Aspirations

(One of my Deci-Classic posts - this was originally a free-form poem written back in 1994, but I think it works better as just an essay.)

There but for the lack of foundation garments went I

When I was eleven, my mother and I moved to Chubbuck, Idaho (a slightly less glamorous suburb of Pocatello).  That was when I realized what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a scandalous woman.

I don’t know what you called them in your hometown - brazen hussies, scarlet women, or as my grandmother used to say “women who were not better than they ought to be, “ but you know the kind of woman I mean.  They’re pretty hard to miss. Florescent stretch pants frightened into submission, K-Mart cashmere sweaters straining over double-D chests, and six-inch come-get-me heels grinding out the butts of their Salems (‘Cause smoking menthols was more ladylike. No one ever accused them of not being ladies and left with his family jewels intact.)

We had a prime example of a scandalous woman living in our trailer court  (that’s where scandalous women tend to live – at least while they are waiting for their old men to get out of lockup.  He was framed.) I don’t remember exactly what her name was, Bambi or Trixie or Shelli or Debbie – Let’s face it, when parents hang that kind of a name on you at birth, you don’t grow up to be a rocket scientist. Some women were born to be bad.  She was one of those women. She drove a big-old ’67 Mustang.  Cherry red.  And she used to hire me to baby-sit for her every Friday night while she went down and kicked some ass at the local pool hall.

I used to watch her prepare for the evening, using a half a can of Aqua-Net and a pint of kiss-me-dead red nail polish, and listen to her tales of the men she loved, and the women she hated, and the friends she was going to get together with and go out and paint the town red.  I wasn’t quite sure what this meant. But I knew it sounded like excitement and adventure and life and… Like a huge party that I couldn’t join. Yet.

My desire to be just like her wasn’t hurt by the fact that my other role-model among the women of the Blue Moon Trailer Court was Bonnie, a sweet young thing just off her honeymoon with Max. She wore dresses with flower prints that came modestly below her knees and she wore her hair long because her husband liked it better that way. She used to bake me chocolate chip cookies with carob-chip substitutes – they’re healthier that way.  And more boring. At the time, I hated boring slightly more than I hated broccoli.

I knew that I was meant for better things – neon lights, rhinestone jewelry, fake satin everything. But, though I tried, I never quite made it to scandalous. I didn’t have the figure to pull it off.  Or the lingerie. Or the subscriptions to True Detective and Playgirl. But every now and then, I still manage to make the girls at the office say “You did what?”  It’s my little tribute to the Bambi/Trixie/Shelli/Debbie that still reigns inside me.