Suburban Kathy Bates
If you follow me on Twitter (If you don’t already, please
don’t start. It’s really not worth the attention.), I recently live tweeted a
train encounter with an older lady, who was on the train with a younger lady
who looked old. Both of them were kind of overweight and they were sitting in
the train compartment between cars. If you don’t ride the CTA in Chicago
(…lucky bastards…) then you don’t know that this is a tiny compartment off the
main one. It has two seats and basically room for one person to stand. I like
standing in it in the morning because it minimizes other people touching me on
public transportation because other people are disgusting.
So I was sitting there and the older lady is talking.
Loudly. Like, not in an obnoxious, twentysomething,
I-think-I’m-funny-and-want-other-people-to-hear-me-talking-about-my-ex-boyfriend
kind of way, but in an
I’m-an-ebullient-middle-aged-woman-and-I-would-work-at-a-bank-if-I-lived-in-a-rural-area
sort of way.
So she’s talking really loudly and I can tell her friend is
kind of uncomfortable, because she keeps looking around to see if other people
are staring. I’m intently looking down at my phone and, of course, listening to
every word that is being said.
Like:
“Do ya know, Sandy? God, she’s the funniest woman on earth.
You’ll piss your pants if you hang around her too long!”
That was at the point that I keyed in to the conversation
and became interested. Prior to this phrase, she had been talking about
presents and wrapping and it hadn’t been that great.
I also realized that this woman is basically every woman
that Kathy Bates has been playing in movies for the past twenty years. Not
every part Kathy Bates has played, but if you need a charming, funny, loud,
southern woman, you cast Kathy Bates in Titanic or About Schmidt. I also didn’t
know where this woman spawned from because she obviously doesn’t ride public
transit a lot, if she is belting out the words “piss” and other things… like
she’s singing an aria. Generally when you encounter such people, they are from
the suburbs. It’s just how it is. On Cubs game days, there are inevitable five
50-something year olds from Naperville yelling about the weather and public
transportation and how fun it is to be on a train.
So, the conversation starts to escalate.
“I taped the Brown’s game.”
“Oh…,” young lady says shyly.
“Yeah, but they lost! I’m not going to watch a game they
lose! I guess I could watch it for those cute boys in hot pants. You know what
I’m sayin’!”
“Uhhh…” her companion says.
At this point it becomes important for me to stifle
laughter. I didn’t want them to think I was laughing at them, because Suburban
Kathy Bates is HILARIOUS. If she had a talk show I would watch it. I also want
to know who Sandy is, because if she makes SKB laugh until she pisses her
pants, I WANT HER IN MY LIFE.
“Yeah, I love football,” SKB continues.
“I like soccer better,” friend says.
“Oh!” SKB bats her eyelids. “Those cute boys running around
in short shorts, getting all sweaty! You know!”
“Hehe.”
“I’ll watch that. You gotta take what you can get, big girl.
You know what I’m sayin’!”
At this point SKB breaks down into hysterical laughter and I
can no longer stifle my giggling. Luckily we are pulling into my station, so I
have my hand over my mouth and am trying to push my way out because my laugh
has drawn attention from the companion, who I think thought I was laughing at
their expense.
When I finally get out of the car, I am still laughing on
the train platform and everyone is throwing me the side eye because they think
I’m crazy. I immediately get on my phone
and update every status I can think of with wisdom from SKB. I only wished I’d
gotten her train schedule so I could ride with her every day. I’d have to push
out her traveling companion Mean Girls style so that I could ascend to the top
of the SKB friend ranks.
“Colin Kapernick! I’d watch that 24-7!” SKB would say. “You
know what I’m sayin’, big gay!”
And we laugh all the way to Naperville.
I Guess My Life is Awful
It’s a weird experience going from a big city to a small
town, especially if you were raised small and have spent several years in a big
city. Like in Chicago, you just kind of assume that everyone thinks the way the
media spins stuff, so gays are loved, Obama is God, and country music sucks.
It’s weird then to go back to the small town life and
realize that a large number of Americans still rent videos from a brick and
mortar video store and think that if you aren’t pregnant, getting someone
pregnant, or actually carrying a child at that moment, then your life is a
failure.
I recently went to one of my best friend’s Christmas parties
over the holiday. The first half of the night was pretty great. We met a bunch
of old friends, met some of my buddy’s new coworkers, and played board games. The
coworkers we met all had kids, but it was normal. They talked about the kids,
we talked about other stuff, it was a casual conversation and a lot of fun.
Then about ¾ into the night this one girl showed up from our
high school. Despite being almost 30 and a pretty mature adult, I basically
break into hives when I see popular people from high school. I’m still
terrified of what they’ll ask or if they’ll make fun of me; I literally become
15 again and can’t talk or really assert myself in any way.
Well, Tina entered and sat on the couch. She married a guy
from our high school, has kids, etc.
Even though I was at one of my best friend’s house and had
another couple of my really good friends present, they don’t fully understand
what it’s like to be socially aberrant in some way. They have girlfriends and
wives, live in rural places, and aren’t really ostracized due to any factors.
They can nimbly slip into any social stream and be absolutely fine.
Luckily, another friend from our high school, Penny, was
there. Penny also lives in Chicago, is an artist, and is on the road less
traveled. She didn’t get married and have kids, and I didn’t like vagina, so
our existences clearly drew a stark boundary between us and everyone else at
the party.
Well, Tina sits right next to Penny and is like:
“Oh my god, hey!” (They were both cheerleaders, so you can
only imagine the girly double-speak happening.) “How are you! What are you up
to?”
Penny pulled out her phone and showed a picture of a
painting she had just sold. “I’m an artist. This is a piece I recently did.”
Tina looks at the picture, then turns away and takes a sip
of her drink, “Oh, that’s nice. So like, artist…? That’s your job?”
Penny sort of pulled the conversation together and the night
continued. I don’t mean to cast Penny or myself as some sort of saints at the
mercy of rural rednecks, because it wasn’t like that at all. Penny definitely
gave back what she got, i.e.:
Tina: “How’s your sister? She was always so pretty.”
Penny: “She’s well. You guys kind of look alike.”
Tina: “She was so pretty… Wait, what is that supposed to
mean?”
Penny: “You look the same. You have the same features.”
*Cheerleader stare down*
At another point Tina is like, “We went to the party and
then stopped to get a video on the way home.”
Penny says, “Video? Like… You got a movie? Don’t you have
Netflix or AppleTV?”
Tina answered this question with a tremendous eye roll and a
look around at the rest of like, “Who is this bitch?”
The rest of the game time was uneventful; luckily I had
nestled between two couches and was trying to be unnoticed by the rising tide
of high school people that started to crash through the door.
Eventually, however, it was unavoidable to talk to them and
a big group showed up, ending the game and raising the average BAC of the party
from .05 to 2.2.
I was shuffling about the room between groups and took a
seat next to Penny. We knew some of the same people in Chicago, so we were
chatting and catching up… oh yeah, and obvi throwing major shade at Tina for
hating Penny so much.
This was until Linda came into the party and threw herself
down between us. I can honestly say I don’t think that Linda remembers any of
this party. She was BOMBED. So she’s like:
“Well, who would have thought…this…right? Us? Right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Penny was like, “Let’s document this.”
So a picture was taken and put somewhere online with the
tag: “This happened.”
Then Linda is like, “Yeah, I hated you in high school. If I
would have met you then, I would have clawed your eyes out.”
I think it would be a safe estimate to say Linda and I spoke
5 times during our 4 years of high school. I don’t know if she was drunk
hating, exaggerating, or really didn’t like Penny and just lumped me in with
her since we were sitting next to each other, but there was really no reason
for us to have any feelings, one way or the other, about each other in high
school.
This segued into life advice from Linda: “Having kids sucks.
No one calls you to party anymore.”
At this point I was so uncomfortable, I started glancing
around the room to find an exit. All my friends were a room away or otherwise
engaged, and I just couldn’t handle it.
Eventually, I got up and went to the kitchen where I poured
some punch and took some deep breaths. I had a short reprieve before Bonnie
rolled up to me and is like, “Hey, Tedd!”
Bonnie and I had maybe spoken in high school 6 times.
“So what’s up? What are you doing?”
I explained my life, which, while unimpressive, is
self-sufficient and pretty good.
Bonnie didn’t think so.
“So you, like, work for PayPal? Wow. You were smart in high
school. I’m glad I got high all the time. It would have been a waste to study.
PayPal. Wow.”
I don’t know where Bonnie’s rancor for PayPal comes from,
although, I feel I could have said, “I cured cancer” and she would have been
like, “Oh, wow. Cancer? AIDs is a bigger problem, why didn’t you cure that?
What a waste.”
So she scoots off and left me feeling awkward and rethinking
all of my life decisions. I then realize that none of her questions had been,
or ever would be, “Are you happy?” so any judgments would always be based on
her set perceptions of what I should be doing… Astronaut? Doctor? President?
And not what actually matters.
It was all right, though, because she came up and apologized
later:
“Tedd, I just, I wanted to apologize. It’s just you were
smart and talented in high school and everyone expected you to do something
with your life, but wow, like you’re just… You know it’s kind of a
disappointment for everyone who thought you’d, you know…”
This rambling continued for a bit before Neil, a kid who is
several years younger than me, thoughtfully interjected:
“Hey, Tedd, it’s good to see you.”
We then proceeded to talk about his career and his moving
away from Springfield. For a brief moment I thought that I should have attended
our high school reunion the previous summer if my conversations would have been
like those with Neil.
This was swiftly countered by Bonnie’s:
“Oh yeah! The reunion! We all know you think you were too
good for us.”
So… I guess everyone from high school thinks I’m an uppity
homo who works at PayPal in a go-nowhere position?
I guess it was a relief that no one made fun of me for being
gay, but I can’t help but think it was tacit in all their judgments: You’re not like us. You left us and now you’re just.. doing
that?
It was all worth it though, for this gem of advice from one
of the girls at the party.
“You know, I read on Google that if you smoke two packs of
cigarettes the day after sex, it works like Plan B. It doesn’t, so don’t
believe it.”
Advice we can all live by, and really, an important reminder
of the season, because, what if Mary had smoked 2 packs of cigarettes when she
was pregnant with Baby Jesus?!
Something we should all think about.
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
