Chapter 14

Catherine Duke

"You do not tame a vixen,

you only travel in her wake."

~ John Keats, 1776

It has been one of the great honors of my life to work with the inimitable Catherine Duke. Countless hours I have spent, seated across from her within the buffered confines of the WNYX news booth. I cannot count the number of times our toes have brushed one another casually as I read the traffic report and Catherine, the weather. Sometimes it felt more like a powder keg than a broadcast booth. Yes, the sexual tension was undeniable. But we'll get to that later. Let me start at the beginning of Catherine's story.

Few people are aware of the humble beginnings of Catherine Duke's career. After hustling her way through college, running card games for her uncle on street corners and in subway stations, Catherine landed her first job doing voice over work for radio commercials. Listen closely and you may recognize the lilting timbre of her vocals in advertisements for many popular feminine hygiene products from the early 1980s.

She continued to do advertising voice over work for several years before being picked up by a local news station doing pre-recorded news stories. Generally they were fluff pieces: petting zoo openings, Christmas toy drives, what have you. While she was making a name for herself, Catherine's true goal, what she pined for, was to be a live news anchor. She knew her day would come and, thus she continued slogging her way through bit parts and feel-good filler stories, hoping that one day she would make it big.

It can be difficult for a woman to break the glass ceiling and venture into the male dominated realm of on-air broadcasting. Lucky for Catherine, Jimmy James is a man who recognizes talent. He was in a cab, making his way through the mean streets of Manhattan one day when, through the radio, he heard Catherine's melodic voice endorsing the benefits of a contoured panty liner. He knew right away that he needed this woman on his team. He tracked her down and extended her an offer she couldn't refuse. I'm sure the opportunity to work side-by-side with Bill McNeal only sweetened the deal. As you have surely surmised, she accepted the offer, and that is where our stories began to intertwine.

I still recall Catherine's first day at WNYX with fondness. You only get a handful of chances to make a first impression. If experience has taught me anything, it's that when confronted with a new colleague, you need to mark your territory immediately to establish dominance in the relationship. I don't mean to imply that you should literally relieve yourself in your shared place of business. Although, if that suits the message you're trying to send to your new peer, then I certainly will not challenge your constitutional right to urinate in any given office setting. In this particular situation, however, I did not wish to offend the lady. I merely wanted to make it clear that, when we were within the confines of that glass booth, I was in charge. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

Jimmy had decided to start Catherine off with just the traffic and weather, purely bush league stuff. I could tell immediately that she was destined for greatness, so I took it upon myself to throw her into the deep end—really engage her in our broadcast. In the middle of my report, I passed her my news copy and sat back to enjoy a cigarette and watch the show. At first, she looked shocked. I feared she may freeze like a deer in headlights. Well, she proved she was no deer, but rather quite the fox. She picked up just where I had left off and finished the story. It was clear she was up for whatever challenge I could throw at her. Time and again, I would toss her a story she hadn't rehearsed or tee up some follow up questions she never saw coming. Catherine never faltered. She swung at every pitch and, soon, gave as good as she got. The woman was up to snuff. She had passed the Bill McNeal test.

Once she had proven her chops and was going toe-to-toe with me on the daily news, my next goal was to make her an indelible staple of WNYX. The two of us would make up the marble columns that supported the archway through which New Yorkers entered the colosseum of news, traffic, and weather. I figured that a good way to ingratiate her to our loyal listeners was to make her relatable to the average New Yorker. Having pilfered a copy of her resume out of her personal file after hours, I was well versed in her experience in advertising. Given that roughly half of all New Yorkers are women, I decided the best way to improve Catherine's relatability would be to let the listeners know how well versed she was in the use of feminine hygiene products. I did her the honor of giving our listeners a detailed rundown of the products she had endorsed in the past. Ever the consummate professional, Catherine sat across the booth from me, patiently waiting for me to finish listing her accomplishments. I saw a glimmer of something in her eye. Was it gratitude? Was it humility? There was only one way to find out. Thus, I continued. It was about the point where I asked her, on air, if she preferred a scented or unscented douche, that she stood up, reached across the desk, and slapped me so hard I had to get a crown replaced. That woman knew how to deliver a burning slap with such conviction, it left the slapee forever changed. I probably don't need to tell you that it was exhilarating. I have been chasing that high ever since!

Every day was a new challenge in those early years. Catherine and I loved to play this little game where she would pretend to ignore me most of the morning. I would escalate my playful teasing of her throughout the day, usually culminating in my attempts to lightheartedly embarrass her on air. I was always searching for that line in the sand where the lady would say she'd had enough. I would seek out the line and see just how close I could come before she let me know I had crossed it. I could toe that line with the best of them, but I could not resist taking a tiny step over to the other side, at which point she would bestow upon me, one of those earth shattering slaps and I would be walking on air the rest of the day. What a woman! It was a delightful little cat and mouse game, really.

My favorite time of year was always Catherine's birthday, the holiest day of the year. November 15th is a day to be celebrated for that is the day this incredible tigress entered this world. Always a tower of modesty, Catherine loved to pretend she did not want to be celebrated. But, come on, she's a woman. What woman doesn't love to be made the center of attention and adoration? I saw right through her ruse. So I took it upon myself, year after year, to make sure that New York City celebrated this woman as they should. After the mid-morning traffic report I would always take a little time to wish Ms. Duke a happy birthday. My wish was for everyone to celebrate her the way that I did. So, if you are reading this, please think of Catherine every year on November 15th and know that it is the day when, in 1959, the world received a gift of the second greatest on-air news reporter that New York City has ever known.

You might ask why I would get so excited about Catherine's birthday. After all, a woman of her caliber ought to be celebrated year round. This is true and I would like to think that, in my own special way, I did celebrate her every day and continue to do so now whenever I find myself feeling lonely late at night. But I digress. The reason her birthday was so special to me was because on that day and that day alone, I was always able to elicit a slap the likes of which the world had never seen. The moment she would hear me state her birth date and age over the airwaves, I would see a fire ignite in her eyes. She would scold and threaten me, which was how we both knew the game was afoot. Each year she pushed me to make the celebration bigger and more elaborate. At some point, when she had left me dangling in the breeze long enough, I would receive my gift. She would wind up her arm like a softball pitcher and when her palm made contact with my cheek, the love I felt in that touch was enough to knock me into the next zip code. I would be left feeling bewildered for the rest of the day. Then I would begin counting the 364 remaining days until we would do this dance again.

Of course, as wonderful as Catherine's birthday may be, no day can compare to the glorious night that all that pressure and tension found its release. I'm sure I needn't tell you that I am a man of great honor and an honorable man does not kiss and tell. However, I will tell you, we did a lot more than kiss. The date was December 13, 1991. I was still riding the high from my birthday slap a few weeks earlier. It had been a particularly grueling week and Jimmy had generously offered to take the staff out for drinks. As the hour got later and more and more of our comrades said their goodbyes and made their way to their homes, Catherine and I eventually found ourselves alone in a bar at closing time. Maybe it was the liquor. Maybe we were just lonely. But that night, something changed between us. The tinder box had been lit. We could both feel it. I gazed into her eyes. She gazed into mine. At long last, the barkeep hollered, "Last call!" Then, with a gentle shrug of her shoulders, I finally heard Catherine utter those three beautiful words I had been waiting to hear for years: "What the hell?" With that, we tumbled out the door, down the street, into a cab, and, ultimately, into each other's hearts.

As I previously mentioned, I am not one to kiss and tell. But I will tell you that my night spent in Catherine Duke's apartment was, in a word, delicious. It's a night that I have re-lived in my imagination a thousand times over. I would not wish to tarnish the lady's reputation or to reveal any of her more intimate secrets. While I cannot share details with you of what happened that night within the pages of this text, if you wish to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the care of my agent, I will gladly send you a sketch of what she looks like naked.

While that night is permanently cemented in my mind as one of the highlights of my time with Catherine, I am sorry to say that the two of us were not meant to be. Having relieved the sexual tension between us, we mutually decided that it would be better not to pursue any romantic entanglements. I cannot emphasize enough that it was a mutual decision. I agreed just as much as she did that our professional relationship would suffer if we attempted to carry on a personal relationship, even in secret. I was completely in agreement with her on this subject. Our feelings were exactly in alignment. When Catherine voiced her opinion on that topic, she got absolutely no objection from me. Not that night and not at any date in the future. I never pressed the topic any further. Certainly, there were never any late night phone calls begging her to reconsider. We were of one mind because, after all, great minds think alike.

Having come to that entirely mutual understanding, I refocused my efforts on making Catherine a better reporter. It seemed to me that would be the best way to keep our ongoing relationship strictly professional. It's easy for women to get caught up in the ways of the heart. I did not wish to tempt the woman. So, I focused all my efforts on improving her career prospects, so as to keep her from getting distracted by our erotic time together. Few budding journalists have the opportunity to be mentored by the legendary Bill McNeal. I felt I owed it to her to instill her with as much of my vast journalistic knowledge as could be imbued. Of course, much of what makes me so accomplished in my craft is pure, natural-born talent. As much as I would wish to share that gift with the world, it's simply a trait with which I was born and, thus, not something that can be taught.

Still, I saw a great deal of potential in Ms. Duke. I made it my mission to mold her into the best version of herself. The way I saw it, Catherine's biggest downfall on air was her inability to deal with the unexpected. For example, if she were in the middle of a report on foreign affairs and someone else in the booth were to begin shrieking like a baboon caught in an elephant stampede, she would have a tendency to get flustered and become unable to finish her story. That lack of professionalism may fly in the unscrupulous world of feminine hygiene advertising, but in the world of New York AM radio, she was going to have to be better than that. I made it my mission to see to it that she became the most unflappable reporter in the news business—second to myself, of course.

It is my belief that the most effective method of teaching this type of skill is through exposure therapy. The wilder and more frequent my antics got, the more composed and imperturbable she would become. I started with simple diversions, such as flossing my teeth or cleaning out my ears with one of her pencils while seated across from her in the broadcast booth. In the beginning, her disgust with such a display came across clearly in her growling vocal tones until the point at which she could no longer continue speaking into the microphone and would storm out of the booth. Eventually she became accustomed to those types of diversions and simply shielded her eyes from me when we were on the air together. This was probably for the best, since it meant she also wouldn't be distracted by the mere sight of my overpowering masculinity triggering memories of our special night together. Having reached that milestone in her training, I moved on to more audible disturbances. One of my most memorable tactics was when I began adding the words, "in bed," to the end of each of her sentences while reading a news story. It would go a little something like this:

"The Governor is expected to appoint a new Transit Commissioner this week."

"In bed."

"The previous Transit Commissioner resigned amid a sexual harassment scandal."

"In bed."

"No word yet on who the appointee will be."

"In bed."

"Although it is rumored the Governor will be appointing a woman with a great deal of experience."

"In bed."

In the beginning, these types of interruptions left Catherine flustered and unable to continue with her report. In time, however, she learned to predict when my interjections would occur and would simply mute our microphones for the brief second of my hilarious outburst. That's exactly the type of unwavering professionalism I was trying to instill in Ms. Duke. This advancement of her skills had me nearly bursting with pride.

The escalation of my attempted interruptions continued until there came one fateful day when it was clear I had nothing left to teach Catherine. Ultimately, my hijinks improved her professionalism and her skills as a news woman to such a great extent that she was able to move on in her prestigious career. There came a fateful day when she was offered a position as a London correspondent for a satellite news service. Through my tutelage, she had become so sought after that she finally received this offer, which would call her across the pond and away from our beloved WNYX. We couldn't have been prouder of Catherine as she went on to fill this new role even though she left a hole in our hearts. New York would never be the same without her. While we don't hear much from her anymore, I'm sure she keeps a special place for all of us, and especially for old Bill McNeal, somewhere deep inside of her. And, Catherine, if you're reading this, I just want to say, you're welcome.