Seattle Girl (3 page)

Bill cut in. “Without hearing too much more of the story, Jake, I’ve got to say that you sound pretty obsessed with your dog. Maybe your girlfriend is right.”

I couldn’t resist jumping in. I do have a major thing for big dogs after all. “Hey, wait a minute, Bill. I think I’m getting where Jake is coming from.” I looked over at Bill to make sure he wasn’t pissed that I was talking. He gave me a thumbs up, so I continued. “Jake, Haley’s the light in your life, isn’t he?
 
He’s the best thing around, right?”

“Yeah, he’s always here for me. When I come home late my woman always has the bedroom door locked and I know she was going to be nagging me, but Haley is always happy to see me. He’s my boy.” While Jake was talking, I could hear him giving his dog little kisses.

“Is that Haley you’re with right now?”

“Yeah.”

I felt a little bad for taking over Bill’s show like this, but he was sitting in his chair, with a big grin on his face, so I kept going. “Where’s your girlfriend?”

“I don’t know. Out, I guess.”

“You don’t really care where she is, do you?”

Jake was silent on the other end. I was starting to worry that I had pushed Bill’s caller too far.

Maybe I wasn’t like Julia Roberts after all. Maybe I was more like Renee Zellwigger in
Jerry McGuire
when she’s the only one in the office who stands up and says, “I’ll go with you,” and Tom Cruise looks at her like, “Who the heck are you?”

But then, before my worries got the best of me, Jake said, “I guess not. She’d sort of be in the way right now, come to think of it, wanting to talk or something.”

I breathed an audible sigh of relief and found my tongue again. “That’s what I thought. You do love your dog Haley more than your girlfriend. And you do put him first. And you know what, that’s cool.”

“Really? Wow, that makes me feel so much better. Thanks for your help.”

As Jake hung up, Bill was shaking his head. On the air he said to me, “Georgia, I can’t believe you were agreeing with this guy. I mean, he moved out to the country to raise his dog in a
better environment
! And quit his job to do it! He sounds like a wack-job. If I was his girlfriend, I would have left him a long time ago.”

“Bill, Bill, Bill.” My voice was rich with exaggerated pity. “Obviously, you’ve never owned a great dog.”

Bill groaned. “And there you have it folks, the gauntlet is raised and we’ve got our question for tonight. Do you love your animals more than you love your people? Are we warped to place so much focus on the well-being of our animals when there are kids living on the streets? Give it some thought and give me a call after this short musical break.”

I was hooked.

* * *

And thus began my career on radio, discussing dogs and love with strangers. I couldn’t think of anything that would be better than doing that all day. And it was fitting, somehow, that my life’s purpose should reveal itself to me in such a way.

You see, that night in the studio with Bill, the pieces of my life finally fell together and made sense.

You know how when you’re a kid you spend a lot of time alone in your room trying to figure out what to do with your life? Sitting in the dank, basement closet with Bill, I finally realized that I should utilize the one thing I had going for me.

My big mouth.

In retrospect, all of the signs were there right from the start. In the first grade, every Friday I lived in fear of bringing my report card home to be signed, because while the rest of my grades were high, I always got a “C” or lower in deportment.

Believe me there was plenty of yelling, and threatening, and grounding in elementary school. But, no matter how much I wanted to avoid the consequences, I just couldn’t be quiet. It was no fun and besides, there were so many things that just needed to be said.

Too bad that I was the only one with the guts to speak up, right?

I’ve always had a lot to say, living and breathing by my God-given right to provide running commentary to life. Unfortunately, while it may be annoying to have someone like me in the room when you’re trying to watch a TV show, it’s the height of impropriety in the third grade.

Let me make it clear to you how bad it is to be overly talkative when you’re a kid.

Having a big mouth is sit-in-a-corner-every-other-day during recess bad.

One time in third grade one of the boys had his arms wrapped around a tree and it looked like he was humping it. So I said to the other kids, “Look at him, he’s humping the tree!” which everyone laughed at and I thought was pretty great observation on my part. Thank god I was around that day during recess, right?

Nope. I got in huge trouble from the teacher. Evidently, a child my age shouldn’t even know about humping, let alone be pointing it out to the other kids.

Hey, not my fault if everyone else was a little behind in their development. I was calling it like I saw it. But of course, I got into a ton of trouble at home and my third grade teacher never treated me the same way again.

Having a big mouth is like taking home a “C” every week to your pissed off mom who then spends hours lecturing you about your upcoming future as a spinster because boys don’t like girls who talk too much.

Oh wait, we’ve already been over that, haven’t we? Sorry...

Anyway, since I already knew that I liked to talk, a lot, about anything, and that I had lots of strong opinions, the next day I sealed my fate by enrolling in the FCC mandated licensing program.

Girlfriend was going to be a superstar.

Here’s something you should know about me: I believe in embellishing for impact. I never think of it as lying. I’ve just always thought that if one is going to tell a story, one should tell it properly. And that means that if I have to make a few small details more grand than they may have actually been, so be it.

Unfortunately, other people don’t always think that way. Take my ex-boyfriend Brian, for instance (whom I shall tell you all about in a little while if you’ll agree to be patient). You’d think I was committing a crime every time I told a really great story to our friends. He always had to make it a point to say, “No, that’s not what actually happened at all” ruining what was a fabulous time for all of us.

In any case, given my career choice, embellishing for impact is a skill that I am very proud of. Otherwise, wouldn’t everyone just change the station?
 

Who needs the truth if it’s boring?

* * *

“Check this out,” I said to Diane, pushing into our shared bathroom as she was putting on her makeup.

“Mmphh,” she said to acknowledge my presence while giving fierce concentration to her lip-line.

“I just got the FCC handbook today and it says that I’ll be heavily fined and kicked off the radio if I use, quote, any obscene, indecent, or profane language while on the air.”

“Does that include fuck?”

“I think so.”

“Shit?”

“Yep.”

“Cock?”

I laughed. “Probably not if I’m in a deep discussion about fowl, but otherwise...”

She put down her lip liner. “Pussy?”

I snorted. “Do you mean ‘Come here pussy cat?’”

She did something really sloppy with her tongue.

“All of the above,” I said.

Turning back around to the mirror she picked up her lipstick. Unscrewing the cap, she looked at me in the mirror and said, “Well, in that case, you’re in big trouble.”

Feeling more than a little defensive, particularly because this was exactly what I was worried about, I said, “I don’t know. I think I can keep it clean during my show.”

Diane raised an eyebrow, then smacked her bright red lips together. “The original potty mouth? I don’t think so.”

“Thanks for your support,” I muttered.

“You don’t want me to lie to you, do you?”

“No,” I sighed. “I love it when my best friend tells me that I’m bound to be an utter and complete failure at something that I really want to succeed at.”

She rolled her eyes at my exaggeration and I continued, “Anyway, the station director gave me the 5am to 8am slot.”

Diane started working on her eyeliner. “Jesus! That’s way too early.” Holding the sleek black stick an inch away from her left eye, she narrowed it and said, as if she had just tasted something foul, “You don’t expect me to wake up early and listen to you, do you?”

“Of course not!” I said, secretly relieved that she
wasn’t
going to be listening. I didn’t think I could stand for her to ridicule my attempts at talk radio, which, I had already accepted, were bound to suck as I learned the craft. “In the three years I’ve known you, you have somehow managed to get all of the unit requirements in for your major without ever signing up for a class that starts before 11 a.m. You’re a wonder to us all.”

“A girl needs her beauty sleep,” she murmured and I giggled.

“Some more than others,” I said. Diane shot me a dirty look, but I knew she knew I was kidding, because, honestly, you don’t get a whole lot more gorgeous than Diane.

No strands of hair are ever out of place, she is always at the height of fashion, and the in-crowd glams onto her like credit cards to Bloomingdales. As a perfect vision of loveliness and sexuality all crammed into one package, I had seen her use her looks to her advantage time and time again. She could play any character: Sleek-and-glamorous; Dumb-blond-bimbo; Savvy-businesswoman-in-glasses.

But underneath her façade of the hour, she was also the most honest person I had ever met. Take, for instance, the day we were talking about what we’d do with $100,000 dollars and she said, right off the bat, “I’d buy jewelry.” No apologies, no “Oh, I’d start a foundation for the homeless,” or any of that bullshit that other people would be feeding you. Just big diamonds. Plain and simple. Who else has the balls to admit to being so shallow?

 
Part of the reason why Diane had virtually no concept of money being hard to come by was because her parents were of the ultra rich set in Scottsdale, Arizona. I got the sense from the stories she told about them that she had never really had much to do with her folks. Like, her string of nannies had been as close as she ever got to having an actual mother.

Sometimes I even got the sense that she was envious of my relationship with my mother, because even though we bugged the shit out of each other, at least my mom was involved in my life.

Too involved, for my liking, but I guess it really depends which side of the fence you’re on, doesn’t it?

Diane rummaged around on the makeup strewn counter, finally picking up a jet black compact, breaking into my ruminations. “Can’t you get them to give you a different time?”

“Duh. Why didn’t I think of that?” I said, smacking myself on the forehead. “I’ll just march up to the station director and say, ‘I know I’ve never done this before, but everyone else on your station is crap, so can I have the peak hours after 5 p.m.?’”

“That’s what I’d do,” Diane said matter-of-factly.

I sighed and pointed out the obvious. “That’s because you’re you. And he’d be so blinded by your blonde bombshell-ness that you’d probably get away with it. He’d just laugh in my face and tell me to fuck off.”

“So what are you going to talk about for three whole hours every single day?”

I shrugged, trying to act nonchalant about it. “Oh, I’ve got lots of ideas.”

Diane finished with her makeup and went into the bedroom to slip on some shoes, so she didn’t press me for more details.

Which was good, because, frankly, I didn’t have one single idea for my show.

Not one!

And this was me we’re talking about. The girl who never shuts up.

Clearly, I was in big trouble.

* * *

At first I tried listening to the radio station, figuring that I might pick up some tips from the students that had some DJ-ing experience under their belt. Fat chance!

Straight off the bat I realized that my initial impressions about college radio had been dead on. Nobody listens to college radio and for good reason.

It sucks. Truly, it’s awful. During those three weeks I listened to as much college radio as I could stand. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stand much. I felt like I was listening to my teeth being pulled out, hour after hour. I had my work cut out for me.

Bill’s show, thank god, was a highlight among them all, as I actually found myself laughing out loud from time to time during his broadcasts.

To round out my education, and to balance out all of the amateur garbage I was hearing, I hunted out the syndicated talk-hosts on my AM station. Dr. Laura, Howard Stern, Michael Savage. I learned something very important from the pros: The most successful radio personalities are one hundred percent true to who they are as people when they are on the air. Even when they rub people the wrong way, as all of them do every single day, they are compelling. So compelling, in fact, millions of people tune in to listen to them.

If I wanted people to listen to my show I was going to have to be special. Out of the ordinary. Completely frank about subjects that other people were skirting around. I wanted to tackle topics that really pissed me off, knowing that even if my opinion angered my listeners, at least when they were done listening they’d know that they’d been given a good time.

The question that kept me awake those weeks before my first show was simple: Did I have anything to say? What if I got to the studio and had no opinions?
  

Rationally, I knew that was impossible. I was practically the most opinionated person in the whole world. But I was so nervous about going on the air by myself for three whole hours, five days a week that I was totally freaking out. We’re talking way outside the rational zone.

With fourteen days to go until my on-air debut, after watching
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
for the billionth time and saying goodnight to Diane and then tossing and turning in bed until 2 a.m., I finally gave up on sleep and threw on some clothes. I didn’t want to go to a coffee shop or diner and be around tons of keyed up people—all of whom had something to talk about with each other, when I was the original blank canvas, god dammit—I just needed a place to think. It had been strangely dry and sunny for the past few days, so I grabbed a blanket and headed out to the large square between my apartment building and three others. Surprisingly, even in the middle of the night there were plenty of students hanging out on the grass, all of us soaking up the dry weather for as long as it lasted.