Lizzy and I were returning to Oak Street parking lot Monday afternoon, me $40 richer thanks to a cashed paycheck and her a crispy shade of red because she rediscovered the tanning bed, when who should we spot walking into the lot but Thomas the Virgin. (Great name right? He's a local radio personality on Valdosta's answer to 99x, who's also in my leadership classes...the name's only for the very specific terms by the way...) Seeing that Lizzy and I like to keep tabs on the former roommates (and anyone else who hates us really..it's an old survival mechanism, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer" but if you don't want to really be close to them, just spy on them!) we were reading in bipolar Erin's livejournal the day before about a certain TV who kept attacking her...and then Angela's comments to that post discussed how if only Thomas the Virgin would ask Erin a certain question, these attacks wouldn't be so annoying...We'll we weren't about to let this die, and this was the perfect opportunity to corner him for an explaination. So we trailed him into the lot, then turned suddenly away from him because this cop was following us and Lizzy got nervous...3 lanes later, we caught the boy and he settled down in the middle of the road (like literally sat on the concrete next to the Honda) for our little chat. Turns out, he was very surprised to hear about all these feelings. Before Christmas, Thomas and Erin had a moment of passion...only he was very drunk and horny and she was very sober...so while Thomas just passed that off as another drunken makeout (you'll find out later, he's a rather friendly drunk), Erin fell madly in love...sending emails to say hi, complaining to her friends about how he hasn't called her back, your basic pathetic girl post-hookup stories. Pitying the boy for having to go clear this up now, and hoping for a decent parking spot, we offer him a ride to his car, only when we drop him there, the Kia won't start...but it's okay, he has jumper cables...only they don't stretch as far out as Lizzy's car (he's parked facing a wall, between two other cars and we're behind him...) No worries, we'll just drive him down to the radio station to get more cables...what we didn't know was that Thomas had been strategically avoiding the station until the minimal amount of people would be there. That past Saturday, Vanilla Ice had been in town performing at the Mellow Mushroom (you know you're career's shot when..) and Thomas had partied there with the entire (older and legal) radio crew...and hadn't held the liquor well...The first person we see when we pull up sees Thomas as he walks out the door and shouts "Dude, you're vertical!" I can only imagine how bad it was. For the next 20 minutes, we toured the station and caught various blurbs of that night (he grabbed an old woman's boob, thinking it was her shoulder...was hidden in a chair from the cops...got caught in the zipper of a leather jacket...etc), until finally we reached Shag, the DJ with the jumper cables, who was currently on air, holding a contest for the best first date story...After quick introductions all around, Shag takes the mike and tells the listening world (about 6 people here in Valdosta...) that Thomas the Virgin has just walked into the studio with 2 ladies...and they aren't dogs! Why don't we give him about 30 minutes with them and see if we can clear a few outstanding issues up? Lizzy and I are in so much shock, we just stood at the door with slack jaws while Shag moved on to talk about Thomas desire for jumper cables ("I guess some people like it kinky") and therefore preface the next, very heavily edited first date story...smooth man, very smooth. A quick interview with Thomas after the phone call confirms his right arm is still larger than the left (come on, think, because even I got that...) and I decide I've got to listen to this station more often...you can pretty much say anything when it's live, because who's going to record it and have proof to sue you later?
So maybe this wasn't the most honorable way to become famous on the radio, but they didn't use my name, so don't worry daddy...I'm still "slan agus diea guith" (That was a great phone call...barely related, but if you wanted to know the translation to my butchered Gaelic, get me drunk first...I'll play you the voicemail.)
