Commitment Issues

by Wynn Wagner

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  Chapter Two

  Hi, I'm Sean, and I'm an alcoholic. And I was clutched by an angel. It was so awesome and reassuring and reaffirming, but it didn't put food in my stomach. I needed to get a job.

  Before I got sober, I made money with my mouth—my voice. Phrasing is learned. Intonation is learned. Baritone chops are inherited, and I had great genes for radio. Thanks, Mama!

  I slurred so many newscasts that nobody would hire me. I cut spots (commercials) that were supposed to be thirty seconds so they fit inside a network show, but I just relaxed and recorded until I was finished. Somebody told me that one of my half-minute spots was almost two minutes. Oops, my bad.

  One news director even gave me the famous “you'll never work in this town again” speech. He was almost right. Radio is such a tight little group that nobody needed any references. Everybody knew each other. Everybody knew about me and my antics.

  It was hard to get back into broadcasting. It had been hard enough to break into the business the first time, but it was almost impossible to return to broadcasting after making such a colorful exit. A typical city will only have a handful of broadcasters and an even smaller number of radio stations. In a big city, like where I lived, everybody in the outlying area wanted to come to the city. They wanted to “make it” on the air. Dozens of good voice talents would apply for every opening. Big-city broadcasting is so competitive that they can get talent almost at minimum wage.

  "You don't need money,” they might say. “We're going to make you a star."

  Like being a star will buy a Big Mac or a cup of coffee. It was bad for me because of all the booze and dope. I couldn't hold down a job because I didn't know you couldn't really do broadcasting when you were so drunk that you slurred words or went into blackouts. After I got fired from a couple of radio stations, everybody in town knew about it. I was branded as unreliable and a pain in the ass to work with.

  By the time I went to AA, I couldn't get a job in radio. I wrote obituaries for the newspaper, and I made pizza for a while. The newspaper made me nuts, and I really sucked at making pizza. Don't get me wrong, I was grateful for the work. If I hadn't had those jobs, I would have been on the street more than I already was. One apartment manager kept eviction papers handy because he was tired of my excuses.

  Getting sober actually made things worse for a while because of the detox process. I knew that AA worked because I'd seen other radio guys going through it. They annoyed me because they were all so bubbly in the morning. I would be hung over when these electric personalities would pop in to tell me about their character flaws and how glorious it was to get beyond all that. I wanted to throw up.

  The first few weeks I was sober, I had to walk through the neighborhood to collect soda cans to recycle. It was the only way to buy gas for my motorcycle. Those first few weeks were actually worse than being drunk. That isn't exactly true; it was equally bad, but I didn't have chemicals to blot out reality. Getting sober really sucked, but I knew that I had to stick with it. A radio guy can't make a living without being able to talk, and talking requires control of the muscles in the mouth. I can do this thing. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

  I saw one of my old radio station buddies at AA one night. He had been sober for a number of years. We had worked together when he was first getting sober. He would bounce into the station and be happy with life. He would tell me how exciting his sobriety was. I wanted to throw things at him to get him to quit effervescing in my direction. It was hard to fight a bruising hangover around such disquieting displays of joy.

  This guy was laying down a foundation for me, although he never said anything about my drinking. He only talked about himself and his sobriety, but it showed me that AA was a way to get sober. I wanted nothing to do with it back then, but I remembered watching him. When I needed to stop drinking, I remembered this newscaster.

  So there he was, standing at the podium before a gay group and telling his story. He was talking about his wife and kids, which was okay. He was being effervescent and happy, and I still wanted to throw things at him, but he made it hard to be a curmudgeon.

  He recognized me while he was giving his drunk-a-log, and he came up after the meeting to say hi.

  My home group is known as the “gay group” in town. People who aren't gay can attend, but they usually don't.

  He was one of the reasons that I knew AA would work for me, and I told him so.

  "Did you know I was drinking?” I asked him.

  "Later I did, but not when we were working together. I heard your interview with the Secretary of the Interior."

  "Not my best work,” I said with a shrug. It was one of my last interviews in radio, and I was so drunk that the Secretary could barely understand my questions. I asked him why the country needed an interior designer, and he tried to explain his position to me. The interview ended when I passed out and fell out of the chair. The Secretary's bodyguards stopped the interview and got him away from me.

  The newscaster also learned that I was probably gay because the gay group was my home group. It is possible that we have some non-gay members, but I've never met any. So he did the math, if he didn't already know. I don't hide it, but it isn't the typical conversation in a radio station. He didn't make a big deal about finding me at the gay group. If he had any issues, he kept them to himself.

  My radio buddy gave me a card and wrote down a name on the back. It was the production director at his radio station. “Production” is a fancy word for commercials. The production director is the one who is responsible for getting all the in-house commercials recorded and put to music. He also would be the one to get station promos done. The radio guy seemed to think they might have some extra work to throw my way.

  "Nobody will hire me,” I said.

  "Maybe not,” he said, “but the answer's always no unless you ask."

  I nodded and told him that I'd call.

  "It isn't like a live gig,” he said. “Somebody who might not trust you with a live mic might take a chance on you in production."

  When I called, the production director was expecting my call. He knew my work (which meant he also knew about my colorful fuck-ups). He didn't ask if I could do the work or what I might be looking to do. He just told me what he had available and asked if I was interested.

  Interested? I wanted to turn back flips.

  He gave me two six-hour shifts a week to start. There was a stack of copy (scripts) waiting for me each time. The station had a library of production music. Each tune was available in ten-, thirty-, and sixty-second edits, and I was able to pick what I wanted. We had hundreds of tunes of every genre you could imagine. I'd listen to the music and get an idea of where the natural musical breaks might be. Sometimes the client would already have music, and that made my job easier. One or two had jingles, so I got to learn how to be an expert editor and mixer. “Expert” is a relative term. I was more of an expert than I used to be, but some guys can make the software suite create artwork. Nobody complained, but I know my first few fancy edits sucked rusty storm water runoff.

  "One-Take Sean,” they called me. I could scan through a spot on the monitor and just start talking. I would always get the finished version in one take. That would give me some time to brush up on my production skills. The time evened out because I would spend longer than others in getting the voice and music mixed.

  There were always a few spots to do, and they gradually gave me more and more promos and station breaks. Radio stations have trouble getting promos cut because they want them done by a voice other than the disc jockey. I was the perfect one to do their promos because I didn't have a show. If you do station breaks, your voice is heard twenty-four hours a day. If you listened to this station, you'd trip over my voice.

  * * * *

  I thought about my angel sometimes, and I even walked around the neighborhood looking for him. Nobody had ever seen anyone like Rafa.

  When
I jacked off, I usually got one or two flashes of him grinning a couple of inches above my head while he made love to me. It was going to be years of longing for a repeat of those magical moments.

  Once or twice I thought about Rafa so much that I lost track of what I was doing. I just got satisfied and limp without shooting, and that's not like me.

  I'm not a wild guy, and I don't go out hunting for sex. In the past, I always wanted to know the guy before we hit the sack. Rafa was the only time I had sex without knowing his name, and now all I had was the memory of our encounter.

  * * * *

  Something really amazing happened one Thursday morning. The station's news director came into the production room. I had met him a few times but didn't really know him well. He said that the station had done some voice research on everybody on staff—including me. He said that a company in California hired a room full of people to come listen. Each person was wired to record perspiration and heart beat and breathing.

  He said my voice was a complete flat-line with male listeners, and I was crushed to hear that. It couldn't be good for a gay announcer to get no reaction from men. The news director also told me that my voice spiked female perspiration, and he said it was a dramatic change. What was more, he told me that the company used perspiration level to measure the sexiness of a voice. Okay, the gay announcer could make women wet. It was too weird. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with a room full of sweaty women, and I didn't know why a news director—a perfectly good news director, I should add—would be telling me any of this.

  What the news director was telling me was that he wanted to add an on-air gig to my schedule. He wanted me to do a long newscast at noon. One newscast a day was the offer, but it was an eighteen-minute show. He wanted it to be easygoing and lighthearted. He didn't want blood or guts. Commentary was fine, but it all had to be mainstream. He told me that my commentary always had to be the opinions that the listener already held.

  He said that there'd be an engineer (great!) and an editor (grrrr!). An editor meant that he wanted to keep me on a leash. I couldn't really blame him, but I didn't like it. He said he had heard some of my news work from years ago, and he liked my folksy approach. He wanted me to keep to the informal chat style, like I was talking directly to him as a friend. I wasn't playing some Joe-Announcer role at a big sports stadium. He liked that I came across as talking directly to one listener.

  And, by the way, he added, if the station brass liked the newscast, they might want to send it out to a network they controlled. The company owned radio stations all over the country, but much of their content came out of a few locations in major cities. The manager of the station was looking to be a supplier to the rest of the network. They thought I might be a feather in the station's cap.

  The engineer was a pro. He wanted to twist knobs but not be your friend. Typical for an engineer. I only knew Ronny on the other side of a big double-pane window in the studio.

  Janie Marroquin was my editor and writer. Everybody called her by both names, never just Janie. She has the harshest Latina accent you can imagine, but she is a great editor and writer. When we first met, I thought they were kidding me about using her as a writer. She talks like she just stepped out of the barrio, but she is an amazing writer. She blasts her way through wire stories and newspapers. Her keyboard smokes as she prepares everything. Somehow she moves the words from her laptop computer to the monitor right in front of my microphone. I can make changes if I want, but I almost never want to. I tweak a little when we're live, but that doesn't need any advance work on my part. Yes, I do news by the seat of my pants, and it makes the news director really nervous, considering my colorful track record.

  We practiced for a few days before we were supposed to go on the air. I think the news director wanted to make sure that I was up to the job. He could have me tape the show if he wasn't comfortable with everything. One-Take Sean came through. It was as though Janie had heard my old newscasts and was writing just for me. She didn't even complain too much when I tweaked the scripts.

  The first part of the show was always hard news, or as hard as we were going to visit. We almost never did bloody stories. It was the softer side of news, and I always nailed the script. There was a clock in the studio with a sweep-hand. I hate digital clocks in a radio station because it makes me do arithmetic when I could just look at the second hand of an analog clock. The Lord of the Clock was Ronny's finger. If he was different from the clock, he won.

  In the eighteen-minute show, we had two breaks for commercials. One would come six minutes in. Ronny would hold up one finger a minute before the first break. He would hold up a bent finger at thirty seconds, and he would count down the final ten seconds using all his fingers. I never missed his cue, and that pleased him. Some engineers have to fudge and cheat, but Ronny knew that I would nail our landing.

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  Chapter Three

  ...They signed a consent decree with the Department of Justice. That's a pile of complicated documents written by expensive lawyers. In a nutshell, the company was saying to the government, “Hey, we did nothing wrong, and we promise never to do it again.” They paid a twenty-seven-million-dollar fine, a lot of money to be sure. Unfortunately, the cost of the Justice Department investigation is reported to be eighteen million, and during the eight years this has been an active case, the company reported a profit of two point three billion—with a B—dollars. This has been Perspective America. I'm Sean Roberts....

  "And, we're clear. That's a wrap,” Ronny said through the studio intercom.

  Janie told me that the station manager wanted to see me.

  "Sounding better and better,” she said.

  "Thanks."

  * * * *

  "Senator Whitehead's wife wants to sue us,” the station manager told me. “I thought you should hear it from me."

  "Do they have grounds?"

  "You know the broadcast?” he asked.

  "Sure,” I said. “I assume it's the one where her husband was caught in a ladies’ room on the highway outside Washington."

  "Yeah,” the station manager said, “but you said he was in drag."

  "He was,” I protested.

  "That's why I'm not worried about the lawsuit, but she thinks we held her out for public ridicule."

  "What can I do to help?"

  "Stick to the scripts that Janie Marroquin writes for you."

  "Always."

  "Good,” she said. “Two other things, and I'm not sure how to do this delicately."

  I had that sinking feeling where the room got heavy. Station managers don't use the word “delicately” unless they have some desperate news. This time she just wanted to let me know that a beer company wanted to hire me as their spokesperson for a new national ad campaign.

  "You okay with that?” she asked.

  "Know anything about the money?” I asked.

  "No, they're still playing games. There isn't anything concrete. When it is we'll get your agent to contact them."

  "I don't have an—” I started to expose myself as not being able to negotiate, but I stopped myself. “Sure, you have a phone number?"

  "I know you're in AA and all,” she said, “and I didn't want to tell them to contact you unless you were okay with it."

  The conversation was right on the borderline of some federal laws. I'm sober, and I had never appeared on the station's property drunk or stoned. The second “A” in AA is “anonymous,” and having this conversation told me that I wasn't all that anonymous. Big deal—so what. My drinking was never anonymous. She was looking out for my best interests. Maybe she wanted to make sure her noon talent didn't get into a situation that would make her have to find a replacement.

  "It's fine,” I said, “so long as I don't have to sample the merchandise."

  "I'm just watching your back,” she said.

  "Thanks. I mean that."

  "One more thing,” she said. “I want to take your show nat
ional. When you were hired, you and the news director talked about expanding to some of our other sister stations. This is bigger. I want to see if we can't syndicate your show on a much larger scale. I think we can both make some decent coin for it. Could you get your agent to call me about a new contract?"

  "Sure!"

  "Next Monday I need you to get Janie Marroquin and you in here an hour ahead of time so we can talk about content and format. We aren't going national so fast, but we might as well plan for it."

  "I'm sure that'll be okay."

  "What we need to do, starting Monday, is add another block at the end of the cast, a space for local news. I have you sold as a local interest, and I don't want to endanger those spots while we transition."

  "Makes sense,” I said.

  "Great, get your agent to call me today or tomorrow."

  "Bueno."

  * * * *

  Hi, I'm Sean, and I'm an alcoholic, and I don't even know where to go look for a talent agent. I have to find one today, maybe yesterday.

  "We may be going national,” I told Janie Marroquin in the studio. We use our little studio as our office.

  "Ooo, marcha,” she said. “Senor Voice is moving on."

  "Well it's a package deal,” I said. “If I'm moving, you and Ronny are coming too. You got a talent agent?"

  "Why would I? I'm a writer, not talent."

  "I don't know, but I need to go get one, like, today. You're talented in my book."

  "Cool,” she said. “I'm union, babe, and a national gig is already covered by the contract. It's a nice increase, but it's already negotiated by the union."

  "Do you know any talent agents?"

  "Chinga, man,” she said. “I gotta do everything for you? This'll cost you. Come buy my lunch."

  We ate pasta while she looked through her tablet PC. I already knew that she used an Android computer. When I asked about getting an Apple iPad, she told me that I'd be a real dick and hate myself because it was such a piece of shit. She said it was cool to own unless you wanted to turn it on and actually use it for anything other than what Apple engineers expected.