As I Lay Frying Read online

  With that, a gaggle of women in fringed shirts and cowboy boots came in. One couple asked another, “How’s the place you’re staying?”

  “Great,” said a rested-looking woman, “it’s a beach block condo and it’s real homey. Not stripped down like lots of rentals.”

  Bonnie poked me in the ribs and winked.

  So we slunk off to await the phone man and clean our floating house. With the weather improving, we phoned in our pizza order and waited for the dock party to begin. Pity the poor renters with their parking tickets, and kids screaming for T-shirts and beach fries, while we watch a gorgeous sunset and imagine all the tax deductions we’ll buy for the condo come fall.

  Home sweet boat.

  May 1997

  LORD HELP THE MISTER WHO COMES

  BETWEEN ME AND MY SISTER

  By the time Thursdays roll around I’ve pretty much had it up to my eyeballs with people assuming everybody is heterosexual. That’s why I love beach weekends—with all the diversity in this community, gay people get a breather from the insulting assumptions we hear most everywhere else.

  And when Rehoboth burst to life on Memorial Day weekend, I counted dozens of reasons why my comfort level is so high. Between an awesome women’s dance at the convention center (even if Bonnie and I were the oldest women on the dance floor), and Baltimore Avenue teeming with gay people, we were everywhere.

  Insulting assumptions were mercifully hard to come by. Unlike last week when Bonnie and I were at our local mall and a salesman eyed the two of us, looked at my credit card and asked, “What are you, sisters, or something?”

  Now this happens to most lesbian couples I know, even if they’re as different as Jack and Mrs. Sprat. The only exception (and I’m not even including race here) is when only one lesbian has grey hair. Then they ask the embarrassing, “mother and daughter?”

  But mostly it’s the sister thing. When one lesbian offers a credit card to pay for purchases for the pair, salespeople make the only assumption they’re conditioned to make: it’s not a husband and wife or parent and child, so these women with financial ties must be, uh, um, sisters!

  When the clerk asked if we were sisters or something I wanted to ask if he was a moron or something, but I settled for telling him we were merely “or something.”

  Gay people need an ad campaign to let the world know that alternative spousal relationships exist. We could plaster busses and billboards with photos of great looking lesbian couples saying “We’re no sister act.” Or posters of three embracing couples—two men, two women and a mix ‘n match, with copy reading “Just friends? Think again.”

  And the first place I’d post them would be hotels.

  Recently we checked into the Fairmont in Chicago, where a clerk asked us “Can you make do with one bed or do you want two?”

  Boldly, without hesitation, I said “One will be fine.”

  The clerk looked at us and said “Are you sure? Because I can get you a room with two.”

  “I’m sure,” I said with conviction, “We’ll take the room with one.”

  “Well, let’s check a minute,” she continued, tapping on her keyboard.

  “Really, it’s not...” I protested.

  “Oh! Here we go! I do have a room with two beds,” she said triumphantly, handing me a key.

  Invisible lesbians. I don’t think she would have listened if it had been my picture instead of Ellen DeGeneres on Time Magazine with the “Yup, I’m Gay!” headline.

  Then there was the gallstone incident.

  I arrived at the emergency room with what felt like a Subaru Outback lodged in my gut. I’m doubled over in a triage room chair and they shove a financial responsibility form under my nose asking me to check, among other things, single, married or divorced. I was in no mood to debate. I qualified to check all three, so I did. Hours later, after being told I needed surgery, they got me again.

  “Mrs. Jacobs, er...Miss, er, Jacobs...er...” (I guess they read the financial form.) “We’re taking you to X-Ray. Is there any chance you’re pregnant?”

  “No, not a chance.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “There’s not the slightest chance you could be pregnant?”

  “No. I don’t sleep with men and my biological clock stopped ticking before the lesbian baby boom.”

  Now this got her attention, but she couldn’t seem to process the information.

  “So you’re sure?”

  “That I’m a lesbian? You bet.” Morphine is really good stuff. I never did find out what she checked on the form.

  In my pre-op haze I recalled other such indignities. Like the ignorant transmission man who assumed I was scamming him when I brought the car in under Bonnie’s warranty; the insensitive people who ask Bonnie “are you still with Fay?” when they’d

  never dream of asking married friends the same question; and the legions of Americans who assume that straight couples are the only ones working hard, paying taxes, and living in the suburbs with station wagons and dogs.

  Finally, a nurse came to take me to the O.R. and asked who’d be in the lounge awaiting word of my condition. I gave her Bonnie’s name. “Friend or relative?” the nurse asked. Another trick question!

  “Um, relative.”

  “Sister? “

  “No. Um...”

  I finally lost it and whimpered “Spouse....” To her credit, the nurse, with a hint of apology said, “Oh. I guess we need some time to get used to these situations so we can do better.”

  Well, the rest of the world should take a lesson from Rehoboth. Capping the weekend, Bonnie and I were half a foursome celebrating a birthday at a local eatery. Behind us, two straight couples in their late 60s or early 70s celebrated a birthday too, and we exchanged toasts.

  When they asked where we were from, I pointed to the boys and said “These guys have a home here, and we’re from Maryland, but spend weekends here on our boat.”

  And lo and behold, the quartet had not a moment’s hesitation processing our non-traditional coupling. And that’s how it should be. No if, and, or assumption about it.

  June 1997

  NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR SOILED CLOTHING

  Partway through our rainy, windy, miserable spring, I heard an explanation for it on the weather channel—something about a jet stream screw-up causing El Niño winds. I was explaining it to my friend the accountant who said “then El Niño must be Spanish for f-ing cold.”

  He had a point.

  And while we were reduced to wearing ski jackets in June and passing the dog around for warmth, El Niño really got on my nerves when my best friend from high school visited the beach with her family.

  Too cold for beach or boat, and too inappropriate to suggest spending the day downing Bloody Marys, we did the beach fries, funnel cake, T -shirt thing, then bowed to the 10-year-old’s request to visit the boardwalk amusements.

  First we played Whack-a-Mole, where you take a heavy mallet and bash small plastic forest creatures popping up through holes in a table. I was terrible at it—always a day late and a mole short. Bonnie, Best Friend, and the kids gave those moles migraines from hell, scoring 180 to my 40. By our sixth round I hiked my score to 60 by hovering over only one hole and whacking the daylights out of its lone inhabitant.

  I was pondering Whack-a-Mole as an allegory for coming out of the closet at a Southern Baptist Convention when the youngest player asked “What do you get for winning Whack-a-Mole?”

  “Carpal Tunnel Syndrome,” I said.

  “Aunt Fay, want to go on the bumper cars?” a young-un asked.

  “No, you go.” I said, wondering why anybody would pay to get whiplash when you have such a good chance of getting it for free on Route One.

  Suddenly, fog rolled in from the ocean, plunging the boardwalk into a dense haze. Best Friend and I lost sight of the kids— including Bonnie. By the time we saw them again they were in some sort of line, which I inadvertently joined when I w
alked up to ask what they were waiting for.

  “Great, you’re going with us!” Bonnie said with a finality cinched by the 40 people now behind us in line. It seemed I was going on some sort of circular contraption painted like a wagon train, with little two-person cages harmlessly rocking back and forth. It didn’t look bad.

  I didn’t see the sign until I was next in line to board. “Not recommended for pregnant women, people with high blood pressure, heart problems, bad backs or with any other medical problems….” It included everything but toenail fungus.

  I’d have cut and run but there were too many eight-year olds behind me. I stepped into the gently swinging cage, sat down and pulled the security bar across my lap. That should have been my first clue—it was encased in about a foot of foam rubber.

  Sharing my cage was Best Friend’s son, the recent college grad, who asked, “You’re going to be okay with this, right Aunt Fay?” Clue two.

  With a sickening grinding of gears our cage shot forward, and promptly turned completely upside down, hanging me by my thighs and emptying my pockets of a whole winter’s stash of parking meter quarters.

  “Oh my god!!!” somebody, who turned out to be me screamed as I closed my eyes and saw myself hanging over Rehoboth like a sloth.

  As we righted ourselves, sixteen dollars in quarters came back and hit me in the face. Best Friend watched in horror. If her face looked that bad and she was on the ground, what did my….

  “AHHHHHHH!! Houston, we have a problem!!!!” We flipped again, and this time I was sure I was falling out, that stupid bar no match for a well-fed woman who was, at that moment, regretting the funnel cake.

  With visions of a Barbara Walters expose on amusement park accidents flashing before me, I clung to the bar, blood rushing to my brain, and centrifugal force flinging my breasts back where they hadn’t been since puberty.

  “Here we go again!” hollered my cage-mate, either to warn me or drown out my moaning.

  Again and again the cage whirled in circles, turning us upside down until I was finally heard screaming “I’m almost 50 years old! What in the El Niño am I doing here !!!!”

  Then, mercifully, it stopped. I was helped from the cage by my solicitous escort, who politely noted my sea-green complexion and went to get me a Coke.

  “Well, what did you think?” asked Bonnie, whose face was still its natural color and who seemed to be getting a perverse thrill in knowing I wanted to kill her.

  “I think I’m going to barf,” I said, to the laughter of my companion who thought I was kidding. It was obvious that my entire entourage thought I was a whack-a-mole-challenged, bumper car-fearing, easily nauseated, amusement-phobic ninny.

  I staggered toward the old-fashioned Shooting Gallery arcade, where you could fire a rifle at targets on an outhouse door, a moonshine jug and the back of a piano player’s head. I especially liked that one. I used to be married to a keyboard guy.

  Bonnie, Best Friend and the kids looked at this antiquated amusement with no lights, no virtual reality, no joy stick and no computer graphics, turning up their noses.

  Fine. I borrowed two quarters, plunked them into the slot and started to fire. Bam. Down went a duck. Bam. Open came the outhouse door. Bam. A whole bunch of geese bought it. Bam, Bam, Bam. To my great glee the pianist was history. 25 shots, 25 hits.

  More quarters hastily came my way. I didn’t know if I was Annie Oakley or an Earp brother. 50 shots, 50 hits and the piano player got it twice just for spite. Did I see some respect blooming on the faces of my posse?

  “Wow” said the pre-teen; “Impressive,” said the young man; “Doesn’t this worry you, Bonnie?” asked the Best Friend.

  “No,” said Bonnie, “but I suggest we let her have her way for the rest of the day.”

  It was on the way out of the amusement area, between the Tea Cup ride and the hamster cage thing, that I spied the professionally printed sign that pretty much sums up my experience. It said NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR SOILED CLOTHING.

  If not them, then who? El Niño? And what exactly are they trying to say, really? It’s there on the wall by the Haunted House. If you get down that way check it out and let me know what you think. And please look for my quarters embedded in the boardwalk.

  But a word of warning: funnel cake or hamster cage. Never both.

  June 1997

  GOT A PAIR OF DYKES?

  “Why the hell don’t you write fiction,” Bonnie said, “then maybe these stupid things wouldn’t happen to us all the time.” She had a point.

  We were stranded in the middle of Rehoboth Bay with a boat full of actors and a big metal crab pot stuck to our propeller. The actors were a trio of musical comedy folks set to perform that night in town.

  We’d planned a leisurely afternoon cruise. At 3:30 p.m. we were ten minutes from completing the ride, leaving plenty of time for the actors to get back wes and rest up for the evening—when the submerged crab pot, no warning float attached, attacked our propeller. Cruuunch, thud, short stop, beer everywhere.

  “There’s good news and bad news,” I said. “The bad news is we’re dead in the water; the good news is we have a dozen free crabs.”

  “Right,” said the captain, “propeller repairs alone will make those free crabs worth about a hundred bucks each.”

  Bonnie and I stared at the twisted metal mess behind the boat while the actors retreated to the bow to argue over who’d be a better Ginger from Gilligan’s Island.

  “Let me take a look at the situation,” said a passenger we’ll call Kayak Man. He offered to get into the water to survey the damage. “How deep is it here?” he asked.

  “Shallow. I doubt if it’s over four feet,” I said. “We’re always running aground.”

  He climbed down the swim ladder and completely disappeared. He was pissed, but we’d finally found the channel. Bobbing for air, Kayak Man noticed that our new crabs were still very much alive. “I’m not touching those things, they’re snapping at me!” crab phobic Kayak Man said, scrambling back aboard.

  “This will be great material for another story,” somebody said to me, prompting my grabbing my little notebook to take down details.

  “Put the damn book away and start flapping your arms in the distress signal for a tow,” Bonnie hollered. The actors joined me and I couldn’t tell if we were calling for help or singing Hello Dolly.

  I grabbed the cell phone and called for a rescue party. We waited, trying not to think of the clock ticking toward show time. “Have you ever been stuck before?” asked a performer.

  “Once or twice,” I allowed.

  I told of a particularly memorable incident on the Chesapeake Bay where our boat, stocked with a quartet of lesbians, suffered a dead ignition switch. We needed a hot wire, and loathe as I am to admit this, not one of us had that skill.

  A good Samaritan came along, climbed aboard, and flopped onto his back beneath the boat’s dashboard to play with the wires. Bonnie handed him requested tools.

  “Screwdriver.” She handed it over.

  “Wrench.” She handed it over.

  “Pair of dykes.”

  Excuse me????? We looked urgently at each other, knowing we had two pair aboard, but not knowing which couple to sacrifice. The four of us clamped our mouths shut and clutched our sides to keep from exploding into hysterics.

  “Dykes. You know, needle nosed pliers, have you got any?” asked the mechanic, mercifully unaware of his double entendre and ensuing commotion.

  “Oh, right!!!” Bonnie said, handing him the proper instrument. Fortunately the engine turning over covered our roaring laughter.

  The next day we conducted an informal tool survey—needle nosed pliers really are called dykes.

  Back to the present, our stranded crew was amused. “Hey, we’ve got a pair and a spare here” said one of our crew, pointing at me and Bonnie, then herself.

  “Are they really called that?” asked an incredulous actor. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

 
“I hadn’t either,” I said.

  “Somebody was putting you on,” said Kayak Man.

  With that, we saw our marina rescue boat heading toward us. Pulling alongside, the mechanic boarded our craft, looked down at the crab pot stuck to the prop and the first thing out of his mouth was “Do you have a pair of dykes?”

  “I...rest...my...case,” I managed to spit before stuffing my hat in my mouth to keep from howling. Now there were seven people clutching their sides, screaming with laughter. The mechanic had no idea what he’d said.

  Since the only pair of you-know-whats we had aboard were human, we had to be towed back to the marina for repairs. The actors fled as soon as we hit terra firma.

  Bonnie was about to do the butch thing and jump in the water to yank the damned crab pot off the back of her boat when the rescue team directed us to stand on the bow to help lift the prop out of the water. “Woman’s work,” Bonnie muttered. “Now we can call your damn book “Our life as ballast.”

  Then, Kayak Man, who was the remaining man on the crew, was asked to stand behind the boat and do the honors with— what else—a pair of dykes.

  In a burst of machismo, Kayak Man slipped into the water, grabbed the aforementioned rudely-named tool, followed instructions for cutting part of the mangled metal away, and freed the propeller. Triumphantly, he waved his pair of dykes in the air. Our hero.

  So the actors made it on stage in time, the boat seemed no worse for wear, and we all proved what we’d surely suspected: you never know when a pair of dykes will come in real handy.

  July 1997

  DON’T FOG ON MY PARADE

  People thought I was kidding when I vowed to recreate one of history’s most famous journey’s—not Lewis & Clark, not Amelia Earhart, but Barbra Streisand’s Funny Girl tugboat trip in New York Harbor. I intended to take our boat to the Statue of Liberty, climb out on the bow and sing Don’t Rain on My Parade.