Seattle Girl (7 page)

“Who needs him anyway?
 
Here, let me read to you what Lord Derrington is doing to Catherine in this scene. There’s no way Kyle could have competed with these moves.”

And as she read the sex scene from her latest romance novel aloud to me, something good came out of my ultra-embarrassing night with Kyle.

I was hit with a lightning bolt for exactly what the topic for my first show on KUW should be.

* * *

By 4:45 a.m. the sun was just starting to rise. I had walked through the dark streets of campus hoping it would burn off some of my nervous energy. But as I stood in front of the heavy door that led into the basement radio station, I was still more nervous than I had ever been my entire life.

The coward in me wanted to turn and run back home, get under the covers, and just continue my life as it had always been.

Boring, sane, and well, boring.

I closed my eyes and tried to remember the feeling I got every time I was a guest on Bill’s show and put the headphones on. Every time I spoke into the mic and heard my own voice reverberating through my ears.

I tried to think about how scared Baby must have been in
Dirty Dancing
, but she got up on stage and danced with Patrick Swayze anyway.

And that’s what pushed me over the edge, because nobody puts baby in a corner, so I refused to stand, quivering, outside the front door for another moment. Taking a deep breath, I was about to reach for the handle, when a lanky guy with really long dread locks opened up the door.

Grunting at me, he took a drag on his cigarette. “You new here?”

I smiled and nodded. “Yeah. I’m on at 5 a.m..” I wasn’t sure why I decided to confide in him, but I said, “I’m kind of nervous actually.”

He took another drag and looked at me through the clouds of smoke. “Whatever. This station is a piece of crap. You could fart continuously for three hours and no one would notice.”

I laughed. He was definitely the right person to confide in. For the first time in weeks I felt secure again. “Right on,” I said and headed inside.

I was pretty sure I could do better than that. And really, he was right. No matter how much of an ass I made of myself, there were probably about four people who would be half-listening as they drove to work, blurry eyed and yawning.

I let myself into the control room and gingerly sat down. Looking around the small space, running my fingers over the control board, I felt pure happiness well up inside of me.

Finally, I had found something good. And it was mine. As long as I didn’t screw it up too badly, that is.

Laughing somewhat maniacally, I reached for the headphones just in time to hear the end of dreadlock-man’s song. It sounded like Bob Marley, but then again, any body who sings Rastafarian music sounds like Bob Marley to me.

I cleared my throat before hitting the on-air button. Then, in my most professional I-am-on-the-radio-voice I said, “It’s 5 o’clock and I’d like to welcome you to the Georgia Fulton show, where
you
get to say what’s on
your
mind.”

I had worked that up as my little tag and I was pretty pleased with how it sounded. Very professional indeed.

“My topic on this very early morning is, of course, very near and dear to my heart. For all of the women who are listening, how many of you have pursued a man who you know isn’t worth it?
 
How many of you have gone out of your way to change yourself, to be someone entirely different so that some guy would fall for you?”

I stopped talking for a moment to try and collect and organize my thoughts. I knew that sometimes Bill had to talk continuously for fifteen minutes to fill dead air space before anyone called in on his show. I just hoped I had the stamina to babble and repeat myself long enough to wait out the first caller.

Right as I was starting to say, “I’ve recently had my own experience with this,” the phone line lit up. After giving a quick thank you to whoever was in charge of the Universe, I picked up.

“You’re on the air with Georgia Fulton. What’s your story?”

“Hey Georgia,” a husky female voice said. “You wouldn’t believe how many jerks I’ve gone out with.”

Ah, this sounded juicy. “Give me some examples.”

“Let’s see,” she said, as if she were trying to figure out where to start. “One guy said he wasn’t married, but then he was and had, like, six kids. And of course, he was the one who wanted me to dress up like a little girl all the time.”

“Pervert.”

“Totally. And then there was the guy who said he was married, but he wasn’t, he just liked meeting in hotel rooms so that he could pretend he was married.”

“Did he make you dress up in anything special?”

My caller laughed. “He liked me to look like a prostitute, which may have had something to do with the whole hotel thing.” She stopped for a moment, as if she was finally putting two and two together.

“And then there was the guy who liked things to be kind of nasty.”

“How nasty?” I asked, almost afraid of what she was going to say.

I wanted juicy, but I also wanted to make it past my first day on the air, so I kept my finger firmly poised over the ‘bleep’ button.

“The usual. Whips and chains and lots of leather. Mostly he liked for me to hurt him.”

“Oh,” I murmured, more than a little shocked by her disclosure. Fumbling to keep the conversation going, I said, “So what I’m hearing you say is that you had to be someone else for every single guy you went out with or they wouldn’t have wanted to be with you, right?”

“Exactly!” she exclaimed. “And I’m sick of it.”

“No kidding,” I said, wanting to kick myself for being such a lame talk show host. Couldn’t I come up with something better than ‘No kidding’?
 

Thank god my caller was more on it than I was. “You know what I’d like from a guy?” she said.

“Tell me,” I said, leaning into the microphone as if we were best friends talking about love over coffee.

“Quiet dinners. Holding hands.”

Finally stepping up to the plate, I asked her, “So what have you been doing with all of these sickos then, huh?”

“I don’t know,” she said, sounding miserable.

Wanting to boost her confidence, I said, “You sound really nice.”

“I do?”

I laughed and said, “Heck, if I were a lesbian I’d ask you out on a date.”

“Really?
 
You mean that?”

I smiled. “Sure do.” And then as I saw another line light up I wrapped up our call. “Thanks for calling. And thanks for listening. And on to our next caller. You’re on the air with Georgia Fulton.”

“You chicks are full of shit,” a male voice growled into the phone.

“Excuse me?”

I was shocked and yet pleased that I had managed to start up such a fiery debate so early in the morning of my first day on air. Unfortunately, the ‘shit’ had slipped by me, so I laid my index finger on the bleep-out button and prepared to employ it without hesitation at the next sign of foul language.

It was unlikely that the FCC was listening in on my little show, anyway. At least that’s what I was hoping for. Otherwise, I was toast, and only fifteen minutes into my first day as a DJ.

“You tease us by wearing little thongs to make it seem like you’re into us, but then whenever we want to get a little action, you act like we’re the bad guy.”

I sat back in my chair and fiddled with the cord on my headphones. This guy was a real charmer. Not! And I was so glad he called my show I wanted to kiss him all over.

“Sounds like you’ve got some issues, buddy.”

“No. It’s you chicks that have the issues. Always worried about whether you’re too fat, or if your makeup looks okay, or something stupid like that. Guys don’t care about any of that stuff.”

Surprised, I said, “You don’t?”

He grunted. “We’ll sleep with a chick who looks like Jaba the Hut if she’s got a tight, wet hole and doesn’t talk our ears off afterward.”

I couldn’t keep from laughing. “Hey, stay on the line with me here. I want to pick your brain, ‘cause I think you might be on to something.”

“Yeah, sure,” the guy said, and I could tell he was pleased by the invitation.

“So, what I’m hearing you say is that guys really aren’t that picky after all?”

“You got it.”

I was confused. “So then why am I single, and why is my best friend who looks like a supermodel single, and why did the woman who just called in have so much trouble with the guys she’s dated?”

“Easy,” he said and I held my breath waiting for his answer.

“You’re all fucked-in-the-head nut jobs,” and then he hung up.

This time I caught the non-sanctioned F-word with the bleep-button, thank god. But the oddest thing was, even though I tried to pass off his words as misogynistic male-speak, I had the sinking feeling that he was right.

* * *

To my great delight, the rest of the morning my show rolled along nicely. There was only one small lull at about 6:30 am where I had to babble to fill dead air, but apart from that a steady stream of people called in with stories and theories. It was definitely a good start, and that night after my first successful show I actually slept again, thank god.

Unfortunately, even in the after-glow, Kyle’s rejection still ate at me. I couldn’t let it go. I had debated the issue endlessly with strangers, but I still wanted to know why he didn’t want me?
 
Was I really that much of a messed-in-the-head nut job? Was I not pretty enough?

I needed self-worth reinforcements and I needed them fast. So I called in Seth for an emergency symposium at CC.

Still embarrassed by the whole thing with Kyle, I told him my pathetic tale.

“Honey, I just can’t believe what you’re saying really happened.” Seth shook his head in dismay. “I’m telling you, girl, straight men have no taste.”

He pointed across the room to a blonde with huge, fake tits. “See that?”

I nodded.

His lip curled in disdain. “I’ve watched how straight guys operate. They see a set of fake tits and suddenly they’re blinded by silicone. Skanks, that’s what they go for. If they had any sense, they would be all over you. Look at you sitting there all brunette and cute and fine.”

I laughed. “I love how you build me up to be a sexy-beast.”

“Georgia.” He grabbed my hand across the table and pulled me out of my humiliating reverie. “If things were different, you know I would have definitely hopped into bed with you when we were freshmen, right?”

I squeezed his hand and sighed. “Yeah, I know. Too bad all the guys who think I’m hot are gay, huh?”

“Speaking of being gay...sometimes I really, really, really wish I was straight. My life would be so much easier.”

Seth’s face had a hollow, pale look to it that I hadn’t noticed at first and I had a really bad feeling about what he was about to say.

“Did you finally tell your parents? Oh god, was it totally awful?”

“I tried. I really did.”

I grabbed his hand, suddenly feeling incredibly selfish for thinking that my quasi-romantic foibles with some random guitar playing guy even mattered. “What happened?”

“You know how I had planned on taking them out to lunch so that they wouldn’t make a scene?”

I nodded. “The whole do-it-in-public strategy. Sounded smart to me.”

“My brother showed up unexpectedly.”

“Oh crap.”

Seth’s older brother Jim was a hot-shot neurosurgeon in Beverly Hills. All his life Seth had felt like he didn’t measure up to Jim. Coming out of the closet was just another way that Seth felt like he was letting his parents down.

“I just couldn’t do it, not with Jim there. I had really psyched myself up to come out and now I just feel like there’s never going to be a time when I’ll be able to do it. Who was I kidding?”

Scooting my chair close, I rubbed his back. “You just need to give yourself some more time. They’re still going to love you, you know,” I added quietly, hoping that I was right about his parents being open minded.

“My dad’s a judge, for fuck’s sake. He’s going to lose it.”

I bit my lip. I didn’t know what to say to that irrefutable logic. So the two of us sat in silence, while I thought about how damn hard it was to grow up.

Gay, straight, gorgeous, or plain, I didn’t know anyone who was having an easy time.

* * *

Unfortunately, my father’s birthday dinner was that night. I love my dad, and all, but I was really not in the mood to deal with another wacky family night around the dinner table with the Fulton’s.

I walked into the kitchen and my brother handed me a beer. Looking over my shoulder to see if there was anyone with me, he said, “Still single, huh?”

“Nice to see you too,” I said.

My mother walked into the room and grabbed the beer out of my hand. “Too many calories,” she said as she handed me a Diet Coke.

“Mom, diet soda tastes like mouse piss,” I complained, but I popped the tab anyway and drank.

Sighing at my language, she said, “How do you expect to catch a man if you talk like a bus driver and eat and drink whatever you want, whenever you want it? We never had sugary soda in this house. I don’t know where you learned to drink it.”

My brother swigged his beer and tuned us out like he had my whole life.

His wife, Susan, walked into the room. “Hi Georgia!” she said, and came over to give me a hug, but right then two toddlers ran by, screaming at the top of their lungs and she turned to chase after them. “Ellen! Joe! Keep your voices down and come back here,” she screamed at least as loud as them. Suddenly I knew where they got their lung power from.

My brother looked utterly undisturbed by the whole thing—I guess growing up in our house with my parents nagging and yelling all the time had helped to inure him against this sort of thing—while my mom had a blissful smile playing across her lips as she watched Susan try to corral her hyper kids.

But when she turned back to me, her lips were pinched and prune like. “See what you’re missing out on!” Shaking her finger at me she admonished, “Mark my words, a loudmouth girl like you is heading straight towards being a spinster. Don’t you ever want children?”