The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (7 page)

The laundry was enormous, probably a 20,000-square-foot brick building. It was fronted by a tiny dry-cleaning store, which of course also took in laundry. Out of the 100 employees, 50 percent were mentally or physically challenged, 30 percent were ex-cons, 18 percent were prostitutes, and 2 percent were the huge black guy who carried a .45 and me.

I instantly made friends with .45; I was naive, not stupid. This sweatshop was filled with washers, dryers, and mangles, which are enormous ironing tables with conveyor belts and rollers. The temperature of the room ranged from 100 to 120 degrees, depending on the workload inside and the temperature outside. We prayed for snow no matter what time of year.

My fanciness was not an asset at the laundry. Turf wars and teams began to form. My team was comprised of hookers, crippled people, and the guy with the gun. Lest this get confusing, I’ll refer to us as the Crips. The mentally insane and the ex-cons formed the other team; I’ll refer to them as the Crims. There was a rhythm to this madness. Turf wars didn’t involve murder. The weapons of choice were linens, or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

At one end stood the team with the unironed, damp laundry, whose job it was to feed the sheets, tablecloths, and pillowcases into the massive, dangerously scalding eight-mangle machine. Awaiting the linens was the team whose job it was to rapid-fire fold the laundry, lest all the laundry flip onto the floor, getting them fired by the dreaded lead girls. It’s all fun and games for the feeding gang, but it creates fury in the folding gang. Things get nasty fast. The feeders shove the linens into the mangles as fast as they can. The folders frantically try to keep up. The meaner the feeders, the faster they shove. However, the gangs rotate every two hours, so the feeders can’t be too obvious about their war games. And if they have been terribly evil they know they need to brace themselves for the ultimate in laundry wars, the illegal double-layered linens! The Crims were made up of convicted felons and lunatics, so legality meant little if nothing to them.

At the end of each day, .45 would walk me to my car to make sure I didn’t get raped or murdered. It was deeply appreciated. Each night Bob and I would drive the 20 miles back to our stone house wiped out, me physically, Bob mentally.

On week four I was offered the lead girl position at the laundry, aka the girl who was going to end up gang-banged by Christmas. I said good-bye to .45 and resigned from the laundry the next day.

Being in veterinary school is not an easy task—it’s actually brutal. Bob worked his ass off in school, and I worked my ass off keeping a fancy home. I became a nanny, and my work life immediately became better.

Bob and I lived in the stone farmhouse until he graduated and became a full-fledged veterinarian. We said good-bye to the place that had been our first as husband and wife, good-bye to Mildred, good-bye to the bushel loads of lilacs, good-bye to the ghost who lived in the cellar, good-bye to the 107 people we left behind in Olsberg, and good-bye to the Billy Graham revival that occupied weeks of our lives since we only had one TV channel. We packed our dog, cat, and raccoon and were on our way to California. After all, there was gold in them thar hills.

By this time I had less confidence than when I began my marriage, not having to do with Bob and me, but with myself. I was scared to death to leave Kansas. I had no skills or training. Bob was now a doctor, his brother was an oral surgeon, his brother’s wife was a scholar, and I was nothing. I knew I’d have to work in California, but it seemed I wasn’t even fit to be a dog groomer, and thought myself too stupid to be a mailman, fearing I couldn’t pass the civil service test.

But here before us was our future: Bob’s looked bright and shiny; mine looked vacant. I had exiled myself into the oblivion of just being “Bob’s wife” and I was terrified.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?

—GROUCHO MARX

The Art of
Tornadoes

B
Y THE time I was 24, I’d been married to Bob for four years. I was restless and bored out of my mind. Sex had become a torture, a kind of looming task that I was unwilling to participate in. Bob was the only man I’d had sex with. I wasn’t looking for someone else to shag. I was just chronically inventing ways to get out of “doing it”: ironing at three in the morning, feigning illnesses, can’t “do it” on my period, arts and crafts, gotta get up at five o’clock to get to the beach, back pains, deaths of pets, sad news of the uncle I’d never met passing away, it’s too hot in here, I electrocuted myself, I fell off my horse, the raccoon bit me, you hurt my feelings, I’m gonna throw up, I can’t get over Ms. NYC, we have guests, the dog fell off the roof, the chinchilla is eating the wrong food, I have to mow the yard, I can’t find the goose, my stomach is going to explode, I think my IUD is lodged in my uterus, we have no electricity, the shower is leaking, and “Hey, how ’bout that Halley’s comet?”

I kept thinking about the second time I had sex with Bob when we were in my mom and dad’s room after they had left town to attend my cousin’s funeral. What happened to the girl who was dying to have sex with Bob, even when Jesus was warning her not to?

There was this gilded oval–framed photo of Jesus Christ above their bed glaring at us. I was trying to be sexy and cool, but I seriously couldn’t fornicate in front of Jesus. I grabbed the portrait of the Savior, walked it into the bathroom, and turned it facedown on the counter, freaking out because the tile was cold and it seemed a horrible way to treat Jesus. I spread out a bath towel, nestling Jesus on the terry cloth, then covered the frame with another towel. Then I started worrying I was smothering Jesus, so I removed it. I turned off the bathroom light, and pondered whether Jesus hated the dark. No, these were not the calculations of a seasoned vixen, these were the thoughts of a 17-year-old girl who wanted to be a woman.

So there I was in 1974, being the woman I’d always dreamed of being, with full permission to bang my brains out . . . but I didn’t wanna.

Bob and I were living in California. My mind was still like a 14-year-old, my body was like, well, not a 14-year-old . . . I had curly, flowing hair to my boobs, with an athlete’s ass that had finally molded into the tiniest, tightest pair of Fiorucci jeans made. My once-embarrassing swimmer’s six-pack had now smoothed out to a concave slice of heaven—I thought the California boys were day-trippin’ at the sight of me sauntering down Hermosa Beach. There was no doubt in their minds—or mine—that I was “the shit.”

I had resisted all advances, and by resisting I mean I’d flirted with every beach boy in my path but never acted on it.

Bob and I had bought our first house, overlooking the ocean in Redondo Beach. We had a sleek, new white BMW. He was a partner in his veterinary practice, and he was breathtakingly handsome in his Dr. McSteamy sort of way. He was instantly an excellent veterinarian, and he was working really hard and assuming tons of responsibility.

I, on the other hand, was restless, useless, jobless, sexless, lifeless, bored, with no direction. I was a great cook, funny, highly creative, with a fine ass that I didn’t want my husband to touch. I was worthless, actually. I’d become worthless.

One day, while looking for a new cat in the
LA Times
classifieds, I noticed an artist advertising for a model. His name was Putt. I interviewed with him and got the gig of posing for his latest oil painting.

He was a fine artist, he really was, but I made a bad decision to pose for his painting. If I recall correctly, Putt painted Western scenes; thus I was in some stunning dance hall gown, one shoulder up, the other draped down to expose one nude breast, a sultry painting. I guess we could say this painting was the modern-day version of a sex tape floating around in someone’s living room or gallery now. But I quickly learned that husbands don’t like their wives posing nude, even for accomplished artists. Of course I already knew that, didn’t I? To this day, I think I did it as some covert revenge for Bob cheating on me with that NYC beauty queen my junior year.

My husband was furious when I told him, and rightfully so. He thought I was at home cooking his dinner, I’m sure, instead of posing seminude for a local artist. It was also so unlike me, as I was modest to the point of Victorian prudishness.

This marked my turning point—I’d degraded myself, and Bob helped me degrade myself a little more. He called me many names; the most impressive one started with a
C
. I knew what I’d done was wrong, that I wasn’t a nude-y kinda girl. I felt like shit, like the whore my mother predicted I’d become. It really screwed with our marriage.

We decided to go home to Kansas for Christmas. I had all these decorated pillows there that I’d made when Bob and I were in college, and a Wichita friend of mine named Carmen had made terrariums. Apparently she was as bored and hard up for some goal in life as I was. She said, “Kirstie—let’s take your pillows and my terrariums and sell ’em at the holiday showcase in Wichita.” Out of storage flew my 150 handmade pillows to be put on the open market, but we needed a BIG vehicle to transport all those pillows and 10 bulky, ugly terrariums.

Carmen’s husband, Dick, had a friend with a Bronco, so come Saturday morning, along came Jake—a handsome, twinkly-eyed, pseu-docowboy rich guy. He just “got me,” you know? He “understood me,” “appreciated me.” Good ole Jake. I loved his name: “Jake.” He’d never been married, never found true love, and he was just the kind of midwestern bad boy I’d been fantasizing about. The one all the girls in Wichita wanted . . . Jake.

Why wouldn’t they all want him? He was 27, blue-eyed, with a big smile, cowboy hat, custom boots, and a ripped body. He appeared to be a cowboy who’d just gotten off his horse, scrubbed up, and come to town for dinner. In point of fact, he was a highly educated heir of a prominent oil family in Kansas—the recipient of a hefty trust fund, compliments of his grandfather and Standard Oil of Ohio. Jake—he was so strong and helpful and happy. Attentiveness is and was his most obvious trait. He didn’t have me at “hello,” he had me at “howdy.”

I sold all of my “before their time” designer pillows and spent Christmas with my husband and our families with visions of this new guy Jake dancing in my head. Bob went back to California to his practice, and I stayed in Kansas for another week. Oddly I found a penchant for the game of backgammon at Dick and Carmen’s parents’ house. The best player? Of course it was Jake. We spent several nights studying that backgammon board, with me doing my best Faye Dunaway impersonations à la
The Thomas Crown Affair
. I dazzled the cowboy with my coy smiles and my infinite wit, but I left it at flirting. Soon it was time to go back to California and my husband.

I blocked Jake out of my mind, didn’t talk to him for six months, and that summer Bob suggested we go home for a vacation. I loved his family, especially his mother—she was a role model for me. We swam and did skits, ate the finest food known to man, played games and a lot of bridge, rode horses, and flew around in Dr. Alley’s plane. It was perfect; I loved my husband, and I had since I was 16 years old. All was well.

Bob had to head back to Cali to work, and I decided to stay another several days to spend more time with my friends. I’d made my decision to be a good girl, and that summer Jake had faded out of my mind.

Kansas is notorious for tornadoes. They are destructive and devastating, perhaps a prelude to my own life.

Carmen, Dick, and I were all hanging out at his family’s house—it felt like my second home, a huge College Hill estate in the heart of Wichita. They were a family with five sons, each one hotter than the next. The home was warm and inviting, with animals all around, dogs, cats, and raccoons. Dick’s parents, Don and Maxine Aldritt, were fun—not hipster fun, just warm and adorable. They let their children have full rein. There was always tons of home-cooked food around, and articles by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Maxfield Parrish adorned their house. There was a huge swimming pool with a tall cabana that horrified us girls when the boys dove from it into the pool. This place was what I imagined the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport was like, without the ocean and the Catholics. I remember sitting at the kitchen table while Maxine was making brownies. We were playing backgammon . . . and in walked Jake.

My heart started pounding like a damn drum. His white shirt so crisp and clean, rolled-up sleeves, revealing his tanned perfect forearms and his understated stainless-steel Rolex. Jake had the most beautiful hands and chest I’d ever seen. I can still envision his tan forearms covered with golden-blond hair. His eyes looked bright blue like my dad’s against his dark skin. Immediately, this girl was gone.

He told us to turn on the TV, that a tornado was headed toward Wichita. But the combination of our impending doom and the sight of his tan neck against his white cotton shirt made me feel the need to breed.

About that time, loud crashes of thunder shook the Aldritts’ house. You have to witness a Kansas storm to know its full impact. The wind whipped up and was immense, and the lightening was like a thousand transformers blowing at once. I’ve been terrified of storms my whole life, especially tornadoes. I’d seen Udall, Kansas, flattened to the ground when I was eight. Tornadoes are vicious and unpredictable.

I snapped out of my crush coma, and true fear set in. But a moment later I had the insane thought,
Oh my god, it’s Jake. I need to brush my teeth so that I have fresh breath when I flirt with him before we die in a twister.

While he was in the living room messing with the TV I seized the moment.
Oh my god, I probably have brownies in my teeth
. I scrambled in my purse for a toothbrush and ran across the kitchen to the sink. Under the cabinet was a tube of toothpaste. I began brushing wildly.

Oh my god.

I can’t have brownies in my teeth!

I can’t let Jake see brownies in my teeth!