Where For Art Thou Romeo?

Last week my printer threw off its inky shackles and rebelled. The mutiny was crushing in its totality and in a matter of hours I had been reduced to the type of pathetic man that has conversations with inanimate objects.
“Come on baby, I just need a few pages, just a few…you know what, forget it! You think there aren’t other printers in the world that would love to produce my work! Sorry, I didn’t mean that, you know I love you.”
Concerned for my mental health, and more likely knowing just how technically incompetent I am, my girlfriend subtly handed me the phone and the tech support number. I went to the kitchen for some Reese’s reinforcements and dialed.
It started as all tech calls do. A recorded woman led me through a seemingly endless labyrinth of options, and then ignored whatever button I pressed. I know some focus group found her soothing, but I would rather talk to a machine. The idea that another person, even if it’s only their detached voice, was putting me through this torment was terrible. I expect pity from a fellow human, only a machine could be so callous as to make me enter my 27 digit service code four times. By the time I was connected to someone with an actual working cardiovascular system, I’d plowed through a king size package of Reese’s cups. When I get diabetes, I’m suing Dell.

I don’t know how many people there are in India named Romeo, but there can’t be many, and it was a small dose of pleasure to know that I may have been talking to the only one. More than likely his bosses at the tech support center had told him to pick a Western sounding name, and Romeo was born. I wouldn’t be surprised if he shared a cubicle with John Wayne and Ringo. Romeo was going to help me with my printer, and for the next hour we would spend a considerable amount of time listening to each other breathe.
It was an emotionally draining experience. After replacing the ink cartridge for the third time under Romeo’s guidance, I could feel the old fury building up inside. I had better things to do than talk to someone a world away who I could barely understand…and then Romeo would prompt the latest attempt at printing with a ridiculously enthusiastic yet heartfelt “Ok now, here we go with it!” and the tension would ease. It wasn’t hard for me to picture Romeo at moments like these. I wondered if he had a wife, a girlfriend? Who did he go home to at night? For some reason I became convinced he was wearing navy blue slacks. As a child, what did he think his future would hold? It probably didn’t include answering phones. Or maybe this is what he had worked for, a steady job that allowed him to buy all the books he wanted. Alone in his apartment he would surround himself with Shakespeare and escape to the world of that other more famous Romeo. Perhaps he fantasized about dying with the same type of romantic tragedy as his namesake. This is how my mind works. This is why I can’t fix a printer.

I tried everything he told me, every last restart and paper feed, but nothing worked. My printer no longer wanted to have anything to do with me, it had packed its suitcase and left. It wasn’t easy to figure out my warranty number, I couldn’t understand Romeo’s unsure English and I was hopelessly unorganized, but after much wrangling the proper forms had been filled out. That’s when Romeo noticed my address.
“West Hollywood? So you are near Hollywood then?” he asked excitedly.
“Well, yeah. I live right there, pretty close,” I replied.
Romeo paused for a moment, I pictured him closing his eyes. “Oh, it must be very beautiful then, ok? Many movie stars, oh.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him Hollywood is mostly made up of unemployed actors and homeless people. Out of my window I can see the Hollywood sign, and a KFC.
“Well, yes, it’s very beautiful,” I said, “You see famous people sometimes, and there’s palm trees along the roads. Maybe someday you can see it for yourself.”
“Oh no, no, I am on the other side of the globe,” murmured Romeo. He said it like a confession, as if I didn’t already know.
“You never know,” I responded, “someday you could be driving down Hollywood in a nice car. Even the movie stars would turn their heads to see who it is. It’s sunny everyday, you’d buy sunglasses to wear, it’d be great. Who knows? Maybe someday, huh.”
At that moment I really felt like Romeo and I were friends, and I wanted to give him some daydream to help him make it through endless hours of answering phones. I wanted to give him some small escape, a tunnel out of the monotony of his day. For a small moment I felt the vast expanse of the world open up and I wondered at the ability to talk to someone across the globe, to be able to share in their dreams if only for a second. All my previous technical anger was gone, I didn’t care about my printer, in fact I was a little glad its breakdown had brought me closer to someone I would have never talked to otherwise. I suddenly wanted to go have a drink with Romeo and listen to him reminisce about the day I called his office and inspired him to leave it all and somehow, someway, make it to Hollywood.
“No,” announced Romeo “that will never happen for me. Thank you for calling Dell, ok?”
It was over that quickly. The world was small again, just me, my apartment, and a malfunctioning printer. I kept the phone next to my ear for a moment, not wanting to hang up, but the connection was dead, if there had ever been a connection at all