Chapter Text
Early August 1980
The summer of 1980 in New York City was a scorcher. The season rolled in with 90-degrees days in May. In June, temperatures kept rising, humidity in toe.
The entire city became a sauna, muggy and dirty and relentless. The streets reeked of rotting garbage. Asphalt melted in the sun. The Hudson and the East River slugged down, brownish, under cloudless skies. Breeze might have been a word in a dead language.
I spent my days trying to sleep in my shoe-box apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, a cheap plastic fan shuffling hot air around the room. I spent my nights in a stuffy Midtown radio booth, my T-shirt and shorts sticking to my skin like glue. On the radio, no one could see me sweat.
“Good evening, New York, this is The jukebox on W99.9. I’m Trish Jefferson. I’ll be here until the sun comes up or until I die of dehydration. Whichever comes first. Please send in your song requests. Let’s start the night with Go your own way, chosen by Debra for her ex-boyfriend, Matthew. She wants Fleetwood Mac to back her up: she won’t give him a second chance.”
I pressed a button, launched the song and gulped a mouthful of cold water. Above my head, the On Air sign blinked on. I had begun another night, the sole host and producer of a midnight to 5 am radio show.
You can go your own way
Go your own way
You can call it
Another lonely day
I placed my headphones on the control desk, stood up and walked into the adjacent producer’s room. A fax had come in for the news team. Usually, these were briefs about the European stock markets that the news team subscribed to. Or sometimes notes on how things were going over in Tokyo or Hong Kong. I pulled out the paper from the Ricoh machine and unfurled it like I would a fragile parchment.
The handwriting was neat, elegant loops and curves on the thin page. “Dear Patricia”, it started, formal, unexpected. “Could you play Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode with the following dedication: ‘Old Friend, pick up the phone.’ With my warmest thanks, JP”
Blood rushed to my ears, surprise and joy coursing through my body in equal parts, and before I could control myself, I raised my hands in triumph. I had been giving the fax number out on the air since the beginning of July, and this was the first fax to come in with a song request for my radio show.
I caught myself. My radio show. Words I had fought against until then. I shook my head. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. But hadn’t this midnight to 5 am slot become my own? What had been a spur-of-the-moment idea had taken root, and I wondered how far it would take me.