Scott nodded. “Sounds great. Make sure the camera’s working in the main booth so we can upload pictures to social media while we’re interviewing him. And we’ll be having a contest to win front-row seats to his concert next Friday, so be prepared for the phones to blow up.” He looked down and scribbled notes on the checklist he held.
“Got it,” I said with a smile.
“I heard that Crineene got kicked out of a club last night after getting into a fistfight with her boyfriend. A fistfight,” Tom said with a grin. “Make sure you find that story.”
“Awesome.” I smirked as I shook my head.
The meeting ended and I headed back to my computer, reading and printing up stories about celebrities that had happened overnight, including Crineene’s incident. On the one hand, I was thankful that there was enough drama to fill the three entertainment segments during the show, but on the other I wondered how the hell all that had happened in the span of twenty-four hours.
This was exactly why I had no interest in dating a musician or someone in the business. That entire scene didn’t interest me outside of this radio station. I loved my job and it was fun to meet the people whose music I enjoyed, but that was as far as I took it.
In college I dated a drummer for a local band that ended up getting a record deal. The experience pretty much cured me of any future crushes I might have on boys who sang or played instruments. It didn’t take me long to catch on that most of those guys had a problem staying faithful, expecting their girlfriends to overlook any indiscretions because girls were constantly throwing themselves at their feet.
“You can’t expect me to resist that kind of temptation every night, babe. It’s not like I like them the way I like you. I mean, you understand, right?”
No, I didn’t understand, and I didn’t want to.
Realizing that I’d had more than enough craziness in my life, I found myself craving normalcy when it came to the opposite sex. Problem was, I had no idea where to find said normalcy since celebrities and people in the radio business were the only people I tended to associate with during my waking hours.
To be fair, the majority of those guys weren’t interested in dating me either. Most of them wanted girls who liked to go out all the time—the kind of eye candy who enjoyed being seen, causing a scene, and doing bad things. I wasn’t that kind of girl, and as soon as they found out that I’d rather be at home in my pajamas than at a party in the Hollywood Hills, they seemed to lose any interest they might have had.
The truth was that being required to attend VIP parties, concerts, private events at clubs and bars for work made me not want to hang out at any of those places outside of work. I wanted to spend my days off binge-watching my favorite TV shows on my DVR and catching up on sleep. And when my best friend, Kristy, called every Saturday afternoon and begged me to go out with her that night so she could blow off steam, I usually compromised by agreeing to have dinner with her somewhere fun. It was the best I could do.
During the show, I sat outside in the control room and listened in on the guys as they sat in front of the mics in the on-air booth and talked effortlessly to the general Los Angeles area. They had moved on to a segment about worst first dates, and I was manning the phones.
“Tom and John in the Morning,” I said automatically as I answered the phone.
“Oh, hi!” The female voice responded slowly, almost stuttering, as if caught off guard. She sounded nervous, which was pretty standard in my experience.
“Hi.” I hesitated, wondering how much I would need to probe her about why she called in the first place.
“I was calling about the worst-first-date stories they were talking about.” She giggled into the phone, and I found myself smiling too.
“Awesome. Okay, give me the quick version,” I said.
Working for the number-one rated radio morning show meant that one of my jobs was to screen the callers before we put them on the air. Someone needed to make sure the listener wasn’t going to screw up the show, be vulgar, or say things that had nothing to do with what the guys were currently talking about.
I also needed to make sure the story didn’t suck. If the caller couldn’t get through their own words without stumbling, I would politely thank them for their call before telling them we had moved on from that segment. It was usually a lie, but it was my job to keep the show flowing and ensure the callers were contributing something relatable, or at the least, entertaining.
The woman, who identified herself as Monica, told me all about her horrible first date back in college where the guy was only using her to get to her roommate, and couldn’t even fake being interested in her for more than twenty minutes. It was perfect. Poor thing.
“Okay, Monica, I’m going to put you on hold. The guys will be with you in a minute. Try not to cuss, and make sure you turn your radio all the way down while you’re on the phone with them, okay?”
Most of the callers didn’t follow my instructions about turning the radio down on their end. They ended up live and on the air with an echo that reverberated through their car speakers and everyone else’s. Hearing their own voice talk to them over the radio seconds after they had already said the words caused most people to stutter and become confused. The DJs would normally yell at that point for them to turn their volume down before giving me a glare, like I didn’t do my job.
“Okay. Turn it down? How will I hear?” she asked, confused.
“You’ll hear the station through your phone. There’s a five-second delay, so if you keep your radio on there will be all sorts of feedback, and it usually messes people up.”