The deal was that Kathy and I would have until the end of the year to see how the show worked out. In our contracts, we were to receive bonuses if the show did better than expected. If it worked, we both could pull in twenty-six thousand a year, and with bonuses added, we could make up to thirty-one thousand. I couldn’t turn down that kind of money. That represented the most money I had made so far in my career. I wondered how much Brother Abu had made while at WUCI. I should have made union stations a priority a long time ago.
I sat down and went over all the salaries I had earned during my six-year stint in radio. In 1986, I made close to sixteen thousand dollars while working plenty of overtime at WHCS in New York, a nonunion station. Once I got my raise, though, I was set to make over twenty-three thousand. That was pretty good money for a radio broadcast major in only his second year out of school. And I was in New York, one of the biggest radio markets in the country! I could have moved up the ladder in no time, but I let my personal problems cloud my logic. If I had been under contract with Mr. Pay ton, I would have been forced to stay.
“Damn!” I felt like kicking myself in the ass for leaving my job in New York. I left it to return to D.C. in 1988 and make only thirteen thousand at WMSC, another nonunion station, while unsuccessfully chasing Faye Butler. From 1989 to 1991,1 didn’t fare much better, hopping from one makeshift position to another in Baltimore and Virginia. I was basically sleepwalking on the job, but I was finally wide awake after landing at WUCI. There were no more brainless decisions to be made. I called up John Sprier and went in to sign the contract.
“Will I still be able to substitute for Brother Abu during the week?” I asked John in his tiny office after signing. There never seemed to be enough room at any of the small stations where I worked.
John looked at me, confused. “He didn’t tell you?” he asked me.
“Tell me what?”
“We came to a mutual agreement to cancel ‘The Awakenings.’”
I had no idea. I figured that the extra money I made from Brother Abu’s show would put me in the forty-thousand-a-year bracket. I guess I was being greedy. “No, I didn’t know that,” I said.
“Well, the ratings for the show were pretty good for a number of years during the eighties, but with recent competition from other stations like WOL, WPFW, and WDCU, and then the other things going on in Abu’s life, his ratings have been declining over the last couple of years,” John explained.
“I guess I hooked up with Kathy Teals in perfect timing then,” I responded.
“Well, you have Brother Abu to thank for that. It was his idea to get you two together and see what happened.”
I was stunned. “Are you kidding?”
“Not at all,” John answered. “I didn’t want to say anything about it until after I got a chance to see how it could work out. I didn’t want to promise you and Kathy anything that I couldn’t deliver, but after I heard the energy that you two had on the show, I was behind it one hundred percent.”
I was speechless. My career had been dangling on a string again and I didn’t even know it. I shook my head and sighed. “Man, this radio business is something else.”
John smiled. “If you don’t have a strong stomach, then this is definitely the wrong business to be in,” he agreed. “By the way,” he added, “Kathy wants to sit down and come up with a better name for the show.”
“Yeah, she told me. I’ll call her up about it tonight.”
“Okay, and just run it by me as soon as you guys come up with something good. Don’t take forever, though. We start airing the show next week.”
•
The first thing I did was drive over to Brother Abu’s fabric store on Georgia Avenue to thank him. It was just a few blocks from Howard’s campus. It was a small place, but it looked good.
“Hey, Bobby Dallas! How are things going?” he asked me as soon as I walked in.
I gave him a handshake. “Hey, man, I just found out about the show.”
He smiled. “I knew this was my last year before I even met you, brother. I just wanted to help somebody else out and bring them on the show before I left. That’s how I came on board in nineteen seventy-five. Because if nobody brings you in, it’s very hard to get started,” he told me.
“I had this other young brother in mind, but he went off and got his own show in Houston. He had family down there. So when I met you up at Howard, it was perfect timing for both of us.”
I was very fortunate. Brother Abu was a good man. He hadn’t even known me for a year, but he helped me out in my career tremendously. Frank Watts had gotten me into the market in D.C., but he also left me hanging.
“What do you think about this relationship show with Kathy Teals?” I asked.
“Oh, she’s a bright sister, Bobby, very bright. She’s been shopping that idea around for years, but you know, I wasn’t really interested in it. I had other things on my mind. That didn’t mean that it wasn’t a good idea, though, especially with how we have black men and women carrying on with each other today. Things have gotten really nasty. We could use a show like that in the community.
“Matter of fact,” he said, “let me introduce you to my wife.” We walked to the back of the store and through a curtain. “Hanifah, this is Bobby Dallas from the show.”
His wife was a very handsome woman with the healthiest brown skin I had ever seen in my life. I thought of her as being handsome because she appeared very strong and forward in her African garb and headpiece. She was busy sewing a dress on a large wooden table.
“Oh, how are you doing, brother? I like the shows you put on.” She greeted me with a hug.
I wasn’t expecting the hug. “Thank you,” I said.
“Yeah, he’s gonna be doing a show on relationships now with the sister out of Ohio that writes the romance books,” Brother Abu informed his wife.
“Oh, Kathy Teals,” she filled in. “I read her books. She knows what she’s talking about. These children out here today could use a show like that. They’re just as mean as they wanna be to each other.”
“We weren’t all that perfect in our day either,” Brother Abu said with a smile.
“Yeah, but we still had a certain respect for each other, sisters and brothers did.”
Brother Abu looked at me as if he still had his doubts. I could tell they had a good relationship. The better relationships seemed to always have a healthy trade-off of opinions without friction.
“Well, nice meeting you, brother. And keep up the good work,” Hanifah told me. Brother Abu and I walked back out front.
“I wasn’t so sure if you liked that show we did last week,” I told him.
“Well, I never said you can’t have a little fun on the show, as long as you keep the focus,” he responded. “Kathy’s a good sister and you’re a good brother, so I believe you two will be able to do that. There’s no question in my mind.”
I was relieved. I thought I had let the brother down by settling for lower standards somehow. “I’m glad to hear that from you. I didn’t want to disappoint you after bringing me on the show and giving me that opportunity like you did.”
He shook his head. “Nah, brother, see you’re a different person from me, and I wouldn’t expect you to do the same things that I did. What worked for me may not work for you. You’re from a new generation. That’s what radio is about, constantly moving on to what’s new. Bobby Dallas is what’s new. And it’s just like I said, as long as you keep your focus, nothing can stop you from making the moves that you need to make to keep rising.”
“So you think that this is a good decision?” I asked.
“It’s a decision that you have to make, brother,” he answered frankly. “If you want to get in the radio business, you have to get in first, establish yourself, and then you can say what’s what.”
I smiled and nodded to him, extending my hand. “Thanks again, brother.”
He held my hand and asked, “Were you thinking about not taking it?” He had a lot of concern on his face.
“Well, I signed the contract already, I just wanted to hear your opinion,” I responded with a grin.
Brother Abu cracked up laughing. “So you already knew what you were gonna do, you just wanted to see what I would say. All right now, Bobby, you got your head on straight.”
“Okay then. I’ll stay in touch with you,” I said, heading for the door.
“Yeah, you do that. And if you need to ask me about anything, just call me.”
I walked outside on Georgia Avenue and felt like a new man. I was tempted to buy another pack of cigarettes and have a celebration smoke, but since I had never smoked around Brother Abu, I decided to wait at least until I got farther away from his store.
•
Kathy came up with the name “His Way/Her Way,” for the show. It didn’t matter to me, I was just ready to try it out. Kathy had this gimmick that made the show popular in a hurry. If a caller could say the show’s title five times in five seconds or less, without messing up, she would give them a choice of one of her three books. As the show progressed, we began to give out movie tickets, dining certificates, and different products. That went over very well with the marketing department.
Most callers could say “His Way/Her Way” the first two times, but by the third and fourth repetition, it came out “His Way/Were Way,” or “His Way/Her Ray,” and we’d all break out laughing. Once callers started getting the hang of it, we had to change it around and have them say “Her Way/His Way.” Depending on how expensive the giveaways were, some people were asked to say the title both ways and interchangeably; that’s when things really got humorous.
When we first started out, Kathy and I would simply discuss issues concerning relationships in the black community. Once we started getting regular callers, most of them were women asking questions like, “Why do guys have to have three and four women at a time?”
I joked, “Their mommas told them they better shop around,” just to keep the show entertaining. Then I said, “For a lot of guys, if they can’t foresee getting married any time soon, then they just can’t say no to the overabundance of women there are. I hear in D.C. alone, that it’s about seven women to every man.”
“First of all, that’s a false statement. The term is marriageable men versus marriageable women,” Kathy responded. “Because of the incarceration and unemployment rates of a lot of these brothers, they’re considered undesirable, and then the so-called desirable brothers take advantage of that. It’s just plain immaturity. Sister, you need to find some more mature men.”
Then we’d continue on the subject for a while.
“On the flip side of that, Kathy, you have some sisters that only like the guys who have other women,” I commented. “You know, they like the gigolo types.”
“Those sisters are immature, too,” Kathy said. “That’s like the little girl who wants the chocolate fudge ice cream sundae, knowing that it’s gonna mess up her new Sunday dress. Somebody has to tell her, ‘No, you can’t have that. It’s bad for your teeth anyway.’”
We had a bunch of sisters complaining about rap music and the way rappers were degrading women. I couldn’t joke about that issue. I didn’t agree with a lot of things being said on rap songs of the nineties either.
Kathy said, “A lot of these guys are young, and hanging on the corners with their hands inside their pants, gesturing like they have something monstrous to offer down there. And they get a kick out of bragging to one another about B’s and H’s when a lot of it is just a front.
“I was out in California recently, and I heard that Ice Cube and Dr. Dre and a lot of these other young rap stars have steady girlfriends and children. So a lot of this stuff is just created to appeal to that young brother hanging on the street corner who likes to lie and fantasize about his sexuality.”
“It’s kind of like locker room talk, actually,” I responded. “I was never into it myself because I wasn’t much of an athlete, but I do know the type. And what’s happening is that the vulgar talk that boys and men usually have about women behind closed doors is now being said on albums and on Top Forty radio where it shouldn’t be.”
“It shouldn’t be in the locker room either!” Kathy snapped.
Kathy and I passed out flyers for our show during Georgia Avenue Day, the Black Family Reunion Day, and of course Adams Morgan Day. Before we knew it, we were already doing better than expected in our ratings share.
I felt like a sword and shield for black men until more brothers began to call in and express their opinions. That didn’t happen until months later. One good discussion got started when a brother asked us, “How come it’s okay for a brother with money and a good job to have a girlfriend who may not have it going on like that, but a woman who has it going on always pushes the brothers who don’t have as much as she has to the side?”
I looked at Kathy and chuckled. “I want to thank you for calling up and asking that question, brother,” I responded to him. “We don’t get many brothers calling in with questions that they’ve been thinking about. Thanks a lot.”
“Yeah, I was just talking about that subject with my friends last weekend,” he said. “It’s like, if you don’t have more money than what they have, then you can’t do no thin’ for them. And if we acted the same way, a whole lot of these sisters would be pissed.”
Kathy said, “First of all, I’m assuming that the brother on the line is young, and he’s dating a lot of women who don’t really have any money yet, because I know plenty of older women who are willing to pay for a man, buy him clothes and everything else. But a lot of women are used to being pampered and they don’t feel that they’re supposed to spend their money on a man.”
“Now we’re talking,” I instigated.
“It’s hard to break away from that attitude as a woman no matter how much money you make, because that’s the way that society has been for so long,” Kathy continued. “You have to understand that women having their own money, legally, is relatively a new thing. There were times and places in America where a woman could not legally own property. So now, a lot of men are becoming victims of their own chauvinism.
“Frankly, most men aren’t prepared to deal with a woman who has more than them anyway,” Kathy added. “They feel intimidated and start acting as if they need to do something extra. These brothers then become insecure and get real physical or mental with these sisters. It’s just like that show Martin on TV. The brother makes a point to bring his girlfriend down to his level just because she’s more educated than he is.”
“Well, that’s not me,” the brother responded. “I don’t feel intimidated by them at all. I just wanted to know why I’m always expected to pick them up and to pay for everything.”
I added my two cents and said, “I’ve been with women who made much more than I did who took me out a couple of times, but it was never a consistent thing. So, how do we work toward closing the gap between these two camps?” I asked Kathy.
“It’s a lot of sisters who are willing to pick a brother up and pay his way,” Kathy answered.
“But it’s a lot more who will not. In fact, some sisters would be offended by it,” I responded, instigating again.
“That’s right,” the brother on the line agreed with me.
Kathy smiled and said, “Well, it looks like we’re gonna have to have two shows for this subject because we’re running out of time.”
I laughed and responded, “We have time enough to take one more call. Thanks again, brother.” I punched in the next caller. “Caller, you’re on.”
“Yeah, my name is Danyel, and I just wanna say that if the brother can’t take the prices in the mall, then he needs to shop somewhere else,” she said. She apparently had an audience of girlfriends in the background, cheering her on. Then she immediately hung up on us.
I looked at Kathy and shook my head with a grin. Kathy didn’t look too thrilled about that call.
“Now see, we can’t be like that as sisters because that turns off a lot of people and it’s counterproductive to real relationships,” she responded. “We should never judge a guy by how much he has or how much he’s willing to spend, because that makes us look like no more than whores.”
“Mmm,” I grunted. “Do we have time for one more call or what, Kathy?”
“You know what, Bobby, let’s just wrap it up for tonight. And I’m going to end the show by saying this; there’s gonna be a lot of sisters who will start to make more money than a lot of brothers out there, but what we have to understand is that we’re all in this struggle together and it’s not about what we have, but how we feel toward each other.”
Then Kathy looked at me and said, “Take it away, Bobby.”
“Stay tuned for Pablo Garcia and ‘Latin Rhymes,’ up next from nine until midnight. This has been ‘His Way/Her Way’ on WUCI, The International Station, with your hosts, Kathy Teals and Bobby Dallas. Until next time, don’t ask your girlfriends or the fellas, give us a call.”
Pablo walked in with his thumbs up and his head nodding. “Good show, guys.”
I chuckled and said, “Thanks, man. Give ’em a party.”
“Oh, yeah, I will. I always do,” he said with an energetic smile. I liked Pablo. He could have had a lot of women, but he was a dedicated married man, and his wife was a fox.
Kathy looked worn out that night. “What are you doing for the rest of the night, Bobby?” she asked me. We had gone to a lot of movies and functions together to pump our show and the station by then. It was early November. We hadn’t been romantically inclined, and I wasn’t thinking much of it. Our relationship was strictly professional.
“I don’t know yet. Why?” I asked her.
Kathy smiled and said, “I was just wondering if you were starting to get hot dates from the show yet. You know you’re getting pretty popular around town.”
I chuckled and said, “Get out of here. Nobody knows me.”
“I’m serious. You’re gonna start getting a lot of women who will want to go out with you,” she told me.
We walked out of the station and onto Eighteenth Street. The Adams Morgan area was in full buzz with Friday night traffic.
“I hope not the ones like Danyel,” I said.
“You’re gonna get all types of them,” Kathy assured me.
“What about you?”
“Are you kidding me? A woman talking about relationships? Guys will avoid me like the plague, thinking that I know all of their lines already. And you know what? I do,” she said with a smile. “But a guy who knows a lot about relationships, oh, the women are gonna love you.”
“I don’t know that much about relationships. You’re the one with the Ph.D.”
Kathy smirked and said, “You believed that line? I got you goin’ good then.”
“You sure do, because I did believe it. And you act at least thirty-two, tome.”
“Well, you’ll never know,” she said.
“What are you doing for the rest of the night?” I asked her.
“Taking off all my clothes and having a long, warm bubble bath,” she told me.
A lot of Kathy’s comments bordered on flirting, but I usually let it slide. I smiled and said, “All right, have a good Calgon, and I’ll see you next week.”
Since I lived less than six blocks away, I could walk to work. And on my way, walking back home that night, I actually did think about my popularity with women. I still wasn’t dating anyone. In fact, I thought about going out to a club and meeting someone that night. By the time I got home, I decided that I would.
•
I got dressed to impress with a nice tie and splashed on some cologne with plans to catch a jazz set at Takoma Station in Maryland. Brother Abu had often talked about the place. It was supposedly a lot different from the clubs I had been to with Gary Mitchell. It was a more cultural crowd. When I got there, though, they had a long line that stretched down the street. I wasn’t planning on waiting in that thing. I walked up to the front of the line where they let people in two and three at a time. The doormen were all wearing black, I guess as a security color.
“Yeah, I’m from WUCI Radio. I’m here to see the jazz set on location,” I said. I had gotten used to getting into places over the years from being connected to radio. That was about the only thing that was consistent for me.
The first brother at the door stepped inside to tell another brother, “We got a guy out here from the radio.”
The brother inside asked, “What station?”
When the first brother turned back to me, I took the liberty of telling the inside guy myself. “Bobby Dallas from WUCI,” I told him. There was no sense in relaying messages back and forth.
“Oh yeah, the relationship guy,” the inside brother responded. “We were listening to your show in here earlier. ‘His Way/Her Way,’ right?”
I nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s it.” After that, they let me right in.
“You got a lot of fans in here,” the inside brother said. “A couple of the waitresses wanted to meet you.” He was a cream-colored brother about my height with low-cut hair. He was thicker, though, with the broad shoulders of a football player. He reminded me of a light-skinned Brad.
“Hey, Angel, come here when you get a chance! I got somebody you want to meet!” he yelled, walking me inside. “Yeah, man, my name is Chris.”
I shook his hand and looked around. The place was as tight as a can of sardines. No wonder they were letting people in so slowly. “It’s pretty crowded in here,” I said.
“Yeah, that’s how we like it,” Chris responded with a smile.
They had a large bar to the left, with a small lounge area that had a television. The main dining area was to the right with a smaller bar. There was a spot for the band in the far right corner. It was a black, educated twenty- and thirty-something crowd.
The waitress named Angel finally made her way over to us. She was a slim sister with a twinkle in her eyes and a cute, smallish face. She had her light brown hair twisted into baby dreadlocks, and she looked familiar to me.
“You used to go to Howard,” she said to me with a smile.
I snapped my fingers. “That’s where I know you from.”
Chris said, “Oh, well, since you two know each other already, let me go on about my business.”
Angel said, “Oh my God! You’re Bobby Dallas?” She wasn’t starstruck or anything. She was just surprised to see that I was the same guy she went to school with years ago. “Didn’t you go to New York?” she asked me.
“Yeah, I was up there for a while.”
Angel had to get back to work. “I’ll be back,” she told me as she moved to take another order.
Once I found an open seat near the bar, I took it like in a game of musical chairs. I could have been standing for hours if I didn’t.
“Are you Bobby Dallas from that ‘His Way/Her Way’ show?” another waitress asked me. I guess Angel had spread the word.
“That’s me,” I said.
“That’s a nice show. We were listening to it and arguing in here today,” she responded with a smile. She was shorter than Angel, browner and just as good-looking.
“Thanks. I’ll make sure I tell Kathy that people like it.”
“All right, well, keep up the good work.”
A sister sitting nearby overheard our conversation and began to eye me. “Excuse me, what show are you on?” she leaned over to ask. She was wearing too much makeup that didn’t really match her skin. And she had a lot of brownish-red hair, like a lion’s mane.
“‘His Way/Her Way’ on WUCI-AM,” I told her. “We air on Thursday and Friday nights from seven to nine.”
“WUCI?” she asked with a grimace. “Isn’t that that Spanish station?”
I nodded and said, “Yeah, that’s the one. But it’s not just Spanish. We call it The International Station. We broadcast African music, jazz, and we have a lot of different talk shows, too.”
“And your show is on Thursday and Friday nights?” she asked again.
“Yeah, from seven to nine,” I repeated. Kathy often reminded me to carry flyers everywhere I went, but I always forgot them in my car. I definitely wasn’t going back out to get them. It would have been murder getting back in and finding another seat.
Angel made her way back in perfect timing. I didn’t want to talk to the makeup and big hair queen for too long. “How long have you been back in this area? You just moved back for the show?” Angel asked me. Her apron was off. I guess she was on a short break. It had to be a short break in that place, unless they stopped taking orders altogether. It was crowded with a lot of people who had the late-night munchies.
“Actually, I’ve been here since eighty-eight,” I answered.
“I graduated that year.”
I smiled and said, “I know. You remember Faye Butler.”
“Yeah, that’s right, you did used to hang out with Faye. She got a job down in Atlanta.”
“Yeah, she told me about it before graduation.”
Angel pointed at me and said, “Didn’t you used to talk to Pearl Davis when she went to Howard?”
“I graduated with her,” I said.
“Yeah, you two were in the same year.”
“We ended up in New York together until she got famous,” I said with a grin.
Angel cringed and said, “Oh.” Then she cheered up and added, “But you’re about to be famous now.”
I smiled and shook my head. “No way.”
“I’m serious. That’s how it starts,” she insisted. “You start off with a good show at a small station, and then the larger stations end up calling you.”
“Yeah, well, that’ll be a couple years down the road. But I’m doing all right, though. What did you major in?” I asked her.
“Television/film with a minor in drama and the performing arts.”
When she said that I held in my smile. I was thinking about the waitress joke again.
Angel smiled at me, reading my mind. “Some things take time,” she said.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” I agreed. “It took me six years to land this show, and I’m still looking to do other things.”
“Oh yeah, like what?”
“To host my own show one day,” I told her. I still wasn’t too thrilled with being “the relationship guy.” There were a whole lot of subjects I wanted to address.
Angel smirked at me and said, “Oh, so you want your own thing.”
“Yup.”
We shared a laugh. Then Angel pulled out her pencil and pad and wrote her number down. “Call me up sometime,” she said.
“I thought you’d never ask,” I joked with her.
She smiled and went back to work. I was pretty satisfied with that. She wrote her first and last name, Angel Thomas. I didn’t have to meet anyone else for the rest of the night. I could have walked out, gone home, and gone to bed right then. But I stayed just long enough to hear a few songs from the band. A group called 2000 Black was performing.
•
For that next Friday’s show, Kathy invited on a female stripper named Candy, who flirted with me on the air. I had had my first date with Angel earlier that afternoon. I was certain that she was listening that night, so the stripper situation became very embarrassing for me.
Candy was wearing a black leotard and had a body like an Amazon queen—tall, toned, brown, and curved from D.C. to California. “A lot of people have false ideas about the business,” she told us. “Strippers are not hookers. We’re dancers. And if you come into a strip club and try to treat us like you can take us home or something, you will get your feelings hurt.”
“Have you ever been to one of these clubs, Bobby?” Kathy asked me.
“No, I’ve never been,” I answered.
“Why not? It’s good clean fun,” Candy joked with me.
I laughed and said, “I wouldn’t exactly call it that.”
“I mean, it’s just like going to a movie, it’s just rated more than R,” she responded.
“It’s rated a lot more than R, because it’s live action and you get to sit right there in the front row.”
Kathy said, “I thought you’ve never been to these places, Bobby.”
“I haven’t, but I’ve seen what these clubs look like in enough movies and on TV shows to know,” I responded to her. I felt like they were ganging up on me.
Kathy said, “Okay, we’re gonna go to the phone lines and try to get some brothers who frequent these stripper clubs so we can see why they go.”
I put my foot in my mouth and said, “It’s pretty obvious why they go, Kathy, with women like Candy in there.”
“Oh, well, thank you,” she responded to me with a smile. “You’re pretty sexy yourself, all tall and handsome in here. Some of the girls and I were wondering what you look like when we listened to the show last night.
“He looks good, y’all!” she yelled.
I tried not to laugh, but failed.
“Do you, like, pick certain guys out of the audience that you might want to tease?” Kathy asked her.
“I do, but everybody else doesn’t. You know, I just like to have a little fun when I’m out there.”
“Isn’t that dangerous, though? You might influence a psycho or something and have him waiting out in the parking lot for you,” I said.
“Bobby, you’re not a psycho, are you?” she asked me. She was starting to remind me of Mona with her teasing. Candy looked in the age range of twenty-three to twenty-seven.
“No, I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about these guys who frequent your clubs.”
“Ah, again, we have a lot of security, but men stalking women is not just for strippers, that’s a concern for any attractive girl in America. I don’t see the difference, really, in me being in a stripper club than in a regular club where men and women dance together. In fact, more women have gotten in trouble after going to regular clubs because they’re actually touching, drinking with, and going home with these guys, which we don’t do. At all.”
Then she smiled at me and added, “Then again, if I saw myself a Bobby Dallas in the audience, I probably would take him home.”
After the show, and with Candy back on her way to work, I told Kathy that although she had embarrassingly flirted with me, the sister seemed pretty intelligent.
Kathy looked offended. “What are you saying, that a woman can’t be intelligent because she’s a stripper? I don’t invite just anyone on the show. I knew she had a head on her shoulders when I talked to her.” Then Kathy smiled and said, “She really liked you, though. That’s gonna make you even more popular with women. Bobby Dallas!” she screamed, teasing me.
I tried to brush it off again. “Come on now, cut it out.”
“You can’t tell me you haven’t had women coming on to you because of the show. I mean, I’ve even had a few guys try and approach me.”
I looked at her, surprised that she’d shared that information with me. Kathy could seem extremely private sometimes. “And what happened?” I asked her.
“I took a few numbers,” she said with a grin. “I’m not dead yet. I might even have a date tonight.”
“You do?”
“Bobby, that’s my business.”
“You ask me if I have any dates.”
“And it’s your business if you want to tell me or not.”
“Oh, so it’s like that?” I asked with a smirk.
“Yeah,” she responded. “It’s like that.”
We walked out of the station and onto Eighteenth Street wearing our new wool WUCI jackets. Two college-aged white girls walked past and looked.
“Hey, that’s Bobby Dallas!” the blonde said.
“Oh, he is tall and sexy,” the brunette added with a laugh. They walked off enjoying themselves.
Kathy looked at me and burst out laughing. “What did I tell you? Even these little white girls are screaming for you. We should do a show on that. ‘Jungle Fever.’”