Receiving signals

Frankie D was sitting in the nightmarish thing that passed for a chair in Studio A of WGNS, the college radio station he had basically called home for the last five years of his life. Frankie was on the extended education plan. WGNS had bad luck with the FCC From the start. Take it’s name, first of all. The Hip-Hop and Metal genre DJs loved to make up little promotional promos referring to firearms, such as “WGuNS: listen to what we fire at you!”

The FCC had not given WGNS permission to build a transmitter in any sort of location that provided decent reception around town. You’d be amazed, considering how clear commercial radio is, how hard it is to find a spot to put an antennae that actually lets folks hear you. Especially in Frankie’s hometown. They had hills. They had lakes. They had all kinds of crap the fritzed radio signals.

In fact, you couldn’t hear it right outside the studio.

Frankie was sitting there in the studio chair, trying to remember not to lean back because this chair’s springs couldn’t take it anymore and you’d fall over. He was also trying not to look at the guy washing the windows outside. Frankie did not like directly interacting with other people much, or even looking at them. This guy looked like your hardcore blue collar ex-jock. You could see tattoos poking out of his rolled up long sleeve shirt, he had that sunbeaten look and a Marlboro limply hung from his lip. Frankie didn’t look to see if it were lit or not.

The guy waved at Frankie D a bunch of times but Frankie didn’t even see it peripherally. Then the guy knocked and Frankie turned to look involutarily. The guy was holding up a note to the glass so Frankie could read it. The note said, “Hey! You know, I can’t really hear your signal!” Frankie looked and saw the guy had headphones on.

Frankie shrugged at him and looked away. He mouthed “sorry” but he wasn’t looking at him anymore.

A few seconds later he heard another knock. The guy had a new note.

“You can’t do anything? I’m right out your damn window. I wanna hear you as long as I’m washing your window.”

Frankie shrugged again but this time he wrote a note, too. “Can’t do anything. It’s a weak signal. Sorry.” And he looked away again. Hoping it was over.

It wasn’t over, though. The next note said, “What are you playing?”

Frankie scratched out his old note and wrote beneath it: “Trip-hop.” No band name. Nothing else.

Another knock and another note: “Huh, I don’t know them. Do you have a station phone number? I have a cell. I can call in.”

Frankie read the note twice and frowned. He wrote a last note and then pulled the blinds on the guy. The note said, “Look, I’m not going to play any Zeppelin for you, okay?” Through the blinds, he saw the silhouette of the man giving him the finger.