The ageless gaggle of women swarming the
front doors of the Hub Theater had surrounded me since my birth. They were chatting and laughing. Punctuating
each elongated vowel with a delicate dangled wrist and a smile. The downtown
streetlight bounced from the sheen of their freshly pressed pantsuits. The
moonlight boomeranged from their dazzling zirconia studs.
These women were masters of blurred boundaries. Champion orators of mixed messages. My childhood memories remain filled with vignettes of these fancy misses assaulting my face with perfumed kisses. Lecturing me on the importance of brow plucking at the tender age of nine. Dragging me around to every discount shopping outlet in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex as if they were docents to the very finest of retail collections. Standing on their teeny-tiny decorative soapboxes delivering moral maxims and domestic living tips learned from the matrix of daytime TV. Wanting so much to craft me into a proper woman, but subsequently creating a calamity of insecurity and confusion.
Yet, despite the genetic coaxing to remain hush-hush when it came to matters of personal business, I somehow managed to wiggle out of their nets and onto the stage. Which subsequently lead me to discover solace in the expose. Self-acceptance in the humility. Unabashed ego-rushes from making people laugh.
This new “hobby” of mine made the women extremely uncomfortable.
Nonetheless, there they were. The Queenmothers of my hive. They came to support me and they were glowing.
In theory, I should have been glowing too. But, I was a sweaty mess. It was opening night of my one-woman show, after all. In the city I had determinedly abandoned a decade ago. Tonight was to be my triumphant return! Tonight, I would show the world that I was no longer an awkward preteen moping around in bear-trap braces and army green Cavariccis… but rather, a tall, beautiful, (slightly intoxicated), well-spoken and exuberant woman with finely plucked eyebrows and a bargain mini-dress to boot. Tonight, I would be a sensation!
(If I didn’t bolt out the backdoor of the theater frantically screaming and violently waving my arms in the air. It seemed a like a tantalizing option.)
Tonight, I would share a story. A story of a lonely summer in which I spent most of my days supine and naked on the hardwood floors of my matchbox apartment drinking endless bottles of Shiraz and shamelessly flipping my cheeto-stained fingers through stacks of celebrity gossip rags. All the while, aimlessly searching for love, of course.
Tonight, the Women would learn more about my character in thirty minutes than they had ever known in thirty years of raising me. Terrifying. Or maybe not. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to stomach the show. Maybe they would quietly exit the theater with their suburban-chic handbags pulled over their heads at first mention of my adult bedwetting fiasco(s.) Who knows. It could go either way, really.
Or, maybe they would get me. Like, really get me. Krissi. Their daughter, niece, second cousin. The girl they meticulously yet carelessly raised. Maybe…