The Voices of Creative Nonfiction Writing

I'm under no illusions that my voice is particularly pleasant. I cringe when I hear myself on answering machines or on video, clinging to any hope there may be that my voice doesn't actually sound like that. I sound like a child when recorded. It's really just embarrassing trying to record your voice mail message for work when every time you sound like you snuck into daddy's office and started playing with the phone.
My creative nonfiction writing class is full of annoying voices. One girl, a honey blonde, accompanies her voice with nose scrunches. Her voice is low and hollow, airy and patronizing, as if she's your kindergarten teacher and you're the silly kid who always eats the paste. Overly concerned with not offending anyone, her sing song voice creeps into a small giggle at the end of her literary criticisms and she seals it by smiling in such a way that her face collapses like an accordion. Her lips contort into a rosebud smile, pushing her nose up, creating little crinkles along the bridge. For some inexplicable reason, she closes her eyes. Her eyes are not being squished closed by a big smile, she voluntarily closes them, perhaps having once seen the expression she makes in a mirror, and hoping to never catch a glimpse of it again.
My assessment of another girl may be biased. Whenever we have a workshop, collaboratively critiquing someone's essay as a class, most people try to point out things they liked, plot points that were confusing, or areas that need more clarification, only seldom adding in critiques of grammar. But not this girl. In her cynical, sarcastic drone, her only effort at class participation is to tell someone that their sentences were too long, or there were too many commas. This all changed when she was the one being critiqued. I never noticed her voice to be particularly annoying, but probably because she rarely talked. Our teacher has us read our essay aloud before it's discussed, and she, regrettably, started off with an insufferable monotone. There are few things worse than a monotone voice. One of them, is someone who talks, or reads, too slowly. We have 50 minutes to discuss two essays. She took up around 10 minutes reading two and a half single spaced pages. The slow rhythm accented a little problem with inflection. Every sentence had the slightest upward inflection. Not enough to form a question but just enough for me to want to stuff her thick black glasses down her throat.
Our final (shall we say intriguing..?) voice comes from a chubby, pale, geek who wears a dog collar. No idea why. Can you ask someone a question like that? "What's up with the dog collar?" I just don't know. His voice isn't annoying, because he sounds like Elmer Fudd, who is just a lovable guy, despite his murderous nature. But it's hard to take Dog Collar Boy seriously when he means "brutally" and it comes out "bootally." It's also really difficult to understand someone with a speech impediment reading out loud. Everything is jumbled together, there is no such thing as an "R" in the world of Dog Collar Boy. His wishy washy ways are similar to Batista, from one of my favorite shows, Dexter, which I watch with Travis. Travis constantly makes fun of Batista, and while Dog Collar Boy talks, all I can imagine is Travis impersonating him, repeating everything he says in an exaggerated way. I think my version of hell will be something similar, hearing myself on video over and over for all time.