Thursday, February 16, 2012

Scary Suzanne

I was 24 and recently separated from my husband.

I had two tiny children and I was terrified. I was afraid of the future, afraid of being alone, and scared to death of dead of night intruders. I thought for sure that someone would break into our house and kill me and the children or worse.

As a result, I kept every light in the house on all night long. I sat in the hallway outside the kids bedroom with a hammer and a kitchen knife. I could only fall asleep when the sun started coming up. This might have been reasonable if we lived in a blighted area but we did not.

One more thing, I had Willie, my 125 pound German Shepherd. One night I thought I heard an intruder and I called the police. Willie would not allow the officers to come in to search the house. The cops shook their heads at me and told me everything was fine. I felt a little stupid, but I was still terrified.

My mother had a friend named Suzanne. Suzanne and her two daughters had recently been displaced from their home because of a fire. My mom suggested I might want to offer Suzanne a place to stay for a while because my house was a 3-story job with about 6 bedrooms. I had met Suzanne on a couple of occasions, but really didn't know her. I thought of the nights of terror at being home alone and being the only line of defense to protect my cubs and figured, "how much worse could it be?" I invited Suzanne and her teenage daughters to stay with me for a while. I never could have imagined that having this 40 something woman and her 13 and 15 year old stay at my house could have turned into my worst nightmare.

Suzanne was a tall bosomy redhead with a very forceful personality. Two days after moving in, Suzanne sent her daughters to her ex-husband's for the night and told me we were entertaining a couple of professional football players from the Oakland Raiders that night. She went shopping and brought back more liquor than I had ever seen outside of a bar, along with groceries for dinner. While I started dinner, Suzanne went in to "dress" for the boys. She came out in a plunge neck dress, high hooker heels and startling green eyeshadow along with 2 inch long false eyelashes. Suzanne told me to go get changed and she would finish up in the kitchen. ("Changed into what?" I wondered.) I did change out of my jeans and sweatshirt and into something more suited to an office than a cocktail party, and I put the kids to bed for the night.

Suzanne explained to me as we had a cocktail, that the guys were going to expect to be shown a good time. Now I can tap dance a little, but I quickly understood this was not what she meant. She came out and told me they would "expect" to have sex. Say what? I told her that wasn't happening. Suzanne looked at me and said "You're kidding right? Do you know who these guys are?" Actually, I didn't. I didn't follow football thank goodness. Suzanne looked at me and said "I hope you aren't going to ruin this evening for everyone."

We actually had a nice enough time having a drink and dinner with the men. All I can really say about either one of them is that they were big. When Suzanne and her friend went off into the bedroom, I said goodnight to the guy I was supposed to "entertain" and went in and got in bed with my 3 year old son.

When I woke the next morning, Suzanne and the two football players were having coffee on my deck and having a grand old time. She was wearing a blue silk nightgown. I was horrified that my neighbors could see this blatant display of big men and a slutty woman on my deck. (Yes, I was sort of a little prude.)

Suzanne stayed with me for two more weeks. She did bring boyfriends over a couple more times but didn't bring one for me.

It was probably just as well.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Hula Girls and Fembots



"The Princess Pupule has plenty papayas
She loves to give them away
And all of the neighbors they say
Oh me-ya oh my-ya you really should try-ya
A little piece of the Princess Pupule's papayas
Zazza zazza zazza zazza zay "

This is the song I sang to my husband Alex yesterday as he was working on some project on the computer. Now, I also did a little hula dance for him at the same time. If you don't know the song, the name "Pupule" is pronounced "Poo Poo Ly". So it is more lyrical than it would be if it was pronounced "Poo Pool", isn't it?

Okay, you may be wondering what possessed me to do the little hula dance and sing the Hawaiian song for him. I was rather disappointed that he didn't look up at me more than once or twice while I did the little improvised routine for him. Alex may be going to Hawaii for work. He could be gone for 2 weeks and then again, he could be gone for 2 months. It's anybody's guess at this point. You may think I did the hula for him because I want to go with him on this trip.

You would be very wrong there. I don't like Hawaii. I've been about 10 times and I have no desire to go again. I'd be more interested in a trip to Fresno, California, or Racine, Wisconsin. Hawaii is too hot for me. There is no good food in Hawaii. I avoid the sun. I don't like Hawaiian music. Hawaii bores me.

Paris, on the other hand, enchants me. But, alas, Paris is not on the playbill.

What was keeping Alex so busy that he could avoid looking at his wife as she sang "The Princess Pupule" and danced the hula? Well, he was on-line with "Comcast" trying to get cable service reconnected at a lower rate than before. (Alex was thinking of me being home alone with no cable while he was in Hawaii drinking Mai Tai's and watching hula dancers.)

The person he was on-line with was named something like "Nikita" and every comment he made was responded to with a "Great!" or a "Cool!". I asked Alex to see how much more it would cost to add "Showtime" to our service and Nikita responded "Great!" but never actually addressed the question.

I have concluded that Comcast enlists the help of "Fembots" to do their customer support. I do not know if we actually have signed up for cable again or not. I don't know if we added "Showtime" or not.

Alex was very happy with the ultra pleasant Nikita!

"Cool!"