Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

Advantage for what?

He opens his arms wide, so that I can see, at either end of the wingspan of his taupe suit, an immaculate French cuff with an onyx period for a cuff link. You’re right, he says. You’re absolutely right. I just, you know, I think like a businessman. Instinctively. Like you think like a reporter.

I’m not a reporter.

For good?

Never was. There’s no money in it.

He snorts and rubs the corner of his eye with his pinkie, as if bothered by a contact lens or a sudden itch. You work in the nonprofit realm, he says. There’s no money in any of it, is there? Wouldn’t you like to jump ship to corporate, ultimately?

Corporate radio? I thought it was all run by computers now.

What about, say, MSNBC?

Why is it, I always want to ask, that strangers assume I’m just waiting for my chance to move to the big time, that promised media-land of fame, wall-to-wall exposure, the news zippers, the endless symphony of dings, bleeps, swooshes, texts, pings, updates, alerts? No one wants a job to keep anymore: I get that. We’re all free agents. But do I, in particular, look like I want to be on that treadmill, do I have that look of perpetual dissatisfaction, the hungry one, the up-and-comer? No. It’s become a default, I suppose, an assumption, the question that always has to follow what do you do?

No, I say, look, I mean, public radio is different. It’s a mission. It’s about what you want out of your life, I guess you could say. Nobody does it for the money. Really it’s a kind of self-flattery, when you get right down to it. But whatever — I fell into it because I need a steady job. It beats pumping gas.

Or working for Fox News.

Right, I say, with a weak laugh. As if that were an option.

It occurs to me that this would be the place where I could clarify what it means to be on the programming side, the administrative side, of radio. But, on the other hand, I’m just enough of an operator not to. It’s an old habit, this self-promotion that dares not speak its name. That’s how you get into Amherst with an A average.

So what, you just wanted a promotion? That’s what this is about, moving back to Baltimore, taking this job?

His BlackBerry buzzes, conveniently, and he checks the screen before shutting it off. I find myself staring, for no good reason, at his ears: perfectly ordinary, like all ears, fascinatingly shell-shaped, overly detailed, a kind of virtuosic molding of cartilage with no obvious rationale. Why do we have earlobes, for example? To be tugged, tickled, pierced? I remember nothing about Martin’s ears other than they seemed a little too large for his head, and that he was always tucking his chin-length bangs behind them, especially on the right side. These are the same ears, presumably, only the color has changed.

He’s done it; it’s real. Here, in the soft mood lighting of an expensive restaurant, and the high, flat light of the sky over the water, in public, framed by two potted olive trees and a trellis of fake grapes, he is inarguable; there are no cracks, no fissures; he is unquestionably a black man. All at once I feel an intense, pressurized pain in my sinuses, my forehead, eye sockets, across the bridge of my nose: as if my own face has become inflatable and is about to lift off.

You okay? he asks. Hey. Kelly. Look at me. You need a Tylenol or something?

No. I’m all right. Already the pain is receding; I wet my napkin, rub it across my forehead, and it’s gone, just as fast as it came.

Thought you were having a panic attack there or something. He laughs, a deep, reverberating belly laugh. Heck, I knew you NPR people don’t like to talk money, but this is something else.

No, I say, really, it’s not about money at all, Martin. I came here because I needed to start over. So to speak. I needed something; this was what came up. I was grieving. That’s how it is. Sometimes you have to make quick decisions.

Was it a mistake, coming back to the old town? Too many memories, something like that?

I don’t remember nearly as much as I ought to.

Maybe that’s a good thing.

I feel bad that we never kept up, I say, trying to sound as loose, as conversational, as possible. It wasn’t right, to end things the way we did.

When was that?

When was that? After Alan died, of course. After the funeral. What was that sushi place called, in Towson, the place we ate afterward?

He laughs, weakly, as if I’ve said something mildly funny, and then stretches out his chin and rotates his head ninety degrees in each direction, a calisthenic stretch, only his eyes are open, peering, checking out the room.

I’m sorry.

Don’t be sorry, he says. It’s not your problem, is it? Why shouldn’t you want to catch up? But listen, here’s the thing: if you were me, who would you trust with this kind of information, with this particular secret? It’s not like I got one of those scanners and stole someone’s Social Security number off a phone call. The way real people do, the standard way. It’s not criminal . Lord, if it were that easy. Listen, Robin’s a good woman. You’ll meet her. But she’s got a family to protect now. She wouldn’t believe it if I told her today. She’d think I’d gone schizophrenic.

You have kids?

Adopted. Twins. Sherry and Tamika. They’ll be eight in December. What’s wrong? You look skeptical.

I mean, because, biologically—

I’m officially infertile. Unofficially, vasectomized. Those genes are staying put. But look, what I want to talk about right now is you .

What about me?

Well, why do you want to get into this mess? Why not just be a good public-radio guy, station director, whatever it is? If it’s not the money, then what?

You haven’t even told me what you want me to do.

It’s right in front of us staring us in the face, so to speak, right? My story. I need someone to tell it. To spring it on the world, the way it needs to be done.

What you need is a publicist.

Yeah, maybe, he says. Somewhere along the line. But first I need to have the whole thing worked out. I need a narrative . Not just for myself, you see. There are other people involved. Expose one part of the story and you expose it all.

You mean the surgery. The doctors, the hospital, the research—

Of course. And of course you must be curious. But honestly, it’s nothing that surprising. Mostly it’s been done before. Collagen, rhinoplasty, eyelid changes, voice box alterations. A lot of nipping and tucking. You’d be surprised at how little it takes to make a difference.

And the skin?

Drugs, he says. Dr. Silpa, my doctor, he’s got it all figured out. He did decades of research on this stuff. Synthetic melanin. Tailored precisely to the shade you want. It’s all proprietary; the patents are in. But look, that’s not what I’m talking about; that’s just research . The technical stuff you can write up in a few pages. What I’m talking about is the story, the emotional logic of the whole thing. That’s the crux of the matter. Why me? Why was I the pioneer? In a hundred years this’ll be as common as a nose job. But there always has to be a first one. Your job is to prove that I’m not out of my mind . Ever heard of Christine Jorgensen?

No.

I’m not surprised. But ask your grandparents — anyone who was around in the Fifties — and they’ll know that name. Dimly. Jorgensen was the first person to have a sex change and write a book about it. A Personal Autobiography. I got a copy from eBay; it’s in my office. I’ll show it to you sometime. She was a huge celebrity. When she came back from Denmark — that’s where the surgery was — there were crowds at the airport. This was 1952. The tabloids were all over it. She appeared on talk shows. Sid Caesar made jokes about her. She made it a possibility; fifty years later, it’s just ordinary business. So I’m the Christine Jorgensen of the twenty-first century. That’s the business model. Only now, of course, we have to be global: everywhere at once. Americans are stuck on the idea of race, no question. Here we’re going to be facing some serious hysteria. At first. But the thing is, there are a hundred other ways to play this in a hundred other places.