Clogged

"So, I had a blind date last night."

"Oh, yeah? How was it?"

"It was pretty good! He was cute. We went to dinner, and then went back to my place."

"And?!"

"We made out a little bit, and then it got a little weird..."

"How so?"

"He asked me to lick his asshole."

"Huh. What did you say?!?!"

"I told him I wasn't going to do THAT on the first date!!!!"

"Oh. Good for you."

The above conversation was a test. This was the first conversation that Marcus and I had, me being a new employee at the insurance company where he worked. Marcus told me much later of his plan. He told me the story to see how I would react. I passed with flying colors.

Marcus told me he refused to be friends with anyone under thirty. He was thirty-eight. He said he simply did not have anything in common with people in their twenties (I was twenty-three at the time). Until he met me and found out that asshole-licking did not shock me. Not even on the first date. Marcus and I fell deeply, deeply in love.

Marcus was very good-looking. He looked like your typical surfer-dude: messy bleach-blonde hair, peircing blue eyes, tan (sun-damaged) skin, tall. When he was standing still, you would never know he was gay. However, as soon as he opened his mouth or moved his body, there was no question. That boy was on fire!

His manager (he was an actor/ writer - aren't we all?) once told him to never run on camera. He had been cast in a horror movie, and as he was approached by the axe-wielding serial killer, he ran. He ran while screaming wildly and flailing his arms, not so much like a girl but very much like a very gay man. (Of course, upon him telling me this, I immediately made him re-inact the scene.) Apparently, his protrayal of the character was perceived as not very masculine. So, from then on, no running. Except on my command. Which happened often. How could I resist?

Since he was a gay man and I was a heterosexual girl, we became the best kind of friends with benefits. With me on his arm, he attracted oodles and oodles of attention from hot guys, and so did I. The icing on the cake was, at the end of the night, he always got laid and I didn't get date-raped. It was a win-win situation.

One of our favorite haunts was La Fabula. I am not kidding. Of course, it was in the heart of West Hollywood, gay-town USA. Across the street at Sunset and La Jolla, at the peak of rush hour, men with heavy mustaches dressed in girly cheerleader uniforms held up signs reading, "honk if you're horny," and when passersby honked, one of the 'girls' would get a spanky with a big wooden fraternity paddle. now, THAT'S a good time.

Marcus and I would sip margeritas, nibble on appetizers, and flirt, flirt, flirt, then we were off to the clubs to dance the night away. One evening as we were shaking our booties to some horrible techno, music blaring, lights flashing, I leaned over to Marcus.

"You know, I used to be a professional clogger!"

Marcus stopped dancing and raised his eyebrows. He said nothing. Clogging was not usually something I brought up in conversation, because it was highly embarassing to me back then, but I felt comfortable with Marcus. We were bonding! We were dancing! He was noticing what a great dancer I was! And I was telling him one of my deepest, darkest secrets. Clogging couldn't be that shocking compared to asshole-licking, right?? Now, I wasn't so sure.

When we exited the dance floor to get another drink, Marcus was still quiet.

"Why are you acting so funny?" I asked. I was afraid I had crossed the line. Of course my fabulous new gay boyfriend could not accept me as a clogger. What was I thinking?

Marcus sipped his tenth margerita of the night indignantly. "Well, Jennifer, you just told me you used to be a professional call-girl. How do you expect me to react?!"

A wave of relief swept over me. He thought I was a prostitute! It was all a big misunderstanding! Everything was going to be okay. I thought I might cry.

"No, silly, I said I was a professional clogger. I guess you couldn't hear me over the music."

"Oh." Marcus did not look impressed. In fact, he looked annoyed, as in why would I tell him such a repugnant thing? This was the very reason I kept this factoid locked away in my overflowing closet. People, in general, perceive cloggers as intolerent, red-neck, Ku Klux Klan members. Now I wished he still thought I was a prostitute.

I started clogging in the late '80s. A woman had come to our school and offered to teach a class, so I signed up. There were about twelve of us, all girls and one boy. How he got roped into it, I'll never know. He seemed to enjoy it anyway.

Our first clogging troup (yes, they are called troups) was called Mountain Dew. Not like the popular soft-drink, but like the dew on the grass in the mountains surrounding the hillbillies as they wake up in the morning. Face down. In the grass. Clutching an empty jug of moonshine. I guess. I would not know first-hand, but this is how I envision it, not being from the south myself.

The uniforms we wore (yes, they are called 'uniforms') likened that of Heidi. Perhaps the connection here is that the Swiss, too, have dew on their mountains, their mountains being the Alps. So, although we may have been perceived as rednecks, we were, in all fairness, sophisticated rednecks. Or, at the very least, our instructor (yes, we referred to our clogging teacher as our 'instructor'), Bonnie, had seen the movie 'Heidi'.

We wore black patten leather tap shoes, with loose taps fastened to the bottom. Loose taps as opposed to fixed metal taps that tap dancers wear. The loose taps make a clicking sound. They are very loud and annoying which fits the redneck stereotype.

Clogging originated in the south and involves a lot of stomping. I believe this type of dance came to be as many generations of rednecks sat on their porches, drinking moonshine, and stomping their feet. I would imagine men for the most part wore jeans and boots (if they actually had any shoes on at all) and the girls wore petticoats. Somehow over time, the dresses and petticoats got shorter and shorter, until our clogging uniforms were so short you could see our 'bloomers' or, rather our underwear. Bloomers, though they probably started out back in the olden times as big, frilly pantaloons, morphed into colored nylon undies. This was probably the result of some dirty old men wanting to see young girls jumping around, flashing their panties. We did, however, wear our bloomers over our suntan-colored pantyhose, which seemed acceptable to us and our mothers.

Our petticoats were dipped in a vat of liquid starch and hung to dry. They had the texture of paper mache and were very scratchy and uncomfortable. If you weren't careful, you would likely get a snag in your hose. We all carried extra pairs, just in case.

To be continued...

Vision Problems

"Good morning, Jennifer. It's Marcus."

"Oh, hey, Marcus. What's up?"

"I'm not coming into the office today."

"Oh? are you sick?"

"I'm having vision problems."

"Oh, my God! What's wrong?!?!"

"I just can't see the point of coming into work today."

Marcus chortled/ guffawed/ snorted into the phone as he hung up. I was working as a long-term temporary (what?) receptionist at an insurance agency in Los Angeles in the mid '90's, and Marcus was my (far superior) co-worker and my friend.

I could relate. I was having the same problem. Daily. At $7.00 an hour, who could see the point of showing up to work? I spent more money on magazines and lunch than I made each week. Forget about rent and groceries! Thank God I had a rich roommate.

We took turns each week buying groceries. On her week, the fridge was stocked. On my week, she ate out and I had to ingest endless mounds of spaghetti with week-old, wilted mushrooms. They were dried out and covered with slime. But they didn't kill me!!

I always did seem to have enough to go out on the weekends, though. I would drop a hundred dollars easily in one night. (Don't laugh; that was big money to me back then and still today.) That didn't mean I always made the ernt, which is what prompted me to get a second job.

Through yet another connection in the entertainment industry (watching the local news in L.A. is like watching Entertainment Tonight), I landed a job as a cashier at the Laugh Factory. What a coup! How fun to hang out at a comedy club, meet comedians (the funniest people on earth!) and drink cocktails! Hooray for me. I was truly living the dream. Well, not really my dream, but surely somebody's. It sounded good anyway.

How was I to know how painful it is to watch an unknown comic bomb in front of a packed house? Or worse yet, bomb in front of an audience of two people? Oh, the agony. I expected to stand at the back and enjoy the free show. Instead, I found myself cringing and holding my ears inside the cashier's booth, blocking out the dead silence/ groaning/ crickets chirping in the background. Alternately, when only a few people showed up, I would plant myself at the back of the room and laugh loudly at really lame jokes, as if this somehow made up for their gut-wrenching failure.

The one highlight was meeting Bret Butler. She was on the brink of stardom with her own sit-com coming out. She was also in the midst of divorce. She was nice. She talked to me a little and said she liked my lipstick. It was Real Raisin, I will never forget. She was very funny. She gave me hope. Not for all the sucky comedians I had been subjected to; there was no hope for them. But for people like me, who are forced to work some crappy job in ye old comedy barne, that we will actually be entertained for once instead of feeling compelled to slit our wrists for someone else's ineptitude.

To make matters worse, while I was working there, I was accused of stealing. Every night, the manager would bring down the till for the register. She was supposed to stand there while I counted the money and recorded the starting balance on a receipt. Then, at the end of the evening, everything was supposed to balance. One night, she stood hovering over me, and I counted the money. Usually, the starting balance was one hundred dollars even. This particular night, I only counted eighty.

"There's only eighty dollars here."

"Are you sure? Count it again."

Again she hovered over me and watched as I counted out eighty dollars. It wasn't like it was eighty-thousand dollars, which might probably be stressful and intimidating. I would not know first hand because I have never held eighty thousand dollars in my hand, not even in Monopoly money, because when I played Monopoly back in the day, a lot of money was, like, five hundred dollars. Now that's what people spent a week on frappacino at Starbuck's.

So, I counted it again, and again, I came up with eighty dollars, being the whiz with money that I am.

"Yes, there's only eighty dollars. So what do I do?"

"Just write 'eighty dollars' for the beginning balance, and we'll figure it out later."

Little did I know that 'we'll figure it out later' meant, 'you are screwed and will be accused of stealing a paltry twenty dollars because I am a filthy, fithy liar'. At the time, this potential outcome did not occur to me. Why would it? My manager told me to do something and, by God, I did exactly as instructed. At the end of the night, I balanced my till to eighty dollars. The whoop-ass didn't start till the next morning.

I got a phone call first thing, as it was a Saturday and I was scheduled to work that night.

"Jennifer, it's 'Lamey'. I need to talk to you." 'Lamey' was the owner of the club. Hmm, I thought, why is he calling me? Maybe he wants to ask me out. Oooooh, that's awkward. Uh-huh, no.

"Apparently, the till was twenty dollars short last night. Were you aware of this?"

Summoning my twenty-three years of wordly wisdom and confidence, I replied, "Yeah."

"So, you took twenty dollars from the till." Excuse me?

"No, I didn't." You go, girl!! Whoo-whoop.

"Well, the manager told me that you counted one hundred dollars in front of her, but then on the receipt you've written eighty dollars. So, clearly you've taken twenty dollars. We've no choice but to suspend you from the schedule for two weeks."

Huh? I didn't really know what to say here. I was confused on two points:

1) The manager had clearly lied, and stolen the money herself, which was stunning to me. Why steal twenty dollars? What's the point? The consequences far out-weigh the gain here. In L.A., you could pretty much get two beers and a pack of smokes for that. Might as well stay home. If you're gonna steal something, go big, like eighty million dollars from a bank (is that an unrealistic amount? I wouldn't know) or a Picasso from the Guigenheim, if they even have a Picasso. Again, I wouldn't know.

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I would make a crappy criminal. I can't keep my mouth shut. I'm always bragging about things, like, "I only paid $2 for this skirt!! What a steal!" Can you imagine if I stole twenty whole dollars!??!? The cops would be on me like Lindsey on meth. Too obvious.

2) Why didn't they call the law? 'Suspended from the schedule for two weeks'?! Um, SO. I was poor as dirt anyway. That was not going to hurt me. The fact that I was not fired and arrested was a relief, and also shocking. So, of course, I, being totally immature, naive, and in all likelyhood, severely hungover, took my licks, though they were completely undeserved.

This has always bothered me because, as I said, I'm no theif. I can tell you, however, who is. I won't say her name, though it rhymes with Shmuzanne. I will not identify her other than to say she is of Asian descent and she currently hosts some kind of home show on cable. Take that, bitch, for throwing me under the bus. For twenty dollars. I hope it doesn't cost you your career. In all fairness, it didn't affect mine. I wonder how it felt to put the blame on someone who is poorer, younger, yet more attractive than you. Maybe you needed the money for breast implants, poor thing.

So now I'm writing while at work, which I guess qualifies as a form of stealing, though I justify it by telling myself it is for my mental health and allows me to be a better worker. The time I spend not working at work probably adds up to a good bit more than twenty dollars, but it's hard to say. It's all in how you look at it.

Mommy Says

"You have a mouth like an eighty year-old grandmother." My husband utterred these words very calmly and matter-of-factly to me and yet they stung like he had slapped me across the face. "I sound like what?!?!" A comparison to a truck driver would have been more expected and more appreciated; I've let the F-bomb (and other smaller, less significant, bombs) drop more than my fair share in my lifetime. Not something to necessarily be proud of mind you, but I relish my ability to use it when necessary in mixed and perhaps inappropriate company, only sparing my grandmother out of respect, of course.

And so, what had changed? My mind struggled to remember the expletive I had blurted out only moments before which had solicited such a comment from my husband; and then, there it was, in all it's glory, at the forefront of my brain with all of the other recently uttered "curses" I had resorted to using in front of my children: "Lordy be!" What exactly this means, I do not know.

I do know that since the birth of my first child I have had to become highly creative with my choice of "cuss words", if you could even call them that. When my husband accused me of sounding like someone's grandmother (surely not mine; I'd never heard her swear a day in her life, not even something so tame), it struck a chord. I was disappointed in myself. What had become of me? Had I completely lost my edge in the midst of wifedom and motherhood? Was I softening in my old age? Was dementia slowly creeping its way into my brain? No. I had simply realized that any word that came out of my mouth would surely come out of my son's, and I realized only too late the harsh repercussions of this.

One evening, long after I had put my son to bed, as I was gracefully trying to pull the leg of my boot-cut jeans over my stilleto (surely I had been to happy hour this particular evening? Otherwise, I can't explain the logic here), I (surprise!) lost my balance and fell forward into the dresser. It hurt. Upon impact, I apparently blurted out, "Shit!" I mean, who wouldn't? I say 'apparently' because in the moment, I did not realize I had said it and continued getting ready for bed. Little did I know that tiny ears were awake and listening in the next room. Actually, I am not convinced he was indeed awake, only that somewhere in the remote corners of his dream he heard his mother shout a very new and interesting word, one that his kid radar had locked in on.

So much so, the next day in the middle of the grocery store, he proceeded to whisper, "my mommy says...", followed by a long pause (so all the kindly shoppers could look our way in antiticpation of what darling phrase would escape from this child's lips), and then, "...SHIT!!!!" Jaws dropped, children fled, and many a heel was turned upon. I quickly clamped my hand over my son's mouth while assuring myself and anyone within earshot, "I most certainly do not!!" (Granny speak, hmmm?) My son proceeded to repeat this same phrase over and over and over again, giggling all the while. Despite my protests, there as no stopping him. He was 2 1/2, if that explains anything.

I decided then and there that I would have to watch my mouth, whether or not he was around, because certainly at some time, he could overhear my filthy, filthy language and repeat it for all the world to hear, to my credit. My master plan had a major loop-hole, however. I had not counted on my child overhearing other people's filthy mouths, or more importantly, the filthy mouths of their children. My son started daycare shortly thereafter, ironically for socialization with his peers. To my relief, his experience at daycare had taken his focus off repeating the word "shit" over and over again. To my horror, on the first day he came home toting the F-bomb. He was armed and dangerous, and more significantly, he was smart. He substituted his new favorite word into his favorite phrase: "Mommy says FUCK!!!"

Now, "shit" you can pretty easily get away with. Other mothers laugh and shake their heads; they can commiserate with you. "Fuck", on the other hand, means you are a low-life piece of white honky trash who needs to be reported to DFACS immediately. I hung my head in shame while trying in vain to cover my son's mouth.

Eventually, the novelty wore off, and he stopped saying it. It had a permament effect on me, however. Thus, I have the mouth of an eighty year-old grandmother. Well, Lordy be!! It could be worse. I've yet to get a call from DFACS.