dana danger

I couldn’t afford an iPhone when they first came out, but all of my coworkers could. I hated them all, and I’m not using the word “hate” lightly. I was so furiously jealous that I literally lost sleep, self-esteem, hope for the future—my lack of iPhone was a deep, painful void in my life.

I took a new job with better pay, and this past October, I bought an iPhone. It was amazing. People would ask me if it was really that cool, and I would quite honestly tell them that I didn’t know how I had lived without it. I ensured that all of my sites worked properly in Mobile Safari, even going so far as to start building a custom iPhone interface for JLex; I began to refer to the act of printing out directions from the Internet as “the old-fashioned way;” and perhaps worst of all, I settled arguments at bars by finding the answer on Wikipedia.

I was complete.

But after just a few blissful months, disaster struck. My purse, with my iPhone in it, was stolen. I was crushed. I spent the next several days holed up in my apartment with the lights off. I played violent video games and wrote bad poetry. And I tweeted: “All of our social systems depend on people being essentially good. But they’re not.”

A few days later, my ransacked purse was found and returned to me. I dug through it frantically looking for my iPhone—nay, for my very soul—but it was gone. I was crushed all over again. It was like it had been stolen twice. Never mind that I got back my notebook, IDs, and pretty much all of my other valuables. My fucking iPhone was gone.

I still had the RAZR I’d been using before I bought my iPhone, so I had it reactivated. I described it as “steam-powered.” And I felt like such a dork when I used it. I was convinced people were looking at me, thinking, “Oh my god, is she actually using a RAZR? What a loser.” I wanted a new iPhone immediately but I decided to hold off in case the then-still-rumored iPhone 3G was announced soon. I didn’t want to relieve my trauma only to be devastated a week later by obsolescence.

As time passed I began to get used to my RAZR again. I no longer swore violent retribution every time I had to make a phone call. As more time went by, I grew accustomed to the lower phone bill. An extra $30 a month isn’t much, sure, but when I go out for dinner or drinks or dancing, I silently thank my RAZR for buying the first round. I realized that the iPhone is perhaps the worst thing that ever happened to conversation. (”So I was reading Christopher Hitchens’ column the other day, and…hey, are you listening to me?” “Huh? Oh, sorry, I was just reading this email from my aunt Trudy. Don’t you just love lolcats?”)

It’s been three months since my iPhone was stolen. A week from Friday, the iPhone 3G will ship: the day I’ve been waiting for! But I’m not going to buy one. I’ve recovered.

They say people don’t really appreciate love until it’s gone. And although my iPhone and I weren’t even together long enough for the honeymoon phase to wear off, I realize now that I was in an abusive relationship. I was emotionally involved with my iPhone. It left me for another woman, and now it wants me back.

Well you know what? Go fuck yourself, iPhone. You’re an asshole.