Don't Sleep With a Bubba

by Susan Reinhardt

  It all started because my last book gig ran up a big ticket, so the publisher gently suggested I might want to pay for this Atlanta University of Georgia Alumni appearance out of pocket and stick it to Uncle Sam next April.

  Mama and I were pinching pennies and eating KitKats, her favorite candy bar that she takes everywhere, even to church and funerals. The hotels in Buckhead, Atlanta’s ritziest section where I was to speak in a big, fancy tower, were priced in the triple digits and the traffic a nightmare. We tried one hotel, then another, and weren’t about to pay $300 for seven hours’ sleep, a few tubs of cereal, a pot of weak coffee and turn-down bed service with a single square of chocolate. We could do our own bed turning and stick a giant KitKat on the pillow.

  We whipped the car around and decided to try some hotels along Buckhead’s outer edges. Things are always cheaper on the perimeters. “Let’s try that place,” I said, steering into a darling stucco-style hotel that is part of a huge chain of affordability, comfort and great reputation.

  We figured this place would provide shampoo and a hair dryer in the bathroom, a pot of coffee and a continental breakfast in the morning. Instead, we walked directly into a lobby and nearly fainted, inhaling that unmistakable odor of vomit and tee-tee. Croaker’s Rest Home smelled better than this.

  Mama, eyes like a lizard’s, rotating and rolling around and surveying the stinky lobby, reluctantly handed over her Visa and vital information and took a rusting key from the manager.

  A bad vibe encircled us, floating over our heads, entering our bloodstreams and causing our poor hearts to pump and palms to sweat. Men began appearing from nowhere, as if they walked like ugly, whiskery Caspers through the walls. I am talking about mean, unkempt, festering men. I decided to tell a lie so we wouldn’t be robbed, shot or raped in the middle of the night.

  “We’re only going to be here two hours,” I said, so the old goats wouldn’t break into our room and kill us as we slept. The clerk raised his eyebrows, and winked knowingly. Why is he winking that way? I wondered.

  He gave us the key to the back of the building where all these burned-up and rusted cars were parked. Every vehicle appeared to have been pulled from flames or a junkyard. We opened the hotel door and, lo and behold, the beds weren’t made and lady-of-the-evening paraphernalia was strewn everywhere. Six suitcases lay open, and spent condoms littered the filthy carpet while empty cans of Colt 45s and cigarette butts weighted the fake-wood furniture. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

  Mama screamed as if someone had stabbed her. Her eyes popped and I saw more white than I knew was humanly possible, while her jaw fell to her collarbone.

  “We may not be rich, but this is NOT us. Run! We are hightailing it out of here.”

  We all but sprinted to the lobby, fumes of that drug-and sex-drenched room still in our noses and clinging to our skin. At the front desk, I was gleefully telling the management we weren’t about to stay in such filth, but, “Thanks for your kindness, and we are sure you spread out a great continental breakfast all the same.”

  Mama whispered in my ear. “The only thing spread out here is legs,” and I just prayed no one heard her.

  While chatting with staff and his various staph infections, I was trying to get our hot Visa out of his eager hands when Mama snatched the card and dragged me by the forearm and pushed my fanny toward the car. We flew so fast out of the lobby our suitcase wheels sparked as they hit the asphalt.

  “They think we’re prostitutes,” she said, locking the car with the click of a button and a huge sigh, deciding she’d drive this time. “This is what’s known as a Hooker Hotel. We just didn’t know it because we aren’t locals.” She stared at me, then fell over laughing, as she is prone to do.

  “They think what ? Did you say hookers ?” We were both wearing normal, nonhoochie-mama clothing and looked like Sunday School teachers.

  “Susan, didn’t you see all those men flocking around while we were checking in and asking us where we had dinner appointments? Those were the old geezer johns the hotel sent our way.”

  I thought about this and realized that, Lawd have mercy, my mama was right: we were presumed to be hos.

  “They think we’re a kinky mama-daughter act,” she said, burning rubber and squealing from the hotel on two wheels. She pulled off the main road a few blocks later and made an announcement. “This is where we’ll get ready for your big event.” She cut the ignition and I realized we were in one of Buckhead’s finest alleys and parked right next to a green Dumpster.

  “There’s a lot of five o’clock traffic and plenty of people will probably see us, but that is better than the alternative, right?” she asked, unwrapping a KitKat and telling me to go first while she would be the Look-Out person and warn me when to cover up any naughty bits.

  Let me tell you, there’s something about being buck-naked in Buckhead that is almost as frightening as entering a Hooker Hotel. I stood scared to death, bare-assed and trying to squeeze my front and back fannies into a girdle no bigger than a tube sock while Mama hollered that a BMW full of men in business suits was coming our way.

  “HIDE!!!!” she yelled hysterically.

  “I can’t.”

  “Open that trash can door and jump in. It’s better than them seeing your possum, isn’t it?” This was her pet name for vagina. More on that later.

  Well, no, it wasn’t. I could not face those Tri-Delts if I was both FAT and smelling like two weeks of rotting garbage.

  Sometimes, it’s best to be naked in broad daylight behind a Dumpster than in a hotel where the geezers assumed we were hookers.

  Sometimes, life offers us only two choices. And we’d made ours. This time, I had perfume and Altoids, plus a stick of Secret Solid.

  Hollywood and the Mee-Maw Panties

  T his is not happening. It’s not. Really, it can’t be.

  Oh, no, no, no. I think it is true. I’ve gone through the scenario dozens of times, and there’s no getting around it.

  The ONLY pair of Mee-Maw drawers I own—and I borrowed these from Mama—are missing. I’m talking about the world’s ugliest and most gigantic pair of once-white, now-gray, great-granny panties are AWOL, which also stands for Absolutely Wickedly Offensive Ladieswear.

  Yes, gone. I should NEVER have packed them. This isn’t the type of undergarment a dignified though cracked Southern Belle takes on her first trip to Los Angeles to try and impress the VIPs at HBO headquarters in Santa Monica, now is it?

  Of course, my only pair of Mee-Maw knickers have long been known to bring nice, smooth lines to the tight fit of a certain pair of khaki pants. And so this is what won the atrocity a spot in my suitcase.

  Since my mother is not fond of Mee-Maw panties, I’m wondering how she came to own them in the first place. Maybe, she, too, had an outfit that would work only if such a hideous undergarment was worn to give the body a natural, I’m-not-wearing-a-thong shape. I’m guessing the drawers must have come from my great-great-grandmother who, at 94 was caught in bed with a 32-year-old traveling salesman who didn’t seem to mind such britches.

  If I wanted to wear the super-snug khaki capris, there was no other choice but the elephantine underwear the size of a nightstand, no elastic left worth mentioning.

  This was LA, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Sherman Oaks, and I was the Hick in the City and on my way to Sex in the City headquarters and didn’t want panty lines showing. The Mee-Maw drawers were my salvation. They seemed t
o slenderize, chewing off chunks of upper thigh and disguising inner legs intent on greeting each other in a chafing hello.

  The ten square yards of panty were great. They gave me confidence, along with my Prada shoes bought on eBay. I even waved to Olympia Dukakis, feeling the swish of voluminous nylon as I moved across Santa Monica Boulevard on my way to convince HBO to pick up the TV show my friend Robert Tate Miller, a hugely talented screenwriter, and I had worked up from material in my first book.

  Someone, I don’t remember who it was over there, liked the book so much they called for a meeting. I flew out first chance I could get and sat on the plane next to a woman coughing up damaged lung chunks and sounding as if she had TB. It was my thirty-six hours of Almost Fame.

  HBO headquarters was like stepping into an even more modern version of the Jetsons, with space-age furnishings and electrifying color everywhere. I couldn’t exactly tell the chairs from the tables and sofas. I’m almost positive, looking back, that I sat on a fuzzy hot pink watercooler by mistake.

  After a thirty-minute wait, in which I nearly died of six heart attacks, Rob and I cruised with pretend calmness into the offices of two vice presidents young enough to be our children. They gave us Fiji water and fifteen minutes of their valuable time. I got all nervous and couldn’t shut up, but Rob called his agent afterward and said, “It went great. Couldn’t have gone better. It’s a good thing Susan flew up for this because a phone conference wouldn’t have worked nearly as well as them meeting her in person.”

  Two weeks later we heard the news from Rob’s agent.

  “They loved your TV treatment and thought Susan was fun and entertaining, but overall felt there wasn’t enough sex in the story lines.”

  Oh, my mother would be so proud.

  After less than two days in California, it was time to pack everything up and head back home. My thirty-six-hour trip to LA. Gone in a sneeze.

  To think I was a guest in a fairly famous screenwriter’s home—a beautiful semipalace with its own basketball court and swimming pool right outside my bedroom window. To think I cleaned every speck of dirt from that room and properly made the bed before I left, extra careful I’d left nothing behind except a KitKat on their pillow, the toilet tissue pressed into a beautiful triangle at the tip.

  To think I’d done everything right and then…then…Oh, no, please let it not be so!

  Almost as soon as I returned from my quick little mission, I felt something punch my stomach. I couldn’t breathe. No. No. Please, God. I searched the suitcase a hundred times. The Mee-Maw panties had gone missing. I’d better call Nancy Grace. She’d understand. She’d do a segment for six weeks. I know she would. God love her and the time she takes with missing people and maybe even Amber Alerts for lost undergarments.

  OK, don’t panic. Think, think, think.

  Think “spin.” Write the hostess a letter. It doesn’t matter she’s perfect and rich and wears Dolce & Gabbana intimates. Deep breaths. Pen and paper. Good, thick paper, not the cheap kind from the Dollar Mart.

  Dear Robert and Lady Tate Miller

  I must thank you so much for the warmth extended during my brief visit to your lovely city. The guest quarters were more than any weary traveler could ever hope to enjoy. I thank you for the pleasure of staying in your inviting and tastefully exquisite home and the charming company offered. Please know you are welcome in western North Carolina anytime.

  Again, many thanks,

  Susan Reinhardt

  P.S. I imagine this may sound odd, but as I placed my suitcase under the bed, I did notice a rather large nylon garment somewhat the size of a tablecloth, bunched about near the headboard. I figured it was part of your delightful Great Dane’s bedding and left it alone. Again, you guys were the best!

  Erma Bombeck Country

  I called the airport to confirm the ticket for a flight to Dayton, Ohio, leaving Asheville on a chilly March afternoon. The man on the other line couldn’t understand a word I was saying, nor could I figure out most of his native tongue.

  OK, for the record, no one swoons over an accent the way I do. For some women, it’s men in uniform; for me it’s an accent. I don’t care if it’s drawling Southern, Australian, Jamaican or Brazilian. Talk to me all day, honey pie. That is, unless I’m trying to get my plane ticket confirmed and figure out a friggin’ way to get a unicycle on a small Delta carrier.

  The gig I was headed for I was afraid I wasn’t qualified to handle. Somehow, through too much wine and a crowd of rowdies, I ended up becoming one of the keynote speakers for the semiannual Erma Bombeck National Writers Workshop in Dayton and was leaving on a jet plane, though the ticket man couldn’t understand my Southern and I couldn’t understand his Burmese.

  For those who never knew and loved Erma, she was quite simply the best—my personal columnist hero. Every two years in her city of Dayton, the Writers Workshop bearing her name has a three-day hoopla of activities, sessions and keynote speakers attended by hundreds worldwide.

  Dave Barry—The Dave Barry—was to be one of the keynotes. And I somehow got roped into “following” his act the next day. He gets the nighttime tipsy crowd. I get the hungover or tea-totaling lunchers. How does ANYONE follow a great like Dave Barry?

  I knew I couldn’t repeat my Malaprop’s Bookstore wine-infused performance. My body tolerates alcohol about as well as a vegetarian can swallow a Hardee’s Angus Thickburger. A couple guys from the paper were filming my wild, tipsy speech, and I sent in the tapes and was hired.

  Oh, my gosh. Here I am headed for the airport and will have to follow Dave’s act as well as that of a big-shot columnist at USA Today : Craig Wilson.

  I was thinking, “How does a girl top Dave Barry?” Well, she doesn’t. Then I remembered my unicycle and figured he couldn’t ride one while throwing candy and condoms to the crowd.

  This is the point at which I called the airline’s 1-800 number and I tried for half an hour to converse with the representative of unknown cultural origin.

  “May I take a unicycle on the airplane?” I asked, trying to speak slowly, knowing my hick vowels would throw him for a loop.

  “Yu wunt do dake whut?”

  “Do you know what a unicycle is?”

  “No, ma’am. I do not know such wud be called dat.”

  I thought a moment. “Do you know what a clown is?”

  “Shu I do.”

  “Clowns ride YOON EEE CYCLES. Day have ONE WHEEL.”

  “I see. Vedy gud.”

  He put me on hold for twenty-two minutes while I passed the time eating an entire bag of Extra Cheesy Doritos, and returned to say I could pack my one wheel and head on to Dayton.

  “Yu gong haff to take off de pedals fust.”

  “What? How do you take off the pedals?”

  He grew silent, processing my Southern language and question. “I know nutting bout dat. You also gong put yoon-e-cycle in box no bigger dan twenty von by thutie tree.”

  I politely thanked him and decided I’d let Dave Barry rule the show. After all, he’s earned it. I’ll just stalk him instead of trying to top him.

  My plane, minus the unicycle, arrived late, but I managed to sit in the fancy black car in the exact spot Barry’s slender and probably firm ass had sat. I figured that’s as close to
the man as I’d ever get. I told the driver to “Please hurry,” and was able to catch the last half of his act and, boy…was he good. No, he was great.

  Naturally, I put him on my Stalking List. But so did five hundred others at the conference, so the line to get to him during his book signing was a mile long. I waited, mingling with other writers and then held out my book to him. I had bought Boogers Are My Beat , thinking that would be right up my entertainment alley. He must have been exhausted, but he was more than gracious and smelled like Tic Tacs and good cologne, and I just knew he’d read How to Climb the Bestseller Ladder: The Secret Is Grooming and Hygiene .

  After he signed my copy, pretending to have actually heard of me, I rushed up to my room, excited about what he must have written with his hot little pen. Perhaps it was, “Loved your first book!” Or maybe, “Ditch Tidy Stu and Run Away With Me.”

  I locked my door and took a deep breath. And there it was. “To Susan Reinhardt: A Goddess. Dave Barry.”

  Oh, mercy saints alive! Is this REALLY what he wrote? That night I went to sleep happy and dreaming of my future as his replacement, just as other humor columnists have held that very same and impossible dream.

  The next day there was quite the commotion during one of the sessions. Women everywhere were talking about what Barry had written in their books. This is when my enormous balloon popped.

  “He said I was a goddess,” one woman shouted in euphoria. “Me, too…me, too…me, too,” fifty more squealed.

  That ended my stalking of Dave Barry.

  Later that evening, however, the Bombecks arrived. As in Erma Bombeck’s family. I’m crazy about Erma. The conference was premiering a public television documentary about her life, and the entire family was seated onstage for the five hundred of us to gawk at and perhaps question after the film.

  First, I’d like to say that her children, Betsy, Andrew and Matthew, are precious and not a bit snooty, nor is her husband, Bill, a kind and quiet man. They stuck around for most of the conference.