The Calming Channel
A short story I wrote just before the Iowa Young Writers' Studio in June of 2023.
Three trays of plastic cups were laid out for everyone. Instead of taking turns, we all lunged at the table, bumping up against each other like nobody else was there. I sat back down, cup in hand. The chairs were arranged in a circle; each seemed purposefully placed so that everyone in the group could see each other. It was the kind of seating arrangement that was supposed to make you feel like you matter — like everyone else in the group also thought you matter. We sat there, twelve of us, outwardly expressionless. I watched the man across from me fiddle with his dive watch. He repeatedly pressed the chronograph, making the sub-second hand spin in circles. All this while the woman beside me picked timidly at her worn nails.
The door opened, and in walked a new face — perhaps our Channel Master.
If so, a dress code was not a prerequisite for the title of “Channel Master” because ours was dressed in jeans and a hoodie.
“Funny thing,” the woman next to me said. “I expected him to be more…official.”
Her name tag read “Amanda.”
Personally, I don’t know what I expected from a “Channel Master.” It’s not something I wanted to think about. Perhaps because I worried my imagining would differ from reality. It’s the same reason that I don't really read anymore: to avoid the trouble of trying to imagine a faceless character in all their complexities. When I do read, the best I can do is imagine imprecise faces, images that, when really thought about, devolve into mangled versions of whatever is the end goal. Every time, without fail, the apprehension ruins the experience.
“Hello, all! I’m so pleased to get to know your faces and even more excited to welcome you to your first Calming Channel.”
His voice was inviting yet impersonal, like he, like all of us, was here for intervention. His voice was educated and precise, like he had gone to a journalism school of some kind. When he spoke, he surveyed the room, deliberately making eye contact with each one of our skeptical glares. He spoke in a rhythm, not so rhythmic that it seemed purposeful but rhythmic enough to imply that he’s been at this awhile and has landed on the easiest and least offensive way to speak.
He slowly went around the room, asking each of us to verbalize why we were there and what we hoped to gain from the experience. It seemed as if everyone who spoke was, up until the words left their mouth, thinking about what they should say and to what extent they wanted to sound self-aware or intelligent. I was no different, so I spoke broadly,
“My manager sent a few coworkers here — urged me to take the day off. I’m honestly not sure what I'm in for — I just hope I can learn from this experience.”
After a few seconds pause, he continued:
“Well, first and foremost, I’d like to thank you all for being brave and sharing some really deep and personal baggage with the group. I know for some of you, these stories don’t mean anything now — but I promise — eventually — they will.”
He waited. “I’ll tell you a little bit about myself. Five years ago, I sat in your seat; before that, I had a wife, a stable job, and a kid — my Jackson.”
He choked up for a moment; I could see the water invade his eyes. He blinked, and a tear ran from his cheek onto his hoodie. It left a dark, oily-looking stain. I noticed it was not singular; I saw a flurry of dark, distinct, and blurry-looking tear stains. They were old and dry — like he had cried a thousand different tears on that shirt and wore it every day as a ratchet kind of motivation.
“My life was great until my Jackson — my late Jackson . . .”
It was getting a little performative.
“ . . . was slain on the side of the road by a killer — a man posing as a drunk driver. He took away my son’s life with a detached touch, a soulless and evil act.”
He let that sit for a moment. I just blankly stared into his heavy eyes and listened as the chronograph cycled along.
He broke the silence: “The worst of it was, I didn’t feel a thing. Not a damn bone in my body did. I utterly and wholeheartedly didn’t care — so I showed up here — looking for help. While your situation might not be analogous to mine, I want you to know that as this group’s Channel Master, I understand you; I understand your shame and complexities, your frustration, and your desire to reciprocate and describe whatever is going on in your head.”
The emotion in his voice softened until it lingered on a sincere tone:
“I promise you — this group will soon, too, feel like I do.”
I watched. The only thing I could focus on was not the sweeping language, but his unwashed and tear-covered sweatshirt. The clothing seemed a purposeful choice to relate to us, and something felt subtly premeditated about the whole spectacle. He stood as if he had worn that same hoodie, given that same speech, and shed those same tears continuously — to every individual — and every group he ever led.
“Well, we’ll get started in a moment — while we’re setting up, feel free to grab a snack from the refreshment table or take the chance to stretch out — we’ll start in a few.”
I didn’t know exactly what they were setting up. It wasn’t a secret; everything I didn’t know about the process I avoided voluntarily. The introductory segment of the program went on for only about 20 minutes before he called the recess. I could tell the program was meant to be presented in waves of short, intense introspection followed by periodic breaks. At this point, though, I could tell we had not quite gotten into the groove, so our speaking time felt short and break ill-timed.
I strolled over to the snack table. The options were sparse. Each selection appeared less appetizing than the last: low-fat yogurt, refrigerated biscuits, and Utz Wheat Twists were a sodium buffet I genuinely wanted no part of.
I walked away from the snacks and stepped toward Amanda. I wanted to talk to her; my reason was two-fold. For one, there seemed to be some kind of unspoken connection between us. She was someone I wanted to get to know better and a person I could connect with, even if the conversation ran dry. The other reason was more concrete; during the icebreaker, she mentioned that her manager referred her to the channel in order to “learn to build meaningful relationships.” That reason was awfully similar to mine, and I wanted to engage.
She was maybe ten years older than I was, and she had a unique presence. She wasn’t masculine — she was a small woman — but rather, she had a raspy quality to her. She wore a blue bead necklace, occasionally covered by her flowing brown hair. She styled her locks in curtain bangs, concealing acne scars on the sides of her forehead. Her resting face wasn’t a smile but rather an expression of contentment and a hint of pretension. Needless to say, Amanda was human, and I liked that.
“Good morning,” I said. I shouldn’t have said “good morning” because it was neither morning nor a very good one. I could have said, “How are you?” but I felt that would’ve been taken in the most literal sense, and we only had a few minutes, and I didn’t want a sincere answer because then we might’ve gotten into a conversation about her feelings and not what I wanted to talk about.
Before she could respond, I kept talking. “So your boss also sent you here?”
She glared with skepticism. Her eyes were hazel; they peered with both immense emptiness and fierce judgment. They were also pretty and wildly headstrong. “Yeah…” she said reluctantly.
“I don’t know if you were listening during the whole intro circle thing — honestly, I don’t blame you if you just tuned out — but I just wanted to connect because we seem to have similar reasons for being here.”
She answered quickly, mentioned something about the old Seacoast Bank down by that tourist trap, the Jungle Queen River Boat. Said her manager commanded her to “learn to work with others” and “learn some damn empathy.” She thought that was “total horseshit” because she can get along with others — it’s others who seemingly can’t get along with her. I summarize all this to you instead of recounting it because she was just so irritable that none of her thoughts were worth closely listening to and certainly not worth sacrificing the white space to include. I couldn’t tell if her words were something an unempathetic or empathetic person would say, and that made me uncomfortable and certainly put me off.
Still, part of me enjoyed our conversation. I wanted to care about her plight; I wanted to stand there and talk for as long as I had breath to speak. I'm unsure if that feeling had anything to do with her. It may be my underlying feeling of apprehension I had for whatever was to come next. While I didn’t know much about the Calming Channel, I did know their goal was to “teach others the power of empathy,” and I didn’t know what that entailed.
While I can’t speak for the whole group, I certainly didn’t and don’t consider myself a purposefully unempathetic person. Perhaps that may make me ignorant, self-aware, or a vague mix of both. At the least, I’m pretty certain that I can empathize with people, especially face-to-face; I'm just incapable of expressing it in words or appearance. If anything, I just think other people have gotten really good at expressing their emotions even when they don’t feel anything. When I was a kid, I religiously read a series of erotic novels — “The Porcelain Diaries.” I didn’t read them for their story but for their use of language and imagery. The novels forced me to feel all sorts of emotions; they used words as vehicles of expression, ranging from pleasure to pain to disgust. After a while, I filled entire notebooks with words and passages from each book. I started to memorize them; I counted the syllables in each sentence, said them out loud, and repeatedly wrote them down until my notebook was full of lopsided scribbles. Yet, in practical conversation, I could never deploy my vocabulary — I could never grab the right word in the right way to express the correct emotion. Instead, I just stand there idle, directionless, and seemingly unrelatable.
I’ll never forget the day my mother found my notebooks. She had a look of genuine horror on her face; I think she believed, for some reason, that I planted the notebooks purposefully to make her feel uncomfortable. My mother was like that; she always believed everybody was out to spite her all the time. I remember her collecting my notebooks in two separate stacks; I sat there and watched aimlessly as she continuously jeered in my direction. She put the novels and notebooks in the back of her car, demanded I get in, and drove to a local river. I chucked each book into the abyss. I don’t remember any of the actual throwings — I just remember her overpowering scream lulling every one of my external senses until the last book slammed into the water’s shimmering surface.
I was expressionless during the whole ordeal, and truthfully, I didn’t care about her yelling, the drive, or what was to come next. I didn’t even care about my own emotions; I knew I had a set amount of energy I was willing to give to that moment, and I made the conscious decision that it was not worth feeling about.
***
After my conversation with Amanda, I returned to the therapy circle. The Channel Master had set up a rolling cart of televisions during our break. There were four, to be exact, and each faced a different direction so that a desired image would be viewable from all angles. It was not tightly put together and was clearly jerry-rigged. The cart was somewhat small, and because of this, each TV hung a little off the edge. To avoid tipping over, each television was strapped on via two safety belts perpendicular to the cart’s base. Every strap was routed to the cart’s central table, where each was very tightly wound around a singular holding peg. The straps were very noticeable and obscured every TV screen’s left and right sides. I reluctantly went to the open seat next to the Channel Master’s belongings while the chronograph man happily chatted with Amanda in my old chair. Sighing in discontent, I surveyed my surroundings and realized this was my only option.
Once everyone had seated, the Channel Master began to explain the procedure.
“Ok, everyone, well, it doesn't look like much, but this guy here (he gave the cart two firm pats) is — you guessed it — The Calming Channel.”
I gave him an Amanda glare; I was disgruntled that we were shifting to an impersonal, digital experience instead of continuing our icebreaker.
“Well,” I started, “I think this is a silly way to continue. The conversation was just getting interesting.”
He paused and gave me a stern look, and everyone else in the group glared. I put my head down and decided to stop talking.
He continued, “It’s okay to be uncomfortable; this device can test your limits, but this kind of visual therapy really works.” He walked to the cart and grabbed a pamphlet from its bottom tray. He opened the manual and noted: “It’s important that I read these warnings before our first session.” He went on: “Be prepared for images, words, and ideas that may contribute to your desired awareness but may also cause discomfort or offend. You should take the necessary breaks and breathe between each piece of media. Be gentle with yourself. Lean into whatever is uncomfortable — the discomfort will often pass, and the willingness to encounter these experiences can lead to invaluable knowledge and connection. Finally, the program features flashing lights, which can trigger seizures in individuals with photosensitive epilepsy. If you suffer from epilepsy, we recommend you wear eye protection to reduce the chance of a seizure. If you experience any of the following symptoms, immediately seek medical attention: staring or altered behavior, confusion, loss of consciousness, visual or auditory disturbances, disorientation, seizure, or convulsive movements . . . Any questions?”
A woman raised her hand:
“Do you have any of those glasses?”
He nodded, walked to the chair beside me, and rummaged through his belongings. He pulled out a pair of tinted glasses from the bottom of the bag. He slid them into his hoodie pocket, zipped up the bag, and handed her the glasses.
“Put those on when you sense a visual is becoming too strenuous for you,” he said. She nodded yes, thanking him for the gesture, and the monologue briefly resumed.
“I figure I ought to get things started.”
He calmly strolled to the cart and flipped the power switch attached to the central peg. The lights went out, and each screen gradually flickered on. A dated image of a boat cross-faded into frame. The ship was accompanied by soothing music that seemed sonically to describe the peacefulness of watching it slice through the gentle water. Next, the screen displayed an image of a father and son hauling a carpet across their suburban lawn. From there, snapshots of married couples, happy grannies, men going to work, and rural tractors gave way to a video of a man raising the American flag. The narrator spoke of prosperity, proclaiming it was “morning again in America.” It showcased an idealized, harmonious existence. Once over, the screen faded to black. The video was quiet and calming. I reclined and looked around; it seemed as if everyone else in the group also reclined in their chair, looking just a little more comfortable than before. I peered back at the Channel Master behind us, leaning against the wall. He had a subtle grin on his face — pacified. I looked away.
When I faced the screen again, I was greeted by flashing lights. The flashing pulsated, quickly cycling through precise intervals of red, green, and blue. Beneath the color, a lamb stood in an open pasture. For around 30 seconds, we all sat there watching this static creature. Soon, it started running. The combination of the camera’s motion and the pulsating was awfully nauseating, and I couldn’t help but look away. When I turned back around, the screen had gone black, and the group looked shell-shocked. Many were reclined like before, but their body language subtly differed. The chronograph man had taken his hand off his watch, Amanda had stopped picking at her nails, and they all unintentionally looked less intentional in the way they presented themselves.
By coincidence, the video recoiled and started from the beginning. I watched as an axed man chased the lamb. The livestock sprinted with stress, and its face turned a gray shade of pale. After a while, you could tell the lamb’s leaps became uncoordinated. One foot in front of the other became all feet down simultaneously, stretched in an unattainable position. Eventually, the lamb tripped, and the screen went dark before the man could pounce. Immediately afterward, another piece of media began playing. The flashing remained, this time pulsating between magenta, green, and white light. More unbearable was the sound accompanying the flashing — loud, incoherent guitar strings. The noise burst from the devices’ internal speakers and rumbled into my eardrum. All this while the screen displayed a series of increasingly distressing images. It felt like some weird form of enhanced interrogation meant to elicit some kind of emotion out of the group.
I glanced around. I watched as, almost unanimously, the eleven others shifted their bodies, placing themselves in the optimal crying position. Each spread their legs, placed their elbows on their knees, and put their face in their hands. A chorus of weeps and cries exploded from the circle; the wails were loud and sorrowful, yet painfully nuanced and confused. I was unsure of what exactly they were all crying about. Were they overstimulated? Upset at the distressing images? Suffering — perhaps for the lamb? I felt painfully qualified to be there then; I was taken aback by all the crying. While I wanted to understand their emotions, I couldn’t.
I refused to acknowledge that sympathy, emotion, and empathy could spawn through brute force — whatever they were feeling, I didn’t think it was genuine. The detail lost in all of this is that while those images were distressing, they’re nothing you can’t find on some corner of the internet, nothing you haven’t seen in some curated piece of media. Because of that, no matter how distressing the images got, I felt unmoved by them. Still, when I looked at the swollen faces of the people I had just begun to know, I felt immense empathy. Looking around at a group of supposedly unavailable people hysterically weeping while you sit there, stonefaced, does something to the ego, and part of me wanted to weep with them — part of me did — just not outwardly.
The Channel Master slowly migrated from the back wall and toward the television cart. He bent down to grab a box of tissues from the cart’s bottom rack. He went counterclockwise around the circle, starting from his belongings. He moved silently amongst the all-encompassing noise and stuck the box out to every individual he passed, taking his time and patting a few on the head while releasing the occasional empathetic smile. Each person he walked by took a brief break from their uncontrolled crying, sniffling in their immense discomfort to allow themselves a tissue. As he walked, every group member, without fail, took a tissue. Like many things the Channel Master did, he seemed to have a presupposed rhythm to the process and had no trouble gliding through waves of emotional turmoil. He picked up speed around the corner like he was trying to get out of the way. When his pace finally got to my seat, he did the same routine he had done eleven times before — extend the box and wait for a nod — and that nod never came.
I wasn’t trying to be dramatic about it — I just raised my hand and waved him off. He stood for a moment, bewildered — it was almost as if nobody had ever said no to him before. Part of me felt bad for messing up his rhythm; he was in such a perpetual meditative state, and I felt like the wrench in it all. He shot me a look that was much different than the one Amanda gave me before — this glare contained both disgust and disappointment, like I had failed a test put in front of me. It was spiteful, a lot like my mother’s. In that look, he dropped the act for just a second and gave me a chance to peer beneath all the therapeutic language and rhythmic speak he must have practiced so many times. For a brief moment, I was allowed to gaze into his unpolished, judgmental being. Eventually, he slowly lowered his arms, checked himself, nodded his head, and slunk to the back wall.
By this point, I had completely tuned out whatever was happening on the screen in front of me. After about a minute, I cocked my head and quietly peered back at the Channel Master. He was looking up at the ceiling. In the TV’s shimmering light, I could see his eyes water and a few gentle tears running down his cheek. At that moment, amidst all the crying, noise, and overpowering light, all I could think about was my own dry eyes — it was almost as if I was the only being in all of Fort Lauderdale who wasn’t weeping.
It was then I felt a knot emerge in the back of my throat. I couldn’t tell if it was genuine. I placed my right hand on it and slowly tried to massage it back down. I didn’t want to cry, not about this, not here. I wished I were back with Amanda, back at the icebreaker. That thought felt like a gentle break from the white noise crashing around me. In a last-ditch effort, I cocked my head up at the ceiling. It was no use; I saw the warm, uninvited water slowly enter my vision, and then — I cried.