Becoming the Storm
44 Interview with a Mad Man
ABOUT FIVE MINUTES UNTIL FIVE we got everyone into the studio. Elaine entered from her usual location. It was her set.
“Hi. I’m Elaine Frost. If you know me, you know I’m the host of Chick Chat on the Hearthstone Entertainment Network. If you don’t know me, I’m just a cute chick who will help coordinate getting your interviews tonight. I’m not going to do a monologue. Let’s get down to business. There are five television stations and two newspapers here. As the TV crews have tightest deadlines, we’ll give each of them the opportunity to have their five-minute interview first and then we’ll have the newspaper guys. When everyone has had a chance to go one-on-one with Brian, we’ll open the floor to general questions. Remember that, like any press conference, everything that is said to any individual reporter is accessible to all. It will also go out over our Hearthstone Entertainment Network. Let’s get started. Our first interviewer is Dee Kalb from WXYZ. Are you ready, Dee?”
The reporter took her place in the chair opposite mine. I’d slipped in while Elaine was doing the introduction and just sat down with a cup of coffee. Dee went straight to the most recent article and started on the private militia angle.
“No, we aren’t a militia and we don’t have any intention of forming one. We aren’t secretive about who we are or who we talk to. During the broadcast week when we are taping Chick Chat and Young Cooking, we often have fifty visitors in the studio a day. For the most part, we’re students and friends who all decided we liked being with each other and came to the same school. We first came out here to the ranch because we couldn’t find housing for all of us on or near campus. Also, a lot of the people you’ve seen moving around the ranch are parents and older friends who came just for the weekend and today because they wanted to support their kids.”
“But you are all wearing martial arts uniforms. It certainly looks militaristic,” Dee said. “Why do you all wear uniforms?”
“It’s a funny thing,” I said. “It started in high school. Do you have kids? We were pretty crazy, but we all really cared about each other. We signed a dating agreement—a pledge that we’d treat each other with respect, we wouldn’t have sex until we were at least seventeen, and we’d always have explicit permission from our partners before engaging in any kind of intimate act. There are copies of the agreement in your briefing packet. Because our parents saw that we could be trusted, they let us have group sleepovers.”
“Your parents let you sleep together as teenagers?” Dee asked in surprise.
“Well, it wasn’t quite that simple. We all slept in the same room, usually spread out on the floor. But the parents chaperoning us always required that we have appropriate sleepwear on at all times,” I laughed. “The question was, ‘what is appropriate?’ So, eventually we evolved a pajama set that everyone could wear. They are really comfortable. What you are calling a military or martial arts uniform is just pajamas to most of us.”
“What are the ranks symbolized by the various colors?”
“I’m happy to tell you what the colors symbolize, but there really aren’t any ranks. We don’t have a hierarchy here. Let me describe what is the closest I can come to that,” I said. I took a sip of coffee. “We kind of guessed that you’d ask that question, so I asked someone of each color to be prepared to come up. Guys, would you all step forward?” Dad, Larry, Lamar, Cassie, Brenda, Rhiannon, Geoff, Leonard, and Sora came up. They were all resplendent in their robes and belts. “Let me start with my father, Hayden Frost. His pajamas represent what we call the tribe. We are all members of one tribe that includes our families and friends. The tribe has grown as our relationships and friendships have grown. The biggest portion of the tribe, represented by gray belts, are our parents. I think gray is kind of appropriate for that, don’t you?” There was some laughter. Behind me, Dee was being led back to her seat. The explanation of the house colors wouldn’t eat into any individual interviewer’s time.
“Within the tribe, we created our clan. We call it the Clan of the Heart, because forming it was based on mutual love and respect. Nothing more. It originated as all those people who were willing to sign our dating agreement back in high school. We incorporated it when we moved down here and needed to set up joint ownership of various properties here on the ranch. Leonard, who is responsible for the design of our robes as they exist today, is wearing a general clan outfit with white belt. This is the same Leonard, by the way, who is the creative force behind Designed by Leonard. You’ll notice that he’s treated his outfit with a little more flair than some of us can pull off. It’s a white-on-white silk damask. Most of us just use utilitarian cotton. Within the clan there are now seven families or what we refer to as casa. Sugar represents Casa del Sol. Their color is yellow and is always in their belts. Some casas maintain just white pajamas, and others have more formal robes in the house color, like I’m wearing. I’m part of Casa del Fuego, as Cassie is. I’m wearing the red robe and she is wearing the white robe. You can see that we have matching belts. This is Larry. He represents Casa de los Caballos with a beige belt. Larry is also our ranch manager. You undoubtedly saw our horses when you were touring earlier. Brenda represents Casa de la Tierra and wears green. Rhiannon represents Casa del Agua and wears blue. Geoff represents Casa del Arco Iris. I love his rainbow belt which was designed and sewn especially for this casa by Leonard. And finally, our newest casa is Casa del Bola. Sora and Tim were members of Casa del Fuego and when they announced their engagement split to form their own family. They have adopted purple as their house color. Sora told me that they were wearing their white pajamas with purple belts until they are married, which will be in just three weeks. I understand Leonard is designing some pretty spectacular purple wedding robes for them. That is the story of our various colors. We’ll switch now to Ren Caswell from WBBT, South Bend, for the next interview.”
And so it went. It took longer than we expected and a couple of the TV guys were getting impatient as their deadlines approached. I tried to give each of them the time and attention they needed to have a good clip with the particular reporter. I knew that each would take a turn re-asking the interview questions of other reporters in order to look like they were the only ones there. Only our feed would show the real shifting around from reporter to reporter.
Ren focused on our relationship to Mishawaka and St. Joe Valley High. There was one question that hit me pretty hard, though. I had to stop and keep myself from choking up.
“Brian, it seems that your clan has been plagued by tragedy from its very beginning. When you were a junior in high school, your friend, Denise Raymond, was brutally murdered after the prom. Less than three months ago, another St. Joe Valley High graduate, Alexandra Cortales, was murdered and her sister Samantha and you were both grievously wounded in a random shooting on the IU campus. Do you feel that your clan is a lightning rod for tragedy?” she asked. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath.
“Ren, the deaths of Denise and Lexi hit every one of us very hard. There isn’t a day that goes by that we don’t think of those beautiful young women whom we—and I mean every one of us in the clan—whom we loved. Are we a lightning rod for tragedy? I don’t believe in such a thing. Let’s not forget that three other people died that day. Parents lost children. Friends lost friends. We feel most the tragedy of our own loss, but it is no greater than the loss of any other. Their pain might not be the same as our pain, but we recognize their pain as no less than our own.”
The interviews progressed. By the end of the fourth interview, the reporters were struggling for questions that would show they had a news story. We’d pivoted the new rotating audience platform and I was standing in the kitchen set. My last reporter was Shelly Ames of WNAP. She’d been patient and had already told us that her report wouldn’t go live until the ten o’clock news.
“So, Brian, with all the allegations printed in the tabloids and all the problems they have caused, are you going to sue the Star and its reporter?” Shelly asked.
“No.”
“But isn’t that like admitting that he was right?”
“Shelly, I’ve already said that the facts this writer stated were correct. I stopped a rape of my best friend when I was in junior high. I was beaten by a gang who later went to jail the next year. I defended my friend from an assailant who had been her boyfriend but had beaten her so severely she was in the hospital for days and physical therapy for months. He was so hyped up on meth that even when police arrived, they had to use a stun gun in order to subdue him. I tried my damnedest to kill Wayne Enders so he would stop shooting and killing people on the sidewalk in front of Gamma House and only regret that I was too far away to reach him. Those are facts. They are the only facts the writer cited before weaving an entertaining story about why they might have occurred.
“Get that word right, Shelly. Entertaining. The writer, who goes by the very creative name of Chase Sanborn, is not a reporter. This tabloid is not a newspaper. It is entertainment. I know about entertainment. I act as a chef on a cooking show. Yes, I try to provide good recipes, but people watch because it’s entertaining. Elaine Frost is relevant and topical. But her show, especially her monologues, is entertainment, satire, comedy. This past December and January, NBC, ABC, and CBS each broadcast its own made-for-TV movie about the life of Amy Fisher. Get this. Drew Barrymore as the Long Island Lolita. The stories all included facts about the woman and events, but none of those shows were news. They were entertainment. They were dramas based on a true story. Frankly, I don’t think Amy Fisher is anywhere near as interesting as Drew Barrymore! I’d watch Drew eat Rice Krispies for breakfast.
“The point is, why anyone would treat this as news. Why are you here? Have any of you asked why the writer had an axe to grind about this clan? Did any of you investigate to find out who it was that trespassed on private property to photograph a very private and personal memorial for our friend and cast it as a military maneuver? Has it occurred to anyone to ask how this photographer happened to be every single place that Heaven was when I was photographed in the background? Could this be the same paparazzo who has stalked Heaven for three years trying to get a photo of her naked? At what point did it become okay to trespass, to stalk, to invade people’s privacy for the titillation of the masses?
“Why did any of you, who represent legitimate news stations and newspapers, consider this story worth your time to spend thousands of dollars sending cameras and reporters here for this conference? What made asking me questions about my pajamas more important than reporting on the fact that Gamma House, in spite of the tragedy that occurred on its steps just three months ago, continued with its summer fun run, raising over $5,000 that it contributed to Riley Children’s Hospital? Why did no one report that, inspired by the life of her younger sister, Janice Gifford has transformed her counseling service in Indianapolis to deal with youth in crisis and grief on a pro bono basis? Who reported on the fact that Lambda Fraternity, to which Raymond Stiles belonged, has established a scholarship in the name of Raymond, specifically designated to recognize young men who show selfless character in helping and protecting others?
“Could it be that this just isn’t news? Or is the truth of the matter that you are really in the entertainment business?”
I didn’t formally end the interview. I just walked off and left by the side door. I was done. I was the storm.
But I was about to become a hurricane.
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