(What's a Radio Tease? Click here!)
I'll let you know right now, this will be the last Radio Tease that I will ever write about. I had a few other women call me while at KSYY-FM in Denver, but I never met any of them and none of them really made a lasting impression on me. When I went to work at the newsradio station in San Jose starting in 2005, I never got any calls from radio teases there. Also, this is one of the few times I will use someone's actual first name (or what I believed to be her name).
Within the first few weeks of me working the Saturday and Sunday night shifts, I would get the occasional call from those women who enjoyed talking to DJs. Even though none of us were really on the air, a lot of people didn't really know that and would call us up requesting songs. We would even get calls from people trying to call another station's contest line, which had a phone number similar to our hotline. (These people would get mad at US because they didn't win!)
One Saturday night, I was talking to this one woman who had contacted other DJs in town. (I wouldn't refer to her as a Radio Tease. She wasn't trying to flirt or anything. She just wanted to talk.) She asked me if I had heard about "The Lizard." I told her I hadn't. She said that The Lizard was a woman whose name was "Elizabeth." However, she had a tendency to act schizophrenic (actually multiple personality disorder). Sometimes, she would say her name was "Liz," "Liza" or "Beth." She described her as looking like Sheila E and said that she was at least 18 years old, because she knew one DJ who had slept with her and he wouldn't have done that unless he knew for a fact that she was 18.
She also told me about one incident in which The Lizard was talking to a DJ at Y108. He invited her to come over to the station and meet him while he was on the air (which is something we all know YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO DO). It happened to be raining at the time. She told him she didn't have a car or any way of getting over there. He told her to just take a cab. So, she took a cab to the station and tried to get him to come outside and pay for the cab. She actually thought he had offered to pay for the cab. He wouldn't open the door and just left her outside in the rain to deal with the consequences of skipping out on a taxi fare.
The next night, I got a call from some woman. She asked me my name. I told her "Fayd." I asked for her name. She said, "Elizabeth." GASP! Was this The Lizard? She was very flirtatious during that first conversation and sometimes, the discussion would get a little inappropriate on her end. She asked when I worked and I told her Saturday and Sunday nights. She said she would call me the next weekend.
She called me back during the next couple of weekends. We usually talked for about a half hour each time. During the successive conversations, she was spinning this tale about how she was married to pro wrestler Randy "Macho Man" Savage. Without coming right out and saying it, she was trying to make me think that she was THE "Miss Elizabeth" of the World Wrestling Federation (which the WWE was known as at the time). She would tell me that Savage and Hulk Hogan were in her house at the time watching wrestling videos. At no point did I ever believe a word that she was saying. I was thinking, "What is it with these women and pro wrestlers?" I had a similar issue with Friez (although she picked one of the more obsure wrestlers), and Kiz, Chez and their younger sister Pid were into pro wrestlers, too.
I spent one Friday night hanging out with my girlfriend and her parents. We had all gone out to eat and came back to their house. Her father was also into pro wrestling, and NBC had started showing wrestling matches on TV on Friday nights. We came home in time to catch the last 15 minutes of a tag team match that featured Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan. Somehow, one of their opponents managed to knock Miss Elizabeth (the real one) unconsious and the EMTs transported her to the medic's office. Savage went with her, leaving Hogan in the ring. Hogan overcame his opponents and ran into the medic's office. He and Savage started yelling at each other. Hogan didn't like being left alone in the ring and Savage thought it was his responsibility to make sure Miss Elizabeth was okay.
On Saturday night, The Lizard called me. She started telling me about what happened to her the night before. She said she got knocked unconscious at a wrestling match. While she was kind of waking up in the medic's office, she could hear Savage and Hogan yelling at each other. I didn't really make any comment except, "Oh, that's terrible."
But this was bewildering to me! How could she have possibly known that I had watched WWF the night before? She's never gone into detail about matches previously, but why did she pick this one to tell me about? And what was the point? I just didn't get it. Of course, the answer was that she didn't know and there was no possible way for her to know. It was just a coincidence. And I know what you're thinking: That my girlfriend was pretending to be Miss Elizabeth, much like Marz did that one time. That wasn't possible. My girlfriend had a noticeable speech pattern that would have made it impossible for her to pass herself off as someone else.
The next night, The Lizard called me again. She was going on more about Savage and Hogan. Then, she suddenly said, "You don't believe that I'm the First Lady of pro wrestling, do you?" I told her no. "Why not?" I said something to the effect that it didn't seem possible that Miss Elizabeth would just call some DJ up out of the blue and start talking to him, especially in the manner in which The Lizard had been talking to me. That wound up being the last conversation I had with her.
Later, I wondered how many other DJs she called up that weekend and told them the same story. I doubt any of them took her seriously. I'm certain that if just one thought she was really Miss Elizabeth, they probably would have been surprised when they met her in person. I also wondered if that woman who told me about The Lizard in the first place was actually her. However, it didn't seem likely that she would have told me all that stuff about her being crazy.
Before writing this article, I tried to do some research to see if anyone else has ever written about The Lizard in the Denver radio market during the late 1980s. I was not able to find anything. I guess no one thought she was worth writing about until now.
The real Miss Elizabeth died in 2003. I wonder if The Lizard is still alive and if anyone still calls her that behind her back.
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