CHAPTER four
The machinery has never been louder. She should've slept in yesterday, front-loaded her rest knowing how hectic the night would be. She wonders if anyone here heard the show last night. Probably not, they'd be sleeping instead like smart people. Maybe she should find the guy that looks the most tired and ask them about it. Nah, that would be a bit rude.
as the day goes on she starts to think about things to talk about on the show. She decides old phone booths and payphones would be a fun topic, she's seen plenty around town and took down descriptions of most. She could say something about how we abandoned so many structures that all had to be designed and built. But that would be too, pretentious, right? She didn't wanna seem like a pretentious hipster douche. She thought of some of the bigger guys at work hearing the show and beating her up for being a dweeb like it was middle school. How dare she like things, what a racket!
She carries on spiraling down into mental anguish until she gets a tap on the shoulder from one of her coworkers. He's holding up his phone, which he's really not supposed to have on the floor. "Did you make this?" It's a podcast called 'the Midnight Radio Jamboree,' the cover art is generic patterns, it looks automatically generated. He hits the play button and her voice comes out of the phone. The must have uploaded the show online after it was taped without her knowing.
"Y-yea? How did you find that?"
"It got recommended to me this morning, when did you make this?"
Poppy checks the time on the control console. "uhh, 11 hours ago?"
"At midnight? Damn, alright." Satisfied, he walks off and back to his station. Poppy, of course, worries that people are actually hearing what she has to say, or god forbid care. how bad can that be? she thinks, he didn't beat me up or anything. He didn't even call me a nerd! She struggles to remember his name, Reggie maybe?
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Kelpy has everything set up when she comes in, everything adjusted to a tee. It's immediately thrown off kilter, of course, when Poppy brings in a stack of 20 CD jewelcases. "This is some of the stuff I wanna play tonight, can you start loading it into the terminal?"
Kelpy looks ready to scream, maybe pass out. "Of course, I'd love to!" The clock reads 11:50, there won't be enough time to load the first one before the show starts so she'll have to do a monologue. Just then, someone comes out of the booth, a skinny rat with a cut up t- shirt for some punk band and jeans covered in metal chains. They say nothing as they walk out, only glancing at Poppy for a second. It just occurs to her that aside from her own show, she has no idea what plays on this station. She gets in the booth and gets her photos in order. Between work and now she managed to make a small website to host the photos she'd taken of phone booths, so listeners could see what she was talking about. Yes its a tad high concept, but she's having fun.
The clock strikes midnight, a station ident plays through the headphones, and Poppy unmutes the mic to start the show. She talks about payphones she's seen, the stickers covering them, the things people used them for, their role as street art, everything she could think of for the subject. After 5 minutes her phone pings with a message from Kelpy saying that the first disc was loaded. She played the first track, a somber piano piece that felt somehow naturally urban. For a moment Poppy closed her eyes and pictured a city overgrown with moss and kudzu. It's dystopian in nature, but somehow also beautiful. Nature retakes what was so forcefully ripped from it before. It wasn't the most far-flung concept, it had happened once before.
When the song is done the commercial light comes on, and she takes the break. It goes in a pattern like this all night. Talking, then a newly loaded song, then commercial. She doesn't play nearly as much music as the night before, but every song feels like it has some meaning to it. Theres a more coherent theme going. She feels great. She thinks Reggie from work will like it, too. She realizes that the show being taped means any number of her friends or family could listen. Shoot, one of her friends is in another continent, they could listen live in the morning. What if her parents heard it? They didn't know about the show, she never told them. Even though she's an adult it still feels like she's sneaking out to record, it feels like she's always under some kind of surveillance even though she's free. She wants to call this out, make it known, but her childhood home is no longer a safe space for selfexpression. At the end of the program Poppy gathers her things, grabs the stack of discs and confronts Kelpy as it walks to the bathroom.
"You never told me that this was going to be uploaded online, what gives?"
"Oh, yeah, sorry! Willow (from the AntiAntlers forum, she suspects) was curious. I can take it down if you want!"
"No, it's fine, I think one of my coworkers listens."
"That's why it had 2 listens! I can't blame them, it's a good show." Kelpy walks into the bathroom, but shouts from behind the door "How late did you get home last night?"
"Uh, three-ish?"
"Jeez girl, you can sleep here but be out early ok?"
Poppy is dead tired, getting home took an hour on bike yesterday and she had to get up at 6 for work. She decides to sleep in the office. What's the worst that can happen?
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