Here’s a question from the live comments feed:

anon1343: On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the most pain you can ever imagine, how would you rate your pain?

My listeners are trolling me. I’m sure of it. But after a series of unfortunate events that may or may not include being intentionally offensive as a defense mechanism, I promised myself, our station program director, and the associate dean for student affairs I’d behave from now on.

So even if I have at the tip of my tongue the Snarkiest Comeback of Contemporary Times, I reluctantly shove the thought away in an effort to keep my job at the campus radio station. Granted, it’s volunteer work. But work is work, and I sincerely believe that volunteer work can be much more rewarding than paid work in most cases. The tradeoff here is that whatever I accomplish in college radio is fully credited in my program. So I need this job. Unfortunately.

My reply is brief, but truthful. “I’d say it’s a three.”

“Lies,” says my cohost Jae. I’d say he looks like he just woke up from a nap or is in dire need of one because it’s four in the morning and we’ve been up since noon, but that’s just how he looks like at any given time. “That is at least a solid seven.”

For the past fifteen minutes, Jae and I have been playing a vicious round of Rock-Paper-Scissors in a misguided attempt to amuse ourselves and our online viewers. All seventeen of them. The loser gets flicked on the forehead and the winner gets to pick the next playlist. Long story short, I lost three out of five rounds, and Jae gets his minute of gloating and an hour of his favorite British Alternative Rock. That leaves us another hour to make stuff up and our shift’s over. The sun shall rise, and our next moment of glory will have to wait until our next midnight together.

Four semesters plus summers in between, and it hasn’t occurred to any of us on the graveyard shift to come up with an actual program to stick to. According to our show producer Eric Nam, we’re running on a freeform format so whatever goes. This usually means we get to do whatever we want, play whatever music we want, and say whatever we want however we want to from twelve midnight to six in the morning. Only the truly nocturnal, the crammers, and the disturbed are up at our hours.

After School Sweg, (formerly known as After School Club) the only no-holds-barred English-language program on Campus Radio, is run by five of us on rotation duos. Most of us foreign-grown but back-on-home-soil kids missing life on the other side of the planet. Five nights a week, we talk about random stuff interspersed between our choice of music, what’s hot in the indie scene, and who’s who in the rising luminaries of university based talents. Sometimes, we play juvenile games like these. At ungodly hours of the morning, you do what you need to do to maintain your sanity.

Jae and I “inherited” the time slot from Kevin Wu after he graduated. I hadn’t intended to do radio—or join any organization—at all, but my program at the College of Music requires me to do campus service hours. Jae was aggressively handing out fliers during Freshman Orientation Week, and he wouldn’t stop badgering me until I took one. And I thought he was cute. You would too, at first glance. He wears the most pretentious and ridiculously large thick square-rimmed glasses that hides his tiny eyes and drowns half of his tiny face, and together with his extensive hoodie collection and the fact that he sings pretty good and he’s not bad at guitar, you have the recipe for Cute Boy. But then you get to know him, and then he’s just Jae.

In any case, none of the other organizations had causes I particularly cared about. Like what in the actual flying frick is a Sunflower Club? I was also fairly certain that most orgs were just fronts for some real shady business, so I showed up at the station the following morning and filled out the volunteer application form.

I’ve regretted my life since.

Out of desperation, we’ve recruited in a few others to join the debauchery: Fresh baby but can actually kill you, Jamie Park; foreign sounding but never been further than Ilsan “Rap Monster” Kim Namjoon; and fencing scholarship kid Hong Kong national Jackson Wang.

We’re like a co-ed pop group, if you want to think of it that way. Or even a band. Jamie is our cute diabolical savage maknae in charge of mood-making; our frontman and lead vocals and sometimes rhythm guitar. Jackson is our loud and wild—the only reason we keep him around, he keeps us and the listeners all awake—center visual; the drums. Philosophical Bull Rap Monster Kim Namjoon is our pretend-leader in charge of being responsible when we have to (and the bringer of deep conversation starters at three a.m); he’ll be soulful keyboards. Jae is Jae, who is best as being Jae; lead guitar with solos in every song. And then there’s me. I’m the one in the back making everyone else look good. I’d be on bass. Subtle.

Tonight, it was just me and Jae, the red On-Air light and the soundboard between us.

“So remember my bandmate Bob?” Jae asks after he’s put on his playlist and switched off the mic. We’re off the live-broadcast, but the comments section is still running. Not that it mattered. No one was chatting. Headphones off, he leans so far back on the swivel chair I expect him to fall over any minute now. But I’m not that lucky, and he just puts his feet up on the opposite desk.

Let’s talk about Jae Park for a moment. Jae is my senior. He’s a full two years older than I am, but because he took a gap year before his first semester and he went on leave for a year to tour with that nationwide singing competition he was kicked out of six weeks in, he’s still here. A senior, technically, but still overstaying his degree in the Liberal Arts program. Don’t let him convince you otherwise.

Pulling my headphones off, I answer, “Jae, two people does not a proper band make.”

“Irrelevant.” He steeples his abnormally long fingers together. Jae’s band, I don’t even know what they’re called, used to have three members. But alas, some of us are destined to be useful members of society and his pianist left to be an accountant. Now it’s just him on guitar and Bob on cajon on their street-busking pub-crawling adventures. Alleged adventures. I refuse to see them live. On principle.

“The point is,” he continues, “Bob, my friend, my brother from another mother Bob, has been depressed for, like, three months now and it’s frankly depressing. It’s not funny anymore.”

I’ve been witness to this Bob Sob Story since day one. According to Jae, Bob has been seriously dating this lovely girl for about eight months until she asked for a time-out or a cool-off or whatever, and Bob agreed because he’s that kind of Nice Guy and it’s not like he had a say on the matter. Anyway, Bob and Girlfriend go their temporary separate ways. Sad life for Bob, but he remained hopeful. Until a few days later, lo and behold, Bob takes the train on his way to wherever and right there across him, he finds his lady love in the arms of another. Congratulations. They’ve officially broke up. It’s been two months, three weeks, and four days since then. Jae’s kept count. We have it on our desk calendar and everything.

“You want to ask our seventeen—fourteen listeners for dating and/or moving on advice for Bob?”

“Better than that, my friend,” he answers. “You’ve been single for god knows how long. Why don’t you date him?”

I scowl at him. “No.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No, Jae. I refuse to come in contact with any of your kind.” Least of all dudes named Bob. Say what you will of me, but the name Bob doesn't exactly inspire in me visions of a dude I’d like to bang someday. Bob sounds like my uncle. Or that uncle you know. Bob is just not a y name. “The fact that he’s associated with you puts him on my Do Not Touch With A Ten Foot Pole blacklist.”

“You wound me, Kitty Kat. Bob is a perfectly decent gentleman.”

Kitty Katastrophe. That's me on air. And Jae is Chicken Lethal. We’re an assortment of domesticated animals on a mission of mass destruction. “You date him, then.”

“I would, but he likes girls. Sadly, so do I.”

“Tough market to be in, my friend.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“No, Jae. Not only is that an insult to me as a human being, it is also an insult to Bob’s human beingness and his capacity to find a date on his own. He’ll start dating someone when he’s ready. Or when he finds a girl he likes enough to do something about.”

“Dude, Brian said the exact same thing.” Brian Kang is Jae’s low-key genius pre-med roommate from Canada. I’ve been getting Jae to bring him in to join our show, but Jae says Brian is too good for us. Jae’s probably right.

(Anyway, back to my previous point. I refuse to c