This was not some exotic destination that I would one day leave and report back on. This was my home now. But I would adapt the same way one adapts to a new country, to new customs, to new consequences of new laws. Given enough time, the drama drains, the days even out, and life resumes again.
I heard drilling on the other end of the line.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Oh,” Dr. Goldfinger said, “there’s construction in the hallway. I don’t even hear it anymore.”
Then it was two months.
One afternoon, I felt brave enough to take a walk. As I bent down to tie my shoes, I froze. Something was different. Something had gone dormant. I stood up gradually, feeling the joy of stillness shoot through my nerves, afraid to scare it off. Then I went on a bending rampage. I picked things up and put them back down. I sat on all the furniture, marking my territory. I lay on my bed with my head hanging over the edge and flailed around like someone being exorcised. I moved to my desk chair and pretended someone behind me had just called my name. And here, I surprised myself. I did not take it for granted. I did not forget. I stood up and twirled around the living room like they do in the movies, and when I stopped, the world stopped with me.
Wolf
First, I blame my phone. My e-mail is coming in but not going out and such glitches can generally be attributed to one’s phone. And to the vaguely mystical forces that exist in order to show us how terrible it is to check e-mail in bed first thing in the morning. But after minutes of pawing at settings, I notice my website isn’t working either. So I call up GoDaddy, to see what the trouble is. Like most people, I have limited interaction with my domain host. They are like the DMV or real estate brokers, who become, for brief and tedious moments, a part of your life. But as much as I have not felt compelled to check in with them, they have felt compelled to check in with me. For weeks, they have been trying to reach me via a Hotmail account that I let go to seed years ago. Unable to bill a canceled credit card, they e-mailed again and again, each time expecting a different result—which is the colloquial definition of insanity but okay. Now my name itself, my license plate since the inconvenient days of childhood, has been put up for auction.
“No problem,” I tell the customer service representative, demonstrating a staggering mix of denial and ease, “just take it down.”
This strikes me as a no-brainer. Perhaps this belies a lack of self-confidence, but how many people are lined up for sloanecrosley.com? I’ve always thought of personal domain names as sentimental objects, of value to precisely one person.
“We don’t have it anymore,” says the customer service rep.
“Well, who does?”
“That depends.”
Am I supposed to guess? What am I, a wizard?
It turns out a person or entity, a noun of some kind, has already purchased the site. No small part of me is amused by the idea of anyone acquiring my website. Apparently, I am the kind of person who would see getting burglarized as a reflection of the quality of her belongings first and as an invasion second. But my comprehension of the situation is still loading. I ask the same question—Wait, what happened?—over and over, thinking this guy is withholding the solution. Now who’s colloquially insane?
Unsure of how to further assist me, he transfers me to GoDaddy’s domain brokerage department, where a fellow named Adam gives it to me straight. Right now, my domain is being reassigned to the new owner and, while said owner’s information should be readily available, it isn’t. The Internet is still churning. I inform Adam that I’ve intermittently been able to crack into my e-mail, which shocks him as much as it does not shock me. My identity doesn’t want to let go of me any more than I want to let go of it.
“This is how it will work,” Adam continues. “I will make contact with the new owner and negotiate the best price possible. Usually it’s a few hundred dollars but it varies. You would pay that plus a twenty percent commission.”
I have questions. Setting aside the eye twitching I experience at alien terminology like “make contact,” how is Adam incentivized to negotiate on my behalf if he’s getting a commission?
“If it makes you feel any better,” he says, “I’m not getting the money.”
It does not make me feel better. Adam I like. If I could fix this by putting two hundred bucks in a paper bag and shipping it to a sympathetic man in a call center in Iowa, I would. It’s the corporate overlords I have a problem with. GoDaddy is not the only company ever invented. If you miss a payment with Verizon, they hunt you down like an animal. They don’t wait it out, tapping SOS into a tin can. And whatever happened to robocalls? And how dare he back me into defending Verizon.
Adam tells me these are solid points (into the suggestion box they go!) but none of them are libelous. My domain has been acquired by a third party through legitimate means. There is nothing GoDaddy can do except help me get it back.
“You’re welcome to make contact yourself but—”
“But you wouldn’t advise it,” I finish his sentence.
Understanding the severity of my problem for the first time, I go into string-pulling mode. This is known as grasping at straws when you have no strings to pull. But surely something can be done.
When it comes to customer service, I have a trick I am simultaneously proud and ashamed to share here. Proud because it works, ashamed because it is the behavior of a raving lunatic. If the usual means of
