flasher was rumored to have been apprehended; then the gossip said it was only a copycat flasher, and we worried anew. The It’s Me Guy faded from thought.
My junior year he returned, to me and me alone. The summer before, I had broken up with my boyfriend of three years and was beginning to regret the fact that while we were together I had enrolled in a school that was 70 percent female (or at least 70 percent who identified themselves as such). At the urging of a friend, I tried online dating, but I had little success. One of my digital suppliants was an Ambien abuser who liked to call late at night and make noises into the phone—so calls from strange males were not unheard of.
Ring, ring.
“Hello?”
A male voice, accented with what I would later come to know as “Deep Brooklyn,” said, “Hey, it’s me.”
“Who?” My heart stuttered. The males I met on the Internet had my cell phone number, not my dorm phone. Who had found me?
“Ed,” he said.
Ed, I couldn’t remember any Ed from the Internet. I asked him how he had gotten my number. He told me I had given it to him.
“When?” I asked.
“At a party,” he said, “last Friday. We met at a party.”
Everything snapped into focus: his opening, the common name and the fact that he had so little to say while I worked to establish his identity. It was the It’s Me Guy. My day had come. Relief flooded my body while “Ed” got to the main part of the show.
“I’m surprised you don’t remember me, actually,” he said, “We got a little intimate after that party.”
I started laughing. “Buddy,” I said, “now I know you’re lying. I haven’t been intimate with anyone in so long…”
“How long?” he asked, and I could almost hear him sitting up straighter in his chair. “How long has it been since you’ve been intimate?”
I hung up. I had been broadcasting my relationship woes across campus in a column in the student newspaper, but for some reason I didn’t want to discuss it with a stranger. “Ed” didn’t call back, and I wasn’t sorry.
In retrospect, my two encounters with the It’s Me Guy are consistent: He didn’t want to stay on the phone merely for his targets’ entertainment. And when I said something honest, and personal, he became excited, wanting to continue the conversation. I didn’t see the play that explored the It’s Me Guy’s motivations, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was about how he’s looking for some kind of authentic connection, ignoring the irony in his tactics.
I still find it strange that “Ed” sounded genuinely interested in my sexual inactivity. Why prod for details of the long, dry nights when there were plenty of other women on campus whose cups ranneth over with partners of both genders? How long has it been since you’ve been intimate, Ed? I mean really intimate, with someone who knows your real name?
I don’t remember when I first heard about the It’s Me Guy. His reputation was so synonymous with my college experience that I wouldn’t be surprised if a warning about him arrived with the orientation packet sent to incoming freshmen. No one knew the It’s Me Guy’s identity.The school’s phone system routed all calls through the switchboard, making tracing impossible. Though we joked of solemn rituals performed in dorm-building basements in the dark, or the passing of the campus phone directory from departing senior to promising lower-classman, most likely he was someone who lived off campus, knew the basic pattern of our dorm phone numbers and never tired of his own gimmick.
Because aside from the initial statement, he wasn’t a clever prankster. Eventually, the It’s Me Guy wanted to know what you were wearing. But the thing that makes Sarah Lawrence unique—supported even by its motto, “You are different, so are we”—is its relentlessly anachronistic student body. Far from fearing the It’s Me Guy, most of the girls I knew wanted to hear from him. We listened in breathless silence as a classmate described a 45-minute session before realizing she wasn’t speaking to her boyfriend. She may have shrugged afterward like it was no big deal, but she glowed with the smug reassurance of the chosen. The It’s Me Guy was so vaunted, he should have been the campus mascot. Instead of the mystical gryphon, the basketball team’s jerseys could have sported a telephone with the receiver held by a black silhouette with a question mark over the face.
My first encounter with the It’s Me Guy came through my roommate, when he called our room during our freshman year. She realized within moments who was calling and waved in our hall mates. He asked her, did she know him?
She played along. “Are you that guy in my French class who’s always asleep?” We giggled.
He murmured assent.
“Yeah, you sound tired,” she replied. It was too much. Her hand clamped over the receiver could not keep out our laughter, and the It’s Me Guy, disgusted, hung up. He wanted no willing participants, no indulgences.
It would be two years before I’d hear from him again. In the meantime, there had been a play, written by a student, examining his psyche. My roommate received a hostile but juvenile voicemail of someone chanting “bitch” into the phone while a kid laughed in the background. A local flasher was rumored to have been apprehended; then the gossip said it was only a copycat flasher, and we worried anew. The It’s Me Guy faded from thought.
My junior year he returned, to me and me alone. The summer before, I had broken up with my boyfriend of three years and was beginning to regret the fact that while we were together I had enrolled in a school that was 70 percent female (or at least 70 percent who identified themselves as such). At the urging of a friend, I tried online dating, but I had little success. One of my digital suppliants was an Ambien abuser who liked to call late at night and make noises into the phone—so calls from strange males were not unheard of.
Ring, ring.
“Hello?”
A male voice, accented with what I would later come to know as “Deep Brooklyn,” said, “Hey, it’s me.”
“Who?” My heart stuttered. The males I met on the Internet had my cell phone number, not my dorm phone. Who had found me?
“Ed,” he said.
Ed, I couldn’t remember any Ed from the Internet. I asked him how he had gotten my number. He told me I had given it to him.
“When?” I asked.
“At a party,” he said, “last Friday. We met at a party.”
Everything snapped into focus: his opening, the common name and the fact that he had so little to say while I worked to establish his identity. It was the It’s Me Guy. My day had come. Relief flooded my body while “Ed” got to the main part of the show.
“I’m surprised you don’t remember me, actually,” he said, “We got a little intimate after that party.”
I started laughing. “Buddy,” I said, “now I know you’re lying. I haven’t been intimate with anyone in so long…”
“How long?” he asked, and I could almost hear him sitting up straighter in his chair. “How long has it been since you’ve been intimate?”
I hung up. I had been broadcasting my relationship woes across campus in a column in the student newspaper, but for some reason I didn’t want to discuss it with a stranger. “Ed” didn’t call back, and I wasn’t sorry.
In retrospect, my two encounters with the It’s Me Guy are consistent: He didn’t want to stay on the phone merely for his targets’ entertainment. And when I said something honest, and personal, he became excited, wanting to continue the conversation. I didn’t see the play that explored the It’s Me Guy’s motivations, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was about how he’s looking for some kind of authentic connection, ignoring the irony in his tactics.
I still find it strange that “Ed” sounded genuinely interested in my sexual inactivity. Why prod for details of the long, dry nights when there were plenty of other women on campus whose cups ranneth over with partners of both genders? How long has it been since you’ve been intimate, Ed? I mean really intimate, with someone who knows your real name?
