Carl Van Marcus: The lady disk-jockey

"And that's it from Johnny Cash for now, all you out there. Let's look high in the sky and see that Led Zepplin and hear the caarazy sound IT makes… like it'll break your head, bambini… lotsa noise comin' on, like RIGHT NOW AND Wiiiiiiiild!"

The long limbed girl with dark hair and enticing high breasted body took a deep breath and wished she could say what she really felt into the mike. She wanted to curse it but couldn't, because it was her only way of making a decent living. She had long ago managed to completely shut off the horrible sounds that came from the records. If idiots out there in the night wanted to listen to such garbage, she was being paid to keep idiots happy. She continued the spiel, which had been written by some advertising type guy.

"This, in case you aren't tuned in already, is the Sally Sue Bennett show, coming live and direct from the friendliest club in town, Jacques' Trap! They pour honest booze! Right at the corner of Third and Main. So come on down and live a little, until 4 a.m., and then you can go next door and get revived with a great breakfast at Rosie's – they never close, and now let's hear it from the Led Zep!"

Sally Sue released the tuntable, hit switches so she wouldn't have to listen to the terrible sound, spun around in her comfortable swivel chair to Face another mike and console and began to tape a second pitch aimed at the teenagers who would have their transistor radios glued to their ears to hear her sex-laden voice enticing them to drive-ins, malt shops, speed shops and whatever Harold Eaton, owner of the teakettle radio station in the heart of coastal California, could sell time to. She had precisely three minutes and ten seconds to do the tape for – teens, and then had to swing back and put on a fun type rap with customers at the bar, interviewing them off the top of her head, looking for laughs, with a bleep button and five second delay in case they used the wrong words, thinking they were funny.

She knew many people tuned into the Sally Sue Bennett Show in high hopes that she wouldn't hit the bleep button quick enough and some blue language would go out on the airwaves. It sometimes happened. The raven-haired woman in her late 20's was resigned to getting at least one nasty letter a month from the Federal Communications Commission threatening to pull her ticket and put her out of work.

She was also resigned to minor indignities, such as being caressed by half-drunk males as she did her chatter thing along the bar and at the booths of the club with a remote mike, but she had developed an instinct which enabled her to evade wandering fingers almost every time. Sally Sue, was repelled by such contact, even though she was honest enough to admit that her body was interesting and knew she'd have to put up with as much or more if she was dealing plates off her arm in a diner and not making half as much money.

Smoothly she reeled off her pitch to the young set as the tape flowed, thinking all the while, that there might be something to Women's Lib after all – she was the only disc jockey in the country who had to, in effect, do two shows at once through the magic of electronics. And a lot of quick scissoring of her long, shapely legs between a sophisticated Jacque's Trap night club and the Rosie's Pizza Parlor across the parking lot. There she would rap with the teens and put them on the air while a long playing tape was spinning and covering time at the bar.

Sometimes she felt like a electronic tennis ball. But it was a living, and she was getting noticed in the industry because the Sally Sue Bennett Show pulled in listeners and pulled beautifully. The part from the cocktail lounge was live and direct; that from the pizza parlor and other sponsors taped. Her husky voice was on the airwaves some 14 hours a day. In time, this could lead to a big network job, but for the moment, Sally Sue had to sell herself, and it was a personal thing.

At least once a week, she visited every sponsor's place of business, met whatever customers might be there, talked with them, taping the conversations. She collected speeding tickets with an old MGA roadster and a new BMW 750 motorcycle, and used them to paper the walls of her apartment. Sally Sue went about her work with a fury, burying a heartbreak that only she knew about. She supported a collection of animals and birds to ease her loneliness.

A cheetah, a huge Airdale dog, a pigmy owl, a red-tailed hawk, a coral snake, and several cats of uncertain origin. She kept them so well fed they never tried to eat each other.

Sally Sue wrapped the commercial two seconds early according to the chronometer she wore instead of the usual tiny woman's watch, and saw that the record had just enough grooves to let her get out of her isolation booth and down to the bar to start some conversation with the patrons. She grabbed the traveling mike and went down the stairway, forcing herself to smile at the admiring whistles of the men.

They had good reason to whistle.

She was tall and sleek, with the blue-black hair long on her back. Her breasts were full, lushly ripened and they bounced as she moved. She walked naturally, with the ease of a deer, and with every step her smoothly-rounded taut ass-cheeks jiggled and the limber muscles of her curvaceous thighs flexed. And by the orders of her employer, she had to exploit her magnificent young body, so she wore a microdress that came barely below the rich swell of her hips, and just above the thrusting nipples of her bosom. The dress was tight and thin, so the tiny buds of her nipples were clearly visible. She wore high heels to enhance the length of her slender, magnificent legs. Her hips, sleek as a sea otter's, swayed as she walked into the cocktail lounge with the transceiver which would put it all on the air.

Well, one more time to get in the crowded elevator like a silly goose and get peopled, Sally Sue told herself as with a bright smile she approached two young men at the bar. To their right was an older man with the look of a lecher, and she knew he would be a problem, but her life was filled with those. If he got really out of line, she could hit the bleep button while the bouncer did his thing, but Sally Sue was aware she had to put up with some indignities in this type of work. The sponsor would not be at all happy to have the sounds of a customer being heaved out of Jacque's Trap being broadcast live and direct. She could see no others along the bar or at booths who looked good for openers. From her studio Sally Sue had picked this pair because they seemed to be in a happy mood and obviously weren't drunk. If she could spend a few minutes chatting with them and the talk went out on the lounge's amplifiers, it would loosen up others and she'd have a shot at more interviews.

"Hi, how'd you like to be on the Sally Sue Show!" she said, squeezing between them, the mike turned on. "Real live radio! And where are you handsome guys from… if your wives don't know you're out, you can give somebody else's names, you know?"

"I'd like to be on you!" the older man said in a blurred voice from several feet away.

Sally Sue Bennett had heard the line many times before, and instinctively hit the bleep button just before the You, and with a professional smile pulled a chuckle retort from her bank as she said, "Well, hi! You look just like Cesar Romero, but a lot younger. I have another half hour to do this show… and I guess we're both here for the same thing, really. Aren't we?"

"You bet, baby," the older man said eagerly, hardly believing that this tall, raven-haired girl disc jockey would go for him… but he wasn't so old, and in bed with her he could fuck off five pounds a night! And to think he could pull her from two young, handsome studs! Well, there were some who liked older men. "We want the same thing!"