Canada’s National Post follows a day in the life of a Toronto Payphone. The paper’s reporters find that the city’s phones do get used, they just don’t get used much. Nothing surprising about that, I suppose.

The New York Times ran a similar story a couple of years ago. In exchange for my behind-the-scenes help on that piece the Times worked in a link to the Payphone Project. I think that’s the 4th time the Times has linked here, and it is much appreciated even if I didn’t feel so appreciative about it at the time (long story that, but I was so miffed about something that I never even read the Times‘ story until now).

The payphone followed by the Times attracted, to quote the story: “a snapshot of New York’s pay phone user, an elusive, rather anonymous demographic sometimes viewed with suspicion.” No doubt, the survey of that Queens Boulevard payphone turned up a grittier (and more abundant) clientele than the Toronto payphone users described in the National Post story.

I was interested in helping the Times with their story on a day in the life of a payphone because I have performed that sort of overheard payphone surveillance myself. For my own edification and without reporting most of the findings I have camped out by New York City payphones to see who, besides me, still uses payphones, and why. I was interested in what stories might rise from public conversations carried on by people using these phones.

The overheard stories were not always wholesome. Screaming matches, insane people, phone sex encounters and apoplectic threats of physical violence ending deals gone horribly wrong were offset by more innocent sightings of confused tourists and congenial old-timers whose wits appeared to be about them, they just didn’t carry cell phones.

I used to see an impeccably-dressed old man using payphones in midtown. He seemed constantly to be working the payphones of 5th and 6th Avenues and all the streets in between. Almost any time I saw him he had a payphone receiver at his ear as he busily scribbled note onto his legal pad.

I think he was quietly insane – harmlessly minding-his-own-business-insane — but still insane.

I noticed him a few years ago. Using a payphone and writing onto his note pad I first thought nothing much of it except to notice that someone was using a payphone. I notice these things. He looked like someone out of Glengerry Glen Ross. I actually thought it kind of cool to see an older gentleman at work, sticking to old-school techniques of payphones for communication and hand-written notes for information gathering.

I don’t know when I realized it but one day it hit me: It couldn’t be. It didn’t make sense.

The next time I saw him he was working a payphone on 5th Avenue. Talking in full voice he flipped through pages of his notepad, referring to this, reminding himself of that. He hung up the phone with a small show of frustration, as if he had just lost a sale. He collected himself, adjusted his tie, and walked down 5th Avenue with a genteel stomp. He looked around, his head held high and his sights set far. He was very tall, well-dressed and well-groomed, even debonair.

I walked over to the payphone he had just used. I lifted the receiver. The payphone did not work. There was no dial tone, no humming noise, no nothing. To a passing observer the man appeared to have used that phone to make or break a business deal. The grist and grizzle of his demeanor gave the appearance that he was on the move, on the make, with places to go, people to see, and hearts to break. Yet all that time he had been talking into a dead phone.

I hung up the phone and timidly followed him down 5th Avenue. This is the only time I ever intentionally followed him. For as frequently as I had noticed his payphone-using presence I never paid him more than a casual regard. This time I studied his gestures and tics, noting the nervous manner in which he extended his right thumb into a semi-circle and nervously scratched the inside of his palm with his overly-lengthy index-fingernail. I tried to read the story behind the costume and the façade. I imagined he had retired long ago and that he spent his later years going mad, going through the motions of the old job, remembering his glory days as a hardscrabble salesman working the streets and offices of New York through payphones and hand-written leads. I saw him as a street actor recreating for invisible audiences the triumphs of his days. Looking at this man I asked myself, a middle-aging man whose glory days (such as they were) may already have passed: “Is that me? Is that me in 20 years? Is that me today?”

I followed him only for about 30 seconds.

I did not see him again for a long time. The next and last time I saw him was in lower Manhattan — a part of town far from where I normally encountered him. Sitting at a table in an indoor public space he looked haggard and windswept. I think he was unprepared for that day’s rainy weather.

He sat as if at leisure, his right leg crossed on his left knee. He seemed to assay the crowd of people at this busy public space. He stroked his chin and looked around, consulting his papers and scribbling new notes betwixt crossing out words written earlier. He gallantly used the 2nd and 3d fingers of his right hand to cast aside his right-most sideburns. The public space was crowded and I, having spotted him unexpectedly, stopped cold in my tracks. I found myself looking over his shoulder, as inconspicuously as any passing stranger. I saw his notepad up close. This is the pad on which he jotted down notes and from which he gathered information for his fantasy payphone calls. This was the first time I saw the notepad close up.

There were no words. I saw the papers from closely enough to be certain that they were covered with nonsense. I saw not a single intelligible word or letter on the page.

I thought it might be shorthand. It could have been asemic poetry. Alas, even the most sympathetic observer could not describe these etchings as remotely articulate. It was incoherent scrawl, not even reaching the deceptively recognizable level of gibberish. Just scrawl. I stood behind him for about 30 seconds. He turned the page from one covered with this scribbly-scrawl to a fresh, blank page. He stared at that page for many seconds, the pen in his hand poised to record something.

Nothing is wrong with staring at a blank page. Creative people, I think, rely too much on the work of others for “inspiration” (which frequently amounts to obfuscated plagiarism). A blank page, a blank wall, a dismal view out your office window does more to inspire creative thought than immersing yourself in the works of the great masters.

I choose to remember the old man like that: waiting for inspiration. Staring at blank sheets of paper and speaking into non-working payphones in search of that inspiration which comes only from within.