Radio Gaga

I work in the radio station alone, now, during the Coronavirus quarantine. My boyfriend Kevin drops me off most days in my own car then comes and gets me again when I’m done with the show. It’s not necessary in any practical way, this de facto chauffeuring,  but it makes me feel secure. Like a kid being dropped off for school with a lunch packed and crisp ironed clothes. The promise of being picked up after school, air conditioned car, a kindly word, right on time. But I will be exhausted after the radio show, half beaten, half victorious. 

We are the champions, my friends. 

When I turn on the microphone, I wonder if anyone is actually listening. I’m displeased with the moments I’ve stumbled over my words, or told a show guest on the telephone that they’re great when I really find them mediocre and a time-filler. 

No time for losers. 

I often have the wrong thing to say, just the wrong thing altogether, and I press the wrong button and mutter, “Great, Johnson,” sarcastically under my breath and try again and make the same exact mistake again. And then I make it a third time. So I walk out into the sales bullpen, spartan and empty because everyone is home with a mask on or getting drunk. 

I've paid my dues time after time.

I could have been a contender. But I walk into walls. I walk into furniture. I walk through my past and gaze into my future but am seldom right here where I ought to be.

And bad mistakes, I've made a few.

The bullpen smells like fresh lumber and old coffee and office dust. Everybody’s gone, masked or drunk. Maybe both. The carpet is thin, not because it’s old but because it’s cheap. And the waste baskets are overflowing. It’s my doing. I’ve filled them with scripts I’ve printed, and pizza boxes, and other assorted nonsense. First one, then another, and another. Wastebaskets I mean. 

And I walk back into the studio and press the wrong button a fourth time. And I curse. But on the fifth try I nail it, my voice cracks with emotion and I laugh sincerely and the joke I was trying to make works, and I feel like a winner in the moment. And for that little sliver of summer I am not an over the hill actor slunk off to the small leagues, biding my time. I’m vital and here and now. And I wish I could erase everything and revel in this moment all day, but I don’t have the patience for such things. And besides, it’s time to try to say something clever to the weatherman who’s actually pre-recorded but whom I try to animate and bring to life by pretending to interact with him. I’m a charlatan, a circus barker, a cur.

We are the champions of the world.