Giving Up the Ghost (15 page)

Even more compelling was my lack of alternatives to school. Logic would dictate that someone skipping college would go
out and join the workforce. However, with my inability to show up anywhere on time, dyed hair, piercings, frequent state of inebriation, and verbal explosions, my employment options were somewhat limited. That left me with a simple choice: either work more hours at T.J. Maxx, the one place that seemed happy to have me, or enroll at least part-time at Kent Stark. As far as I could tell, Kent Stark was mostly for students, like me, with so little college potential that they couldn’t handle going to the actual Kent State University thirty miles north. It was a legitimate college, at least on paper, and I now had a response (which only required me to utter two syllables) whenever someone asked about my plans. I figured I could just sign up for a few basic, embarrassingly unchallenging classes to get everyone off my back.

As soon as I had, I sought out the campus radio station. Almost the entirety of my knowledge about new wave and punk had been formed in two ways: from music discovered while listening to WAUP late at night and from music shared by friends who discovered it listening to WAUP late at night. WAUP was a small college station, attached to the University of Akron, bringing fifty thousand watts of Hüsker Dü, Laurie Anderson, the Damned, X, and Television to throngs of rural kids who never thought music could sound or feel that way. My goal at WKSC was simple: to blow people’s minds. I knew the effect WAUP had had on me, and I intended to use my slot on WKSC to do the same to others, whether they wanted me to or not. Because I was a freshman, and because I had no experience, and because I was late to sign up, I got the one shift not yet claimed: Thursday mornings from eight to ten.

WKSC seemed to be classified as a “radio station” solely because those involved wished it to be. I don’t think there was ever any broadcasting involved, as it had no transmitters. It
was “broadcast” through the PA systems in the hallways and lobbies of the three campus buildings, was featured as the “on hold” music in the Theater and Art Departments and as background music in the school’s grim early-seventies-era cafeteria. In this regard, it was caught somewhere between being Muzak and a bad club deejay system.

The entirety of its studio equipment looked as if it was about to explode—and in a glorious manner. The broadcast console was probably World War II vintage, featuring large fist-sized knobs for mixing that let out bursts of crunchy noise and distortion every time you moved them. The two turntables worked, though Steve pointed out that I should never touch the metal platter of the left one, or I could expect a pretty severe shock.

“Yeah, you could empty your bladder on that one,” he said, slapping me on the shoulder.

There was also a monstrous open-reel tape player, which Steve said hadn’t worked in the three years he’d been there, a microphone for announcing, and a cassette player the size of a suitcase.

“You know, if you get the tape in there just right, it’ll play without eating the tape,” he said. “But it probably isn’t worth it. Even by ’KSC standards the thing sounds like caca.”

The most troublesome feature of the WKSC studio was that the entire station was located in one corner of the cafeteria, blocked off by two glass walls. That meant that at least 90 percent of your listening audience was in clear view, no more than forty feet from you. This would lead to a lot of unwelcome audience interaction, especially considering my musical choices.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Steve said, leaning down to draw my attention underneath the broadcast console. “If you ever get
complaints about the volume being too low or too high or too whatever, here is where the Secret Volume Knob is.”

Steve pointed to a numbered dial bolted to one of the console table’s legs. Above it was an embossed plastic label that read
SECRET VOLUME KNOB
.

I have no idea what became of Steve after WKSC. He could have become a dope dealer, a congressman who fucks young pages, a life insurance salesman who steals money from old people—it doesn’t matter. That moment, showing me the location of the Secret Volume Knob, was the single stupidest thing Steve would ever do in his life.

“Whatever you do,” he added with a giggle, “don’t turn the Secret Volume Knob completely up. The compressors can’t handle it, and the results are thunderous, man. Shit will blow up.”

Steve looked at me with a large grin. My training was complete.

Buying drugs from my co-worker Todd and his roommate Andre was a novelty to me. Before I met them, all my drugs were acquired from friends or friends of friends. It was mostly appallingly low-grade pot and random speed. We were teenagers; often having drugs was more important than actually using them. Sometimes we’d hold on to the stems and seeds that had cost us our entire allowance, just so we could say we had it.

I developed a mental image of what a real drug dealer’s life must be like. I imagined a big house, a Cadillac, and chicks running around in bikinis while everyone played extremely loud music on their massive stereo system. Even considering Todd’s employment in Housewares at T.J. Maxx, I was still willing to fantasize he had a bitchin’ existence.

In truth, Todd, his girlfriend, Andre, and Andre’s girlfriend
all shared one room at the Traveler’s Inn Motor Lodge on West Tuscarawas Street. There were two chairs, a small table, two beds, a barely functional television on a small dresser, and a bathroom. There were also piles of clothes, empty food containers, and a bicycle in the room. It smelled like a hot, dirty sock.

The only one walking around in anything close to a bikini was Andre, whom I rarely saw wearing anything other than his underwear. Andre didn’t seem to have a job or anything to do. He sold crap drugs to high school kids at football games and the roller rink. That seemed to be enough to pay his share of the weekly rent at the Traveler’s Inn. Andre loved to complain about white people and make jokes about how stupid white people were, but I never recall seeing him with anyone other than white people.

I imagine that I was different from a lot of Andre and Todd’s meager assortment of customers. Most people got high to feel good. Not me. I wasn’t there to feel good. I was there to feel nothing. It seemed that my life was full of reminders of how fucked up I’d let it become. It wasn’t that I wanted to feel everything was okay, or that I wanted to forget or feel absolution or oblivion. I wanted to be a blank slate. The pills were a way to achieve that for a few brief hours. Good or bad, it didn’t make a difference. I just didn’t want to feel.

The deal was pretty simple. I would buy a twelve-pack of beer (not Wiedemann) and take it over to Todd and Andre’s. I would make small talk, have one beer, buy some mildly overpriced drugs, and then leave the rest of the twelve-pack with them. I usually just wanted pot, but if they had something more, I would try some pill roulette. In truth, a lot of the cheap pills that I bought from them just made me breathe heavily and fall asleep, which, arguably, could be considered
the same thing as feeling nothing, especially when I didn’t dream.

“How about those blue ones, with the hearts cut out of them?” I said. “You know, like the one you gave me at work.”

“Those ain’t hearts, fool,” yelled Andre from the bathroom. “Those are little
V’
s cut out of them, for the name, Vali—”

“La la la la la la la,” I interrupted, putting my fingers in my ears.

Andre had forgotten my rule—not that he cared enough to remember: I didn’t want to know the names of the drugs I was buying. I just wanted to know what they’d do to me. I had these bad visions that one day I’d learn that because I took Drug X, I could only have kids with two heads, would eventually stop getting erections, or would develop some terrible disease. In my mind, if I didn’t know what I was taking, I wouldn’t have to worry about what it might do to me long term. Problem solved.

“How much?” I asked.

“Three a pop,” Todd replied.

“If I buy this crap pot you have, I’ll only have enough cash for five,” I said.

“Take six,” Todd said. “Last one’s on the house.”

“Like hell it is,” Andre called out from the bathroom. “You buy five, you take five.”

“Deal,” I said, throwing the cash onto the bed, putting four pills in the bag with the weed and holding the last one up to my eye. It did look like a tiny heart. I popped it onto my tongue and reached for my beer.

“Oh, no, like fuck you won’t,” Andre said, running toward me from the bathroom and grabbing the beer from my hand.

“What the fuck, Andre?” I said, pulling the bitter tablet off my tongue.

“Man, you are not doing that here. You take that with beer, and you’ll be seeing shit that isn’t there, man. That will seriously fuck you up.”

“Really? I’ll see things that other people can’t see?”

“Bitch, you will be drooling in that chair for six hours. I ain’t gonna have you hanging around here all night.”

“No, seriously, this stuff can make me see things that I can’t see straight?”

I pulled my wallet out of my pocket. I still had about seventy dollars from my paycheck that was supposed to go for car insurance.

“I’ll buy all of them.” I said.

“What?”

“All of them,” I repeated.

“Three apiece,” Andre said. “And no freebies,” he added, hitting Todd on the back of the head as he walked over to change the channel on the TV.

I planned out my first WKSC playlist for the next week. While I was supposed to be studying polynomials and reading
The Good Earth
, I was worried about my second set of songs and whether the Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now?” should go before or after the Butthole Surfers’ “Concubine.” I think I had the entire first month mapped out before my first shift.

Asking me to wake up and be somewhere at 8
A.M
. was pretty much the same thing as asking me to get up and be somewhere at 3
A.M.
, so I knew from day one that the only way I’d pull it off was to take a bunch of different pills and stay up all night. Which, like every time you try to keep yourself awake all night, backfired completely, resulting in me passing out at around 5
A.M
. and waking up just a few minutes before I was supposed to be “on air” (if you could call it that).

All my dramatic running around to get the shift started, interrupted by mad, sickness-fueled dashes to the bathroom, seemed to distract the meager listening audience from what I was actually playing, which was probably a good thing. The complaints were few that first show but really started to pick up as fall got rolling.

“I don’t think people want to hear ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ before their second cup of coffee,” Steve offered in my first (and only) feedback session. The criticisms slid right off me. Someday, I thought, these people would hum “Holiday in Cambodia” while rocking their kids to sleep at night, and they’d have me to thank for it.

As I came in one morning a few weeks into my deejay career, I noticed three black women sitting at a table chatting and drinking coffee. They’d been there every Thursday morning. The woman who seemed to do most of the talking was wearing knee-high red leather boots. I recognized her because she had winced and looked up at the overhead speaker several times during my previous shows.

While I was getting settled in, I dropped my first record, “Institutionalized” by Suicidal Tendencies, and, as was my norm, gave a good twist to the Secret Volume Knob.

I looked up and noticed Red Boots.

“I’m sorry,” Red Boots said, smiling wide, as I opened the door and stuck my head outside. “I was wondering if you could do me two little favors.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Well, first, it is hard for us to talk when the music is so
loud,” she continued. “I was wondering if, perhaps, maybe, you could, you know, turn it down.”

“Sure.”

“I mean, like, way down.”

“Well, like all the volume settings are automatic and can’t be changed, but I’ll see what I can do,” I said. “What’s the second thing?”

She grinned.

“Well, we were wondering if you could, perhaps, take requests, or try, like, playing some different music.”

“Hey, I know it may not be to
your
taste,” I said. “But I have to keep the entire audience in mind.”

She crunched up her brow.

“Entire audience,” she said loudly. “Look around.”

Besides Red Boots and her friends, my “entire audience” consisted of a handful of half-awake fellow students and two cafeteria workers.

Her tone suddenly shifted.

“Our table is the simple majority here, and if we don’t want to hear this screaming ‘I hate you’ junk, you will play what we want.”

“Hey, if you don’t like it, you can come sign up for your own shift and play what
you
want.”

“Or I can just tell your tragic mopey ass that
I
pay for this school, too. And I pay just as much as
you do
,” she said, tapping her finger against my chest.

“Write a letter,” I said, stepping back to close the door. “Because then you’ll learn how little other people care about what you think.” I shut the door and reached for the Secret Volume Knob, turning it up even higher.

Red Boots started to shake her head as she rejoined her
friends, shouting, “Oh, hell no!” so loud I could hear it through the glass wall.

I dropped my Flipper record on the other turntable and played “Living for the Depression”—a minute and a half of mostly lo-fi shouting over a simple (and sloppily played) three-chord progression. The speakers barked out:

Red Boots was now standing up, addressing the few occupied tables around her, and pointing at me through the glass. Eventually she just turned toward me and shouted. Inside the ’KSC booth, I couldn’t make out a single word, but I think I still pretty much got what she was trying to say.