Want to call it off? Dial ‘C’ for coward

A couple of years ago, I was convinced I’d been 989’d. Let me explain: I’d been casually dating a guy called Richard -- a beautiful, cleft-chinned poet with tousled hair and a tendency to quote Charles Bukowski too much. After a few weeks, we lost touch. OK, he stopped calling. I was a bit sad to see him go but chalked it up to his drifter tendencies.

A few months later, I ran into Richard at the Beverly Center. He seemed very pleased to see me. So pleased, he gave me his new phone number and said I should definitely call soon so we could hook up again. Ignoring my mother’s advice never to call a man unless he calls me first, I picked his digits out of my purse and gave him a ring at (323) 989-7651.

Instead of his sexy drawl on the line, I got a nasal-voiced harpy screeching, “The number you have reached is not in service.”

That’s funny, I thought. Maybe he’s dyslexic.

I inverted the last two numbers and tried again. This number was also out of service. After furiously dialing every possible combination of those last four digits I learned the ugly truth: All numbers in the 323 area code that begin with the prefix 989 are invalid. Unassigned. Useless.

I’d been 989’d.

Humiliation tied knots in my stomach. Did Pacific Bell reserve a special phone grid for lily-livered hipsters? Did everyone know about the 989 blow-off except me? I imagined Richard laughing with his friends. “Dude, remember that girl from a few months ago? I gave her the 989.” High fives all around.

For my own sanity, I needed to know if I’d been dissed. After some serious sleuthing -- whitepages.com and Google were both consulted -- I placed a desperate call to his ex-roommate. As it turned out, the number Richard gave me was only one digit off, though of course it didn’t begin with 989. He’d memorized his new number wrong and unwittingly sent me into a 989 spiral of paranoia and humiliation.

In the process, though, he’d handed me a potentially useful weapon for deflecting an unwanted suitor in a pinch. Sure, it might be spineless, or even cruel, but I could 989 anyone I never wanted to hear from again.

Or I could take my lust for rejection a step further and slip him the Official Rejection Line, (310) 495-5412. Dial it and a man with a Moviefone voice delivers the bad news: “Unfortunately, the person who gave you this number does not want to talk to you or speak to you ever again. We would like to take this opportunity to officially reject you.”

Ouch. But there’s more. Rejection specialists are standing by.

“To hear consoling poetry, press one.

“To hear a joke or two to lift your spirits, press two.”

Pressing two isn’t necessary. If you’ve been given this number, the joke’s on you.

OK, maybe -- judging from my 989 experience -- I can’t take a joke. Maybe the rejection line is just a fun distraction. But something tells me that people are callous enough to use it instead of having the guts to say, “I’m not interested,” or tell the white lie, “I have a boyfriend.”

What the recorded message should say is, “I’m sorry, but you completely misjudged the person who gave you this number. He or she is a cowardly, mean-spirited person who doesn’t want to go out with you but wasn’t enough of an adult to tell you that. Consider yourself saved from wasting any time on this worthless human being.”

Some people don’t even exchange phone numbers anymore, just e-mails. That feels like less of an investment, and ignoring e-mail is a lot easier on the conscience than screening phone calls.

But the less of ourselves we give out, the less we’ll get back. Dating has always been nerve-racking. And yet if what we want is to find something real, we need to have the courage to tell the truth.

Julia Gaynor can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.