The recent thread about George Zimmerman and Sean Hannity reminded me of my days of college radio, where I was denied a conservative talk show because of a then-unknown Hannity being fired from that station three years earlier.
Then I thought about another college radio story of mine -- one that involved a girl I came a hair away from asking out. Since people seemed to enjoy my last "YOU MAKE THE CALL" about a girl from college, I figured I'd do another one.
This story isn't quite as interesting as me pretending to be another dude in order to get laid, but I think it's still worth telling...
It was early 1992. My college (UCSB) had two radio stations. One (KJUC) was a low-power station with three frequencies (I think two AM and one FM), only able to be heard on campus and through "cable radio", which was radio received through coaxial cable for cable subscribers. It had a small listener base, and was considered the training station. You were promoted to the bigger station (KCSB), which could be heard as far as 125 miles away, if you impressed the management of the station.
I had a show on KJUC in the winter quarter of 1992, along with a partner who often didn't show up because he was drunk. The show was mainly a Dr. Demento-type comedy music show, but I also made prank calls and did other comedy bits of my own. I also had a wacky cast of characters that would call in, including Ken Scalir. My show was on at midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning for 2 hours, and was mainly listened to by drunk people in the dorms. Because KJUC and KCSB were in the same location, I saw the KCSB DJ every week during my shift. That DJ was a very pretty (and somewhat alternative-looking) girl who ran a music show, playing stuff I had never heard of. Other than me, her, and occasionally my air partner, there was almost never anyone else in the station at that time of night.
From the first time I encountered her, she was very friendly to me and seemed to flirt a lot. I was never the delusional type of guy who imagined that every girl was flirting with me. I was always good at telling the difference between normal friendliness and legitimate flirting. I was definitely getting the legitimate flirting vibe from her.
She was also very complimentary toward me and my show -- actually far more than I (and the show) deserved. She kept saying things like, "You seem like such a natural for radio", "You're very talented", "Your show is hilarious", "I wish I could be as comfortable as you on the mic", etc. She would frequently come into my studio while her songs were playing and would sit really close to me, so she could also talk into the mic and banter with me.
As the weeks passed, it seemed like her friendliness and flirting was increasing, and I thought there was a good chance she was attracted to me. I kept wanting to ask her out, but I feared that it would be really awkward there in the future if she said no. Finally, I got the balls to do it. I told myself that I would ask her out sometime during the upcoming Friday shift.
I should stop at this point to mention that I taped every one of my shows, and would listen to them later so I could assess how I sounded. (I don't listen to the shows again here, BTW.) The easiest way to accomplish this was to use the tape system in the studio engineering room, which any air personality could reserve on a sign-up sheet. Basically, once you sign up for a 2-hour block, the room is yours. I always signed up in advance for the block when my show aired, so I could just leave the room closed and have it tape my show. I would run in there between songs and flip the tape over/change it when it would run out of room.
On that particular Friday, I was dismayed to see that she had brought some friends to the station. There were 3 friends total -- 1 female and two male, and they were kinda loud and obnoxious. I definitely wasn't going to ask her out that night. It didn't seem that she was involved with either of the two guys.
During my show, I went into the engineering room to flip over my tape after about 45 minutes. I was shocked to see my tape hadn't been recording, but instead was sitting on the table, mostly unused. Instead, I saw someone else's tape in the machine, copying music from one of the studio records.
This pissed me off because I had reserved the studio and nobody had the right to do this. However, I figured that it was just one of her stupid friends, and they just didn't know how the whole thing worked. (It was still assholish to pop out someone else's recording tape, though!)
I put my tape back in and took the other one out. I walked out of the engineering room, and went back to do my show.
I checked about 20 minutes later, and once again my tape was popped out and sitting on the table, while the other person's music was copying again! What?!
I once again replaced my tape, and walked out of the engineering room. Right then, I saw the girl and her friends walking by.
"Hey," I said, "I just want to let you know that I always reserve this room to record my show, so I put my tape back in the machine and will be using it until 2am. You are welcome to use it after that."
Suddenly she freaked out and got really nasty with me.
"What the fuck, dude?", she snapped. "That's really fucked up. We were trying to record some music, and you just took our shit out of there?"
"Hey, you took MY tape out of there first. And I was the one who reserved the spot in the room for these hours."
"Yeah, but it's just KJUC, who cares about recording your show?", she retorted. "We can't wait until 2. We have to go when my airshift is over. Are you really not gonna let us copy that music?"
"No," I firmly replied. "I need it to record my show. I'm sorry, but I was the one who signed up for the time."
She looked really pissed. "You know what? You're really a fucking asshole!", she blurted out to me.
At this point I realized that not only was my chance to ask her out gone, but so was our growing friendship. I also thought a whole lot less of her after this episode, and wouldn't have wanted to date her, anyway.
"Look," I said. "These people aren't even allowed to be here after hours. I don't give a shit about that, but if they are going to keep interfering with my use of the engineering room to record my show, that really pisses me off. If I find my tape out of that machine even one more time, I'm calling the station manager and telling him everything."
"Whatever. You're a fucking dick, dude," she said, as they walked away from me.
Keep in mind that they weren't using the machine for anything related to her show, but were rather just using it to pirate music. Again, I didn't give a shit if they wanted to use the room to pirate music, but not at the expense of the time I signed up for. I also found it very rude that they just removed my tape TWICE without asking me.
After the whole thing was over, I couldn't quite rectify what happened there. If she really liked me like I thought she did, would she have flipped out on me that easily? She obviously knew that was my tape in the room. Would she have taken it out in the first place if I was someone that she had interest in? I started to question my own ability to tel the difference between a girl being into me and one who was just being friendly.
As a weird postscript to the story, a few weeks later I told this story on the air, and then prank called her show during my show. Knowing she would recognize my voice, I had a friend on the phone speak when she answered. Indeed, she answered live on the air, and he engaged her in a conversation. She told him to hang on, played some music, and then continued talking to him off the air (but still, unknown to her, broadcasting on my show.) I wasn't sure if this was an FCC violation (since we were calling within the same studio), but I let it continue. She went on to tell this complete stranger about a bad relationship with her father, the fact that she suffered from depression, and some other personal shit that actually made me feel bad to be broadcasting. I ended the bit right there, and told the listeners that I didn't expect that to happen. I don't believe any of my listeners ever tattled on me, because I never heard anything about it.
So what do you think was the situation here?
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Originally Posted by Spookygook
