I sit on the dirty couch and put my guitar down beside me on the floor, so it's touching my leg ? as if we (me and my guitar) are in the middle of a crowded room instead of where we are which is completely alone in this freakish static-filled wall-to-wall purgatorium. The dull muffle of a far away radio is lulling me into wooziness, so I keep pinching my thighs in an effort to stay awake, because the only thing worse than actually being here would be waking up here. I wish so badly I were back in the cool brown halls of WNYC with the highly intellectual types coasting by, their eyes alight, their mouths in a smile (at me) or asking important questions (of each other), their pants well-worn yet clean (and sometimes a tad short, but sometimes not), many of them sporting accents (good accents, like from Portugal or England), with all the plaques on the walls for "Best Reporting" or "Best Investigative Reporting" or "Best Investigative Reporting for a Daytime Show" or "Best Investigative Reporting by a Banana in the Springtime for Hitler???"
My thigh jerks.
FUCK!
I must've fallen asleep and now here I am, back in this freakish static-filled wall-to-wall purgatorium.
The clock on the wall ticks to 1:57.
Suddenly, the short plump girl donning the backwards baseball cap and dimples pops back through the door from whence she's now come, technically, twice. She appears at the entrance of the glass doors and strikes a "ta da!" stance, saying, "Ready to rock and roll?"
"Not really," I say. "It's sort of the middle of the night."
"You're telling me?"
"Do you do this every night?"
"Not every night," she says. "I get one night off."
"Wow," I say.
"You have no idea," she says.
I follow the plump girl back through her whence door and down a long hallway, passing a doughy white guy in a Mets jersey (and hat) who's walking like an automaton, stiff-legged and -armed, saying, "Pepsi, Pepsi," like he's in a trance.
We take a right into a small control room with lots of teeny blinking lights and computers where a round-faced black guy is sitting on a swivel chair.
"Hey," I say, and he salutes me.
"This way," says the plump girl, and I follow her into the actual studio which is through the next door off the control room, where's there a large console behind which is sitting some older guy in a brown sweater. Beneath his headphones (on his head) is what looks to me to be a toupee.
"Joey," says the plump girl, pointing toward the older guy.
Joey doesn't look at either of us.
"Check," I say.
I sit in one of the two chairs on the other side of the console from Joey, and put my guitar down beside me. The Pepsi guy sort of falls into the room, squeezes behind my chair, and plunks down into the other chair next to me. He takes a swig of soda and makes a face.
"Yuck," he says, and wipes his mouth on his arm. He looks at the can. "Diet Pepsi ? oh wait, no, Pepsi One!" He sits up straight and bounces a little, sticking his finger up in the air like the number one. "Number one and we suck! Number one and we suck!"
Joey's still in his headphones and still hasn't looked at me when the plump girl says, "Have a good time," and smiles at me in a disarmingly nice way, like everything's going to be okay, like she knows this is all little "crazy" but she's here for me, she's on my side, which makes me feel good and quite affectionate towards her, until she slams the door to the studio behind her and I'm alone with Pepsi Boy and Joey Reynolds.
"Ready?" yells Pepsi Boy and smacks his hand down on the console, which makes Joey jump just a little in his seat and shoot Pepsi Boy a really shitty look. Really shitty in the sense that it looks like Joey really and truly hates Pepsi Boy. Then he shoots me a shitty look, though not as shitty as the one he shot at Pepsi Boy.
I say, "Hi."
Joey doesn't say anything to me.
Then he starts tapping his headphones, and Pepsi Boy tells me to put on my headphones ? which I do, with care, irrationally endeavoring to put them on my head without any part of the headphone actually touching me because who the hell knows what other desperate freaks (besides me?) have been canoodled into coming here in the middle of the fucking night to kiss Joey Reynolds' ass WHOEVER THE FUCK HE IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?
Inside the headphones, Joey Reynolds' theme song is playing. It's very 50s doo-wop and mostly just repeats "Joey Reynolds, Joey Reynolds Show."
It's not unpleasant.
It ends.
Joey begins by saying before he gets into it, last night the Seahawks just plain outplayed the Steelers, to which Pepsi Boy immediately jumps in saying No they didn't, that Joey has it backwards, that the Steelers came out on top, at which point Joey proclaims Pepsi Boy to be an idiot. This is how the slow-motion tangle that is the relationship between Joey and Pepsi Boy begins to reveal itself. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the entire show is based on a mutual loathing between Joey and Pepsi Boy, a loathing which is hard to pin down as to whether it's Loathing (ha ha) or LOATHING (I actually hate you but the producers are making us do this). Whatever it is, it's a really comfortable thing to be around and really frees you up to think and join in on the conversation in a clever and intelligent way.
As I sit there, silently ping-ponging my eyes from Joey to Pepsi Boy and back again, they continue talking about the events of the previous night which it only takes me about eight minutes to realize was the Super Bowl. The entire conversation hinges on what time Pepsi Boy ran out of chips, which leads into a discussion about sandwiches which ends with Joey Reynolds depositing the following joke:
JOEY: When does a hoagie become a grinder?PEPSI BOY: Philly!
JOEY: A grinder become a submarine?
PEPSI BOY: Boston!
JOEY: When does a hero become a grinder?
PEPSI BOY: Now you're back in New York again!
JOEY: No. A hero become a grinder when you're doing a gay movie.
PEPSI BOY: [LAUGHTER] You got me there, Reynolds!
This is, of course, when Joey finally looks in my direction and says something about the fact that there's a "lady" in the studio (me) and Pepsi Boy says how that's great because otherwise it'd be a "gay show," which sets Joey off on a small jag of talking about once having worn black underwear, until the conversation takes another sudden swing and Joey says:
JOEY: We're with Jen Tynin [WHICH HE PRONOUNCES "TIE-NIN"], author of the book "Everything I'm Cracked Up to Be."PEPSI BOY: Hey, that's a good title.
JOEY: Well, we'll see...
ME: Heh heh.
JOEY: Let's see. What's a rock and roll fairytale, besides the whole life story of Motown and Michael Jackson? [SNORTING LAUGHTER FROM JOEY]
After I have no comeback to this, because I'm half asleep and can't really understand what's going on ? and the few things I do understand are grossing me out ? Joey and Pepsi Boy decide to riff on Michael Jackson and his pedophilia, which leads into their making fun of some rabbi for having eight kids and how the rabbi evidently considers it religious to rub Viagra on his body on Friday nights, and then Joey makes some lewd reference to sticking holes in bed sheets.
I'm still just sitting there as Joey and Pepsi Boy continue lobbing conversational doggie bones to and fro during which the words "octogenarian" and "metaphysical" are used (correctly and incorrectly, respectively) and something about my trying to chime in is feeling remar