Bare Bones (15 page)

For the most part, though, we care for each other. The rawness of real emotion—either good or bad—has always been the main draw of the show. That's part of the reason why after one of the worst moments in my life, when I really thought I was going to be killed, my immediate instinct was to do a show. The early morning of September 29, 2009, started out like every other morning for the past five years since I had begun broadcasting from Austin. After waking up at 3
A
.
M
. (yup, that's what I mean by early morning), I would hop out of bed and practically right into the car to arrive at work no later than 4
A
.
M
. I always parked at the bottom of a big hill, atop which was the radio station. There was never anyone in the parking lot, on my walk up the hill, or in the building where I spent the next hour or two before we went on air reading up on the news and plotting out the show.

On this morning, after walking the hill like always, I got close to the building's front door, which you have to put a code into and then pull open after the beep, a process that takes a second.

That's when I heard someone say, “Hey, Bones.”

I turned around and there was a man in a ski mask, who started running toward me.

I don't know how I didn't hear him or see him, but all of a sudden he was charging at me with something in his hand that I couldn't quite identify. I didn't have a long time to look, anyhow, because there was a man with a mask chasing me.

I kicked off the flip-flops I was wearing and ran as fast as I could. I never considered fighting him. I tore down an outdoor alley that was about sixty yards long. I can still run pretty fast. I'm still in decent shape even though I sit in a studio most of the time. I was running as fast as I could, but he was on my heels. I still had my backpack on with a computer inside—the same backpack I still carry today. “Well, this is holding me down,” I thought to myself as I threw it off my back, hoping he just wanted to rob me and would stop for the bag.

Nope.

The guy in the ski mask passed the backpack and continued to chase me. I ran until I hit a concrete barrier. Fueled by adrenaline and the desire not to die, I jumped over the barrier. But the ground on the other side was much farther down than on the side I had come from, so I wiped out when I jumped and smacked my knee and shoulder. I was in pain.

Luckily, a car pulled up right at that moment, otherwise the guy definitely would have gotten to me. When he saw the lights of the car, the man in the ski mask stopped, turned around, and ran away.

The man in the car, Matt, an engineer and producer who worked at another station in the building, gave me a look like WTF just happened to you?

I went into the building, got some ice for my knee, and called 911. The cops showed up and started to ask me questions for the report about what happened, but at four thirty in the morning I looked at the officers and told them we had to stop the interview. “Guys, I have to go on the air at five o'clock,” I said.

So I hopped on the air and opened up the microphone.

“Hey, everybody. Good morning,” I said. “Welcome to the show. You guys are not going to believe what just happened to me. I just got jumped.”

About forty-five seconds into the story, I started crying on the air. I wasn't sad, but I couldn't control my reactions. Whatever had just happened had built up such a mass of anxiety and feeling that everything came pouring out when I began talking about it. It was a similar reaction to how I responded after I competed in a few triathlons. Each time I finished one of those, I experienced a release that wasn't about happiness or sadness, just raw emotion. This crying was physical, a real breaking down. And the listeners heard each sob.

I eventually settled myself down, finished telling the story, and then finished the show. When I was done, the cops continued their questioning of me. Except now they started to act as if the whole thing was a prank. “Are you sure it wasn't one of your buddies?” one asked. “You set this up?”

I'd never been so pissed off in my life. I almost died and the members of the Austin PD were treating me like I was making it up? (Later, a rival radio station accused me of the same thing.) But they didn't have to take my word for it; there was surveillance footage of the incident that we watched together later. Watching that video footage was almost scarier than the real thing. You could see the guy waiting for me, which is why I didn't see him. What he had in his hand turned out to be a knife—and on his belt he had a pair of rubber gloves!

A couple of weeks later, the cops showed up at the radio station and started beating on the window of my studio. “We need you to come outside and identify this guy,” one said through the glass.

Since the attack, I had hardly slept. Just like when I had a gun held to my head outside the Electric Cowboy in Little Rock, I had vivid nightmares in which I lived out the terror of the moment right in the confines of my bedroom.

“Not doing it,” I said.

I didn't want to leave my studio, because he definitely knew who
I
was. If I identified him, and in the best-case scenario, he went to jail, how long would he serve? A month? Six months? And then, he'd be back out . . .

“We really need you to identify this guy,” the officer said. “If you don't, he could do this to someone else.”

Oh man, how could I say no to that?

“Fine.”

I left the station and got in the back of the cop car. We drove up to another cop car where the police had the suspect handcuffed and standing facing the car. When my window was right beside the man, they shone a light right in his face. I didn't know his face, because he'd had a ski mask on, but I said to the officers that his body type looked exactly like the body type of the guy that chased me. That was the last I ever saw or heard of him.

Even if I had seen the guy's face, I don't know how much help I could have been. The whole incident was such a blur. I couldn't even think straight until after the show that morning. Because of that and the fact that I was so emotional on air, a lot of my friends and the public said I shouldn't have done the show right away. I should have taken the day off, they said. But I think that's always been the appeal of the show—conveying my experiences exactly as they are and without a filter. That realness and rawness is what connects to listeners. The attempted attack was no different. If I had taken the day off, I wouldn't have been able to capture what really happened and put it out there. That for me, is the best therapy.

FIGHT. GRIND. REPEAT.
AND SOMETIMES LOSE

If I had to describe my life in Austin in three words, it would be these: Fight. Grind. Repeat.

When I started doing mornings, soon after I arrived in Texas, and had to start waking up at an ungodly hour, I became very disciplined. I mean, I was never a slacker. In college I hardly had time to breathe. But this was different. The stakes were much higher and the margin for error much smaller. Like I've said before, the first step, foundation—whatever you want to call it—for success is being reliable and on time.

I wanted more than anything to be successful at my job, so I began a routine that I follow to this day:

Wake up at 3
A
.
M
.

Arrive at the office by 4
A
.
M
.

Start the show at 5
A
.
M
.

Lunch at 10:30
A
.
M
.

Nap before noon (if it's not before noon, I don't take a nap)

Work out at 3
P
.
M
.

In bed by 8
P
.
M
.

If that schedule sounds tough, that's because it is. And remember, I don't drink coffee. But I forced myself to do the right thing over and over and over again until it became ingrained in me. Every day was a fight—a fight against my own exhaustion and a fight against every other show on the air. The chip on my shoulder that I seem to have been born with only made me that much more competitive. If everyone else in radio was out to get me, I was going to retaliate by getting every listener out there on my side. Fighting every day—that was the grind. And then I just woke up again at 3
A
.
M
. to repeat it.

My fight club mentality was good for the show but not quite as great for my personal life. There was a period in Austin of about five years that I was single. That's one hell of a dry spell to have in your twenties. It got so bad that it became a running joke on the air; we kept a tally of how long it had been since I'd had sex. That's right, I didn't have sex. Not one time. In five years.

I liked to say that my hours were not conducive to a social life. Not too many girls love going to dinner at four thirty in the afternoon. But the truth is that my problem with women ran much deeper than having to ask them out for an early-bird special.

It started with an inherent sense of guilt that makes casual sex impossible for me. I have a similar viewpoint on food, sex, and anything else that is pleasurable but could potentially affect my life in a negative way. Before I engage in the act, I always ask myself, Is it worth the risk? Is it worth the worry about the potential risk? Then I weigh the rewards against the punishment.

For example, if I drink a milk shake, I'll enjoy that milk shake for twenty minutes. But then I'm going to feel guilty about it for about five hours. When I compare those two time periods, there is no question about what I'm going to do: skip the milk shake.

It's the same thing with sex. If I have sex with someone, it'll be great for an hour or two—or seven minutes. But then what happens if I get the girl pregnant, or I get a disease? What if I mess with her head or lie to her? What if she falls in love with me and I can't commit? What if I fall in love with her and she wants nothing to do with me? Seven minutes of pleasure has the potential to be followed up by a day, week, month, or eighteen years of difficulty, discomfort, or even pain. Pure logic dictates what the best decision is for me. I avoid.

I was always able to think with a clear head (sometimes too clear a head). So I didn't have sex with a woman unless she was my girlfriend. But here's where we get to my second problem—I don't have many girlfriends (I've only had five in my entire life), because I'm as terrified of emotional intimacy as I am of getting gonorrhea.

It's hard to be with me if you're a girl. I'm awful, but not in the way a lot of guys are. I'm not the type who doesn't call or leaves dirty clothes all over the place. I try to do great things for the women I do get a chance to date. I enjoy doing big, elaborate, thought-out, romantic gestures. You know, the it-obviously-took-me-a-month-to-put-this-together kind of thing.

During my first Valentine's Day in Austin I was just so excited that I had a girlfriend, I went all out. I had started dating Wilma Flintstone (not her real name) soon after I moved to Texas (it was after her that I began my five-year stint as a celibate monk). A couple of years younger than me and really cute, she was an intern at the radio station when I was doing my show at night. Soon we started dating. It wasn't super serious, but it was nice. So Valentine's Day rolled around and I was raring to go. I went over to her apartment and immediately presented her with an iPod. “Oh, you got me an iPod,” she said. “That's so sweet.” Hug. Hug. Kiss. Kiss.

She didn't yet know that I had not only bought her an iPod but also fully loaded it with all her favorite music. But lest you think that was my big romantic gesture, I was just getting started.

“Oh, I've got to go out to the car real quick,” I said. “Hey, listen to Song 7.”

Why Song 7, you ask?

Well, in the middle of Wilma's medley of favorite indie rock music it cut off and suddenly my voice came through the iPod.

“Go ahead and lock the door and come outside,” the recording of my voice went.

Wilma did just as the iPod told her to; she locked the door and went outside, where she was greeted by a trail of flowers, made to look like arrows, leading her down the stairs and straight to a huge limo I had rented. I had even put my clothes in the limo so I could make a quick change before she got down to the car. I felt like I was Carrie Underwood doing a wardrobe change during a concert as I peeled off my sweats and T-shirt and jumped into a pair of slacks and a button-up. (Although I struggled with the tie, so it wasn't fully tied when she arrived at the car, which would have never happened to Carrie. Of course, she has dressers.)

When I plan this kind of massive display of emotion, I am the best boyfriend. But really I'm the worst boyfriend, because I'm not good at proving emotion through words. I can romance like crazy, but I can't say those three little words: “I love you.” And because of that, no act, no matter how romantic, can ever be enough.