Yesterday a DJ ruined my life.

I had never heard the show, and knew little about the host. What I did know came from his own resume and seemed a little extravagant. He was like Steve Allen-he'd worked with Elvis and the Beatles, was responsible for making Star Wars the huge hit that it was, single-handedly invented trends in music and radio that are still with us today. And for it all, he'd never received the credit he deserves.

I was in the studio getting my bearings (radio studios are always very dark) when the door flew open and he burst in, already talking. I wasn't sure at first if he was talking to me or a member of his own staff.

"?and that Bill Cosby," he was saying, "was speaking the truth, and that's what's pissed off the NAACP." He took a seat across the table from me, in front of his own microphone.

"Wherever you go," he continued, "it's 'motherfucker' this and 'motherfucker' that." It was pretty obvious now that he was, indeed, talking to me.

"On the subway the other day," I said, not exactly sure what he was talking about, but trying to get into the spirit of things, "a man was complaining about a woman who was talking on her cellphone too loudly. 'That motherfucker,' he said, 'talks as loud as a motherfucker!'"

"You see?" he said. He was far too energetic for the hour, and for a man of his age. The words spilled from him in a torrent. "And people today-you talk to them and it's just 'me, me, me!' That's all they can talk about-themselves!"

That worried me. After all, I was at the station that afternoon for an interview concerning (in theory, at least) my third memoir. Me, me and um, me.

"Yes, well, ah-" I offered.

A few minutes later, after he shuffled his papers and did a sound check, the tape was set to rolling and the interview was underway. He began in the middle of a sentence he'd apparently only been thinking up to that point, and charged ahead from there. After a transition only he understood, he was talking about rest stops and the books you buy for children to keep them entertained during road trips.

"I think my book might be good for that, too," I offered, trying to steer things back toward?well, something.

"Your book is the kind of thing I'd read-while I was driving! It's just that kind of a book! Crazy!" He laughed very loudly.

"I?ummm?"

He talked some more about the decline of black English and how shoddy airline service had become in recent years. I tried, when I could, to interject something. There wasn't much room for that, though. Mostly I concentrated my efforts on trying to keep up with him-and more importantly, trying to figure out just what the fuck he was talking about. It sounded like something you'd normally hear on the subway, or coming from someone crouched on a filthy pink blanket on the sidewalk.

"There was this writer I used to see at a bar in the Village," he said. "What's his name? He wrote Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

"Edward Albee?"

"Yeah, that's it-so what's that title mean, anyway?"

"I?ummm?the-"

"I don't know anything about this Virginia Woolf?have you heard of her?"

"Yes?yes I have."

"I don't know too much about her. I saw that movie-what's it called? The Hour?"

"The Hours."

"Yeah, with Nicole Kidman. So, was this Virginia Woolf a lesbian or something?"

"I?I believe she was, yes."

"Is that why we're supposed to be afraid of her? I mean, what does that title mean?"

"Ummm, I believe it's supposed to be a- a?a kind of a joke, there, ummm. See, it's about this academic couple and, the title, see, it's a play on 'Who's afraid of the big bad wolf,' and?" I wondered if it was worth trying to explain the whole play right there, but gave up on it. It didn't matter; he was on to something else completely already.

"So I saw this movie I, Robot-"

"I haven't seen it," I jumped in, "but I hear that it at least shares a title with Asimov's book."

"What?"

I repeated myself, trying to put the emphasis in the right places so he'd see the joke. It didn't work.

"Who's Asimov?" he asked.

"Isaac? Asimov?" I replied. "The guy who wrote I, Robot back in the 50s?"

"Never heard of him," he said. "Was he big?"

"Yeah," I said, with a note of some concern in my voice. "I guess as far as science-fiction authors go, he was pretty much the, uh, biggest." Then I added, "And he had big sideburns, too."

"Really?" the host said. "So you knew him then?'

"Ummm?no."

Then it was back to hiphop culture, angry rap music and suburban white kids adopting black styles.

It was becoming evident that he had never opened the book he was supposed to be interviewing me about. That's hardly a new story, but this thing was supposed to go on for an hour. He had a copy of the book in front of him and flipped it open occasionally, reading half a random line aloud out of context.

"'?so I turned around and headed back to where I heard the traffic.'" He let the book slap shut. "That's just the kind of guy you are!" he exclaimed. "Always going against the grain!"

"I-umm? What?"

With about 20 minutes left in our allotted time together, he was talking over me to his engineer. Then to me he said, "Turn around and look at this guy." When I didn't turn, he told me again, "No-I mean it-spin around and look at him."

"That wouldn't do me much good," I told him.

"Whaddya mean?"

"Umm? I'm blind."

"You're kidding."

"Nope."

"Well, I didn't know that-have you ever written anything about that?"

"Oh, a little here and there, I guess."

"I didn't know."

"It's okay, it's not a big deal. I'm kind of sick of talking about it anyway."

Then off he went in another direction. I was exhausted by now, but still trying to keep up. At one point, I remember hearing him say, "?if you're an alcoholic like I am."

"Yeah, I suppose I am," I said.

"Really?"

"Well, no. I'm a drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings."

"I go to meetings," he snapped back.

"Oh. Well, see?"

The kicker of it all, however, and the final clue, came just a few minutes before the end of the show.

"I was told," he said, as he was beginning to wrap up, "that I was going to be talking to a black author today, but when I came in, you didn't look very black to me."

It didn't make sense until later. After I got home, I called Morgan and was telling her how the whole debacle went. When I mentioned the "black author" bit, she put all the pieces together. Clearly, one of his producers had told him I was a "blind author." But he didn't hear "blind"; he heard "black," and so came in prepared to talk to a black writer. That I wasn't in the end didn't matter. He still conducted the interview as if I had been black, in some sort of bizarre attempt to cover up the fact that he'd seriously, seriously fucked up.

I don't enjoy doing these things. Mostly because I find it hard to believe that anyone would want to talk to me, or that I have much of anything worthwhile to say about anything. But the experience that afternoon pretty much topped any other interview I'd ever done. And hate as I do to admit it, I'd do that show again in a second. If nothing else, it sure kept me on my toes.

Maybe next time, he'll come to the studio expecting to talk to a blond author. o