DEATH BY RADIO

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ugh. i didn't have time to masturbate this morning, this is why i hate school the most, it's those early mornings where you barely have time to chew on a corner of toast, forget a shower, finish up those last two math problems, and you speed out of your house like the thing was on fire. the quickie choking of the chicken right after waking up calmed my nerves and let me take on the day better than orange juice ever could.

my dad was the best. he was the best, he was cool, cool to me and that is all that mattered. his intellignce was on such an otherworldly scale he would have kicked Ken Jennings's ass in Jeopardy if he had been on, would have permanently disabled Watson the Computer. people said he twitched, he was quick not to anger but to justice, he would often launch into spasms when thinking about the world's problems and how they were ultimately unsolvable and his brilliant mind couldn't do anything to solve them. they said i had inherited his traits, i was heading down a not-normal path with my obsessive thinking and panic attacks and general gloominess. i didn't care, i was my father's son, i was proud. what can i say? fuck the world, i loved my dad, always will, nervous genius and all.

Dabo's sister, named Amira, was two years or so younger than me, bespectacled, large frizzy hair in various two or sometimes three ponytails, a face like a cute pony, with average build. two things prevented things: first, obviously she was my best friend's sister, and secondly, she was more of a tomboy to me, though she was terrible at sports, i just saw her more as a buddy. she did, too, i think, or maybe she was tolerating me for her brother's sake. besides, there was college-student-sister Nasira, hot Nasira with the flowing raven hair, too hot to contain this week, she needs a Wednesday piece all her own next week.

Dad was very keen when it came to meeting new people, new friends of mine, he would zero in on someone's last name and could tell instantly the country of origin. he knew right away from their last name that Dabo and Amira were Armenian but he didn't tell us or anyone that, he wanted to surprise us one morning. Dad would take me in his beautiful artist's never-washed, falling-apart jalopy and drive to Dabo's house to pick up both Dabo and his sister and we would all go to dreaded high school. at 3, Dabo's mom or dad or even Nasira herself would pick the three of us up and drive me back home, depending on everyone's work and college schedules. this was the golden way we all saved money on gas. this morning, Dad wanted to "surprise" all of us by waiting for Dabo and Amira to get in the car before turning on the radio to a specific station he had discovered. usually, the radio is already on when those two get in, it's me fiddling around with something to break the awkward silence of an intellectual father and his intellectual son both with no social skills whatsoever. i'm usually listening to one of my FAVS, LIKE THIS ONE, CLICK HERE, RIGHT HERE AT THIS LINK.

this morning, no, radio silence, Dad had his hand on the knob blocking my meddling with a sly smirk on his face.

when the two got in, well, first, schematic here: Dad of course from now on has to move equipment, so there will always be a fucking huge tired box computer in a box in the back seat. he suggests that i will now have to get in the back with Dabo and Amira and move the inevitable box to the front seat every morning, so i am literally and figuratively trapped in between Dabo on one side of me and Amira on the other in the middle of the back. store that for later.

"hi, guys, top of the chilly morning to ya," Dad chimed gleefully, so full of his plan.

Dabo and Amira as every other day were weary of being woken up so rudely to have to go to a place no one wanted to but had to. i shared in their stoic acceptance each day. they nodded, or maybe they didn't do anything to acknowledge.

"ready for some Meryl and Carol In The Morning?"

Meryl and Carol? i never heard of them. neither had Dabo and his sister. apparently, they were two Armenian gals who had a gabfest radio show in the morning from 6AM to whenever. okay, so since they were Armenians, Dad figured Dabo and Amira, being Armenians, would instantly gravitate to these two ladies, agree with everything they had to say, feel them, unite with them in morning triumph, feel better about themselves, and be ultimately refreshed to attack the school day.

so from then on, whether we wanted it or not, it was Meryl and Carol nonstop from the beginning of the morning ride to when we got to school, every commercial, no stopping, it was never OFF, always ON, every morning, every single morning. every. Dad just assumed that Dabo and Amira were enjoying this---never mind my opinion---because there were never any complaints. what could we do? Dad wasn't an idiot we could push around, and all of us three were way too polite ever to complain. it was uncomfortable because we were being forced to listen to something we really didn't want to, when we had to concentrate on the impending test or the impending beatdown from the bully we would experience that day. it's like being forced to watch The View...if you hate The View, having to sit through that hour every weekday, all the long 60 minutes of it from start to finish.

so, that was bad, but generally, actually, in a vacuum, now that i look back at this with a clear eye not weighed down by embarrassment, the two women weren't that bad. they would often drone on about very innocuous, vapid things going on in Hollywood, though some days they'd surprise us by delving deep into the political landscape in Armenia. they were clearly pro-this-one-side, i always wondered whether Dabo and Amira were pro-that-same-side or pro-the-other-side-of-the-conflict and thought these two yammering hens were idiots for spewing their propaganda. or perhaps they just didn't care at all and were two normal teenagers.

then, for one week straight, my face really had a reason to turn red, for the two distinguished ladies of radio started to talk about a movie Jane Fonda was in or something, and the conversation turned quickly to making love, and the best sex scenes in movies, and then the two recounted their lurid sex lives, no censors, they were being revolutionaries before Howard Stern or something 'cause they were allowed to use curse and naughty words on the radio air, they spoke of blowjob/masturbate/fuck/butterfly/lotus position/farmer's daughter/porn/'80s slow dial-up porn/'90s modem porn/ bestiality/ golden shower/cum shower and other words i can't even remember or i can but won't mention because---wait, why weren't they fired on the spot? why didn't the production manager step in or something?---anyway, the whole thing's a blur because as this is going on with Dad apparently oblivious to the sex talk---just laser-focused on his driving and he fact that it's an Armenian thing that i guess he and i could never understand for we weren't Armenian---i'm trapped inbetween my buddy and her sis, my face is as red as a heart of love i needed right then, i was too embarrassed to even look to see how red the faces of Dabo and Amira surely must have been.

on Friday after that long, strenuous week, i couldn't take it anymore, i farted in the car from embarrassment, it was a big, long, thankfully silent but deadly, fart which filled the car quickly with noxious fumes, it had taken a week to build up and it finally all came out, all came tumbling down into gas. the three of us in the back were so shell-shocked from the sex radio that we didn't even crack a window, we just grinned (i think) and bore it, it even might have served as a distraction from the radio chatter, it was a smell that alerted our noses to perform more as we wanted our ears to perform less.

Dad, my gorgeous father, forever oblivious because he was working on seventeen things in his head at the same time, eventually...huh, i don't remember, i'm not sure how the radio thing stopped, maybe it was the spell-breaking fart after all that finally did it. i never asked those two what they actually thought of Meryl and Carol, if there was a strong Armenian connection there, or if they didn't give a fuck like normal teenagers and just wanted it all to stop. i imagine they would have been all,

"nope. never heard of them. Armenians, huh? cool." from Dabo and

"i'm just gonna say it once, so yeah, i can't stand you, your crazy father, and your overall family, Phoenix...nah, just playin', i got a schoolgirl crush on you...no i don't, i really don't, we cool?" from Amira.

a week or a semester later, i was waiting for Nasira to pick me up from school. 3PM, i'm at the curb, waiting to get the fuck home, bad day, screwed up my chem final, just wanted to disappear, rehydrate, and destress. no Dabo and Amira today, both were sick at home, just some alone time with Nasira to do the trick, wink wink. Cristian the Creep was waiting next to me. before we talked, i alerted him that his fly was open.

"oh yeah, bud, i know, i like it that way," said Cristian through his biting of his tongue.

"sure, sure," and i proceeded to tell him about my fart incident.

"yeah, bud, i know all about that, oh yeah, last night i had a whole bunch of garbanzo beans in my caesar salad, hadn't had those little peach buddies in my food for the longest, and my body just reacted, as i was about to fall asleep, my bed rose up two inches and i farted straight for, like, two minutes nonstop, the loudest stream of bean-emanating smell shoot you ever did witness, just FRTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT!"

and then he closed with biting his tongue, he always closed his loud monologues with the biting of the tongue.

so, yeah, that's how conversations with Cristian would go, he would talk for awhile, and it would just sort of end on a, one of those. i imagined how i would tell Nasira this when she came.

"who the hell is that?" she would say.

"creepy Cristians," i'd try to be clever with.

she'd smile sexily, toss her hair back, and we'd quickly reach 100 as she'd race her ride to my house in two minutes flat, avoiding all traffic rules and regulations like a badass babe...

oh, what? no, Nasira didn't saunter up to the curb with a car next to me, it wasn't her to pick me up, it was Dad. Dad? Dad. in his green, tattered, fringed Kurt Cobain sweater a year before anyone knew who Kurt Cobain was, in his tight-fitting jeans with the knees torn out not for style but from wear.

"i was granted a long lunch break after lugging around those boxes all morning," Dad told me gently over the cracked window. he smiled. he was calm, he seemed free. "come on, Creature, get in, how about some 7-Eleven on the way home? coke smoothie and fries?"

oh,

oh

fuck it, y'know? fuck school. fuck this world. i loved my dad, y'know? fuck friends, fuck phantom crushes, fuck everyone, fuck the creeps and the would-be creeps and those labeled as creeps when they weren't, i loved my awkward father, he was...

...my Dad.



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