I had finally found a station that didn’t recycle reincarnations of the Dixie Chicks on repeat. Charleston’s 96 the Wave played Nirvana and Marcy’s Playground — hits from the 90s that I should perhaps be embarrassed to admit I love. With the radio cranked up, I was frying catfish in the kitchenette, riding a wave of elementary school nostalgia when, all of the sudden, the sound of an insistent nasally twang snapped me out of it.
I would later recognize the voice as that of the Southern Avenger. He was arguing that if one race owed reparations to another, considering crime rates, it was blacks to whites. “Just like slavery, the blood and sacrifice, or to be more specific—the countless assaults, rapes and murders—can never be repaid in dollar amounts. But aren’t white folks owed some kind of justice?” The skill with which he twisted words around was frightening. I couldn’t believe what he was saying and couldn’t wait to hear what he would dare to say next. I started listening eagerly for his new commentaries every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
His platform wasn’t as straight-forward as I first assumed—“I’m pro-confederate flag, but I don’t have a problem with gay marriage. So what does that make me?” “You’ll never hear me use terms like Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. I don’t think most people who listen to FM radio care about that kind of stuff.” He is the voice of prejudice itself. “I want to make people feel comfortable with their prejudices…People don’t like to see where their parents and grandparents grew up looking like Tijuana. They feel uneasy about it.” Over the course of the summer, I heard him argue against everything from Lincoln to the lethalness of second-hand smoke.
The only thing more alarming than his articulacy (and he is articulate) is the spandex confederate mask he wears laced like a shoe up the back of his head. I saw it as soon as I logged onto his website. Strung along the top, there are photos: Southern Avenger riveting blonds while groping their thighs; Southern Avenger standing out the window of his General Lee thrusting a thumbs-up; and Southern Avenger pointing at me as if he were Uncle Avenger instead.
The mask makes pragmatic sense. People send him death threats. They key the car he rides in. And while public appearances aren’t necessary for a radio personality, they’re necessary for the Southern Avenger; they move him beyond radio and into the realm of mascot. In hiding his identity, the mask creates a new one. The spandex not only makes the Southern Avenger look like Spider-Man: it gives him some superhero invincibility too.
Yet it’s the mask that allowed me to see, if not his face, his human body. It’s the mask that forced me to realize that the Southern Avenger wasn’t just a voice but a real person who interacts with other people. I could unwittingly encounter the man mask-less in the grocery store. He could be next to me without my ever knowing.
And now I’m back at school, and after making some arrangements with his secretary, I’m on the phone with him.
He calls me Miss Mari.
“You can call me Francesca,” I offer, aiming for affability but just sounding awkward.
Excited by the attention of a Northeastern paper, he offers every bit of information that might secure his spot on the page. Meanwhile, I’m trying to hide the fact that I’ve never interviewed anyone before. We’re both strategically sharing information, each trying to please the other, trying to establish a good rapport and being overly conciliatory in the process.
“I’m a young guy who likes to get drunk,” he starts to reassure me at one point. “I’m not in any hurry to get married. I make no apologies for my life. You and I—I don’t know how old you are—but we like to go out.”
The phone call feels like an awkward first date.
That is, until I remember that this guy wears a mask.
“It’s a Mexican style lucha libre” he says, pleased to reveal himself a wrestling aficionado. “I wear it for, frankly, the in your face aspect….I like to back up what I say, like to have some heft behind it. It was confrontational. I’m proud of where I’m from…and,” he adds with a laugh, “I really like pro wrestling.”
“Do you ever wear it when you’re not doing a function? Like to promote yourself? I mean to the grocery store or something?”
“No, but this is a funny story,” he says with the kind of amused self-disclosure one wades into more easily on the phone. “I’ve never told anyone this,” he laughs. “But my hair seems to look really good after I take the mask off. So if I’m having a bad hair day at the house, I’ll slap the mask on, hang out, go on the computer, wear the mask for thirty minutes, and then my hair looks grea—”
My roommates are laughing and shouting in the common room. I press the phone harder to my ear, but I can no longer hear him.
“I’m sorry,” I falter. “I have really loud roommates. I’m going to have to ask them to shut up.”
“That’s alright, no problem.”
“Ok one second.”
“That’s alright,” he says even though I haven’t apologized a second time. “Don’t worry about it.”
So much for trying to sound professional, I think to myself, blushing as I rush down the hall and open the common room door. “Guys! Hey! Could you—”
No one hears. They keep on laughing.
There I was, holding the phone to my chest with one hand, splicing coils of smoke with the other. I imagined him down in Charleston sitting on the arm of his couch, dangling his feet. There he was, waiting for this college kid to come back on the phone and finish her interview so that, finally, he could untie his mask, let loose his hair, and hit the town.
— Francesca M. Mari is an English concentrator in Adams House.
