I don't remember exactly when I started having sexual fantasies about Ira Glass, but I do remember when I realized I felt a little different about him. I was listening to This American Life on my iPod, walking around Manhattan, when Ira mentioned something about his wife. It was one of those moments meant to charm, when interviewer bonds with subject over some silly, common experience. "Ha, you too? My wife does that." But that's not what I was thinking. I was thinking: Wife? What fucking wife?
Until that moment, I hadn't realized how proprietary I had become about Ira Glass. I didn't know anything had changed in our relationship, which, for years, could be summed up like this: I loved his radio show. But hearing
promotion
him talk about his wife that day, I felt the same queasy pang that struck when I was twelve, discovering that Rob Lowe had a girlfriend, that Duran Duran's keyboardist was engaged. Except those crushes were based on pinups stapled in the centerfold of a teen mag, on haircuts engineered to appeal to the greatest possible number of suburban teens. What I felt for Ira Glass had absolutely nothing to do with the photos I occasionally glimpsed of him, and everything to do with the bizarre, singular intimacy of his voice in my ear.
I spend most Sundays walking across the bridge from my apartment in Brooklyn into Manhattan. Even after a year and a half in New York, I get lost all the time, and so I was hoping to reconcile the tidy subway grid in my backpack to the stuttering, sprawling one in my mind. It was a lonely, lovely way to kill the afternoon, and Glass' show was a natural soundtrack: geographic discovery complemented by intellectual discovery. Over the course of these afternoons, I not only became more familiar with the city but also with the particulars of his voice. The calculated clip. The choreographed intake of breath. I heard things I'd never caught before — a click, a sigh, a tongue passing across the lips.
I'd been listening to This American Life for years, but it wasn't until I heard it in my earphones, hours at a stretch, that his voice took hold. The streets of New York honked and spat as Glass traced out another neat narrative arc
The amazing thing about NPR personalities is how close you can feel to them without ever knowing what they look like. Even authors aren't allowed such anonymity.
over the course of an hour. And after he had passed the microphone to another correspondent, it would sometimes be minutes on end before I realized I hadn't heard a word anyone else was saying. That I had been in some kind of lusty trance. That I had been in a darkened sound booth somewhere, tugging off the trousers of Ira Glass. But wait, no, I never saw the sex. This fantasy was purely auditory. A scrape of the sheets, a zip, a violent clatter. And then I would come to somewhere near Canal Street, no idea how I'd gotten there or what the hell I was listening to.
Like I said, I get lost all the time.
Act I: Room at the Inskeep
At 9 a.m., the phone rings. "I think I have a crush on Steve Inskeep."
This is my best friend, and I should mention that she spends a great deal of time in her car. The only time she calls, in fact, is while she's driving, which doesn't seem like a good idea to me, either, but I'll take what I can get.
When she calls, she is listening to Morning Edition on her way to work, and Steve Inskeep has just done something endearing and off-color. He drank his first mojito with a rock band and pronounced it quite delicious. He sounded off on a story about Texas cheerleaders by offering his own sideline cheer. Nine a.m. is still early for me.
"Are you awake?" she asks.
"Of course I'm awake," I say, barely awake.
She goes on to explain that she hasn't always been a Steve Inskeep woman. Because she was a Bob Edwards woman, and at first, in the shaky transition phase, she scoffed that Steve was perhaps not bringing as much to the Morning Edition table. His voice wasn't even that interesting. But what can I say? She has a thing for earnest nerds.
"Have you seen a picture of him?" I ask.
She sounds disappointed when I ask this. "He just looks like a dad."
On second thought, let's not talk about pictures. Let's pretend they don't exist.
Steve Inskeep could probably explain what's happening in Iraq, in which case I'd totally get wet.
The amazing thing about NPR personalities is how close you can feel to them without ever knowing what they look like. Even authors, with their glossy black-and-white photos on the cover flap, aren't allowed such anonymity. Lately, there have been a lot of pictures of Ira Glass — banner ads and commercials for This American Life's new television show — and this has been agonizing for me. It punctures all the daydreams I've been spinning: Ira looks too skinny, for one thing, and I hate to say this, but also too old. In my daydreams he's still a chubby, nerdy twentysomething. My fantasy, however faceless, has no room for gray hairs. (Not that I mind a few, in general.)
Let's take Steve Inskeep, for instance. He has a different sonic appeal than Ira's hipster nerdiness; his baritone is more anchor chic. He's the kind of guy who might buy me a few martinis, loosen his tie over some tapas, and get a throbbing boner for Mozart's concertos. This has its own sordid appeal; he could probably explain what's happening in Iraq, in which case I'd totally get wet. I like to envision an erotic evening in which he merely pronounces the names of Al-Qaeda operatives as if it were some kind of Salome striptease — Abu Masab Al-Zarqawi, Saif al-Adel, Abu Mohammed al-Masri. By the time he got to the third "Abu," I'd be ready to jump across the table and rip off his sensible button-down.
