Sinister: my week

[Jesse Chanin]

I am standing looking out over the performance studio and wishing myself 
inside the bodies behind the microphones, trying to will myself into their 
minds as they read down a stock list of questions for their homosexual 
guests:

“Do you support gay marriage?”
“Do you support gay adoption?”
“Is it harder to be gay than to be straight?”

(Read in a complete monotone of course, but the hosts themselves are not 
professionals but rather homeless teens we’ve been training for weeks, 
teaching radio as part of ‘community outreach’ and at each stutter I flinch 
– while my co-worker stands next to me glowing pride)

I want to ask my own questions.  I want to say, “Do you think sexuality 
plays a bigger role in the personalities of homosexual people than in 
straight people, or is that just a misconception based on the fact that what 
is heterosexual is considered ‘normal’ and thus is less noticeable?”  I want 
to say, “Do you want the first thing people notice about you to be your 
sexuality?”  I would ask, “Is our culture too sex-obsessed?”  Again I 
attempt to will myself into the teen interviewer.

“So, is like, being gay, like, different?” she asks.

Kale is sitting out in the other studio talking to the director of the 
program; Kale who has been bothering me ever so much since I finished 
“Middlesex” (by the same Greek fellow who wrote the Virgin Suicides 
actually) and then the same day was told he’s actually female.  I walk by 
the studio under the pretense of getting water and look in.  He still looks 
male (though perhaps effeminate) and they nod at me as I go by.
*
The day before I’d had to drive a radio teen home and in the car she told me 
all about her childhood: her father’s death, her mother’s partying and 
sequential pregnancies with her brother-in-law, this girl staying up until 
3am, to take care of her siblings, and I cringed and said sympathetic 
thoughts and tried to silently convince her to say “I said” instead of “I 
says.”  (She apparently is unreceptive to my telepathy)

Before we left she’d wanted to see my house, so I gave her a short tour.

“It’s so big,” she said, caressing the walls.

“It’s not that big.  It’s dirty.  You know.”
*
I’ve been constantly tired lately.  It’s the weather (the pope says to pray 
for cooler times, folks), and getting up at 6am, and working two jobs.  My 
mom thinks I have mono and suggests acupuncture.  I make some joke about 
feng shui that she doesn’t find funny. When your house is built on an 
underground spring, it’s all a bit depressing.
*
I stand above the controls on the engineering board and lightly touch dials 
that don’t need to be adjusted.  I watch their levels and wish I were 
wearing a cowboy hat and a button-down shirt.  I decline an offer of a 
chair, preferring to stand, looming over the switches and feeling so 
wonderfully and totally in control.  Except there’s this slight ticking 
noise coming from somewhere…
*
The show the day before had been better.  There were four teen hosts, one of 
whom was a girl from Somalia who didn’t speak English very well.  I had her 
start off the show so she’d end up speaking and she did amazingly well and I 
smiled and clapped for her.  She had a beautiful, rhythmic accent that 
floated deeply on the air, and the most incredible skin color I’d ever seen. 
  I didn’t tell her that.

They were all country kids, these four, and possessed the characteristic 
nativity.   It had been refreshing – they’d read their work without first 
issuing a disclaimer of its poor quality.  I wonder for a moment where I was 
taught to do that; who told me to fear arrogance so?
*
My roommate assignment comes in the mail and I try to discern personality 
flaws from a name and ten-digit phone number.  Eventually I make a list of 
questions and lie on the floor next to the phone slowly dialing the number.  
As my finger hits the last one, I decide the list is boring and ridiculous 
and I throw it away.  The first ring of the phone catches in my throat.  It 
proceeds to ring ten more times and then I hang up.

My hands get clammy.  What sort of a Neanderthal wouldn’t have an answering 
machine??
*
The ticking has increased.  One of the guests, a seventeen year-old boy, 
refers to himself as “she.”  I pause.  That’s the second one.  Shouldn’t I 
be able to tell?  Shouldn’t I know?  I want to get boots and paint my 
fingernails a dark purple and pull the cowboy hat over my eyes and glower (I 
won't).  I grin encouragingly at the young hosts.  Tick.
*
After the show another girl in my “mentor” position drives me home.  She 
wants me to come with her because she feels like bitching and (somewhat 
worryingly) everyone knows I’m always into that.  Soon however, we start 
talking about other things too: music, books, African accents.  She parks 
the car in front of my house and we laugh at each other for awhile.  I feel 
in control and don’t once glance at the shift, out the window, toward the 
wheel.  It seems I could stay in the car talking to her forever.

“So, I’ve got to go,” she says.  “Dinner is soon.”
*
The DJ who does the following show has entered the engineering room and I 
point out the ticking to him.  “Hmm,” he says in his best southern accent.  
“Let’s see here.”  He presses a button and sends the signal to a remote 
location, knocking the station off the air.  The ticking continues.

Everyone immediately panics.  I run to get the director and send her in, and 
I stand outside talking with Kale.  I don’t say anything because there’s 
never an opportunity to slip in, “So when did you decide to become male?”  I 
run around pretending to be stressed so as to further assert my control, but 
eventually get bored and pick up the “G” World Book Encyclopedia from 1972.  
It opens to a map of Greece, over which they have imprinted a giant outline 
of the United States, presumably so ignorant Americans can better understand 
its relative size.  While skimming Greek facts, I tap my fingers lightly 
against my thigh and a girl tells me I should try chain smoking as a cure 
for my constant and irritating fidgeting.
*
I have one more day of work this summer, two weeks before college, two days 
before Canada, and I’m tired and the infernal ticking continues.  I think of 
the Tell-Tale Heart.  I want to tell someone something but I don’t know 
what.  The humidity sticks my door shut and even my crazy neighbor is out of 
town.  I imagine the whole city empty except me, and my cowboy hat, and this 
ticking, and sticky car-rides home full of complaints.  At work my 
coke-addict co-worker gives me her e-mail address and tells me to keep in 
touch.

“I want to know what college’s like these days.  I want to hear from you,” 
she says.

“What if I go goth?  What if I dress all in black and stop talking and 
decide to live in a weird orgy commune in San Fransisco?  What if I flunk 
out?”

“Well, then do me a favor and please don’t frickin' write.”
*
I slowly pick up all the headphones and wind their cords in circles.  I am 
alone in the studio for a moment and I open the window and can suddenly 
breathe – the weather has turned.

Someone bursts in.  “Do you know where the PSAs have gone??”

He has hair the color of rust.  “And this makes background noise!” He slams 
shut the window and dashes out.

I untie my hair and let it fall over my eyes.  I pretend it’s a cowboy hat.


**
have a nice friday, sinister.
jesse

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