Ghost Radio (7 page)

“Is that me?
Am I on?”

“Yes, caller, you're on the air.”

“Oh God, I'm so nervous. I didn't know I'd be this nervous.”

“What is your name, caller, and where are you from?”

“My name is Sandy, and I'm from Amarillo.”

“All right, Sandy, where are you going to take us tonight?”

“I've never told anyone this, because I thought people would think I was crazy. But listening to your other callers…well…I just have to tell someone.”

“That's what we're here for.”

“Oh, I'm so nervous. Am I really on the air?”

“Just take a deep breath, Sandy, and tell us what happened.”

“Okay…okay…well, this was when I was in high school. Some of us had gone to a party. Nothing wild, just kid stuff. But it had run pretty late. It must have been like one, maybe two in the morning by the time we were driving home.

“Now, there were four of us in the car. Me and my boyfriend, Jake; my best friend, Tawnie; and her boyfriend, Carson. The party was, like, in this weird part of town. None of us knew it very well. And on the way home we got lost.

“And not just lost. It was weird. We ended up in this big area with all these industrial buildings. You know, like warehouses or something. And it was like we couldn't get out. Or like the complex went on forever.

“No matter how long we drove, or which corner we turned, we still found ourselves driving down these empty streets, past these big empty
buildings. They looked weird, scary. Not like any buildings I've seen before. And it started to creep us out pretty quickly.

“Jake and Carson tried to make jokes about it. But I could hear in their voices that they were scared. You know what I mean, what that sounds like, especially with boys that age?”

“I do, Sandy. And then what happened?”

“I think Tawnie heard it first. Or maybe it was me? No, I think it was definitely Tawnie. Because I clearly remember her saying, ‘Sandy, do you hear that?'

“Those words, the way she said them, I remember it like it happened yesterday.”

“What was it?”

“Well, I couldn't tell at first. But when I listened real close, I heard it too.”

“Sandy, what did you hear?”

“Well, you know the music an ice-cream truck plays? I don't mean the song, but the way that music sounds. I don't know what it's called. But you know what I'm talking about?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, it was like that. But sad. I don't think I've ever heard such sad music in all my life. It made me want to cry and scream at the same time. It made me want to run and run and never look back. And Tawny took it worse than me, she began to scream about how she wanted to get out of the car, how she had to get out of the car.

“But that was crazy, where was she going to go? We were lost. We didn't even know where we were. So we just sat there silent and frightened, driving and driving, with the music playing and Tawnie screaming about wanting to get out of the car.

“I don't know how long this went on, but the sun was coming up when we finally found our way out and got home. When I climbed into bed, I heard that music again. Just briefly, for, like, ten…um…twenty seconds. Like it was trying to reach me one last time. Like it was trying to say good night.”

“That's quite a story, Sandy.”

“Wait, there's more.”

“I'm coming up on a break, Sandy. You've got thirty seconds.”

“Okay, I tried to find that part of town for years afterward, those warehouses or whatever, and I never could. It just wasn't there.”

“Phantom industrial parks and the saddest music you've ever heard. This is
Ghost Radio
live with you till five. And if you want to join us, I'll give the numbers to call after this break.”

I write these words
in ink, in a composition book. No cross-outs. No backtracking.

Just one big vomit of truth.

But where do I start?

I don't like talking about myself. I don't even like thinking about myself. But sometimes you need to dig around in the garden of your past, rummage through the weeds and grubs—searching for that main root.

I guess the root of my life, and all its problems, sprouted when my father decided to marry my mother.

He came from a family ruled by social convention and appearances. A family for whom it was less important what you did than how you did it. My father hated this attitude. And, by marrying my mother, he made that crystal clear. He was ostracized by the family and erased from his father's will.

To his family, my mother would never be anything more than a squaw. A nobody. A nothing. Marrying such a woman “just wasn't done.”

They had someone else in mind. Her name was Marlene Koenig. She was everything they wanted. Cultured, bright, well turned out. She even had some vague connection to the British aristocracy. Dad's family loved that!

She would make “a proper wife.” Miss Koenig was keen on the idea too. Dad stood out among the parade of well-scrubbed suitors who frequented her parents' Fifth Avenue apartment: Those “Bradleys” and “Carltons” elicited little more from Miss Koenig than the occasional “nice” or “sweet.” Dad was something different: a scientist with a bo
hemian edge. And both of these characteristics filled Miss Koenig with a demure debutante's version of lust.

Father seriously considered the match. Miss Koenig's knack for conversation would suit him well as he climbed academia's greasy pole. She also had the approval of the Spencer family of industrialists. He would need grants for his work. They could provide.

Did he love her? Not really. But he was a scientist and thought when it came to marriage, pragmatism might be a more rational guide than emotions.

So, as he left for a conference in Mexico, he believed he would return a week later and ask Miss Koenig to marry him.

He did not return for ten years.

He was chairing a panel on string theory at the National Autonomous University and my mother was in the audience. She'd gone there on a whim. It was raining. She missed her bus. You know the drill.

Despite the fact that she was no specialist, and, frankly, not even very interested in the subject, she torpedoed the panel of speakers with a series of incisive questions. By the end of the session, my father was both annoyed and intrigued. Who was this girl? Her simple common sense had shredded his presentation like one of the paper cutouts Mexicans make for the Day of the Dead. He caught up with her at the subway that evening and never left her side again.

Love at first sight, they say.

Whatever.

Miss Koenig married a banker and spent much of the next twenty years in and out of the Betty Ford Clinic.

My parents smile whenever they see her name in the headlines.

And so into this world of fairy-tale love I came, like the eel in a koi pond. I wasn't what my parents expected or wanted. Almost from birth, I fought their attempts to mold me into the perfect sunny expression of their love.

I was queen of the temper tantrum. Princess of “no.” And mistress of rage.

My parents largely ignored my behavior. They turned inward, losing themselves in their idyllic romance. Their relationship actually was idyllic, powered by equal amounts of goodwill and affection. And passion too, I guess.

It's baffling, but I can attest to it. I was there for most of the soap opera.

My father may have sent his inheritance straight to hell, but my mother also made sacrifices, dropping out of med school to follow her crazy Irishman. He, meanwhile, complaining that his colleagues were unimaginative and incompetent, resigned from his professorship in quantum physics at Harvard. The two of them lived on their modest teachers' salaries in the Colonia Roma, a hip neighborhood in Mexico City, until my father finally decided to go back to the United States. He had some new ideas he wanted to bounce off his former colleagues, and more important, he needed financial backing, something that would be hard to find in Mexico for a problematic gringo who didn't know how to kiss university officials' asses and who virulently despised politicians and opportunists.

My mother tried to convince him to stay. She loved her city, life made more sense there than it ever would in an anonymous American suburb. But for once, my father wouldn't listen. He was convinced that it was time, not just for professional reasons, he explained, but also to deal with unfinished family business—and to express his opposition to U.S. interventionist policies in a way that “really mattered.”

Vietnam.

“Out here anyone can speak out against the war and it makes no difference. But if I get a professorship in the States, I won't just be working; I'll be able to directly influence U.S. academics.”

My mother thought it was bullshit, another of her husband's idealist fantasies; she'd learned to live with them, but they still drove her up the wall. Nonetheless, she gave in. Within months, we had packed a few belongings, sold everything else, and boarded a plane to Boston.

What happened next is irrelevant: high school, college, boyfriends with acne, ten million comics read beneath the covers, psychopathic snip
ers, political correctness, thermoses filled with gin, overweight couples holding hands, distant wars, unreliable condoms, ecstasy, the Cure, discovery of a voracious sexual appetite that would lead to good times and more foul-ups, an arrest or two, Dostoyevsky and Bukowski. My life moved beyond the mundane when I finally found a way to link my true interests with an academic and professional pretext that justified them. After years of denial, I accepted that my true passion was comic books: reading them, drawing them, writing them, and—why not?—researching them. I realized they could be seen as a means of pop expression, as the sketchy realizations—with their low cost and unique accessibility—of people's aspirations, ideals, and fears.

I spent my childhood obsessed with the comics that I was forbidden to read. Any book with more than five pictures was suspect, from the low-brow Adventures of Kaliman and Mickey Mouse to Tintin, Superman, Astérix, and Corto Maltese. It made no difference; anything with thought bubbles was instantly condemned, even thrown out the window.

“It's entertainment for imbeciles and illiterates,” my father said.

This forbidden aspect was part of their allure.

I concentrated on studying and writing my thesis. While comics were often used for the most base and mercenary ends—as propaganda tools, vehicles for consumer and religious training, mechanisms for controlling the masses, and systems of sentimental education—I postulated that they could also be used to break the information monopoly of mass-media consortiums, the ideological oppression of the state, and the mental laziness of those incapable of opening a book. It's not that I thought humanity would free itself from its chains by reading the funny pages; but I fervently believed that they had something valid to say, even if it was in the most basic sense. The first time I read something about Marx, Freud, or Ho Chi Minh, it was in a comic by the Mexican cartoonist Rius. He may not have spurred me on to communism, but his work opened my mind to a different avenue of learning.

Okay, I'll admit my theory was nothing out of this world. Similar stuff had been said by dozens of others. Many simply wanted to justify their ju
venile passions. I wanted to take it further. So I started digging through art history, and without having to look too hard, I rediscovered the Mexican muralists: Diego Rivera, Siqueiros, and Orozco, and the artist José Guadalupe Posada. Adding a dash of the ancient pre-Columbian pictographic tradition, I had a set of visual criteria that offered an interesting portrait of Mexican culture. Armed with these concepts, I returned to Mexico and contacted several groups that made underground comics and zines. I spent months researching and documenting their work. By the time I had enough for a decent thesis, I was already collaborating on a strip for the magazine
Gallito Cómics.
I had also moved in with Alberto Mejía, an artist who dreamed of becoming a famous painter but drew comics and political cartoons for a newspaper for a living. Alberto and I didn't last much longer than the time it took us to illustrate a few pages. That's when I met Joaquin.

I didn't go to Mexico looking for romance, but I didn't foresee meeting Joaquin. The day I met him began so strangely.

I woke that morning with an odd vision. A series of letters arranged in a very specific way filled my mind. I wrote them down on a sheet of paper:

 

E

N

I

T N U J A A

B

N

 

I stared at them. They had no meaning that I could determine. No relation to anything I could think of. Yet they seemed important. Very important. I tried to work on one of my comics, but the letters obsessed me. Every few minutes my eyes would return to the pad. It was as if these letters, in this pattern, possessed an almost religious significance. An undeniable, transcendent power. It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced before.

The letters appeared to be completely random. They didn't form words; they didn't even suggest sounds. They were just letters. And the pattern didn't seem to have any obvious significance. But I knew it meant something.

I felt this was the most important thing I'd ever seen in my life. I would kill for these letters. I would build temples to these letters. If these letters could talk, I would do anything they said.

It was bizarre. I had never been excitable or fanatical. My love of comics was deep and powerful. But it didn't even touch this. This was huge.

I took a shower hoping the feeling would wash away. But as the water pounded against my skin all I could think about were those letters. They had a hold on me. I wanted to jump out of the shower, run back to my desk, grab that pad, and cradle it in my arms like a baby. But I fought the urge, turned up the hot water; maybe I could steam these crazy urges from my soul.

Slowly, as the vapor filled my nostrils, the urge dissipated. By the afternoon I returned to work on my comic, and by evening, guests started arriving for a party Alberto had arranged. The letters were all but forgotten.