Part 5 (1/2)
Jess-Chriss and I must have had the same thought: ”Am I going to have to explain to this kid's mother how he died?”
TINA: We were climbing Old Rag Mountain in the dark on a weeknight.
MOTHER WUHL: Is this your girlfriend, young man?
JESS-CHRISS: No.
MOTHER WUHL: Were you my son's girlfriend?
TINA: No, ma'am, but he did once tell me that I could be really pretty if I lost weight.
MOTHER WUHL: What the h.e.l.l were you kids doing up there?!
TINA: Well, I can't speak for Jess-Chriss, but I was hoping for a leisurely night-climb followed by some over-the-jeans action.
JESS-CHRISS: Me, too. But then she was there.
We called frantically to HRW. After a few minutes, he answered. We followed his voice back down the trail and found him. Jess-Chriss climbed out onto the rocks to help HRW over to the trail. He was banged up, but it was somehow decided that we should continue up the mountain. The last half mile or so was not as steep, and we finally made it to the smooth granite top, where we sat down to take in the beautiful dark panorama of the Shenandoah Valley. HRW motioned for me to sit near him, and Chriss-Jess knew instinctively to go sit far away. Tired, dehydrated, and nauseous, I was still ready to try to make this work if there was any funny business to be had. But HRW didn't touch me. Instead he stared wistfully out at the night sky and told me about the last time he'd climbed Old Rag. It was two days prior, during daylight. He had brought his friend Gretchen up here for lunch. He really liked her, he confided in me. Liked her so much that he didn't quite know what to do about it. After they had gotten all the way to the top and had the picnic lunch he'd prepared, he offered her a piece of Trident gum, and Gretchen-he had to stop and smile at the adorableness of this-Gretchen had asked him to tear the piece of Trident in half because it was too big for her. ”Can you believe that?” he marveled. A girl so feminine and perfect that half a piece of Trident was the most she could handle.
I tried to process what this meant for my evening.
”So... you and I will not be dry humping, then?”
The way down from Old Rag is a forest road. We found a stream in the woods and finally got a drink of water. We scooped it up with our hands and it was the greatest, most satisfying drink of water I ever had in my life. ”Oh the water, / Get it myself from the mountain stream,” I sang over and over again in my head. I was listening to a lot of Van Morrison at the time, because I was also very deep.
It was sunrise by the time HRW dropped me off. As weird as the night's events had been, I couldn't help but be excited about the fact that I had climbed a mountain. I never would have thought I could do that. I think someone should design exercise machines that reward people with s.e.x at the end of their workouts, because people will perform superhuman feats for even the faint hope of that.
As I crawled into my bottom bunk, I thought about how I had climbed Old Rag. I thought about Gretchen, the girl who could only accommodate half a piece of gum. ”I hope you marry her,” I imagined saying to HRW, ”and I hope she turns out to have a cavernous v.a.g.i.n.a.”
Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation
At 5:10 A.M., the el train from the Morse stop in Chicago to the Davis St. stop in Evanston is surprisingly safe for young white women. The only people on the train at that hour are Polish women on their way home from cleaning office buildings all night. They share plastic containers of pale Slavic food that you know is b.u.t.tery and delicious. It's just potatoes, rice, meat, and cabbage in an endless series of combinations.
My first and only day job (so far) was at the YMCA in Evanston, Illinois. I had moved to Chicago on Halloween of 1992, pulling into Rogers Park with people whipping eggs at my dad's Pontiac in accordance with the holiday.
I had never waited tables, and my attempt to lie about that to the manager of the Skokie, Illinois, Ruby Tuesday was unsuccessful. ”Where did you work?” ”The Carriage House in Havertown, Pennsylvania.” My more worldly friend from home had told me to make up a restaurant and give them her phone number. ”Did you do hand service or tray service?” ”Tray.” My friend from home had told me to say ”tray service” because it's easier. ”What was your favorite thing about waiting tables?” My friend from home had not antic.i.p.ated this question. ”Um... the children. Waiting on cute kids... It was a family... restaurant.” Game over. While ”the children” may be a good nonsense answer for a Miss Universe contestant or a gubernatorial candidate, anyone who has ever waited tables-or simply gone to a restaurant with a child-knows that children are the soul-sucking worst. They take all the sugar packets out of the bowl, spill milk all over the place, and their wasted meals only cost five dollars, as compared to a nice booze-drinking adult to whom you might be able to up-sell a crispy onion-and-jalapeno c.r.a.ppetizer. I did not get the waiting job.
I applied for a job as the night box office manager of a small theater company in Boystown. The job paid about five dollars an hour for a four-hour s.h.i.+ft, so I was surprised to find that it required a lengthy interview with the artistic director of the theater. I had a degree in drama, I explained. We talked (meaning she talked) about playwrights we (she) liked. It was between me and another girl for the job, and she needed to know what I had to offer the Tiny Pretentious Theater Company because”We like to think of ourselves as the most exciting theater company in Chicago.” I tried a joke. ”I like to think of myself as the most beautiful woman in the world. But where will that get either of us, really?”The other girl got the job.
My mother arranged for a friend to see me at a downtown lawyer's office for a receptionist job.I wore the electric blue polyester Hillary Clinton power suit that my roommate and I shared for such occasions. The hourlong train ride and scramble to find the exact address had made me late, and by the time I got to the interview I was sweating my roommate's BO out of the suit. The stench of every drink and every cigarette she'd had the last time she wore it filled the high-end office in which I interviewed.Between the suit, its booze cloud, and my thick virgin eyebrows, I was deemed unfit to answer phones in plain view. I was turning out to be college educated and unemployable in even the most basic way.
Thankfully, my electric-blue-suitmate was an uninhibited v.a.g.i.n.a about town. She hooked up with an early Obama prototype named Marcus who worked at the Evanston YMCA. They were looking for someone to work the front desk from 5:30 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. I got the job! Evanston is the diverse suburb just north of Chicago where Northwestern University is. The YMCA there was a great mix of a high-end yuppie fitness facility, a wonderful community resource for families, and an old-school residence for disenfranchised men. It may also have been the epicenter of all human grimness.
There was a resident named Mr. Engler who wore a wig on top of his hair like a hat. He came downstairs once a week to get his Meals on Wheels, which were left with me. I developed a One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest style of professionalism. I've always been a Zelig that way. I'm the jerk who starts to drawl when talking to Southerners and I get very butch very fast when playing organized sports.”Here we go! Hands on knees, ladies!” So when it came to the weird residents at the Y, I leaned right into the role of respectful, put-upon caregiver.
”Mr. Engler, your meals are here.” He would say nothing and make no eye contact as he slid the containers toward himself with his Howard Hughes fingernails. ”You have a good day, sir.” I would go back to folding towels with stoic dignity, like Michael Learned on Nurse.
”Sir, may I see your room key?” I'd bark across the lobby like a young Betty Thomas on Hill Street Blues. The residents weren't allowed to have guests up in their rooms, and every now and then a guy would come in with a friend wearing a big coat and a hat and you'd realize it was a woman. These borderline-homeless guys were sneaking women up to their rooms, which only goes to show that women continue to corner the market on low gag reflex.