Jennifer Oko - Gloss

I wasn’t always this surly. In fact, I’m not always this surly. I like to think of myself as personable. My fellow inmates seem to like me. They say things like “you ain’t so bad (dramatic pause) for a white girl.” And, when we are dancing around the cell block to entertain ourselves (my friend Galina in the neighboring cell can scat like she is channeling a Slavic version of Betty Carter), they tell me I move like a sista’ and that I could easily have a starring role in a hip-hop video. I’m not sure if I’m flattered or not, but I think many of my outside peers would savor that as a compliment. The whiter you are, the more privileged your background, the more being “ghetto” is supposed to be a coveted commodity. I never understood this trend, the rich boarding school boys with droopy pants, walking with the lilt of a drug lord thug. Wispy wheat-haired lasses showing their palm and saying in a staccato cadence, “Talk to the hand.” I appreciate the grit and flavor such mannerisms represent, but wouldn’t it make more sense for people to want to mimic the rich and powerful? Of course, I’m not sure which would be more absurd, a prep-schooled, Ivy-educated, wavy-haired, nose-sculpted young woman like myself trying to talk jive (if jive is still spoken) or a middle-class, third generation mixed Eastern European young woman, also like myself, trying to act like a Vanderbilt.

Like I said, I digress. But that is actually not so off point. Because really, what got me here, into cell block six, had a lot to do with people (yours truly included) trying to appear like something they are not: morning television.

Dear New Day USA—

I watch your show everyday and have for years. But yesterday, I noticed that Faith had changed her hair style. I don’t like it. She looks much better with a side part.

Sandy Franklin

Winona, WI

“THIRTY SECONDS TO AIR!” THE STAGE MANAGER skipped over the wires strewn about the floor and jumped behind the row of semirobotic cameras.

“Shit!” The frail makeup artist rushed forward, armed with a powder puff, and dived for Ken Klark’s shiny, pert nose. The white dust settled and she was gone, out of the shot.

“Ten seconds!”

Klark stroked his chiseled chin, smoothed back what there was to smooth of his ever so trendy, close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair, and ran his tongue over his neon-white teeth. Four thousand dollars in caps right there. He had expensed them to the network, which did not contest.

“Five seconds!”

He tugged his dark blue blazer behind him once more and sat up cocksure.

“Three! Two!” On the unspoken count of “One” the stage manager mimed a gunshot at Klark, who smiled, leaned a bit forward, waiting a beat for the zooming camera lens to settle on him.

“Good morning, everyone! It’s a New Day, USA!” he said. “Today is April 4th, and this is ZBC News. I’m Ken Klark.”

“And I’m Faith Heide.” A small, bobbed blonde in a fitted red sweater popped up on the screen, emitting a girl-next-door smile into eight point five million homes.

And I’m fucked, I thought as I ran into the control room behind the set, twenty minutes late. You are supposed to check your graphics and chyrons before the show, not when it’s already live on the air.

The eyes of the executive producer were illuminated by the wall of monitors at the front of the darkened room, making it particularly intimidating as he turned them toward me for a brief moment, adding pressure to my dangerously undercaffeinated brain.

It was never a good thing to enter the control room without having had at least a sip of morning coffee, because even with the dimmed lights and hushed tones, the place was electrically charged. Figuratively, I mean. Of course it was literally, too. I often thought they turned down the lights not because it was easier for the director to focus on the monitors, since the darkness cuts down on the glare, but because sometimes it seemed the energy emitted by live television was too powerful to face front on. Think about it. For something to have enough energy to hold the attention of someone as far away as, say, Huntsville, Alabama, imagine the energy it has when up close and personal.

I tiptoed over to the row of graphics terminals.

“Maria,” I whispered to the unionized (and therefore to be treated very nicely) woman whose job it was to hit the button to call up each title as the director asked for it. “Can I check my chyron list at the break?”

She didn’t respond, but I knew she heard me. So I hovered, counting down the seconds to the commercial interruption, at which point I knew, because we had been through this before, she would wordlessly, if slightly aggressively, punch up the titles on the computer so I could make sure that none of the characters in my piece would have a misspelled name show up underneath them on the screen. I did this because such an error is one of journalism’s cardinal sins. No matter how moving, how well-crafted, well-researched, well-written, well-produced your piece, be it an article or a lower-third graphic for a segment of fluff, spelling someone’s name wrong was as good for your career as if you got caught sleeping with the big boss’s husband. Actually, that’s a bad analogy. In network television, most of the big bosses have wives.

“It’s P-u-r-n-e-l-l,” I said. “Not P-e-r-n-e-l-l.”

“That’s what you sent us.” She didn’t turn to look at me when she said this.

“I know. That’s why I’m here. We have to fix it.” I was talking through my teeth, but trying to sound sweet and sympathetic all the same.

“Whatever,” she said, typing in the correction one rigid finger at a time.

I exhaled. It was 7:12. That meant about eighteen more minutes for airing “important” stories, and twenty-three minutes until mine.

I went to the green room to steal some coffee. Technically, that pot was for the guests. But the mud they made for the staff was just plain offensive, and I’m sorry, I worked very hard and was entitled to something that was, at the very least, drinkable.

The green room was not actually green. Green rooms hardly ever are. When I worked at Sunrise America, the walls were blue. Here, our walls were a soothing, creamy yellow. If Franklin, the middle-aged man who considered himself the patron of the room, a man steeped in petty authority and indulgently expensive colognes, wasn’t around, it was one of my favorite places to watch the show. The couch and chairs were upholstered in a soft, welcoming tweed, the monitors were tuned to every network, for comparison’s sake, and there was an abundant spread of fresh fruit, cheese and pastries.

That day, a B-list movie star was holding court next to the latest reality game show reject, and I knew that Franklin wouldn’t dare say anything to me in front of them. And by the time the show was over, he would have forgotten my trespass.

Or he would have if it weren’t for the fact that as I turned to exit, carrying my hot, filled-to-the-brim cup of much needed coffee, I walked right into—Oh!

“Oh, my God, I am so sorry,” I said as I put down my foam cup and grabbed for some paper napkins.

“Don’t worry. It’s just my shoe.”

“No, but…” I bent down to mop up the brown liquid that was pooling at the front crease of this guy’s tan suede Wallabies.

“It’s really okay.” And then he bent down just as I was looking up and…

“Ow.” Shit. My head hit his chin.

“S’okay.” And his tongue was bleeding.

This was worse than misspelling a name. I had now ruined the tongue of a man who, I assumed, was supposed to be a guest on our show. A speaking guest.

Franklin was already at the guest’s side, ice water in hand, ushering him to the couch, fawning over him as if he were a damaged little bird.