I was a Jerry Springer Talk Show Guest

The 1995 Version of Going Viral

Ok so, I was on the Jerry Springer Show. Yes, as an actual guest on the stage. I don’t know how to write this without sounding like an asshole. So, I’ll just set the groundwork and then snowball it.

If you are Gen Z and don’t know who Jerry Springer was, well … after school every day there were a dozen talk shows on TV where hosts pretended to be therapists/motivational speakers with a touch of stand-up comedian. They would pretend to care about the trials and tribulations of their guests who spilled their guts about everything from cheating scandals to family feuds, all while a live studio audience gasped and applauded like they were watching a Shakespearean tragedy. Jerry was the leader of the pack… if that pack had the most far-fetched emotional crashes and unhinged fights.

Two things you need to know:

1): I was 22 and feverish to check off another unique box that others wouldn’t consider doing. This chapter can’t encapsulate all the 20/20 hindsight I have yet to suss out about the players nor does it offer all the nuances of personal experiences. This is an abbreviated version for context to get us to the show. Get me a book deal, maybe I’ll expound.

2) We didn’t fight on this episode. That was a thing on Jerry. I don’t remember any physical fights from other guests either that day or even Steve, the bouncer being there. I would not have wanted to have been party to anything like that. This was 1995. I think it got into a more WWF circus later?

The backstory:

During my second semester of my freshman year of college, I met a guy named Nick in my Advanced Composition class. He would turn around in his seat in front of me whenever I said anything funny or subversive and give me a look of relaxed and bemused appraisal. After class one day, I found him walking with me as we exited and he struck up a conversation. Over the course of the next few weeks, those after class conversations got longer and I perceived a faint intention besides friendship. I wasn’t sure if I was being wooed and the soft tension made me feel clumsy. I had a wonderful boyfriend who was my first love and I’m not a cheater. I’m a penguin. I had made sure early on to casually drop in my relationship status and to watch what signals I was putting out. He never made any advances and it stayed platonic.

He mentioned books I should read and music I might like. He was coolly confident and hung on my every word when he wasn’t sweetly negging me. We ended up running into each other at the college theater, both there alone to watch the movie The Graduate. We talked afterwards on the bench outside for a long while and it felt romantically charged. He called me his Katherine Ross reality. My compliment bank from most men had a zero balance and it was a direct hit on the validation scoreboard. Later when I got home, I berated myself for the crush that was starting to unfurl. I needed to refocus and recalibrate on my relationship and not this romantic friendship that was pushing away the good earth in order to bloom. The next time few times I saw him, I let him know that I couldn’t talk and that I was meeting my boyfriend. The rest of the year went by quickly and without temptations. I was back in my happy reality.

The last day of freshman year, my dorm room door was closed and I was reading in bed, surrounded by luggage and boxes to head back home for the summer. I heard the whoosh of paper against the tile floor and looked up and saw that someone had pushed an envelope underneath my door. I walked over to it and read its contents. My heart leapt as I read Nick’s declarations of unrequited love. I opened the door and looked down the hallway, but he was gone. Holy shit.

Nick and I kept in touch sporadically over the summer with letters and calls. I was dipping a toe out of curiosity. Who doesn’t like to be mooned over? We were hours away from each other and it was a safer exploration without the peril of encounters that could put my relationship to the test. Before school started, he transferred to a college in Eastern Oregon which made me breathe a sigh of relief. Yes, go over there where you won’t be a distraction…but keep calling me and sending me letters.

After two years of dating, my boyfriend and I grew apart and went our separate ways, sad but amicably. He eventually graduated and we completely lost touch. I wanted to live in New York. He vowed never even to visit a chaotic city like that. I heard through the grapevine that he married the next girl he dated. Good, that’s what he wanted.

Nick and I continued our long-distance correspondence for years. We would pay wistful homage to the other and had a deep need to keep the romantic flame lit between us. We would also regale each other with our respective courtships and dating escapades. We were definitely reading way too much Henry Miller and Anais Nin.

One night, I received a call from him to let me know that while on vacation, he had met a pretty punk rock girl who was photographing a Face to Face show in LA and they had quickly fallen in love that week. She was smitten with his romantic stoicism and was more than willing to return with him to Oregon. I was excited by their story. After all, our whole purview was littered with a lot of the fantastical; pushing the envelope and scoffing at the mundane. Do what you want! Find others! Tell me a story!

Nick told me that Jamie was one of us. Quick, funny, and very cool but just a few years younger. He had explained my role in his life to her and she had accepted the assignment albeit with more unrevealed tenderness coursing underneath her skin. I suppose we were all mountains and muses to each other and it’s hard to write that now without feeling a little embarrassed. But at 20 something years old, everything has potential for the great American novel and every day you wake up feeling like ‘You are the protagonist! Don’t let anyone write your character for you!’

We would still send and receive letters and continued to phone each other to check in. Jaime would also join in on our calls, each of us working to impress the others and giggling. We made a promise to all meet and a few months later, I pulled the trigger and was on a plane to visit them in Oregon. When I arrived, they stood there waiting for me when I exited the jet bridge. (Back in the day, depending on the airport, there were less precautions and security. People could be there when you exited the plane! Like at the gate! How lovely.)

Nick stood there with the shoulders of a quarterback and the countenance of a jaded Beat poet about to score hash. Jamie looked adorable, young and pensive in a faux leopard print coat. She was biting her lip and had a glint of worry in her eyes. I walked purposefully toward them, grinning. I locked eyes with him and strode intentionally toward him but then at the last second, I quickly pivoted, turned to her and pulled her in for a long bear hug. I needed to hug her first.  She needs to know I’m harmless.

 I whispered in her ear, “Hi. It’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna have a great week.” I could feel her body relax in my arms and sigh softly.

She told me later that she was terrified but excited. She knew what I sounded and looked like and thought, “I’m probably gonna get steamrolled but I’m excited to meet someone who is gonna make me stretch.”

Then we started talking and laughing and walking together and we were off to the races. That week was a blur of late-night shenanigans. Making punk rock music in the basement. Meeting all the friends and weirdos that constantly came in and out. Picking up skater boys in front of the grocery store when we went on a Boones Farm wine run and making sure they came back to party with us.

I knew that Nick and Jaime were the couple and I was there to encourage, inspire and reveal. No one made a big deal of it. I was someone from before who was here now but I wasn’t there to cause any problems. Sure, we still had some romantic feelings but we were more intellectual about it. Nick and I didn’t ever get physical, save for a kiss or two here or there. We preferred anticipation and pretending we couldn’t since that was how it all started with us anyway. We knew Jamie was younger and more sensitive. I wasn’t a problem maker. I was a party girl. The most important thing in life for me was to always seem happy and nonplussed. I wanted to be welcomed back and remembered warmly. Please like me, world!

The show:

After I returned to NY, we continued to keep in touch. During one conversation, Jamie mentioned that she had a friend from LA who knew a producer on the Jerry Springer show in Chicago.

“We should try to get on!” Jamie exclaimed.

I laughed. “Yah! Reunion! Free trip to Chi-town! Hell yea, I’m game!”

A few weeks later, Jamie mailed great candid pictures of us to the Springer producer with a brief outline of our ‘wild’ relationship. Pretty tame in retrospect. We told them that I had met Nick in college and we had a romance and remained connected, long distance. Then he met Jamie and I was fine with it. We were all open with each other and considered ourselves postmodern romantics about our expectations.

The Springer show called to interview us all separately and we were all sharp and funny. We had fleshed out our story and remained intent on promoting this relationship as a good, healthy and a funny thing. We wanted to illustrate that we were all very happy with the arrangement and we were defying norms. We won the producers over with our charm and youth and were asked to be a part of filming in Chicago. They would send us plane tickets and pick us up at the airport.

I would be flying in from Long Island. They were flying in from Oregon. This is before cellphones and email so they hadn’t told us where we would be staying. We would need to be able to find each other so I gave Jaime and Nick my friend Pinar’s phone number who lived there so we could try and hang out the night before the show. Pinar and I had met at boarding school and I was so excited to see her as well.

I was picked up at O’Hare by a suited driver holding my name on a sign and walked to a limo that would escort me to my hotel. It was freezing cold. I was wearing a black motorcycle leather jacket and Chicago must have been 30 degrees colder than NYC. Oh well. No time to get a scarf, gloves and a hat. I checked into the hotel and immediately called Pinar so that she could come fetch me and bring me to her apartment in Boystown where we could catch up.

Pinar was openly suspicious of the whole deal. She couldn’t quite wrap her head around the fact that we were both dating him. Were Jamie and I also interested in each other?

“No, it’s not like that.”  I said.

“Then, what do you two get out if it? Isn’t she bothered by this?” Pinar questioned.

“No, well, sometimes, but not really. It’s a free trip and reunion in Chicago. And well, it’s punk rock, you see. We are postmodern. Blah blah.” I batted any negative notion away.

I spouted the kind of gibberish and shoddy rationale that you hear from any young adult trying to explain their choices that had not been well thought out or verbalized upon cross-examination. She wasn’t sold and I wasn’t the type to try to defend myself at this age besides shrugging. We were at an impasse conversationally and I changed the topic. I was happy to see her. Can we please have a nice time?

Nick and Jamie arrived a few hours later and called Pinar as instructed. We all met up and had ourselves some late-night carousing. Barhopping and blurriness. Pinar tried to temperature check Jamie and as suspected, learned of some concerns.

“It’s fine,” Nick and I said. “It’s all good! We’re in this together!”

In retrospect, I needed her to be okay with it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to condone my participation. Selfishly, I wasn’t ready to let go. Pinar mentioned that I was under some sort of cognitive dissonance. I felt it was condescending and I doubled down harder because of it.

When I arrived back at my hotel room around 1am, there were twelve messages from the front desk. A producer from the Springer show had been trying to call me all night and was freaking out and worried that we weren’t going to make it to taping the next morning. Each voicemail message was more agitated than the last.

“Hey! Ummm, where are you? Ha ha. Want to make sure you know how and when to get to the studio in the morning. You’re still coming, right? Ok. Hope you're ok. Umm please call me as soon as you get this!!” She was breathless and getting angry.

I called her back immediately.

“Hey! Sorrrryy! Yes, we will all be there! We were meeting with my local friend tonight. Just had to see the city a little and hang. Sorry for the delay! Everyone is back at their hotels and we’ll be there tomorrow morning with bells on! We’ll put on a great show!”

At seven am, with oodles of youth and vigor that are long gone, I was up, showered and brought to the studio by another limo. A slight hangover was appeased by a small vodka bottle from the hotel room that I tucked into my leather jacket’s inner pocket. I found a vending machine with a can of orange juice and medicated myself with a screwdriver. I saw Nick and Jamie briefly when they arrived and they were a little sluggish given the early hour. We were quickly separated into three different green rooms and given our own assistant producer. They then brought us in, one at a time, to have our hair and make-up done. I got to have my makeup done in the chair right beside Jerry, himself. He appraised me nonchalantly and I didn’t pester him besides a few jokes because I will never not help myself.

We caught each other’s eyes in the makeup mirror and I said, “Hey Jerry, did you ever hear the Dorothy Parker quote when they asked her to use word ‘horticulture’ in a sentence?”

He was polite, if cool. “No, what?”

I gave him a shit eating grin and said, “She said you can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”

He smirked and went back to reading his notes.

I had planned my show outfit carefully; combat boots, skin-tight black vinyl pants and a black t-shirt with a silver mud truck flap girl ironed on. My hair was shoulder length and flipped up like Lady Miss Kier. Tres 90’s cool and an armor. Jamie dressed like a female Robert Smith meets a Japanese anime character. She had short jet-black hair and wore an oversized men’s white button-down shirt with a long black sweater and an ankle-length, tight black skirt. Nick wore a three-piece suit with no tie and umpire boots. To me, he looked like he could have been a professor of Bukowski at a small liberal arts college.

Before the show started and filming began, I was brought out to the stage alone. I guess I was the first guest! I sat down at my seat and eyed up the audience.

“Hey people!”  I waved.

They clapped and shouted back to me. I decided to play it up and toy with the crowd and they were living for it.

“Ok, you all are on my side, right!?  I asked. I threw the devil horns and they clapped louder. Pinar was in the audience as well, with a tight smile and a look of concern as she was always a bit more skeptical than I was. This could go wrong.

Lights up. Cameras. Audience cheering. Jerry opened the show with some deadpan observations about love triangles. Could they work?  

Jerry meandered through the aisles. “Hey folks, this is Lola! Her life is like a soap opera! Lola, tell us about it!”  

I leaned back in my chair comfortably and rested one long arm over the back of the empty chair beside me. One combat boot rested on my knee as I gave Jerry a chin up and wave. For weeks, Jamie, Nick and I had run through our beats and bullet points and what our enhanced story arc was going to be with a lot of hidden inside jokes.

“What’s up, Jerry, baby?!” I said coyly. The crowd giggled.

I began my story. “Sure, I can lay it all out for you. So, I met Nick in college and we had what could be affectionately called… intellectual copulation, if you catch my drift.” I said smirking.

“Oh! Is that what college kids are doing these days?” Jerry asked.

“The evolved ones are, the ones who are getting to the next level, yea man!” I said.

I went on to describe our open relationship status. I dated Nick. Nick also dated Jamie. We were cool with it. I certainly couldn’t ask someone to remain monogamous? We were 3000 miles apart and I too wanted the freedom to explore options as well. Also, I liked Jamie. She was a rad, cute girl so good for him.

However, I didn’t mention a very significant fact. At that point Nick and I had never been lovers. I had to keep that detail hidden since we purported to be a love triangle. So, it was rooted in some truth but we took a lot of liberties with innuendo.  

Jerry rubbed his eyes and forehead in confusion. “But whatever happened to one guy and one girl?! He pleaded. The audience clapped.

“Well that just seems terribly archaic, Jerry? This gives everyone what they want. Why limit yourself with such provincial traditions. This work for us.” I pointed out.

“Well let’s hear from Jaime! Jaime! Come on out!” He yelled and the audience cheered.

He signaled a producer who flung open the door at the back of the stage. A flash of jet-black hair and boots stomping underneath her long skirt. Jamie stormed the stage quickly, took her seat and braced herself on the armrests, gearing herself up to speak once the audience stopped clapping. I was a taken back. Why did she seem so angry?

“Hi Jerry. Listen, you need to know. First of all, Nick lives with ME because he wants to be with ME!” She spat out.

My smile turned to shock and my mouth fell agape. This was not what we had planned!? What was happeneing?

“Well Lola?  What do you have to say about this?” Jerry asked.

“Well Jerry, ummm… frankly, I was with Nick first and I’m not going anywhere. They can be together but I’m still someone he wants to see. She was fine with it up until now.” I offered.

The audience gave oooohs and uh ohs and murmured. They were ready for some action! We volleyed our viewpoints and I kept trying to bring it back around jovially but it was veering into a breakdown.

“Let’s bring Nick out and hear how he sees this playing out! Nick, come on out!” Jerry bellowed.

Nick swaggered out slowly with a smirk, his chest and broad shoulders were relaxed and comfortable. The audience booed and he laughed. He sat down and leaned back, taking it all in. Unaffected by the bad energy and relishing in the humor of it.

“Jerry? Jerry?” Nick starts to divulge his plan. “I think I’m gonna get out of the love triangle.”

“Really Nick? You’re ready to leave the triangle?!” Jerry asked with surprise.

“Yes, well, see we need to leave the triangle, you see and we need to go into a love circle.” He deadpanned.

Nick formed a circle with his two hands and then pointed around the circle. “Because when you’re in the love circle, the love comes right back to you.”

Everyone is confused and Jamie and I are laughing. Finally, we were getting this back on our track of subterfuge!

Jerry meanders through the crowd as the audience raises their hands to speak into his microphone and take turns spouting their ideas on relationships. The audience is definitely of the opinion that relationships should be between two people. Even though Nick, Jamie and I started on shaky common ground, we playfully retorted with some of our planned anecdotes and jokes and the audience is laughing with us.

We go to commercial break and the producers add more chairs. We spend the rest of the show watching the antics of the other love triangles onstage, as we are seated behind them. Our fellow stage guests illustrate deeper divisions and ire and the cacophony increases with each relationship. Jerry would slyly mock a guest’s answer and the crowd would chant. “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”  It was a continual ping pong of deceptions and I was feeling thankful that we escaped relatively unscathed. The show ends with Jerry’s requisite sign off.

“Folks, take care of yourselves… and each other.” The crowd cheers and then we hear “Cut!”

After the show, we left the stage all abuzz in energy and confusion. We formed a circle to compare and contrast.

“What the heck happened? Why did you go off script?” I asked Jamie as we huddled together.

“Did you tell Jerry that you were trying to steal him back!?” She asked with concern.

“No, Jesus No!? I said shocked.

“Well, that’s what the producer told me while you were on stage. I couldn’t hear what you were saying! So they were relaying everything that you said. At first I thought, there is no way she would say that?! But they kept riling me up!”

“Oh shit?! They totally played us, man! They instigated the shit out of this!” I said awestruck, pissed and impressed.

We swept ourselves up and out of there and into the Chicago streets to reconnect, resolve and make a few more memories that night. It took a few hours to ensure that Jamie felt on solid ground again. We were now more aware of her sensitivities and it seemed callous not to recognize that.

The epilogue:

I can’t say for sure if our involvement in the show was the catalyst for the eventual demise of our triangle. It was in the cards anyway. I think Jamie and I just matured and sought our own paths of deeper connections. When Jamie and I reunited a few times down the road, we had other experiences and relationships to bond over. If anything, the Springer experience lent itself to laugh filled nostalgia. Nick and I circled around over the years too, but our orbits were further apart each time and the spark had faded with each turn. I wish him well. It was fun while it lasted.

So Jaime and I grew out and away from under Nick’s spell and almost a decade later, I was the lone witness at her 2004 courthouse elopement to her husband Rob. When she moved to Brooklyn, we spent many years together as good neighbors. She even honored me by appointing me the godmother for her daughter. Even though we’ve all moved to different corners of the country, Jamie and I touch base and our conversations typically run deep. We were on the Jerry Springer show and survived. We don’t talk about the weather, y’all.

Listen: Wild and unwise, I wanna be mesmerizing too