Not So Model Home

CHAPTER 13


And What Are Your Plans for That Cucumber?

The next night, I found myself driving to our local bowling alley. Monday night was the gay bowling league. I was on the only straight team. Us four girls: Jerri, Samantha, Regina Belle, and me. What brought us together is that all our husbands turned out to be gay. Well, in Regina’s case, one of several, making her batting average better than the rest of us simply because she had been married more times. So, since we loved the company of gay men, we figured it wouldn’t hurt to be surrounded by them holding sixteen-pound balls. We even had our team name embroidered on our bowling shirts: THE FAG HAGS, in very fancy script. In sequins. Strangely enough, we stuck out like a sore thumb in a sea of gay men, transvestites, one transsexual, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They rarely wore their official transvestite nun habits, owing to the fateful day when Sister Way Too Much’s habit got caught in the ball return and she was almost dragged into the bowels of the machine. From that day on, only facial makeup and short headpieces were worn by the Sisters. Very short, I might add.

When I walked in, I kept my head low. I wanted to slip in quietly with as few people noticing me as was possible. That plan went into the shitter when several of the bowlers recognized me immediately and began a standing ovation. Those who didn’t join in craned their necks to see what all the commotion was about. You would have thought I rolled a 300 game.

Right then, I did the most uncharacteristic thing I’d ever done in my life. I waved my hand with an Elizabeth II royal wave and followed it with a bow. This was so not me. All my life, I’d avoided being seen, being recognized, being photographed. And here I was, sweeping in the praise and adoration as the waves washed over me. So this is what it felt like to be a celebrity. I liked it.

Several of the guys clustered around me, gushing about my performance in the premiere episode of Things Are a Bit Iffy. As I changed into my bowling shoes, fans lobbed questions at me about my first episode.

“Was the slap real or was it staged?”

“Did you wish you hit Gilles harder?”

“Who are you going to punch next?”

“Did you have a boob job?” (I didn’t take offense at this last question since it was asked by Carla de Rossi, the league’s only transsexual.) The initial adoration and congratulations eventually died down, but throughout the night, men would drift by or shout “great slap” to me while I was waiting my turn to bowl. It must have had an effect on my bowling, because I rolled a 220, 231, and 267. It would all be forgotten in the morning, I told myself.

It wasn’t.


I didn’t realize how much my celebrity had spread. Videos posted on YouTube containing parts of the show were nearing 1,200,000 views by the time I got up. When I walked into my local supermarket and entered the vegetable and fruit section around 10 A.M., it really hit me how my life was changing—whether I liked it or not. Granted, I was wearing mini-stilettos, skintight cigarette capri pants, and a low-cut white linen blouse—just the kind of outfit you would wear to pick over zucchinis. As I made my way around the onion and potato table, I could feel dozens of pairs of eyes boring holes in my back.

I moved onto the lettuce and cabbage section, and I was keenly aware that not only was I being watched, but whispered about. I went about my business, thumping a cantaloupe, squeezing a vine-ripened tomato, when a man provocatively holding two casaba melons approached me slyly, puckering up enough to send off a seductive air kiss that said, “I want to get my hands on your tomatoes.” I ignored him—the price of celebrity.

But my adoring fans weren’t done with me yet. A man standing near me, who was sneaking quick sideways glances, whispered discreetly, “Slap me.”

I looked at him briefly, not sure I had heard what I heard. I went back to my Roma tomatoes.

“Slap me, Amanda.”

This I couldn’t let go. “Excuse me?” I said.

“Slap me. Step on my nuts with the heel of those stilettos.”

“Do I know you?” I asked, and turned away.

“I want you to violate me with this yam,” he said, brandishing a rather oversized tuberous root vegetable.

“That’s a sweet potato.”

“Well, it’s a yam, too,” he replied defensively.

“Yams are from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This is a sweet potato. They’re from completely different botanical families.”

“Potato potah-to. I want you to ram it into me, Amanda. Make me your bitch.”

At first I was put off by this man’s appalling lack of knowledge of the origins of basic foods. But my encounter with him had taken a more ominous turn. It wasn’t the sexual component that disturbed me. From the time I was old enough to know what was going on and had breasts big enough to cause male heads to turn, I knew I was being hit on by men from time to time. Creepy fact, but those were the times. There were no sexual harassment laws, no predator laws, or women to stand up for themselves when I was growing up. Of course, it was a great improvement over my grandmother’s time, when she claimed that they left the female babies to the wolves in her Lithuanian village because they weren’t worth as much as a man. So I accepted the evolution that had occurred in human thought, however small that it was.

No, what really bothered me was the fact that from the instant this man used my name, he was acting as if he actually knew me—that he felt comfortable enough to be intimate with me. I knew a line had been crossed. It was unfortunate. I wanted adoring fans, the operative word here being adoring. Adoring meant people standing at a respectful and reverential distance, whispering how much they wanted to be like me—no, to be me—and perhaps snapping a picture to show the folks back home while throwing large bags of gold, frankincense, and myrrh in my general direction. But it concerned me that fans wouldn’t always follow the rules I had laid down in my mind. I discovered that I should be nice to all of my fans, but I shouldn’t be too nice to any of them.

“Get down on your knees,” I said, surprising myself.

“What?” the startled yam . . . I mean, sweet-potato–wielding man replied.

“Didn’t you hear me? I said get down on your knees while I finish shopping,” I stated firmly, extending my index finger with the blood-red nail toward the floor, where I expected this man to grovel. “I have more shopping to do. I expect to find you here when I come back!” I said, raising my voice a bit at the end for emphasis. He never got fully down on his knees, and as soon as I was far enough away, he dropped the sweet potato and ran out of the store.

A woman who was watching all this transpire from a distance drifted toward me. She decided to comment on what she had just seen.

“Men!”

“You said it, sister.”

“I recognized you as Amanda Thorne on Things Are a Bit Iffy.”

“That’s me,” I said, thrusting out my hand to shake. She grabbed my hand and pumped it like an enthusiastic candidate for governor.

“So glad to meet you. When I saw you slap that little French bitch on the TV show, I felt a stab of sisterhood. We don’t need to take that from the male patriarchy.”

“Er, yeah.”

“I mean, men have been oppressing us since we walked out of caves and realized we could do more than breed and cook.”

Now, I’m a feminist to a very large extent. I still have my EVE WAS FRAMED bumper sticker on the back of my Toyota Land Cruiser. I still admire Gloria Steinem, mostly. But when I hear a woman making remarks that involve words like oppression, patriarchy, or forced castration, it’s too much for me. I mean, I like men. I like being f*cked by them. I was married to one, for gosh sakes. Of course, he turned out to be gay. But he is still a man, no matter where his penis has been.

“I’m not sure he was oppressing me per se. I think he’s just a bitchy French queen. An equal opportunity offender, if you will. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a kumquat that’s calling me. A pleasure to meet you.”

I left her standing there, unsure whether I was a bitch, really had fruit to buy, or was too much of a celebrity to bother with the unwashed masses. And to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure what I was just then either.