Star Guitar
When I was twelve, I fell in love with a radio tower. We drove past it every day on the way to school, the light at the top was sort of like an eye watching over me. Something about the early morning brain fog convinced me that it loved me too. It would bless my travels with its light, stand guard against the darkness of early Wisconsin mornings. I often wished our house was a little closer to it, so it could keep me safe there too, but that really wasn’t my call to make. I still had to buy new concealer every couple weeks to cover the bruises. I liked to think that when my tower saw, he felt sad, maybe angry, maybe some mixture of the two. I would often lie in my bed after Dad got home and imagine him walking down the hill on his colossal steel legs, bending down to my window, letting me climb onto the little crossbars at the top and carrying me away.
I never gave him a name. He never spoke, he would only sing to me through the stereo. Those days, I would listen to the FM stations relentlessly, straining to hear his voice through the music.
On the last day before spring break that year, I noticed someone working at the top of the tower, clipped to his bones, gently scaling his spine. I imagined him delicately turning the bulb at the top, replacing it with a fresh red eye, how it would feel to be able to be so close to him. It made me feel warm, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it, even after I got to school. How it must feel clipping into each new crossbar along his truss, checking the cables for damages, patching his wounds. I was so preoccupied with the thought, I didn’t even notice Kath pouring water in my new running shoes during gym until I got up to run my laps and felt the soggy squelch of polyester squeezing a platform of sludge against my soles. That night, I tentatively asked Dad what it was like to be an electrician, and he grunted, put down his fork with a clatter. “Dream bigger, son.” (I was still his son at the time). “It’s like having a job juggling fire or caging tigers. Why waste your life on something that wants to kill you? Eat your dinner. We’re going to be late for your mother’s flight.”
We moved to Philadelphia for Mom’s work a year later. The towers there didn’t speak, just stood quietly, solemn, with long, skinny bars in triangle shapes sticking out of their heads. Dad didn’t drive me to school anymore, he had work early, or that’s what he told us anyway. I rode the bus, but nothing ever spoke to me on the drive. Anyway, I had more friends in Philly, and I didn’t need the help anymore. When I got to physics class in high school, Mr. Tyson had us do a lab with capacitors and resistors. My group dutifully built our circuit, piecing together each component with apathetic sluggishness. When we were done, our board was filled with twenty-four little wires, plates, and electronic components.
I tried, but I couldn’t fall in love with any of them.
Plenty of boys tried to get my attention when I got to college. I had been on estrogen for two years at that point, and my body was catching up with itself. A couple guys even stuck around for more than a few weeks, but they were never quite what I was looking for. Something was missing in their eyes, I always said to my friends. They never really understood what I meant by that, and honestly I didn’t either. But whenever I was with whatever boyfriend I was with at the time and I tried to picture the truss, the wires, the bulbs, he never fit. I knew it was dumb, of course it was dumb, I was twelve then and I was twenty now and obviously it was different. But for every steam-window backseat, every kind soul insistent I was important, loved, beautiful, I felt the gap between my metal plates growing. I tried, but I never could believe them.
Last year, I made the trip back to Lansing to visit Grandma and help with Dad’s funeral. A stroke, she said on the phone. I didn’t cry when I heard. I drove the whole way from uni, even though it was ten hours. Every fifty miles or so, I would switch the radio station to whichever one was hosting Jazz Hour. Ten sparkling jazz hours, lined up like train cars. I knew a couple of the arrangements, greeted them like old friends when they would come on (oh I LOVE this one). About eighteen miles out, the frequency switched itself. 98.6 FM, the same frequency Dad and I would listen to all those mornings, a classic rock station back in the day. But what came from my speakers was the saturated twinkling of old pianos, the rich croon of Ella Fitzgerald. What do I care how much it would storm? I’ve got my love to keep me warm.
He was singing again. Falling in love is easy after you hear them sing.