by Chris Lynch
“Ha! And he’s only a freshman, folks,” he says, then cuts off my microphone.
“Thanks,” I say as soon as I’m convinced we’re off air and I’m not being lured into some great radio-biz prank.
“Did you enjoy that?” he says, leaning in close like he’s really hopeful about the response.
“Surprisingly much,” I say. The thought of having the dawn hours largely to myself and others like me who just want to breathe it in is a powerful motivator for getting out at ungodly hours. The chance to listen for the sound of frost evaporating, and to feel a kind of irrational ownership of the world that isn’t possible at any other part of the day, is the whole point.
So, getting up at the same time but with a different purpose—very different, since broadcasting is the opposite of silently absorbing—should be something startling and unappealing to me. George Seldes, who willingly does this all the time, should be a person I politely fail to understand.
Someday I will learn to recognize “should” for the sly deceiver that it is.
“You should think about doing a show,” George says as he passes me a coffee that I’m pretty sure was already sitting there when he put on the fresh pot. It is not the good or strong coffee he promised, but he had a lot of time to forget since he promised it.
I used to treat the rookies like this in high school. Maybe he forgot on purpose, and if he did, I will drink my rookie coffee with dignity.
“I should, probably, think about it at least, huh?” I say, doing a crap job of not being completely flattered by the suggestion alone.
George puts on a compilation of what he calls “Scandinavian Torch Classics” that he promises will subdue the last two of his seven loyal listeners while we talk a bit.
“It’s a completely manufactured rivalry,” he says, “with Fabian and myself as figureheads. He represents the ridiculously antiquated school of thought that holds the Word as the one timeless unit of meaning in our world throughout all time. While I get the gravy job of hardly needing to point out that the modes of communication long ago did the job of rendering the ostensible content of that communication incidental at best. It’s actually a lot of fun, especially since the patterns of history have already declared my side the winner. It’s important for morale and enrollment all the same that we keep up the sparring as if there is still anything in the balance. Otherwise, what would all the poor English majors do with themselves?”
“No!” the voice shocks me right up out of my chair.
“No, what?” George says. “You’re too late.”
“You can’t have him. Not this one. He has potential. There might be words in this one.”
“How do you happen to know this guy?” George says to me casually as he fetches a cup of coffee for Fabian.
“He sleeps about four feet away from me.”
“Oh, this is your roommate?” George says as he hands Fabian his coffee.
“Yes, he is,” Fabian says. “So there you have it.”
“So there I do,” George says. “What a score! Even the Gutenbergers will stop listening to you once they realize your own roommate defected to the side of reason and progress.”
I keep veering from feeling flattered on the one hand to feeling uncomfortable on the other. And both hands relate to the same, uncommon situation of having two opposing teams competing for me to go with one or the other.
“Fabian,” I say, “I think I suddenly discovered that I really like radio.”
He nods, sagely, calmly. Far too sage-calmly.
“And did you also suddenly discover that you no longer really like . . . fresh fruit salad?”
“Jesus,” I say, shooting right up from my molded plastic chair and my undrinkable coffee. “You guys are relentless. It’s like mental schoolboys in the playground seriously debating who would win a fight between, like, Batman and global warming. You’re honestly trying to force me to choose between radio and fruit salad?”
The two of them look so relaxed, even satisfied over all this. They lean close, bumping shoulders as they size me up, while they sip their steaming and probably identical coffees.
What a chump.
“I did remember to point out to you that this was a completely manufactured rivalry, didn’t I?” George checks just to be sure.
“You did,” I say, dropping back into my chair and hanging my head in chumpiness.
“You can do radio and still work with the journalism or literature or creative writing doofs all you want,” Fabian says with a reassuring pat on my knee.
“Hey, you can do radio and still work anything that floats your boat into a weekly program,” George says, patting my other knee.
I feel like a wishbone.
“Okay,” I say, hoping to get at least a firmer grasp of what the Yurt honestly is. “But I thought this was the Writing Center.”
“It is,” Fabian assures me.
“Where’s your typewriter, then? I would think if there was a writing center that you’d have that machine as the center of everything.”
“Well, that E key is sticking again, and I want to treat it just so before—”
“It’s banned,” George says.
“Huh?”
“It’s not here because Fabian’s diabolical contraption was such a loud clacky nuisance that it provoked an uprising. Even the writers joined in.”
“Ha,” I say, “so it wasn’t just me.”
George shakes his head emphatically no, and eventually even Fabian joins in.
I notice, as the end of the night-crawler hours give way to the early bird hours, we are now passing the baton to the mainstream morning shift of gourmet coffees, smoothies, loud pre-class chatter.
“So,” I say, finally strung far enough along, “is this the Writing Center or isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Fabian says.
“Yes,” George concurs. “But it is also the Chess Society, Mindfulness Meeting Space, CC Chapel Micro-Choir rehearsal hall, Photo Phellows Photography Club (close supervision division), Interfaith Outreach, First Friday Folk Freaks—”
“Ah, I think I get it,” I say. “It’s every group’s space if they request it.”
“Most of them don’t even bother requesting,” Fabian says. “They just show up.”
“And they don’t even have to be groups,” George adds, “since any old stray is likely to come in at any time.”
“The Yurt is the epicenter of the entire community,” I say.
“Yes,” George says. “And the radio station is the epicenter of the Yurt. Through it all, we broadcast. And when all the special interests go home for their beauty sleep, we broadcast right through that, too.”
I give my faithful roommate a taunting, restrained shove.
“All things to all people, that was how you first described this place to me. Even when you’re just trying to be a smart-ass, you can’t seem to help coming up with all the exact right words to fit everything everywhere right in its place.”
He looks, for Fabian, strangely uncomfortable with the compliment. I figure it must be me and choosing the wrong way to say the right thing, so I let it go for now. I’ll tell him again, and better, when it’s just the two of us. I always speak better when it’s just the two of us. I don’t know why that is, and I don’t know that I want to know.
But I know this, and I know I want to know it.
I have found the place. The Yurt is the place where I will find things I’m here to find. Where I’ll begin to know who I’m supposed to be. And where I’ll figure out how.
Most remarkable of all is that I was sent here, directed by my dad to find this thing.
And Ray wouldn’t know a yurt if it fell out of the sky and landed right on top of him. It would probably fit him too, that great big beautiful bear head.
orphans
You know what I love about radio?” I say loudly over Fabian’s bashing away at the typewriter.
“No, I do not know,” he says while remaining in his hunchback,
forehead-to-the-page writer-man posture. “I’m expecting to know very soon, though. But first, have you called Ray?”
“No. I will.”
“You have to call him, ya shit.”
“Okay, I plan to, but listen. It’s the one-wayness of the arrangement with radio. I love having the freedom to talk about whatever I want, in exactly the way I want to, without anybody’s beady judgmental eyes throwing me off and making my words fall all over each other and land all wrong. I control the conversation, and that gives me the confidence to plow on until I get everything just right.”
“You do remember that it is Internet radio, yes? That there are a whole bunch of different ways people can get their messages to you, instantly. In fact, chances are that with the number of misfits, maniacs, and malcontents out there squatting like carrion feeders over their keyboards, there could come a tipping point where the number of people reaching you with their thoughts could well exceed the number of actual listeners you’re reaching with yours.”
Well.
“Well, Fabian my friend, I guess that leaves me with just two thoughts. One: Asshole! And two: How can you keep on typing while having a conversation at the same time?”
He stops typing and turns around to face me. “I can’t,” he says. “I’m curious to see what kind of gibberish I’ve got on that page, right after I finish with this conversation in the next twenty seconds.”
“No, I need you for longer than that.”
“Twenty-two seconds.”
“No. More.”
“Agreed. No more.”
He whirls around and is most definitely typing gibberish, because he’s attacking the keys with great smashings that come from way over his head like a mad Mozart at a piano.
“You’re a very funny guy,” I say.
“I know,” he says.
“That’s one of the reasons I want to interview you.”
This manages to get him right up out of the chair. He ventures all the way into my cramped but cozy corner office. My desk, which sits against the window wall about three feet from the foot of my bed.
“What are you up to?” he says, bringing some extra comedy to the situation by putting his hands on his hips and staring down at me fiercely. Third grade felt very much like this to me.
“Are you a writer?” I ask.
“Not at the moment I’m not. I happen to believe that writing and talking are mutually exclusive pursuits, and furthermore, that the population who self-identify as writers in reality break into two groups: writer-writers, and talker-writers. And I don’t think there is very much overlap at all.”
“See, I knew you would make a great interview.”
“That is kind of you. But now, as I would very much like to be able to think of myself as a writer-writer someday, I’m going to stop talking and resume writing.”
Fabian walks, upright and with very little excess of motion, back to his desk in just the way I would imagine a real writer would walk. It’s not sufficient to escape from me, however.
“Come on, Fabian, it won’t take too long. And it’ll be a laugh, too. You know how you love having opinions and stuff.”
“Keir, you don’t even have your own program slot yet.”
“I’m working up to it. George is letting me sit in with him for longer and longer stretches, especially during the late-late, early-early hours I’m coming to love. He says when I’m ready, I can make it whatever format I want. Music, interviews, remote stuff I collect around campus with the portable gear we’re allowed to check out of the media center.”
“That’s all great,” he says. “So just go and do all that stuff, then.”
“Maybe,” I say. “Sometime. But I want to focus, see this through, do it right, and make it special. Something with a great framework to build on, that has an honest point to it. So that it could keep gaining depth and meaning the more I add to it, you know?”
He nods a whole bunch of times in his way I recognize as saying, Hold on a minute, wait right there, I’m thinking something. . . .
So, waiting’s no problem.
“You’re exactly right,” he says. “Anybody can just jump on the mic and talk crap and waste everybody’s time. It’s the very foundation of most commercial radio. But taking your time with this chance is a good move. Does George have any suggestions for what he thinks you might do?”
“Yeah. He says with my background I should do a bunch of sports-related pieces. Not enough sports on the air, apparently. Said it would be cool to maybe start by talking to the football team, players and coaches and all, since they are having another stellar year.”
“Cool. Is that what George said, cool?”
“Cool,” I confirm.
“Yeah, ah, no, not cool.”
“Ah, no, probably not.”
“So, your backup plan to a series on the football team is . . . me?”
“Yeah. How’s that for social climbing?”
“Very impressive. So, are you going to tell me what your hook is? Your through-line? Your connective tissue?”
“Thought you’d never ask. The best part is, I stole the idea from you.”
“Excuse me?”
“ ‘Stole’ was the wrong word, because I didn’t take anything away from you, other than inspiration. I’m going to build up an archive called ‘Interviews with Insufficiently Famous Americans.’ What do you think of that?”
He’s decided to get back to me later on that one, or else he’s answering me in mime, because he bolts like a greyhound out of his chair, to his closet, jumping up to the shelf to check that I have indeed not stolen anything from him.
As he walks slowly back in my direction, his eyes look like they are crossing slightly. His arms are at his sides, but spread uncharacteristically wide of his body.
“What, are we about to have a gunfight?” I ask.
“Not if you answer the following question correctly. Keir, did you touch my book?”
“What? No, I promise I never laid a finger on it. I saw the spine when I went in to borrow a vest, and it instantly sent my mind spinning with ideas just from the title alone.”
He’s still poised to draw. “You swear?”
“I swear. You told me the book was special, and that was all you ever needed to tell me.”
“All right then,” he says, his body visibly relaxing. “But about the other thing, I know I said help yourself anytime . . .”
“I’m borrowing your vests a lot, aren’t I?”
“Well, since I have now had to go into your closet twice to find one I wanted to wear, maybe we’ll just suspend the vest-lend program for a while to give them a chance to settle again.”
“Fine. Cool. Sorry for abusing the program.”
“That’s all right, it’s done now.”
He stands there with his thinking, pondering face on for a few seconds, then goes back to the closet to retrieve the book. He smiles at it, cradling it gently in one hand and barely touching it with the fingertips of the other. He looks like a guy who’s just been reunited with his beloved pet cat. That he had lost when he was a little kid.
He sits on the bed with the book, and though I have never felt this before, I clearly feel welcome, invited to sit next to him and be properly introduced to the book.
He slides it carefully out of its slipcase. People One Knows: Interviews with Insufficiently Famous Americans, by John Updike. He shows me just one page, and opens it only the minimum required for me to see.
“Signed by the author,” he says proudly. “And numbered, number two hundred ninety-seven out of three hundred. There were another hundred done in a deluxe edition, but that was all they ever produced.”
“Whoa,” I say, reflexively moving my hand just slightly in the direction of copping a quick feel of the cover.
He stands, re-cases the treasure, and takes it with him to his desk again. I had run full gallop into brute running backs who did not protect the football as well as that.
I remain on hi
s bed because, why not? Something in this situation is loosening him up, and I don’t want to do anything to break the spell that gets this insufficiently famous American talking from his deep.
“That’s one special fancy book for an orphan,” I say, thinking maybe humor was the thing to move us along. And it probably was the thing, but this was a sorry idea of humor. “I’m sorry,” I say when I see his fractured features aimed my way. “It was stupid to say, but I meant nothing. Bad joke, just really bad, forget I said it.”
He nods, but says no at the same time. “No, I want to tell you about it. But I’m going to tell it quickly so I can be done with it. It was my gran’s book, her one real, shameless item of showing off that she would allow herself now and then. Rare special item, piece of class, piece of elegance, in a poky plain little life and a poky plain little house that possessed nothing else of the kind. Bought for her by my papa on one very rare and special day during the two sweetheart months between his retirement from sixty years in leather tanneries and his retirement from everything else. When I was really young, I believed his hands looked like suede because he never took off his fine calfskin gloves. He was the wise guy who fed me that story in the first place, so of course I had no trouble swallowing it whole. If that man told me his hands looked and smelled like buckskin because his own daddy was a stag, I would have believed that just as easily.
“So there was your romance angle stirred in with the intellectual and the valuable. The trifecta for Gran and more power to the book.”
He is nodding at the story, looking off into some distance. He is nodding at a specific something, but I’m not asking because I’m already learning lessons about this, about asking people for their stuff, and how much harder it is than it looks. About how their stuff, unconnected to your own stuff, still somehow sets things alight that maybe won’t burn well.
“That was a great story,” I say. “I knew you would be a dream interview subject, but you’ve already surpassed anything I was thinking. Great stuff.”
“Oh, it gets greater, but I can see you’re anxious to get going somewhere. . . .”