The Era of Telephone Ring Porno

Sometimes he would call up a friend not to talk to them, but just to make their phone ring. He liked the idea of the phone ringing at someone's house, particularly if he knew they were not at home. It was a sort of like telephone ring porno. He'd call up Francois, and he'd start Francois's phone ringing, and he'd put his phone on speaker and listen to the ring noise, and imagine Francois's phone musically warbling in an empty house for 10 - 20 minutes. He'd do this to all his friends. 10 minutes here, 15 there, 30 minutes occasionally. Then people noticed that the phone was busy when people were gone, and it shouldn't be busy. It was happening regularly, in a creepy pattern, as if the CIA or some conspiracy was occurring, but they never suspected it was ringtone porno. Then answering machines started to become commonplace, and as his friends gradually adopted them, he'd have to leave a message. One day, all his friends in Seattle had answering machines. An Era had ended.