Jason Morris Has A Cold
A modern parody of Gay Talese’s legendary profile, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”
Jason Morris, holding a glass of milk in one hand and a vape in the other, stood in a dark corner of his apartment on a ‘video-off’ call with his mother.
She waited for him to say something. But he said nothing.
He had been silent for most of their calls this week but now, in the privacy of his own, depressing flat, he seemed even more distant.
Jason stared through the glass doors on his balcony, past the four letters, ‘G-A-R-Y’, his friend – Gary - had drawn, that appeared each time it was cold outside and the heater was on.
His mother knew it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in one of these moods – a mood that had been common during this first week of August.
Jason looked out onto his neighbour across the block who sat unmoving at her desk. He thought about how, for all he knew, she could have been murdered and propped up by her assailant. It reminded him of his own mortality. Would anyone even care if HE was murdered and stuffed like a taxidermised badger?
A single tear rolled down his cheek.
Jason had recently discovered a bald patch at the back of his head; he was angry that his girlfriend had washed his favourite pants using the wrong fabric softener; but mostly, he was worried that the next episode of his podcast, “Getting To Snow You, an hour-long commentary on the underbelly of extreme snow sports – would be recorded with a voice that, in this first week of winter, was weak, sore and uncertain.
You see, Jason was ill.
He was the victim of an ailment so common that most people would consider it trivial. But when it gets to a podcaster, it can plunge them into a state of anguish, depression, panic, even rage.
Jason Morris had a cold.
Jason with a cold was like a magpie without its warble, a celloist without a bow, Hulk Hogan without his bandana – only worse. For the common cold robbed Jason of that uninsurable jewel – his voice (he had reached out to every insurer in town, but they all declined to give him a policy). The common cold for Jason seemed to cause a kind of neurotic-butterfly effect amongst everyone who loved him, cared for him, and tolerated his podcast.
A healthy Jason Morris was the embodiment of the fully evolved male, the man who could do anything he wanted because he had the confidence, the equipment he’d bought off Ali Baba, and no apparent shame.
He had the affection of Jamie, his loving girlfriend who smelled good and coddled him when an episode of Snow got less than 10 listeners; his mother, who called him each day to check that he’d eaten; and his Instagram followers - almost two hundred of them – and almost all of them real.
But now, standing in his underwear and wrapped in a stiff, gilded robe he’d bought in Oman (a souvenir he wore out of spite to prove to Jamie it wasn’t a dumb purchase), none of that mattered. Jason had a cold, and no-one understood.
He sipped his milk quietly like a sulking cat. By now, his mother had hung up and had moved on to calling her friend, Diane, to speculate about the sexuality of their new yoga instructor.
But Jason hadn’t noticed. He was miles away in his mind, not even reacting when Jamie tripped while holding a scolding cup of tea.
His podcast couldn’t exactly be described as “words to make love by”, and you could bet money that many of the ‘hits’ he’d enjoyed on Spotify were from people looking for The King & I song of a similar name.
Still, he was out there having a go. He was putting his musings into the world, musings that no-one had asked for but maybe, just maybe, had been looking for all along – like the nerdy best friend in a teen movie who takes off their glasses to reveal they’re a knock-out.
Sometimes she wondered how she’d ended up here, the sideshow to a man who could barely be considered the main act.
Two years ago, Jason had got caught in a rip when they were holidaying down the coast. Jamie swam out two hundred metres and risked her life to save his. When she reached him out in the dark blue depths, Jason pushed his weight onto her in a panic and nearly drowned her. She had put it down to an innate survival reaction, but the incident hadn’t left her.
Sometimes, when Jason was being Jason (like when he cried because the person ahead of him bought the last tuna melt, or when he trolled that 12-year-old boy who left a bad review on Apple Podcasts), Jamie fantasised about what her life would be like had she not swum out to rescue him that day.
But no-one was perfect, and relationships were work. Besides, she wanted a family, and she and Jason had a deal that they would start trying for kids once his podcast reached 10,000 subscribers. This little pact, which had originally started at 20,000 but shifted after a particularly low-rating episode, had given Jamie skin in the podcasting game. She was invested in seeing it succeed.
She had accompanied Jason to the mountains in the depths of winter and held the boom arm in minus 12 degrees to get a soundbite with a liftie. She had left a bundle of marketing pamphlets for his podcast at her work’s reception desk and sent around an all-staff email pledging to buy a coffee for anyone who listened. But it was never quite enough.
Jason had always had “a heightened sense of himself”, at least according to his mother one unannounced-Sunday visit.
The topic had come up when Jason broke the news to Jamie that he had turned down an offer for a one-hour broadcasting slot at their local radio station.
“8pm on a Tuesday?” he had exclaimed with a mouth full of cheese and bacon balls. His mother, seated next to him, was rubbing his calves. “Who do they think I am?”
Jamie had said that she thought any exposure was better than none; that he had to start somewhere. But Jason insisted that he “knew his worth”, and that a better, more “on-brand” opportunity would come up.
18 months into his podcasting journey, it hadn’t.
Jason could be generous. At Christmas time, he made Jamie a customised advent calendar where each day a cardboard window revealed a clue to her gift of the day. It had come following Jason forgetting Jamie’s birthday two weeks earlier and her threatening to leave.
The first few days started well – a back massage for the 1st of December, cooking dinner for the 2nd – but come the end of the week, Jason had lost steam. By the 7th he resorted to taping a Snickers bar to her car windscreen. By the 12th, he tried to pass putting out the bins as a gift, and by the time Christmas Eve rolled round, Jamie was slaving away in the kitchen trying to salvage Jason’s overcooked eggnog and Googling “24-hour Fishmonger” after Jason found out that his “one-upping brother” was bringing lobster to family lunch.
***
Jason sat, arms folded, glaring at his reflection in the blackness of his computer screen.
He had recorded the opening of his episode three times that day, but every take had sounded nasally, lacking authority. Twice he had broken out into sneezing fits. The word “snow” sounded like “snowb”. He had given it his all, but nothing would work.
“Forget it, just forget it,” he snapped at Jamie as she tried to hand him a mug of lemon tea. “You’re wasting your time.”
He stormed out of the spare bedroom, which had been transformed into his recording booth after Jamie was pressured to get rid of her pottery wheel.
“You’re not going to do anything with them, are you?” Jason had asked as he gleefully threw her ceramic bowls into a tub. “Wasn’t it just a lock-down thing?”
Jamie, who had already sold several of her creations at a local market and had orders for several more, breathed deeply and went for a long walk – something she had taken to doing a lot recently.
“Jamie!” Jason yelled out from the living room, face down in a pillow. “Get me Freddie!”
Once In a Lifetime Opportunity to work on Cutting-Edge Production 3 years’ podcast production experience required
DO NOT apply unless willing to work weekends
Unpaid.
DO NOT apply unless willing to work weekends
Unpaid.
Jamie had questioned the requisite level of experience for an unpaid internship given that Jason himself was new to the podcasting game, but Jason assured her that this was the going criteria and that he only wanted to attract candidates who were serious about the gig.
Freddie had an Arts/Law degree with a major in journalism. He supported himself through university by working at Nando’s four times a week and moonlighting as a ghost-writer for illiterate rich people who felt the world needed to read their biographies. He finished uni with honours and managed to secure a coveted graduate role at The Argus where he worked (for money) for two years before being fired during the pandemic.
He had reached out to countless newspapers, magazines, websites, and zines, but no-one was hiring in these “uncertain times”.
He was smart, eager - and desperate.
Freddie’s friends had warned him about taking the unpaid role. So many of their friends in creative industries had suffered the same fate of abuse and exploitation with the hope of moving into a paid position. Almost none of them were ever remunerated. Almost all of them had ended up moving back with their parents.
But Freddie was determined to stay in the industry that he had worked so hard to enter, even if he had to work adjacent to it (or adjacent-adjacent, for that matter). Sure, he was mainly running errands for Jason, and yes, it got tiring listening to him try out different voices when they couldn’t secure a guest and Jason acted out the interviewee’s part himself – but Freddie had inherited his parents’ hard work-ethic, and he wasn’t going to let a minor setback like redundancy deter him from his goals.
This podcasting gig was just another notch in his belt of experience, and he was committed to doing the best goddamned job he could while he was there.
***
The doorbell buzzed. A baby-faced boy with a mop of dark hair stood at the door.
“Hi Freddie, come on in.” Jamie wearily welcomed the intern. “He’s in there.”
Freddie entered the living room to find his boss on the couch tightly swathed by a waffle blanket. Jamie had tucked him in using ‘hospital corners’ after Jason insisted she watch an instructional YouTube video. With his arms swaddled at this sides, Freddie’s boss looked more like a human Band-Aid than a human man.
“Freddie? Freddie? Is that you?” Jason wriggled an arm free and felt around the side of the couch. He wore an eye-mask he’d taken home from a sensory-deprivation pod.
“Hi boss. How are you feeling?” Freddie asked.
“Oh Freddie. I’m afraid it’s not looking good. Not good at all. Come here kid, pull up a pew.”
Jamie held her breath and watched on. It was never a good sign when Jason started speaking like a 1950s mobster. Some people start to stutter when they’re anxious, others might get a twitching eye. Jason defaulted to talking like Joe Pesci.
She mentally recounted the time when Jason broke the news to her that he’d spent their next month’s rent on a Falconry course.
“See here, kid. I’ve got somethin’ to tell ya, and it ain’t gonna be pretty. Now why don’t you bring that sweet beeee-hind of yours over here and I’ll tells ya the drill.”
He snapped out of the accent when Jamie put his Falconer’s gloves through the shredder.
“Freddie, it’s been grand working with you – I mean it – you’ve been a real sport. But I just don’t think I can keep you on anymore.” Jason had removed his eye-mask but kept a hand over his brow. “You see Freddie, I’m sick, and I don’t know if I’m gonna make it.”
“Yes, Freddie – like sick sick.” Jason turned his face away from his faithful steed.
Freddie took Jason’s hand in his. “Like – the Big C – sick?”
Jason inhaled deeply. “Yes Freddie…the Big C.”
Freddie began to whimper.
“Oh for God’s Sake!” Jamie stepped through the couple’s linked hands and ripped off Jason’s blanket. “It’s a cold! He has a cold, Freddie!”
She turned to Jason. “What? So you think you’re the first person in the world to get a sniffle? You think that the world stops because Jason Morris has a cold? Who do you think you are? Sinatra? No-one cares if your meek little podcast never airs another episode. No-one would notice if you disappeared from iTunes entirely – or the face of the earth, for that matter!”
She stopped, breathless.
Jamie Sanders was tired.
She was tired of all the talk, the complaining, the empty promises. She was tired of reading fake testimonials Jason had written about his podcast, weary of his whining when he burnt his tongue on his espresso every single day, and fed-up with his petulant tantrums when life didn’t go his way.
It had been five tedious years. Enough was enough. She had to get away.
Jason lay, blinking.
Jamie walked out.
Then she walked back in, grabbed his microphone and recorder, and walked right out again.
***
Jamie stopped in her car. The light was red. She reached around to check on her daughter, who sat sleeping in her car-seat peacefully. Jamie smiled and lightly squeezed her daughter’s tiny foot.
They had just finished dinner at her parents’ place. Jamie turned on the radio and flicked through the stations, scrawling through the usual commercial channels before changing over to the community broadcasts. She was just about ready to switch off the drawl before a familiar voice cut through the airwaves.
“Gooooooood evening, ladies and gents. You’re tuning in to Timeless Tuesdays with Jason Morris, and boy, do we have a show for you tonight! So clear your schedule, strap yourselves in, and get ready for what’s sure to be a wild…”
Jamie hit the dial and shut off the noise. The light turned green, and she drove on into the night, in blissful silence.
***
This piece originally featured in Flights literary journal (Issue 9, June 2023)