voices carry

six short stories about sound/voices:

1/ I met a man on the internet. It was about a year ago now, far enough off in the distant past that I can laugh about it. I should have known it was going to be a gong show from the get go. The one glaring clue that I didn’t pick up on was this: He hated the sound of his own voice.
You don’t need to know the gross details of our too-good-to-be-true (that’s TGTBT in cyber-language. ha!) on-line courtship. We had chatted for weeks, exchanged pictures, discovered mutual acquaintances in the city etc. However, we had not spoken on the phone.
I told him that I would call him on the morning of our first date to confirm my arrival time. He flatly refused. He said that it would be more ‘exciting’ to meet without hearing the sound of each other’s voice. I should have known that some sort of trouble was afoot, but I agreed.
Ten o’clock on a Friday morning, I arrived at cyber-guy’s house - and the romance quickly began to fall out of grace.
Ding-dong! I pressed the doorbell, shifting absent-mindedly from one foot to another. The door opened. He was much shorter than he had claimed, and much thinner too. But that was not what I found disappointing.
“Hi Angie. Nice to finally meet you. C’mon in”.
I think my cheeks flushed right there. NO ONE calls me Angie without permission. And his voice. Eeep. He sounded like Quentin Tarintino and Woody Allen rolled into one. At first, I couldn’t tell if he was eating his words ot of nervousness, or this was just the way he was.
Conversation in my car proved that he was definitely a word eater. He wasn’t stupid, or completely dull, for that matter, he just couldn’t commit to a sentence. It made me wonder what else he couldn’t commit to. Things were not looking well.
We parked out at Horseshoe Bay, and I decided to try a little language psychology on him. I began to speak in the same way as he did. I formed words in my mouth and then swallowed them back nervously. The words I did get out, I pushed through my nasal cavity. I fidgeted with my body, I fidgeted with the sounds on my tongue. It felt horrible.
I wasn’t trying to mock him - I was actually trying to make him feel more relaxed. I wanted him to feel like I could ‘speak his language’. No such luck. So, I moved onto the reverse-psychology. I spoke slowly and deeply, carefully forming words in my chest and confidently projecting them through my mouth. This did nothing to help he and I connect.
Plain and simply, I couldn’t get past his voice. I never thought that I could be judgmental about something like this - and I never put ‘good voice’ on my dating criteria list. Heck, I don’t think I had ever stopped to consider what a ‘good voice’ was.
His nervousness, lack of confidence, whininess and sneakiness all came out in his voice. I never had to worry about calling him back to deny him a second date - he wouldn’t leave a message on my answering machine.

2/ “It’s colder than a woman’s heart out there” he said to me as he shook off his umbrella and removed his trench coat.
I was sitting at a local bar in the middle of November. I thought I’d have a drink by myself. This stranger had other plans for me.
He must have been at least 70 years old. His face was a spider web of wrinkles and broken blood vessels. He walked with a limp, but there was something oddly agile about him.
He made himself comfortable on the bar stool next to me and ordered himself a whisky on the rocks.
He had one of those voices that forces its way into your chest. He spoke low and even. None of his sentences turned up at the ends, even if they were questions. Everything was black or white. Decades of smoking DuMarier’s had ravaged his throat, giving his words a gruff timbre. On any regular night at the pub, I wouldn’t have been able to make out his voice over the pop music or hockey game being broadcast through the bar - but it was a Tuesday night, and the pop music had been exchanged for some classic rock and the volume had been turned down considerably.
The stranger told me about his early years, working as a fisherman, told me about his sons and his wife who had passed away eight years ago. He plodded through his words, repeating the story that he had decided was the story of his life. This was a story that he had told many times. This was the story that he felt was worth repeating to strangers in unnamed pubs across town.

3/ It made me furious. Whenever her boyfriend came in the room, her voice changed. Normally, her voice, though high pitched, was melodic and strong. She had one of those voices that truly mirrored her personality. Her voice was a loveable roller-coaster ride. It gently slowed and sped, rose and dropped with ease and purpose. She and I would talk excitedly for hours - sitting in coffee shops, living rooms, parks, driving in cars. The conversation was never boring. She was a strong woman with strong passions and a voice that made you want to learn to sing.
But, when her new boyfriend came around, she became small. The roller coaster was replaced with a childish carictature of herself. She spoke only in singsongy baby voices, curling her lips with coyness and mischief. She pursed her lips together and opened her eyes wide, waiting for his instructions and orders. When he was around, her voice rose and octave and lost any of its driving projection. Her words turned into tiny clouds that crawled their way into your ears.
I couldn’t stand it. It made me furious to listen to how small she made herself.

4/ I ended up working for a few days on an organic farm up near Pemberton. It was a family farm. 500 acres, 12 horses, 30 cows, 2 huge houses, a couple of barns, and about 10 children under the age of 12.
One of the young boys was named Will. He had been instructed to teach me how to weed the carrot crops. It soon became obvious that he’d rather not be talking to me.
He introduced himself quickly, suggesting that we get to work. For such a young man, he had a very weathered sound to his voice. He would grow up to be a man of great integrity, few words and no emotion.
Will lead me to the carrot field without a word, not a sound out of his mouth. He plunked himself down between the rows of carrots and gave me a nod to do the same. He spoke in short sentences that were often accompanied by even shorter questions. (“So, you’re going to want to hold back the carrot tops like this. Do you understand?”).
For such a young boy, he lacked the embellishments that I expected. He was trying very hard to be a man. His voice was an odd combination of humbleness and shyness. He projected his words to the ground and seldom made direct eye contact. All I could hope was that he let his silly side out when he was playing with the other kids - because at this rate -it appeared that he was going to have an ulcer by age 14.

5/ I expected the pilot to have an Irish accent, after all, we were flying to Dublin. There is this funny thing with airplane pilots, they all seem to have the same accent, same intonation, same charisma and presence. I’d wager that they teach a speech class at flying school.
He sounded like he was from somewhere on the midwest USA. There was a drawl in his words, especially when he said the world ‘y’all’.
He inserted dramatic pauses sporadically through his introductory speech, drawing the passengers’ attention to no where in particular. Rather than making him sound unsure or hesitant, his ‘ums’ and ‘awes’ were designed to make us feel warm and safe. After listening to him speak for a minute or two, I zoned out and imagined him sitting in the cockpit. He must have a strong jaw line and piercing blue eyes. This pilot would navigate us safely through the friendly skies.

6/ He was the first person I met that laughed louder than me. I think that’s why he and I became friends.
I met him at a concert at a really seedy bar. The good thing was, that between the two of us, we could carry on a full conversation in the middle of a Twisted Sister cover band. His accent was a combination Newfoundland fisherman and Montreal artist. Though his voice was nasal, it was deep and did not whine it’s way into my ears. The nasalness actually gave it character and surely made it stand out in a crowd.
I have been told that higher pitched voices tend to carry farther - somehow - his voice evaded this rule. If I was walking towards his home, I would be able to tell, from a block away, whether he was there or not. If I didn’t hear an enthusiastic, manly flourish, or the rumble of his hiccuping belly laugh, I’d know that he wasn’t around.
With he and I, talk was nonstop and laughter was abundant.