![]() ![]() I try to avoid parties or events where I don’t know everyone, because I don’t know what to say when people ask what I do. I have enormous privilege, and I am ashamed of it. ![]() I sat on the floor, out of breath, my face wet.īecause I was born into a family with money, I don’t have to work for a living. I started crying so hard I had to climb down off the ladder. For an instant I felt my dad’s presence, chewing away in his own fashion. Up on the ladder alone, painting that tricky corner between the ceiling and the wall, I caught myself pressing the tip of my tongue hard against the inside of my cheek. We ripped weeds out of cracks with silent fury for the next hour.įive years after he died, I was painting the upstairs apartment of a duplex I’d recently purchased. It was his own fault for starting without me. I bellowed that he was full of shit and reminded him that he knew I’d be late. He said he was having trouble breathing, and my lateness might’ve been the end of him. When I arrived, he was so pissed that he was in tears and yelled at me before I could even get out of my car. I told him I would be by a bit later: I needed to drop my daughter off at her mom’s first. One day, near the end of his life, my dad asked me to meet him at the barbershop to pull weeds. The Irish temper I inherited from my mom would clash with his more simmering anger. I’ve been free of tobacco for more than twenty years now my dad quit three months before he died. I still catch myself doing it when I’m raking or washing dishes. He chewed his I probed the inside of my mouth with mine. And when we weren’t smoking, we worked our tongues. My dad and I often worked together in silence on small jobs and big projects: painting houses pulling weeds around his barbershop and his commercial rental property tarring over the cracks in the roof of my mom’s flower shop scrubbing grime from brick walls with a mixture of water and vinegar.īoth smokers, we never took cigarette breaks when we worked - we just kept puffing away. Some things can only be seen by braving the cold and the dark. I think of that period as one of darkness but also beauty. Then I moved back to the city to finish my degree in elementary education. I lasted six months at Weasels, longer than my marriage lasted after the move. When it was over, I didn’t sign the release to have the photos published, but I still pull them out occasionally to see my young body lying on a pile of red velvet. Her photographer agreed and offered to include me in a shoot. A photographer flew in to do a photo shoot, and the model told me I was pretty enough to be in Penthouse. ![]() One week a Penthouse centerfold model performed at Weasels. Once home, I would pause to look across the frozen lake, perhaps taking in a shower of meteors against the black sky, or the northern lights, or a scruffy black wolf watching me near the shore. I finished each shift between three and four in the morning and drove a half hour home through the dense woods, often skidding on icy roads. They were arrogant and presumptuous and looked like spacemen in their suits, but their generous tips carried me through the following spring. In February the snowmobilers poured in from Canada and Chicago for a competition in the nearby town. They paid little attention to me and tipped better. Duck hunters wore sweaters and button-down shirts and drank expensive wine and cognac. Bow hunters were quieter and more diversified in their drink choices. Unshowered men, often in bloodstained camouflage, drank beer, yelled, fought, tipped poorly, and groped and pinched me. The busiest time at Weasels was the deer-hunting season. I was also in my mid-twenties and secretly found the idea exciting. The owner said he had another business, though: a strip club called Weasels. I applied for waitressing jobs in a nearby town, hoping to work at a restaurant on the lake near our home, but they had no positions available until the tourists returned in summer. Our marriage was failing, my husband didn’t like working, and I had recently had an affair. In the fall of 1992 I moved with my husband and our two-year-old daughter from Memphis, Tennessee, to a small cabin in the far north of Wisconsin. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |