The students' mockery-affection — Stice's banned impression, Wayne's radio cruelty

texture · standing

• When: standing; Wayne's on-air episode is 17 Nov YDAU
• What: Tavis's manner is so imitable that Ortho Stice's eerie impression of him has been "prohibited by the male 18's" for fear the littler kids will stop taking the real Tavis seriously; the older kids need only shield their eyes and do a horizon-scan when Tavis "heaves into view, seeming to recede even as he bears down" (scene 102). John Wayne, stimulant-dosed and ranting live on WETA, does the deadliest version: adolescent Tavis begging a Canadian cheerleader not to reject a date he hasn't yet asked for — "a terrible fear of rejection" weaponized as openness — a seduction-through-candor that succeeds, "including some sort of imitation of Dr. Tavis carrying on a monologue during the act of sexual intercourse" (n332). The imitations are cruel and are also a form of belonging; Tavis is obtrusive-yet-loved. Of the same lore-genus: "E.T.A.s like to postulate that the mirrors" of JOI's first fortune — the wide-angle side mirrors that shrink the cars behind you — "had been inspired by the always-foreshortened Charles Tavis" (n218 pp. 1035-1036).