Here and Now

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A recent revelation among the various NPR shows I never miss these days has been “Here and Now,” a show that I believe is distributed by American Public Media, and which is not among the best-known or best-loved NPR shows. That’s truly your loss, because “Here and Now” is not the stodgy old curmudgeon of a talker that you may assume it is. It is many things to many different people, and, according to its website, reaches five million listeners a week on 450 radio stations. To me, it is a fount of “information porn” that tickles me as I drive to and from the gym or deliver food for Postmates while I attempt to eke out a meager existence in the surprisingly hardscrabble realm that is Midtown Nashville.

When I was a book publicist, it was part of my job to book my authors onto programs like “Here and Now,” but I rarely actually listened to the shows myself. I rarely consumed any media at all, other than my own moldering iPhone playlist, only recently rejuvenated with—wait for it—cuts by Sufjan Stevens and the Noisettes, among other artists who I really should have heard of ten years ago. No, I never watched “TODAY” or “Ellen” or “Meet the Press.” Once I pitched a book that contained newly discovered slave narratives to noted battleaxe Jackie Levin at the “TODAY” show for Al Roker’s book club, only to have her respond, “Really, Gregory? For Al Roker’s Book Club FOR KIDS???” I was mortified by that error on my part, but who cares in the end? Eventually, Al Roker and Jackie Levin will be just a bunch of dust, like Madonna’s mother in “Truth or Dare”—as will we all.

But I am alive today. And “Here and Now” makes me feel young! Young again! Because surely I am younger than host Robin Young—who has been around the block, as they say—if not her younger co-host Jeremy Hobson. But also because sometimes—and I hesitate to even say this—it awakens the part of myself that I thought time had safely encased in amber. Encased, even, in reinforced amber, and of course the part of myself that I am referring to is my libido. Yes, sometimes when I am listening to “Here and Now,” it’s not just my brain that’s the active participant in the equation. Sometimes, a horridly familiar frisson of longing will coil itself up languorously from my groin, travel up my scoliotic spine, and end up in my mouth, expressing itself in a dripping rictus of desire.

Take today. After leaving the gym, I unsuspectingly turned on “Here and Now” after leaving the gym, only to hear an interview with one Mr. Pat Flanagan, who apparently likes butterflies so much he has become an expert on same, out west there in San Diego. In case you didn’t know it, butterflies are currently swarming through California on some sort of mysterious migration, the purpose of which only they themselves are privy to. From what I can gather, it has become a veritable butterfly reckoning in California, with innocent San Diegoans accidentally breathing the clouds of creatures in and choking to death, or people slipping on butterfly wings and falling to their deaths into Swan Canyon, or butterflies swooping down and stealing the beauty of Sacramento’s flora, which is rightfully humans’ to enjoy! Or whatever they’re doing.

Anyway, Pat Flanagan’s voice immediately awoke in me a great, terrifying desire. To say that he has a sexy voice would be a grave understatement, and I hope you would have empathized with me as Mr. Flanagan discussed “painted ladies,” and “inches of rain” on Valentine’s Day, and “wet weather,” amongst other things, and my body, well, responded. I was taken back to Los Angeles itself on the day last July that I started driving to Nashville, and a voice came on the air on “AirTalk With Larry Mantle” that made me want to check into a hotel and “enjoy myself” immediately. It was some expert on some topic—I don’t even remember what, now. And I know, I know, if I were to have googled the face that the voice belonged to, my desire would have immediately been quashed. But that is the secret behind NPR’s vise grip on my fantasy life. It is only a fantasy, and no one on the radio is good-looking in real life. Except in a lopsided-facial-features kind of way like Ari Shapiro, who will always be forever “filling in” for someone, ad infinitum, forever.

Today, after much meaningless banter, young Jeremy Hobson stopped trying to impress listeners with his lazily thought-out lines of questioning, and finally thanked the great Pat Flanagan for joining the show. There was a great, pregnant pause—you could almost picture listeners licking their lips in anticipation—after which Flanagan, ever the inveigler, responded in a dry, sultry voice: “THANK YOU FOR HAVING ME.”

Listen for yourself, if you don’t believe me:

https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/03/18/butterflies-migration-california

The Desperates

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There were only three Desperates at the facility that week. G. arrived a day later than expected because a flight attendant had seen him bump into a wall at Nashville International Airport while waiting for his Tuesday flight, and banned him from getting on the plane. So he got a new ticket and joined the other two Desperates the next day, on a Wednesday, in an unidentifiable part of Arizona.

At first it was hard for the Desperates to tell each other apart from the staff of the facility. Everyone was wearing scrubs, including the Desperates, but of course, unlike with the staff, all of the Desperates’ belongings had been removed from them, even the medications they took to make themselves less desperate. No medications, no phones, no lip balm, no nail clippers, no Alka Seltzer, no books. Certainly, a laptop was out of the question.

G. and N. were smokers, and every day at set hours, they would beg the staff for a cigarette (G.'s and N.'s own personal, confiscated cigarettes, mind you) and a lighter, and go outside to the designated smoking area and make niceties at each other, but peer in a desperate way at the world—at least as desperately as they could muster, as pumped-full of Ativan, gabapentin, and Seroquel as they were. Could they even be said to be depressed anymore?

(The third Desperate was so boring he could only be described as “Z.”)

Every day, an alarming amount of attendants gave the Desperates pills, took their vitals, laid hands on them in more indeterminate ways, woke them up in the middle of the night two times to take their vitals again, and took their mental health and substance abuse histories. These two categories broke down into many subcategories—family mental health history, mental health and hospitalization history, history of attitudes towards religion, eating disorder stats, stats of suicide attempts, history of treatment, and the rest. All three Desperates were repelled by these queries into their pasts, which they had hoped so much to escape, and N. developed a suspiciously rapid-onset case of pneumonia, and lay on the couch during Group, covered completely with a blanket.

Group involved a very boring, young (possibly 24), and mildly attractive counselor named Juan, who came in at least once a day to lead a “group” of the three of them. Juan discussed things like the emotional mind and the rational mind, and how the two minds might be synthesized into a third, “wise,” mind. Long prior, G. had longed to have a crazy life, which of course requires one to make crazy choices. But now, in this facility, if you were to put a gun to G.’s head and threaten to pull the trigger, he might eventually and after much soul-searching admit that he wished that his life were a little less crazy. During Group, N. lay still with her head covered with the blanket, and could be of no aid to anyone present. At one point, G. and Z. were instructed by Juan to write a letter to their disease. G.’s letter discussed how sorry he was that his disease had led him to this Wednesday evening, in an unidentifiable part of Arizona, with no phone, no lip balm, no nail clipper, no Alka Seltzer, and no books. As he read it aloud to the Group, he began to weep softly against his will. The counselor got really excited and praised his tears, and at that point, G. tried to hold his head up high, in the face of the praise.

When there was no Group, there was nothing to do at the facility but take pills and watch tv and wait to be prodded by a murkily qualified attendant, so often during the day the Desperates would congregate in the common area, where everyone but G. would discuss sports. Everyone had an opinion about college basketball. St. John’s, Duke, Vanderbilt, et al. After those discussions, Z. would then begin to give his own opinions on the way that alcohol—that great, blazing set of wings made of fire—had taken him away from everyone, especially a young niece of his named Emily, whom he affectionately called “Little Miss.” The blazing wings had brought him closer to his own life, but then cruelly took him away from everything. It was his hope that the facility would extinguish the wings and restore him to sanity and his family’s embrace. “I’m sorry, Little Miss,” he said helplessly. At times, after Group, the 24-year-old counselor would take Z. aside and attempt to explain to him some of the basic precepts of living, such as: what a sponsor is; how to find an AA meeting; how to look for a job; when to make an amend; how to ignore whatever G. had said during that day’s Group; how to be.

G. had no interest in AA or the 12 steps. He had tried all of that too many times. He was full of a medication called Campral, which dulled his cravings for alcohol. His plan for when he was back in Nashville was to clean his apartment and then attend the outpatient rehab he had selected. He would also look into Narcotics Anonymous meetings, which he was sure would be cooler than AA meetings, which were full of people who were no fun because they had already had too much fun. He would also practice Transcendental Meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy; he would go to the gym and do yoga. He would find a therapist he could trust, and he would drive for Postmates. He chose not to vocalize these plans to the Group, for fear that their potential reactions would trigger a response from his "emotional mind" that would boggle their "rational minds." G., at times, had no chill. 

***

Two days later, graduated from detox and with his own clothes on, G. made his way to the gate of the plane that would take him back to Nashville. He didn’t know it, but back at the facility, N. was dedicating her meditation practice for the day to him. “May G. never embarrass anyone, ever again,” she breathed as a mantra. “Especially not himself.” At the gate in the airport, a flight attendant greeted G., took his ticket, and introduced herself as Susan. “I’m Gregory,” he responded shakily. He noticed that, as soon as she heard his voice, Susan’s gaze narrowed and seemed to bisect, somehow. Half of her gaze sized him up physically, as though wondering how much force it would take for her to throw him out of the fuselage in the unlikely event of an ocean crash landing (with survivors). The other half seemed to attempt to size him up morally, assessing the likelihood that his clothing concealed an explosive. Both halves of her gaze had their own judgements and ugly connotations, of course, he thought as he walked down the jet bridge and boarded the plane—but neither was without its own kindness.