1991

Let me be honest; I really liked being unemployed.

I was depressed, perhaps even despondent, because of the ignominious end of my relationship with Leslie. But the good part of getting fired from WWWC was that I had a lot of time on my hands, and weekly unemployment checks to help salve my wounds.

I knew, though, that I needed to find another job sooner or later. I was living rent-free at home, and my unenjoyment checks (as my friend Marshall called them) covered my credit-card bills and day to day expenses, but I couldn't stay out of work forever.

I had been in radio for just five years, and the overnight show on WWWC had been my job for three of those years. I prepared some audition tapes, and sent them out to stations in Arkham Corners and Viridian City.

It wasn't long after that that I got my first call from The Anti-Christ.

I remembered meeting The Anti-Christ back in college; my friend "Jake" Jacoby was working at WZBA on Chadwick Avenue, and needed a ride to Adirondack Community College one morning in 1985. I stopped to get him on my way to school, and Jake took me into the station (the first radio station I ever entered in my life) and introduced me to the morning man on WZBA's sister station, Q-Tip Radio.

The Anti-Christ did the morning show with a guy named Walt Chord doing the news. I was a frequent listener (it was a long ride up from Greenwich to Arkham Corners) and enjoyed the way the two of them interacted. While I was inside the station talking to The Anti-Christ (the first radio morning man I had ever met), Jake snuck outside and affixed 7 or so self-sticking travel mugs bearing the Q-Tip Radio logo to the inside of my windshield. That Jake was one fun guy.

Anyway, that 1985 meeting with The Anti-Christ was the first and only contact I had with the man until he called me one day in 1991 after listening to my audition tape.

The Anti-Christ called me at my home in Greenfield Center and asked me to come in for an interview. He was now the program director at WACK, an adult contemporary station located about a mile from the WWWC studio I had worked at since 1989. WACK and its sister station WTSL ("Thistle Country") were located in Baker’s Village, a modular colony of office buildings on Baker’s Road in Kingstown.

I arrived for my 2:00 PM appointment at 1:45. I was taken to an uncomfortable couch in the hallway and told The Anti-Christ would be with me momentarily. He finally came out and shook my hand at 2:30.

He took me into his cramped office located off the WACK and WTSL studios, and we talked for about an hour. I was feeling somewhat skittish, perhaps even inadequate after being fired from WWWC weeks earlier. The Anti-Christ clearly wanted me to know he was doing me a favour by offering me a job. It was an attitude he would take for much of the next 6 years, acting as if he were my only hope for success in radio.

He closed the meeting, after an hour of being mostly pleasant, by asking me, "Is this how you always dress for work?" I had worn my usual WWWC clothes; jeans, casual shirt and beat-up sneakers. He made it clear that this was a professional Radio Station and That's Not How We Dress At WACK. He also revealed he must have talked to Dave Quark about me when he stressed, "This isn't the kind of place where we draw cartoons of our co-workers."

I had had a tense conversation with Dave when one of my more risqué creations had inadvertently gotten left on the floor of the WWWC studio. It had featured a female disk jockey in an intimate moment with Mike...stand, not Mike Rabbitt, the station's news director. I thought it was hilarious. Dave had not been amused. Apparently Dave had warned The Anti-Christ of my artistic aspirations. I told The Anti-Christ he didn't need to worry. In any event, it was only a matter of weeks before The Anti-Christ was soliciting mean-spirited cartoons about, yup, my co-workers.

Chapter Two

I was hired to do the overnight show 6 days a week on WACK; at the time it was the number one station in the Arkham Corners market, heavy on Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand.

I had gotten the job in part with the help of Joe Rafael, a friend and frequent conversational combatant from college. Joe was the station news director, and came in to work about 5 AM, just an hour before I left most days. I had to stay late on snow days, i.e., days when the weather resulted in schools closing, so I could coordinate the school closing information, one of the most important functions of a radio station.

My first night there, I was trained by Ken Duphesse (it rhymes with "crazy"--more on that later), the evening disk jockey who had been there for just a few months at the time I was hired. His strangeness was obvious to me from the first moment I met him. While he was friendly and talkative (more on THAT in a moment), he never looked you in the eye. I was later told by his friend (and WACK afternoon DJ) Dan Slight that the first time he had met Ken he assumed Duphesse was blind.

Ken had a lot of "issues," mostly involving his parents. I pissed him off the first night there with an exchange that went something like this:

Ken: "The only two songs that make me cry are Cat's In The Cradle by Harry Chapin and The Living Years by Mike and Mechanics."

Me: "Wow, you must really have a fucked-up relationship with your father."

Ken: (Furious and astonished) "What are you talking about?!"

Now, anyone who's heard these songs even once knows what I meant; Ken, however, was in such denial that he probably wasn't even aware why exactly these songs touched him so. His upbringing and ongoing relationship with his family had so damaged him that he was virtually incapable of personal growth of any kind and completely oblivious to how he came off to others. That became obvious in our next awkward moment, later that night.

WACK was located in Baker’s Village, as I said a sort of modular outcropping of offices. The bathroom for WACK employees was actually in a separate, though connected building. During my training I told Ken I had to pee and began walking down the long hall toward my destination. He followed and kept his ongoing monologue going all the way, discussing his father, sports, his father, Star Trek (our only mutual interest), and of course, Dear Old Dad.

At the door to the men's room, I realized as I was entering the doorway that Chatty Cathy was FOLLOWING ME IN. I turned around, and we had an exchange that went something like this:

Me: "Do you have to use the bathroom, Ken?"

Ken: "No."

Me: "Well, there's nothing you have to say that is so important that you need to follow me into this bathroom to tell me."

It went like that, pretty much, for the next few years.

Chapter Three

And then there's Jerry.

The three people I worked with the most in my first few years at WACK were The Anti-Christ, who relieved me in the morning, Ken Duphesse, who I relieved at night, and Jerry Faireweather, who did the sports on The Anti-Christ's morning show and came in about 4:30 every morning.

Jerry is tall. Jerry is lanky. Jerry is balding with a comb-over. Jerry has mutton-chop sideburns that look nothing short of preposterous. Jerry is a freak of nature. So many descriptions came to mind in planning this part of the narrative. It's hard to choose. I'll go with the words I'd hear most frequently about Jerry in the nearly 8 years we worked together; words that at once say nothing, and yet say it all:

Jerry's in the bathroom.

See, each of the people I have described herein was weird; that's what it's like in radio: We're ALL weird. The people I met at WACK, though, made me feel, well, nearly normal.

Jerry would come in at 4:30 in the morning, get the sports section of the paper, and then spend most of the next 90 minutes in the bathroom. One time I went into the men's room while he was in there, and he had a tube of Preparation H on the sink and stacks and stacks of paper towels lined up and more hanging from the dispenser. After that hideous glimpse of his true self, I avoided going in the men's room if I knew Jerry was in there.

It really was the funniest, most tragic thing about Jerry; he just could NOT stay out of the bathroom. Whether he suffered a genuine medical problem that necessitated this strange behaviour, or if he was just hiding out from the world, I could not say. But I found it strange, and funny, as hell.

One day during my first year at WACK, I took Joe Rafael's voice-activated tape recorder and placed it in the ceiling tiles above the men's room. I had to know what was going on in there.

The resulting 45-minute tape is mostly silence, punctuated by oddness like:

"I just Don’t know...(pained) WHAT we're gonna do."

"You can do it, you can do it, you can (pained) DO IT!!!"

"I'm coooooold."

Jerry was ALWAYS cold and preferred the studio be at least 85 degrees at all times. I frequently would fill in for someone or other and go on the air after Jerry; it would be so hot and dry in there that I would literally be unable to speak. The words would get caught in my throat, constricted by the waves of heat that threatened to make me pass out.

One of The Anti-Christ's great joys (there were many, all of them evil--more on that later) was torturing Jerry by turning the thermostat down to 65 when Jerry was on the air. I'd have thought it was funny, but I LIKED it cold and The Anti-Christ would set it at 75 or 80 when I was on the air.

The first time The Anti-Christ ever asked me to make a cartoon was when he wanted one of Jerry; I don’t remember what it was of, but you can be sure it was mean.

Chapter Four

The Anti-Christ is the closest thing to evil I have ever encountered in my life. He's the Anti-Christ.

In my constitutionally protected opinion.

If I am to write about the nearly eight years I worked for Benchmark Communications (parent company of WACK), it would be impossible to do so without talking frankly about the misery of working for The Anti-Christ.

It's difficult, I am beginning to realize, to explain exactly WHY The Anti-Christ is as evil as he is; or, more accurately, how to explain it to someone that has not met him or worked with him for years and years. His evil is subtle, but diffuse; deep, but not very wide. It was, though, all pervasive. Everyone I know that knows the man has a story about being abused, browbeaten or horrified by The Anti-Christ.

The Anti-Christ cheated on his wife; he was the morning man of WACK, and I would imagine this position led him to many of his conquests. My personal theory is that he absolutely HATES women, and is a true misogynist. He has an illegitimate daughter by a female disk jockey, and each payday I would see a portion of his check getting mailed to the county for child-support. He was married and had two teenage children, both of who looked spookily like him.

The Anti-Christ had a disturbing habit of wrestling some of the males on the staff to the ground, especially Ken Duphesse and Bubba Duncecap, an amiable doofus who worked on The Country Station and took great pride in telling people his wife had had sex with The Anti-Christ before she married Bubba. The Anti-Christ seemed to take great joy in demonstrating his alpha-male dominance by exerting physical control over these guys and wrestling them to the ground.

He tried it just once with me, and I jerked my arm away from him and told him to keep his fucking hands off me; it was one of the few times in the 6 years I worked for him that I stood up to him. Jerry also wouldn't allow The Anti-Christ to touch him. We both agreed that the behaviour was fucking bizarre. Over the years, I came to understand it, but I never allowed him to do it to me, and the fact that I only had to confront him once was in itself a lesson: The Anti-Christ was terrified of confrontation (any he didn't initiate, anyway) and would not proceed if you spoke up. It's just that Jerry and I, more than anyone other people on staff, had our own weaknesses which The Anti-Christ took advantage of at every opportunity. While his dominance over Bubba and Ken was physical, he exerted equal mental control over Jerry and I.

Joe Rafael told me one time that The Anti-Christ had overheard Joe making a disparaging remark about The Anti-Christ's then-girlfriend ("She has a complexion like the surface of a Nestle's Crunch Bar.") Joe was summoned to The Anti-Christ's office, where he was lectured on the inappropriateness of the remark. Joe told me despite his apology, The Anti-Christ ranted at him for about two hours, at one point telling him, "You're not leaving until I see tears."

One time, one of The Country Station's disc jockeys (Marshall calls 'em "disc monkeys," and I think I like that better), a young woman named Joan Vaquim, got caught by the Anti-Christ bringing home CDs to copy to cassette. He fired her for stealing.

Now, Joan was not a thief. We all borrowed CDs occasionally to tape them at home, because the cassette deck at the radio station was of poor quality and produced lousy-sounding tapes.

When John Smith found out the Anti-Christ had dismissed Joan, he made her hire her back immediately; she had been a long-time loyal employee and the reason for her firing was ludicrous. To justify his cruelty in firing her, The Anti-Christ made her buy her job back.

That's right, Joan had to pay what in later years we laughingly called "The Benchmark Fine"--a 100 dollar payment to the company to punish her for her malfeasance.

The Benchmark Fine, of course, was handed down by The Anti-Christ, the same man who had spent years stealing promotional books from Joe Rafael and CDs and cassettes that came in the mail addressed to me. But The Anti-Christ didn't have to pay the Benchmark Fine. Not for many years to follow, until a chance meeting between he and I in a hallway 55 miles to the South. More on that later.

Chapter Five

I did the overnight show on WACK for three of four years, and my life was relatively stable; while doing the overnights, I also married Lora, and we had two kids, Kira and Aaron. At each landmark moment in my life, the station’s owners John and Mary Smith sent flowers, which I always appreciated. They did this when we got married, when each of the kids was born, and when my parents died, as they did at separate times during this period.

I actually learned my mother had died while reading the Post Star during the middle of my all-night shift. THAT was an odd sensation--but I finished the show and Lora and I went to her memorial at my sister's house later that day.

At some point, things changed; for years, I had had the stability of doing the overnight show, but after years of this, The Anti-Christ called me in one day and asked me if I wanted to do the afternoon show on WACK. Dan Slight was leaving to start a new station for the company, SMACKIN’ 104, which ironically would be located in the Chadwick Avenue building where I had first met The Anti-Christ earlier.

John Smith was expanding his company--he had bought a country FM in Corinth and now had also purchased the two stations on Chadwick Avenue. It was planned that Dan Slight and some of the other people at WACK (including Ken Duphesse) would go "across the street," as it were, while we soldiered on at WACK. That was about to change too, though.

John Smith had been embroiled in a decade-long struggle over a 25-thousand watt radio station that would have a strong signal from Viridian City to north of Lake George. The struggle was finally over and Smith had won--he and The Anti-Christ began plans to put WOCK 109 on the air.

My afternoon show on WACK was a resounding failure. I went into it with great enthusiasm--after all, I was being given a prominent shift on the number one station in the market. My big contribution was a movie review segment that I ended up co-hosting with Ted Waikiki, an employee and avid movie fan at Li’l Kitty Video, one of The Anti-Christ's sales clients.

Now, The Anti-Christ's interference was bad enough; after all these years I was used to his nonsensical proclamations ("The listeners get angry if we say "skies" during weather forecasts--there's only one sky!") and ever-changing programming decisions.

But, the movie reviews segment ended up being sponsored by Li’l Kitty, and the store's owner, Phil Urcrack, took equal interest in what Ted and I were doing.

Left to our own devices, I'd like to think the idea would have worked. Ted and I had chemistry and we both love movies. But The Anti-Christ and Phil both strangled us with their ridiculous suggestions (The Anti-Christ wanted a music bed so loud we could not be heard the first day we did the segment, Phil wanted a 3 minute infomercial for his store) to the point that it, and my show, lasted only a few weeks.

I went back on overnights gladly--I always preferred those hours anyway. The dark, the solitude, the phone calls from lonely girls, the lack of traffic all appealed to me. But things were changing rapidly--I only did overnights for a few months more before being called in again.

The Anti-Christ told me that he wanted me to do news. The woman who had replaced Joe Rafael when he left to go to WANK (a public radio station in Viridian City) had quit after only a few months, and they had a plan. I would write, and Jerry would read, the news. I would work a split shift, coming in 3 hours in the morning and three hours in the afternoon.

This all happened around the time WOCK 109 went on the air. For a time, WOCK and WACK both broadcast identical programming, no doubt confusing longtime WACK listeners and new WOCK listeners as well.

Eventually, the two were split, and WACK became a separate station being operated out of the Chadwick Avenue building. I began going over there in the afternoons to record news for WACK, and I could tell that an Australia-like situation had set in. Dan Slight and Ken Duphesse considered themselves a separate entity, complete unto themselves. I suspected this could soon cause trouble.

See, Smith was planning to eventually move all 6 stations he now owned into the Chadwick Avenue building. But trouble was brewing; Dan was acting as if we in Baker’s Village were somehow the enemy (maybe he was blaming us all for The Anti-Christ's behaviour), and he and Ken were cool to me when I would stop in to do the news. Frankly, I was a bit hurt; I'd always liked Dan, and even if Ken and I were at odds in many ways, we had always at least pretended to be friendly to each other. I couldn't imagine what it would be like when all us Benchmark folk were reunited in the building, as would happen sooner or later.

Chapter Six

One of the oddest things about The Anti-Christ was his foot fetish.

It was a bunch of separate things which made me realize how weird he was about feet, and the first one didn't seem that odd at the time.

We had this part timer, John Pratt, who was also in a rock band and was kind of sloppy. He would fill in for me on my night off, and one morning when The Anti-Christ came in he was ranting about what happened the morning before, when he had come in to find John Pratt leaning back in his chair with his feet on the control board.

Now, the chair is a whole separate issue--The Anti-Christ used to snidely mock me for wanting to sit in a chair while on the air, saying DJs did a better show standing up. He would condescendingly tell me he was able to do his entire show standing up.

I responded by saying that was because his show was only three hours long--he was on from 6 to 9, and then rolled CDs from 9-10 during the "Classless Reunion Hour," which was his way of doing nothing. My show, on the other hand, was 6 hours straight of disk jockeying, announcing after every record. Try doing that standing up for six hours straight.

Anyway, the sitting wasn't what, specifically, The Anti-Christ was apoplectic about on this morning. It was the feet.

"He had his bare, stinky feet up on the console!" The Anti-Christ was nearly hysterical with rage.

Hnh.

I dismissed it as another of The Anti-Christ's bizarre moments. Until a few weeks later, when I noticed he had tissues stuffed underneath a flap on his shoes.

I asked him why, exactly, he needed tissue paper in his shoes. I had managed over 25 years of life without needing to do this--maybe I was missing something...?

He explained that he had just bought a new pair of shoes, and wanted to make sure they didn't get damaged while he "tried them out." He was actually thinking that, if he were unhappy with the shoes, he would return them.

Now, take this for what you will, but I submit to you that MEN DO NOT ACT LIKE THIS. Men buy shoes, or any other article of clothing, and take them home and wear them until they fall apart. It doesn't matter if they're comfortable, it doesn't matter if they look good--those decisions are made in the store during our biannual shopping excursions, and we stand by them under pain of death.

It was, I have to say, the single prissiest thing I had ever seen someone with a penis do.

Then, the cincher:

One day, I was back in the sales office working on news on one of the computers there. The Anti-Christ was sitting across from me at the other computer station, and The Anti-Christ’s second wife Connie came in with Maximillion, her 5-year-old son.

Within seconds of their arrival, The Anti-Christ began browbeating the boy for having socks on that didn't match.

Who the hell would even notice? Why would you be looking at someone's feet that closely, especially when they've just come into the room?

After this series of events, it was one of my greatest pleasures to remind The Anti-Christ of his foot fetish at every opportunity. And believe me, there were many.

Chapter Seven

I was ambivalent about the announcement that Mike Matthews was taking over the WACK afternoon show. While I was happy to return to overnights, I felt that I had failed somehow.

I also wasn't too thrilled to be working with Mike Matthews again; he had been the program director at Y-NOT FM, the sister station of WWWC, the station I'd been fired from before coming to Benchmark. During my last few months there, I had done a show that was simulcast on both stations, and done an hour on Y-NOT in the morning before Mike came in.

He always seemed to resent my presence, and was surly and, I thought, hostile to me. I later, much later, came to realize that he was likely angry about the simulcast, not me in particular. Today he might tell you it was all in my head, but I certainly had no good memories of working with him at WWWC/Y-NOT.

So it came as a pleasant surprise when we met again at Benchmark. Maybe I had grown, maybe he had, or maybe it WAS all in my head, but we got along quite well. We discovered we had some similar interests, including Star Trek and comic books (although he had given them up years earlier, he still had an admirable collection of silver age Marvels); the fact that I had known none of these things about him at WWWC/Y-NOT, to me, reinforces my theories about our early relationship (or lack of same). Though we had worked together for months, we knew nothing about each other. He didn't even remember me getting fired from the radio station!

Jerry and I were there the day a new digital production was installed soon after Mike began working at Benchmark. We both regaled Mike with our best "The Anti-Christ Is The Anti-Christ" stories, but Mike seemed confident that we were exaggerating; he anticipated that he would have no problems, and as it turned out, that was pretty much true. Even today, Mike will tell you his best The Anti-Christ horror stories are all second-hand. The Anti-Christ pretty much left him alone. I think the reason for that is that The Anti-Christ, a pseudo-alpha male, sensed Mike's self-confidence and maturity, and knew there was no point in trying his little reindeer games with him. I never once saw The Anti-Christ try to "get" Mike as he had done so well to the rest of us for so long.

Chapter Eight

I mentioned The Anti-Christ liked to horse around--to put it politely. One morning, about 8 AM, I was working in the production studio when I heard a thump against the wall. Outside in the hall, I assumed The Anti-Christ was up to his usual fun.

As I continued to work, I heard something else that caught my attention, I Don’t remember what exactly. But I got up and went out to see what was going on.

The Anti-Christ was lying against the wall, with his glasses folded and clutched in his hand. Jerry was standing over him. What the HELL was going on?

The Anti-Christ, who could barely speak, told us he had slipped and fallen outside. He had been racing outside to monitor other radio stations on his car radio, and I could see where that could happen. His face looked odd; there was a puckered dent under one cheek.

He was moaning, and Jerry was asking him if he was okay. Clearly, he was not. Someone had to run The Anti-Christ's show while he pulled himself together, though, so I told Jerry to go segue a song. I got down near The Anti-Christ and asked him how he felt. He could not open his eyes very much, and he slumped down even further against the wall. Still moaning.

This was serious, whatever the hell had happened. I went in to Jerry and asked him what he thought. We decided to call 9-1-1. I made the call while Jerry lined up songs in the station's computer system.

After disabusing the dispatcher of the notion that we were still in Baker’s Village, I got off the phone and went out in the hall to see how The Anti-Christ was doing. He had apparently tried to get further down the hall and was now fully spread out, lying on the floor at an awkward angle near the hallway leading to the sales office. I went over to him and spoke.

He was pretty unresponsive, like he was hearing me from a long distance away and was not particularly interested in what I had to say. As I sat with him waiting for the paramedics to arrive, I waved my fingers in his face and asked if he could see what I was doing. He was no longer talking to me--he had passed out.

I took a really good look at his face, and realized he had hurt himself pretty badly. The dent in his face was puckered in strangely, like a bone was broken (which it was). He looked awful.

The paramedics didn't arrive for probably 15 or 20 minutes, but once they got there, The Anti-Christ was loaded up on a stretcher and taken away. Jerry finished the morning show, and I went back to work as well.

We told everyone what had happened as they stumbled in for their morning routine, and while there was genuine concern, the gallows humour also kicked in--"Why would you call 911 for that asshole"-type comments. In retrospect, I kind of wonder that myself.

After I got out of work at noon, I drove over to the hospital to see how he was. He was on a stretcher with a bandage on his face, and Connie was by his side, the dutiful wife. The Anti-Christ had had tests and more were planned. I spoke Connie for a few minutes, and told her with genuine concern that if there was anything I could do to help all she had to do was call.

Then I went home.

My pager went off about 4 PM. Connie and The Anti-Christ's home telephone number.

I called, thinking maybe they needed Lora and I to baby-sit Maximillion or something, anything to help them out in this time of need.

The Anti-Christ had asked Connie to call me to remind me about some stupid, nitpicky detail at the radio station. The same kind of crap The Anti-Christ was ALWAYS pestering me about.

Y'know, before that call came, I was thinking that maybe, injured like this, sensing his own mortality, yadda yadda yadda, The Anti-Christ possibly might change. Maybe see what is truly important and what isn't.

Instead, he took advantage of my offer of help to Connie to ask me to do some stupid bullshit that I either would have done anyway or maybe even didn't NEED to be done AT ALL.

Once an asshole, always an asshole.

The funny thing about this accident is the theories.

I first started hearing the theory that The Anti-Christ had actually had his ass kicked outside the station that morning a few days later.

The Anti-Christ's story that he slipped on the handicap ramp that cold autumn morning was a little suspicious to me. People who slip and fall while running don’t generally end up with the type of injuries The Anti-Christ had, so far as I knew. If he'd fallen forward, instinct would have made him throw out his arms, while if he'd fallen backward, his ass would have been broken, not his face.

Strange.

But I believed him. In the face of no definitive evidence that The Anti-Christ had been attacked, I believed him despite my doubts.

It wasn't until a couple of years later that I learned a fact that convinced me the theories were true. I will not go into too much detail, because this is second-hand information. It comes from an unimpeachable source, but I am cautious with anything I can't absolutely prove is true.

I was told that some time before The Anti-Christ's accident, he had committed what I have variously heard described as sexual harassment or attempted rape on one of the female radio station employees. This woman told The Anti-Christ that if he ever tried anything like that again, she'd send her husband after him.

Click!

It all made sense. Not only did I immediately understand that this was what could have happened, but, my friends, I believe with 100 percent certainty THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED.

In my opinion, given the history of The Anti-Christ's sexual proclivities and his apparent belief that he could get away with anything, he did try to sexually abuse this woman. I believe he did get his ass kicked that day. His injuries were, to me, inconsistent with his described accident. A fist or other instrument of violence, though, would leave exactly the kind of wounds he received that day.

So, for all those times I defended The Anti-Christ to those who subscribed to the "got his ass kicked" theory, to all those who believed that--

I'm with YOU.

Chapter Nine

After The Anti-Christ returned to work at Benchmark, he was told to wear sunglasses to protect his damaged eyes. The result of this was a headache for me.

I mean, a REAL headache. The Anti-Christ had installed super-bright florescent lights to compensate for the fact that he was now encompassed in near-total darkness. While it seemed to me to defeat the purpose of the sunglasses, the lights went in, and it became way to bright for me, who had just gotten off of 7 years of working at night not that long ago.

One of the other problems stemming from the new lights was the fact that the computer monitors in the production room were getting dim from overuse. With the bright lights on, it was impossible to do any production on the computers--you couldn't see what you were doing!

I compensated by turning on the lights IN THE NEXT ROOM and allowing them to shine into the studio, while the lights actually in the studio were off. This allowed enough light to work, but cut down on the pain and inability to see the screen.

The Anti-Christ wandered by while I was working in the production room, and noticed the lights were off. He came in, and disgustedly snorted that "John wants these lights on." I clearly was an asshole for having them off, and if one of John's friends (this was a constant refrain, suitable for any misdeed I might have been committing) saw what was going on, I would embarrass the station and ought to be fired.

The Anti-Christ left, and since the lights were still there, I turned them off again. I was working for maybe 5 minutes when The Anti-Christ stormed in and flipped the switch off angrily without a word.

Fed up, and so angry I was shaking, I went down to John's office and shut the door. The exchange went something like this:

Me: "If I am getting all my work done, do you care if I have the lights off in the production room?"

John: "Of course not, you're saving me money on my electric bill."

I returned to the production room, only to find The Anti-Christ had affixed a strip of duct tape over the switch so it could not be turned off. Knowing full well the shitstorm I was about to create, I pulled off the tape and shut off the lights.

The Anti-Christ stormed in and began furiously screaming at me about how I was disregarding his authority, mocking him and by the way if John Smith knew--

"John told me it was okay if I kept the lights off, The Anti-Christ." (Jesus, was I shaking--I thought he was going to hit me!)

The Anti-Christ was clearly deflated by this revelation. He had been hiding behind John for years, using him as an excuse for every nutty whim he chose to inflict upon the air staff. He didn't say another word, just turned around and left, and not another word was ever said about the lights. I don't know if they were replaced or if I just got used to them, but the headaches went away too.

Chapter Ten

For months, my wife had been complaining about our sex life. I knew she was right. I just had no desire for sex, and barely enough energy to get through the day.

It was fall, 1998. Every day at work was a struggle to get to noon. No energy at ALL. I was also thirsty all the time, and was drinking up to three liters of sugared soda every single day, trying to quench my thirst.

Why did I not drink water? Well, I suspect that I was craving sugar. After all, I remember that Halloween, when the kids got their candy, I couldn't get enough.

I was also, by the second week of November, going to the bathroom to pee every 30 minutes 24 HOURS A DAY.

But it was insidious. It all crept up on me so slowly, the fatigue, the thirst, the craving for sweets, the lack of interest in sex, the peeing, that it seemed, well, ALMOST normal.

But the peeing was the worst. I couldn't go anywhere, do anything, without making emergency plans to go pee. I went with Lora to the annual dinner thrown by the radio station for its clients, and the biggest moment of the night for me was when I realized I'd gone 2 hours without having to excuse myself to go to the bathroom.

When it got down to every 30 minutes, when I couldn't even go to sleep for a half-hour without having to get up, I decided enough was enough. I must have some sort of bladder infection I better see a doctor.

This despite, of course, knowing on SOME level exactly what it was. My own mother had been diabetic, for Christ's sake. I didn't know a whole lot about the disease (something to do with sugar, I think), but I knew the peeing was a symptom. I was still hopeful, if not almost certain, that I didn't have diabetes. Who, me?

There are three risk factors for the disease I've come to call The Deadly Sugar: Smoking, being overweight, and family history.

Bzzt. BING! BING!

They took my blood sugar there at the doctor's office, and Dr. Beatty said he was almost certain I was diabetic. He delivered the news like he was telling me my best friend had died. I, on the other hand, accepted it somewhat cheerfully. I still didn't really know what the disease was, but at least I knew what was wrong and could do something about it. Beatty gave me a diabetic food exchange list and a prescription for a blood-sugar lowering medication, and told me to come back in a few days and see my regular doctor.

I went out to my car, and the reality of the situation Started to sink in. Completely clueless about what this diagnosis meant, I broke down and cried while driving to Hannaford to buy some food for my new life.

Chapter Eleven

The Anti-Christ eventually quit, moving on to another job for Stellar Radio, a new station in Shushan. He had been offered a lot of money to leave, and I think his accident the subsequent lack of an outpouring of sympathy (and cash) from the Smiths prompted him to accept the offer. He had told me the Christmas previous that he was infuriated at how low his Christmas Bonus had been. He told me the amount, and I knew he had gotten what everyone else, including myself, had gotten that year.

Within days of The Anti-Christ leaving, Mike Matthews took over.

It was weird how pleasant it was to work for Mike. Once The Anti-Christ left, it was like we had all been set free from a concentration camp. We would make mocking references to The Anti-Christ for the first few weeks, but in time his influence faded out to virtually nothing.

I found a new place in the scheme of things at Benchmark, one I had never experienced when The Anti-Christ was there. I had been friendly with Mike since he came on board, but once he became the Operations Manager and asked me to be the newsman on his morning show, the fun really started. Just a couple of weeks into this new show, I took a quiz in a magazine that asked on a scale from 1 to 10 how bad my stress was at work. Under The Anti-Christ, I would have said 9, frequently gusting to 10. Under Mike, the stress was about a 2, frequently dipping to 1. His programming and management style is best described as almost Zen-like...resulting in a happier air-staff, increased productivity, and a state of grace unlike any other I have ever experienced at any other radio station.

In addition, I no longer felt I had to bolt for freedom the moment I legally could leave the building, and began being invited along for the frequent "corporate lunches" indulged in by the sales staff and management of the radio stations. I developed friendly relationships with virtually everyone in the building, whereas under The Anti-Christ's constant browbeating I had always felt more than a little unwelcome and unfit to move in these circles. I began to realize just how all pervasive I had allowed The Anti-Christ to become in my opinion not only of my co-workers, but also of myself.

That new sense of my own "power over me" as it were came in handy a couple of months later when I got a call from The Anti-Christ.

A confession: The day The Anti-Christ left, still not sure if what he had said about being my only friend at the station were true, I had thrown myself on my sword as he went out the door and asked him to keep me in mind if he needed any help at his new radio station. Perhaps he was right, and he would be the only PD who would ever keep me on for any length of time.

Now, though, he was on the phone and reminding me of that last conversation. The call came to me waaaay out of left field; I was so happy working for Mike, was having so much fun for the first time in years, that I had all but forgotten about The Anti-Christ in terms of him ever having any kind of power over me again. But like a 40-year-old man in the presence of his parents, I once again felt him dominate the conversation, and my consciousness. He told me he thought it was time we talked, and asked me to come down to Stellar the next day to meet with him.

In my mind, I was unsure what to say or do, but the old dynamics of our relationship kicked in and I told him I could be there about 1 PM.

Almost the moment I hung up the phone, I knew I didn't want to work for the guy ever again. But I told myself I owed it to The Anti-Christ to hear what he had to offer. I told Mike I was going down to Stellar, but that he (Mike) had nothing to worry about.

After I got out of WOCK at noon the next day, I hopped in the WOCK van and drove down to the Stellar studio in Shushan. The Anti-Christ came out to greet me and laughed when he saw what I was driving. He wouldn't have been laughing if he could have read my thoughts, though.

All the way down, I considered my situation. While I was not making a lot of money working at Benchmark, I was happier than I had ever been in my professional life. I was 90 percent certain The Anti-Christ could not convince me to go to work for him.

He showed me into the building, and began telling me how Stellar was unlike Benchmark; everyone worked together as a team for the betterment of the station. It was a real party, to hear him tell it. As examples, he told me no one had to wear a tie (always a sticking point at Benchmark, where the lowliest DJ is expected to wear a tie during business hours, even if he was wearing old jeans and beat-up sneakers. Hello, Jerry.) The Anti-Christ also told me the entire staff had met to decide how high off the floor the decorative strip circling the walls of each room should be. I wonder to myself if he had ANY idea how idiotic he seemed.

The Anti-Christ took me into his office. Then, the moment of final empowerment hit me: The Anti-Christ was sitting across a desk from me, and he was the one with the power over the situation. I knew in that moment I could NEVER work for this scumbag again. All the times he put me down, stole my mail or went out of his way to make me miserable came flooding back--and I knew. There was not enough money in the world for me to take whatever job he had to offer.

As it turned out, he wanted me to do the news in the afternoon, partnering closely with Dave Equissmann, who I knew to be erratic if not downright incompetent. I had worked with Equissmann for years in his on-again, off-again relationship with Benchmark, and he was a known alcoholic who had fallen off the wagon after being allowed to take time off to go into rehab. The Dim Turkey had also told me he was a confused homosexual, afraid of being found out, and not that there's anything wrong with that (he said), but from all the available evidence Equissmann was a train-wreck of a human being and I certainly wouldn't have wanted my fate intertwined with his even if The Anti-Christ was not in the picture.

But The Anti-Christ was, indeed, in the picture. He laid on all the transparent charm he could muster as he described the joys of working for Bert Aniston, the owner of Stellar radio, who The Anti-Christ repeatedly described as "a beautiful man."

He brought in Bob Mealey, an amiably mediocre disk jockey who had trained me at my first radio job. Bob was the Program Director at Stellar, and would more or less be my new boss if I took the job. I felt really sorry for him, because he was acting as if I was already on board, and was making firm plans for how my being at Stellar would make his life easier. After Bob and The Anti-Christ finished making their new plans for the Alan-involved Stellar Radio, John stepped out and The Anti-Christ dragged out his calculator, and asked me what I was making at Benchmark.

I told him (already knowing I would not take the job), and he offered me two thousand dollars a year more. I told him (looking for any way out of the room) that I would also need to pay for a car, since I would no longer have the WOCK van, so two grand was not going to be enough. I figured I'd need five thousand at the least just for the car.

The Anti-Christ did some more calculations, and offered me a seven thousand-dollar raise over what I was making at Benchmark.

I told him I would have to talk it over with my wife (I knew I was going to tell him no, but I just could not say it to his face) and get back to him in a few days. He demanded an answer within 24 hours (perhaps already sensing the worm was wriggling off the hook), and I told him I'd call him the next day.

As I drove back onto the Northway, I was almost giddy. I had been once more in the valley of the shadow of death, and managed to get out to tell the tale. Seven thousand dollars to work with The Anti-Christ? Seventy thousand and I still would have said no.

Now, Mike had been the only person I had told about the job interview. I could have just gone home and told him what happened the next day, but I couldn't wait to share my good news, that the wicked witch was dead.

When I pulled into the Benchmark parking lot, Mike's car was gone. But there was one other person with whom I could share the news. I had pretty much decided I should tell him anyway; so I went in to John Smith's office and closed the door.

John listened intently to my story, clearly angry that The Anti-Christ was trying to harvest his former Benchmark co-workers, and also fascinated by the details of what was going on at Stellar. I told him everything about the place that I could remember, and I made it clear to him that I would never, EVER, leave Benchmark to work for The Anti-Christ. John and I talked for probably close to an hour, maybe one of the most pleasant, level conversations we'd ever had, before I got up and opened the door.

Mike was in the hallway outside, ashen. I came out and John and I told Mike exactly what had gone down, and what I planned to do about The Anti-Christ's offer, which was exactly nothing. Mike yelled at me:

"Don't ever do that to me again!"

He had come back to the station after lunch, and seen the van. He knew I was there, and that I had talked to The Anti-Christ. He saw that I was in John's office with the door closed. Apparently he was convinced I was in there with John quitting, leaving him without a newsman for his morning show, and maybe it bothered him for other reasons as well, I don’t know. But he clearly was as relieved that I was staying as I was. It made me feel pretty damn good about being at Benchmark. It was a feeling I had never had in 6 years of working there under The Anti-Christ.

Chapter Twelve

I was working on something in the production studio when Joe Siciliano bolted in and stared through the studio window into the Country Station studio, where Jerry was on the air. "I gotta see this," Joe said.

I asked him what he was talking about, and he said, "If Jerry isn't staring at the control board in total confusion, he's finished."

I had NO idea what he was talking about, but before I knew it John stormed into the room with Jerry and started screaming at him. Apparently there had been dead air on The Country Station, and when John bolted into the studio, there was Jerry, cheerily yapping away on the telephone about softball, or his ass-related problems, or who-knows-what.

John slammed the door, leaving Jerry in alone in his studio, apparently confident that he once again had dodged a bullet.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

Less than an hour later, Mike came into the production room, where I was still working. He shut the door, and in hushed tones asked me if I could do the midday shift "today, and for the rest of the week."

I didn't care one way or the other, because I would still get out at noon--but I asked him why. He told me that John was firing Jerry and was going to tell him when he got off the air on The Country Station in just a few minutes.

Wow. I was stunned.

I had worked with Jerry for nearly 8 years. Make no mistake, I hated virtually every minute of it. I hated Jerry--but only professionally; try to understand the subtlety. I didn't have any feelings, really, one way or the other about the man personally. I hated working with him because he was so goddamned lazy that if you were working with him you were doing two people's jobs, his and yours. But as a human being, really, despite my frequent torture of him, I didn't even dislike him. I didn't like him either, but I took no joy in his firing and in fact felt a little bad for the man.

Mike, I think, was stunned that John had made this particular move. Knowing what was awaiting me that afternoon, I told Mike "The shitstorm may have only just begun."

I couldn't have been more right. Jerry's firing was the start, not the end, of the changes at Benchmark Communications.

Chapter Thirteen

See, earlier that morning, Wanda Bearclaw from Cosmo Networks had called and asked if I would be interested in a news anchor position. She asked if I would meet her for lunch that afternoon.

Knowing nothing would likely come of it, I told her yes. I had submitted a tape and resume for the Capital Correspondent's job, and never heard a thing. I had applied and been turned down for jobs at WANK now twice. My weeklong stint in the traffic department had ended badly. Apparently I was going to work at Benchmark forever, doing the news forever, and never making a dime more than what I was for the last four years.

It could have been worse; I had a free vehicle (although they had taken my beloved WOCK van and replaced it with the hideous, if more reliable, The Country Station van), and working for Mike was the single greatest stretch of my professional life. As I said, he created a state of grace that had never before existed at Benchmark.

Soon, though, despite all the benefits of working at Benchmark, and working for and with Mike, I would be planning my escape from Graceland.

I think what followed came not despite, but BECAUSE of my disappointments with WANK and the traffic job. It was almost as if, even though I had ended up not changing jobs, I had activated the "change gene," and was somehow destined to do something different.

So, when Wanda called, while I was not really expecting anything to come of it, I was actually open to hearing what she had to say. This as opposed to my interview at Stellar a year earlier, when I never even once seriously considered leaving Benchmark to go back to working for The Anti-Christ.

She asked me to meet her for lunch at the Real Seafood Company. Over lunch she told me about the job, doing news 7 hours a day on an all-news station in Viridian City. She asked me how much I thought the job was worth.

I had given it a lot of thought on the long drive down. I had done this math once before, when The Anti-Christ asked me how much money I wanted to leave Benchmark, and knew I had to factor in the cost of a car. Plus, I wanted enough money to make it worth my while to switch jobs, not just enough to replace my free ride.

I quoted her a sum that I thought was really outrageous, and even she seemed surprised. It was nearly double my Benchmark salary, but I told her I would not consider the job for a dime less. She told me I was a couple of thousand dollars over what her bosses had authorized her to offer me, and she would have to talk it over with them. I told her if they could pony up the cash, they would be getting a stable employee (I worked for Benchmark for nearly 8 years, most of them under The Anti-Christ, the Anti-Christ!) who would not keep bestiality kiddy-porn on his computer at work, like SOME of her former Benchmark finds. That was my best argument, and I was sure it would fail.

I didn't want the job, frankly; I was comfortable at Benchmark. I left that interview sure in the knowledge Wanda would call me the next day to tell me I just wanted too much money.

That didn't happen. The next day, she came back with an offer, not quite what I asked her for, but so close as not to matter.

I thought long and hard about my options; harder, probably, than I have ever considered anything. I absolutely did not want to leave Benchmark. I loved it there.

But John had cut my pay back after the traffic-debacle, and my wife and I had never recovered financially from the birth of my son, now three years in the past. We had fallen behind in our rent then, and every month we fell a little more behind.

Plus, I had a lot of concerns about Benchmark. It seemed like every day I heard more rumours about John selling the place and bolting, and the general state of entropy he was allowing the place to fall into did nothing to disabuse me of the notion that the place was about to experience a huge shake-up.

I talked to Wanda on the phone about 6:15 that morning. She told me how much they were willing to pay, and I accepted the job right there. I got off the phone with her, and went in to tell Mike I was leaving.

He couldn't have been surprised. He knew what I was making, and he knew I had interviewed not that long ago at WANK. While he clearly was sorry to be losing his newsman, he told me he thought I was making the right decision.

Now, I only had to march in to John's office after nearly eight years and let him know I was leaving.

He was angry. And he apparently felt betrayed. I had worked for him for nearly 8 years, and now I was walking out.

He didn’t speak to me again for the two weeks I remained at Benchmark.

My final day there, a small group took me out to lunch, my final "Corporate Lunch." We had a good time, and laughed a lot. I miss those lunches, and those people, more than I can say.

Chapter Fourteen

Speaking of lunch, that mid-day meal became a big issue with my new job. I had gotten used to getting right out at noon and either going to lunch with someone from work or going straight home and eating. Being diabetic, my body expects food on a fairly regular schedule or there can be trouble.

So, one afternoon about a month after I left Benchmark, I was driving back home and realized I needed to eat. I pulled off the Northway at Exit 13 and decided I would eat at the Weathervane, a seafood restaurant on Route 9 outside Saratoga Springs.

Normally, I don’t really like to eat by myself in real restaurants, but as I said, I really needed to eat--I could feel the first flutters deep within my hands that always signals an oncoming attack of low blood-sugar.

So, I went in and ordered, and right after the waiter left my beeper went off. It was a call from Benchmark. I found THAT odd. What could they want? It was most likely Mike. I found a pay phone and dialed the number on my pager.

It was Mike Matthews. He wanted to know if I could come in Saturday morning to train my replacement, a woman named Sharlene Shadenfreud. I told Mike I'd be happy to--I had promised him when I left that I would come in on a weekend day to train someone if they hadn't found a replacement for me by the time I left.

Come Saturday, I was introduced to Sharlene and began showing her the ropes. I was extremely impressed with her knowledge of news writing. The only thing I really even needed to show her was the software involved in doing the news. She had worked for a time with Mike Rabbitt, who also taught me the ropes, so I knew she would do fine. Her first weeks on the job she went to more meetings and gathered more audio than I did the whole time I was there, so I think she'll do fine.

Mike Matthews was there and for a while we both regaled Sharlene with our various horror stories involving The Anti-Christ. Apparently The Anti-Christ had actually offered Sharlene a job once, and we tried to get across to her what a bullet she had dodged.

After Sharlene left that Saturday I trained her, I had a chat with John and Mary in Mary's office. It came as something of a surprise, because from the time that I told John I was leaving until the day I left two weeks later, John didn't say one word to me. I don’t know if he was angry or hurt or what, but I really never thought we'd speak again.

But on my way out of Benchmark, Mary asked me how the new job was, then John wandered in and we ended up talking for half an hour like I'd never left. It was nice.

One of the things I thought about as I left was that, had The Anti-Christ not left Benchmark, I never would have come back a month after I quit to train my replacement. I would have been so relieved to be out of there that I would have turned him down flat.

But when Mike asked me to come in, I said yes without reservation. And I thought about the differences between the two of them.

The Anti-Christ, as I have tried to make a case in the preceding chapters, is the closest thing to evil I have ever encountered. Every single person I have ever talked about him with finds him, at the least, distasteful and unpleasant, and at the worst, evil beyond description. One of the challenges in writing this story has been to convince the reader, who may never have encountered him, of what it was like to spend 6 years under the thumb of this man.

But the flip side of that is, as I have described it, the state of grace that came to exist when Mike Matthews took over after The Anti-Christ left. Professionally, I have never been happier than in that time. I am grateful to Mike for what he created and the sense of belonging he allowed those of us who worked for him to feel.

The fact that I left there does not, of itself, make me happy. I left because I thought I could do something that would allow me to better provide for my family. I didn't leave because I felt unappreciated or angry or bitter. Far from it, if I could have afforded to I would have worked there under those conditions forever.

As I write this, I have no idea what the ultimate atmosphere of my new job will be. The company is a big one, and it is getting bigger. I am working in virtual isolation from my fellow co-workers, in a seperate studio miles from anyone who might be considered my "boss."

I miss the atmosphere that developed in the last 18 months or so I spent at Benchmark; but I am hopeful I was right in making the decision to leave when I did. Hopefully it will allow me to provide a better life for my wife and children. And somewhere in there, hopefully there'll be a state of grace all its own.

Postscript

About three months into my new job at Cosmo Networks ("they just tell me to go out into the woods and read the news, and that’s what I do."), I was in the hall getting some cookies from the snack machine when I noticed The Anti-Christ near the entrance. He saw me, and although my chest was fluttering ("This is the BIG one, Elizabeth!) I walked down and greeted him.

He was there for a job interview.

The Anti-Christ had been fired (or as he told me, "laid off") following months of weirdness on his part at Stellar Radio that culminated with a suicide attempt, by all accounts fake. He had spent the better part of the last year out of work, and now appeared to have been greatly humbled by his inability to find a job. Even McDonald’s had turned him down.

He went in to talk to the station’s General Manager, then came down to my little news booth for a brief chat. I must be the master of compartmentalization, because although I was cordial and friendly to him, inside I was in a state of terror like none I had ever felt before.

It was a terror shared by the co-host of the morning show on the sister station to the one I was on, who knew The Anti-Christ by reputation. Her husband had once worked with him.

In my three months working at my new job, I had come to like and respect most of the people there. While I wouldn’t say I had become friends with any of them at this point, I certainly would have pushed them out of the way of an out of control bus about to mow them down.

You do the math.

I call it "The Benchmark Fine."

The End