Victor

The cabinet was particle board covered with faux wood vinyl laminate that peeled back at the corners revealing the spongy looking honeycomb underneath. Victor sat in front of the record player looking at the flat summit, towering above his head like a Mayan pyramid, the sacred and mystical apex rotating with a serpents hiss and dusty pops before the music came in. He was fascinated by the mechanics even more than the sounds, the grooves in the record and their fingerprint ridges, the way the translucent tooth locking into them as sure as a train track, and the lazy rotation of the turn table. There was a satisfying, outdated clicking as the motor powered on, the analog sound of electricity real and soulful. Victor put his hands on the speaker like the hollow diaphragm stretched with a drum of skin, he could feel the beating of the bass pulsing from the woofer, belching sparkling dust in the air like Tinkerbell. He felt like he was in an aquarium, bubbles floating all around him, daylight stars in the shafts of orange morning light.

Victor dug through boxes that smelled of moldering cardboard, like wet earth and stale air. Turning up an item people had forgotten about was like having your own secret, Victor would investigate the disowned origins and cast off history, making his own sense where he could. He found a box of LPs, some of them with hand made jackets, photocopied fliers, in different colors like milky orange marble and translucent yellow. He played them over and over, sitting beneath the record playing and looking up with his chin in his hands, hoping when he grew up he could buy a suit with a skinny black tie, and wear a Joe Friday hat with sunglasses and two tone wing tips all the time.

Years later Victor would hear a radio interview with a man that was on many of his treasured records. It seemed profane to hear two strangers talk about something that was so intimate to him, he had since learned all the notes and words, and all the cracks and scratches in those songs. The man said what his song was about and Victor thought "No, that isn't right," not sure if he meant the meaning of the song, or who it actually belonged to. It was carved into wax and left an orphan artifact for Victor, and he had never tried to impose the mystery of that secret on anyone, and he was now unwilling to let anyone instruct him on its' design.