Ghost Radio by Leopoldo Gout

like it was up to the standards of our music.
    And Gabriel wasn’t there.
    Without him, making music felt like work.
    For me, radio was a space for reflection. On the air, I submerged myself in music and literature. I listened along with my audience; I read to myself and to them, I discussed all kinds of ideas with total strangers. It was the perfect medium: intense, warm, interactive, and highly volatile. From my very first session in the broadcast studio, I felt like I was in a time capsule, a sensory-deprivation chamber. It was a protective bubble where nothing and no one could touch me. The semidarkness, the illuminated panel, and the on-air light combined to create a cozy, womblike environment, a sort of cosmic solitude. I had the sensation of floating in space, completely isolated from the real world. My only human contact was with the disembodied voices of callers. Everything seemed dusted with an ethereal—yes, I’ll say it—ghostly quality. I could touch and hear the whole world, while no one could be sure of my existence; I was just one more voice in the teeming concert of hertzian waves. It was a land of the blind, where we were guided by sounds and voices, and space took the shape our words gave it. We transformed it with every description, comment, insult, or digression. It was almost like death, floating aimlessly at night, listening to spectral voices that in turn spoke about specters, indifferent to their own condition.
    One day, I read a fragment from Edgar Allan Poe on the air: “The Telltale Heart.” My audience responded well. The calls poured in. Some, who already knew the story, praised me for “elevating the abysmal level of discourse on that pigsty you call a program.”
    Others, younger or more ignorant, wanted to know more about Poe. Did he teach at a local university or sign autographs at shopping malls? The surprising thing was that a few, inspired by my reading, started calling in with anecdotes, stories that seemed to them mysterious or inexplicable.
    â€œHello, my name’s Manuel. I work as a security guard at a building downtown that’s under construction. I couldn’t resist the temptation to call, because I really liked what you read. I already wrote down the author; I’m going to buy the book. But what I really wanted to tell you is something that happened to me.
    I’m forty-two years old, and about twenty years ago I worked in construction, you know, as a builder. Anyways, one night I was working overtime with my uncle at a site. I had to push wheelbarrows full of mixed cement up to the third floor on top of some wooden planks. One night my uncle, who got me the job, showed me a bottle of tequila. “How ‘bout it, nephew, want some? It’ll warm you up!” I said no, it was a bad idea. I could get into trouble or even fall. He said: “Don’t worry, just take it easy. We aren’t getting drunk, we’re getting warm.”
    Back then I drank. Not anymore.
    The last time I had one was about five years ago and I don’t intend to fall off the wagon. But back then I thought my uncle might be right. Besides, he was almost as important as the foreman, so I figured nothing would happen. I took a drink and started up with a load. When I got back down, I walked past my uncle again. He told me to take another shot, and I did. By the fifth round, I was real tipsy, singing and talking shit. And then I fell. I fell into the wheelbarrow, rolled a few yards, and then dropped about six feet. I was covered in liquid concrete. Everything hurt; I thought I’d never be able to move again. Then I heard my uncle’s booming laugh. His guffaws echoed on the naked walls of the construction site. He finally stopped laughing and came down to see if I was still alive. He wiped the cement off of me and helped me up.
    â€œWhat a fuckin’ idiot you turned out to be, nephew,” he said over and over again.
    I’d had enough