Tiny Ladies in Shiny Pants

by Jill Soloway

  Soon the Asian fetish went out of fashion and was replaced by the winners of the Porno-ization of America pageant. I just can’t compete with these women—maybe that’s why I’m trying to stamp them out of existence. They’re like Dick Candy. They really and truly look like they’ve preened and primed themselves, those nails and those giggles and that newscaster-Yuko-system hair, just to look as good as possible—at the end of someone’s penis.

  When Neille moved here from Chicago, we complained endlessly about the proliferation of the Dick Candy. We would go out at night to Sunset Boulevard, the center of the action in LA. But as 5’4” thirtyish chicks who had gained a pound a year since high school, we looked like square linebackers in heels compared to the newly arrived homecoming queens from every state in the country. We were competing with seventeen-year-olds with fake IDs. Oh my god, it was us fifteen years ago. No wonder all those people gave us such dirty looks back in the day. Eventually we gave up trying to find whoever He was and started staying in, cozying up in my Echo Park apartment, eating big bowls of cereal and watching TV to kill the pain.

  One night Neille and I decided to run down to the local corner tavern for a beer. Just a beer, no trolling, no looking for The One. There was a place without a sign that was even in walking distance, and I suggested we go in and get a little ungentrified local color. We figured no one would be inside except a couple of toothless homeless people. But when we got there, there was a huge line of double-long, double-high shiny black pickup trucks snaking around the block. Hmm.

  The sound of Springsteen pumping inside leached out. I opened the door to a vestibule where a storm of Paco Rabanne and Marlboro Red smoke came whooshing at us. This was weird. Smoking wasn’t legal indoors in LA anymore. What kind of bar would let so many patrons do something so illegal?

  A cop bar. Frankly, at first we thought we’d walked into a gay leather bar. The place looked like one of those Tom of Finland drawings. He’s that artist you find next to rainbow stickers in gay stores—tacky sketched pencil portraits of mustachioed men in captain caps with ham-hock thighs. Everywhere we looked there were men with gigantic arms and stern eyes, leaning against wood paneling, downing beers. Some were unstrapping giant pistols and putting them away in gun lockers for safekeeping. We had happened upon a night called Payday Wednesday at a bar called The Short Stop. It was the LAPD’s twice-monthly celebration, where, after they had just been handed their government-issue checks at work, they were ready to let their regulation-length hair down and dance dorkily.

  As I walked through, I finally knew what it felt like to be Heidi Klum. The men stared, every last one of them, heads turning in rhythm to “Dirty Ol’ Town.” Coincidentally, this bar was also on Sunset Boulevard, but it was planets away from the scene down near the Marmont and the Mondrian and the Dick Candy. These guys were used to tired-out biker chicks with halter tops and crow’s feet in their cleavage. The Short Stop was what I called “win-win” at its best.

  Neille and I looked at each other, checking if it was possible we were so connected by now that we actually dreamed together. This place rocked. There were two hundred men and us, and we were the queens of the world again. The cops knew how to flirt. Bossy by trade, they simply struck up conversations as they handed us drinks, without even asking if they could buy us one first. Their manliness reawakened my dainty feminine sparkle. My urge to chop guys off at the legs was gone.

  I was high, floating through the contingents that staked out sections along the bar: the stocky farm boys from Oklahoma, new to LA and full a’ piss; the brown-skinned third-generation Latin guys with names like Soto and Martinez; and my favorites—the badass Metro cops—Aryan, icey-eyed older guys who looked like they talked dirty in their sleep.

  Neille and I had found our very own tit bar (the cool new name for titty bar, which used to be the cool new name for strip club). But this place was so not Chippendales. No guys named Darius, oiled in coconut and swinging that sack of genitals in a circular fashion. Anyone who ever suggested that women could combat sexism by going to male strip clubs is a complete idiot and doesn’t understand anything about everything. Men shouldn’t do that silly booty quake thing where their buttocks go back and forth really fast like jello. Men need to stand still and fold their arms, barely move. And that’s exactly what the men in the cop bar did.

  Just as female strippers seem like tragic, exaggerated versions of femininity, the cops were their masculine doppelgangers. Maybe they were pushed by abusive fathers or some childhood locker-room humiliation into the business of being tough, or maybe it was true what they said: “Hell, I just wanna lock up Bad Guys.” Whatev. I just wanted to hug them, and defrost them by showering some of my special hippie Jew golden love light into their icy blue uniformed worlds.

  Neille and I told a few friends, and the more brave of them joined us every other week. One night, one of the cops and I did more than flirt. We connected. His name was Brad and he was beautiful and strong and half-Greek. He was short, as was his last name—Kritt—truncated, he told me, by his father, from the lovely Kritikopolous into something he’d hoped sounded American. Sadly, it just sounded like Crit, as in your backyard critter, such as a garden weasel. I didn’t care. We kissed on the dance floor as “Reunited” played on the jukebox. I was Debra Winger, he was my officer and my gentleman.

  I gave him my cell number, and every few days after that we would meet somewhere in Hollywood and make out, him being naughty on duty in his uniform, me in my cut-offs and ironic T-shirts he didn’t understand. Soon we started trying real dates. We would have dinner, then make out. Go for a walk, then make out. I was fascinated by him. He was fascinated by trying to figure out what the hell I saw in him. He openly said I was amazing and that he was happy to just go along until I got sick of him. This dynamic was new to me, completely different from the big money TV showrunner men I was used to, with whom I’d have to do the Rules for six months, only to win the prize of a relationship where we’d immediately start bickering about things like “tone.” Brad and I didn’t bicker. We held hands and walked and asked each other questions about our wildly different lives.

  Sometimes, Brad would come by after work and sleep over in my apartment on the second floor of a crumbling Victorian. One night, I suggested we spend the night at Brad’s place. He gave me his address and directions out to Rancho Cucamonga, a hamlet way east of LA. I packed a demure overnight bag and headed out on the 10 after the Friday afternoon traffic died down.

  As I drove I imagined where he lived. It was probably old and woodsy, maybe more a shotgun shack than a house, where overgrown trees would surround a creaky front porch with aluminum deck chairs. Inside, I anticipated a tattered couch, with a crocheted blanket of black and fluorescent yarns, plus wood paneling and a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer sign with a river scene that looked like it was moving.

  As I got further out, big, ugly power towers marked the way to nowheresville. Soon the landscape was dotted not with sagebrush, but with big billboards that proclaimed heavenly developments like Royale Estates or Monte Carlo Place. I pulled off at the Rancho Cucamonga exit. There was nothing Rancho-y or Cucamonga-y about this neighborhood. It was office parks and industrial halogen and lonely strip malls.

  When I turned onto Brad’s street, I realized I was in the sort of vomitous suburban development of my deepest nightmares. Brad was in his driveway, washing his big-ass truck, and waved me over. I got out of my car and gave him a hug. He brought me into his house.

  “Would you mind taking your shoes off? I don’t like to get the carpet dirty,” he said. Bright track lights illuminated white shag, white walls, cream couches, and hotel art. He proudly brought me past the gigantic TV and Formica kitchen to his bedroom with his big bed with that Pillow-Show thing—fifteen pairs of decorative pillows in descending sizes. That pillow-show shit is one of my Top Ten Most Hated Things in the World.

  “Wow, it’s beautiful,” I said.

  He said he thought maybe we’d go to the stor
e and get some groceries and cook dinner, then watch a movie. We were going to do what regular people did. We drove in his truck to the local grocery store. Our first major problem occurred in the freezer aisle when he pulled out a package of toaster strudel and wasn’t trying to be funny. Soon after, he bought barbecue potato chips, calling them our side dish. I kept trying to refocus on his body and his thick legs and his arms instead of his manglings of the English language. I knew exactly how guys who dated bimbos felt. This was the opposite of regular life—having sex or making out was fine, while simple, sober grocery shopping was nerve-wracking.

  We made dinner and sat on his couch and watched a movie on cable. Soon he told me he felt so comfortable he could confess his deepest secret. I was flattered and nervous. Had he killed someone? A mortal wound in the line of duty?

  He said he wanted to go into real estate.

  “Real estate?” I asked, moving away imperceptibly.

  “I want to help people. That’s why I became a cop, to try to help people, but it seems like all I do is arrest the same people over and over again and fill out paperwork. I’ve been realizing lately how much I would love to help first-time home buyers. Do you realize they really get taken advantage of?”

  Oh Jesus. My cop didn’t even want to be a cop, just an Inland Empire real estate guy. That night, Brad and I had mediocre sex, and fell into dreamless sleep. In the morning, we hugged as if we were human, and I got in my car and drove off, watching the billboards get teensy in my rearview mirror. We were finished and I knew it. The next time he griped that I was too good for him and that it was just a matter of time before I left, I agreed instead of talking him down.

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “It would never work.” Brad and I had turned out just like every other relationship—unnaturally high expectations dashed, followed by a door slamming on my soul that said KEEP AWAY FOREVER AND EVER. It always went in this exact pattern—the only difference being whether it took one day or one year to unfold: meet man, like man, dream about man, project a whole lot of things onto the situation that aren’t really there, man does something in sex or relationship to mess up projection, never want to see man again.

  I guess all of those projections and expectations were a form of objectification. What an annoying discovery: I was the woman who railed against objectification no matter where it appeared. It never occurred to me that it would appear in my very own soul song.

  After Brad, I learned my lesson. (Lying.) I continued to gravitate toward the type of man my friends and I called Toolbelts. Toolbelts are construction workers or security dudes, Secret Service agents or firemen. If you’re in the film business, they’re simply referred to as Below the Line. The line is an actual line on the call sheet or budget. The main difference between these men and your high-class advanced degree guys is that, without being told, they make everything their responsibility, from changing light bulbs to basic automobile maintenance to everyone’s orgasms.

  Remember when as women we were told “your orgasm is YOUR responsibility”? Toolbelts somehow missed that one. Jewish men are prone to stopping halfway through and whining, “What am I doing wrong?” or “Why is this taking so long?” But for Toolbelts, who likely spent their teenage years in a cannery, fifteen minutes of repetitive hand motion is nothing. Even more important, they’re responsible for their own orgasms. If they experience a momentary erection problem, they simply walk to the kitchen for a glass of juice. A Jewish man is more likely to get teary-eyed, apologize profusely, and raise his arms to the sky to ask, “Why me, God? Why me?”

  But as the years progressed, categorizing men into above or below the line, Toolbelt or Palm Pilot, didn’t work. In fact, nothing worked. Was it really possible that every last man out there wasn’t good enough for me? Rather than contemplate that I might need to make some internal changes, I decided that my problem might be that I didn’t belong with a straight man at all. I decided that maybe, what I needed was a gay man.

  Yes! The answer to all of my problems! Much like transgender people who felt their whole lives like something was just—off, my soul had actually slipped into the wrong body. Here it was, finally, the truth: I was a gay man trapped in a woman’s body! There was so much evidence. I wasn’t scared of the cop bar, it felt like heaven to me, whereas a lot of my girlfriends would go there once and never want to go back as long as they lived. I would have had breakfast there if it was a restaurant.

  A lot of people, when trying to define homosexuality, point out that a homosexual can sleep with someone of any gender, but only fall in love with someone of their same gender. Aha. The closeness I’d felt with my gay male friends was often much closer to love than the negotiations called relationships I’d endured with straight men. I was trapped in a dysmorphic catastrophe. The love of my life would also have to be a gay man. I was going to find a Gay Husband.

  I had a lot of gay friends, a few who were even grousing about wanting to give sperm to someone to be a part-time dad. My idea was perfect—my Gay Husband and I would move in together. He’d be the positive male influence in our kid’s life. We’d shop together, cook together, laugh at Cheese Nips together. We could share one membership for the Tom of Finland mailing list.

  Maybe my inability to settle down was just a homo-y inclination toward non-monogamy. All those straight men who wanted to own and worship a chaste woman drove me nutso. That just wasn’t me, and it never would be. It was hard for me to pretend like I didn’t know anything about sex. But with my new Gay Husband, I could be loved for who I was. On Tuesday nights, I’d go out trolling for action while he stayed home with the kids. On Thursday nights, he’d go out trolling for action while I stayed home with the kids. The secret, understood rule would be that no one ever brings the action home, so as not to upset the wholesome homestead that hosted our children’s holy home life.

  In fact, we wouldn’t even have to let everyone know my husband was gay. We’d hold hands in public (sometimes my Gays and I do that anyway), and our sexuality would be private like it used to be in the good old days.

  The Gay I wanted most for my husband is my old friend Wayne. He isn’t queeny at all, and as an Indiana native, possesses many of the good qualities of El Toolbelt. He’s a hard worker and a stand-up guy and you can barely tell by looking at him that he likes to spend his free time face-down in a pillow having his ass pounded by a barely literate teenage Latino boy.

  I told my plan to Wayne. He said it sounded good and that, in a few years, if The One didn’t turn up, we’d move in together and use a fertility clinic to start a family, possibly even adopting a pudgy Chechnyan orphan just to round things out. I almost hoped I wouldn’t find a straight man to spend my life with, as my fantasy of my new life with Wayne sounded better and better each day.

  I talked to my psychiatrist, Joy Lowenthal.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “I’m going to make a life with a gay man! It will be perfect, we’ll be best friends and we’ll do stuff together and we’ll take turns with the chores. There won’t be sex to complicate things, so there won’t be jealousy or bickering or power plays or tones, just sensational companionship and a two-parent home. Doesn’t it sound like perfect love?”

  “Not only does it not sound like perfect love,” she replied, “it doesn’t even sound like love. Or life. Love is messy. Life is complicated. That’s what makes it real.”

  Oh, Joy. Why did she continue to try and shake sense into me? Was she getting paid by the Love Propaganda Board? Was she biased because she had a husband and was trying to get all of her clients to reflect herself in a narcissistic therapeutic miasma? Who the hell was she to believe that little ol’ Jill deserved love?

  A few months after Brad and I broke up, the Short Stop announced it was closing down. Some LA West-siders were going to buy it and turn it into a hip bar instead of a cop bar. I wrote a version of this chapter—just the part about the Short Stop, mourning the death of my reverse-gender strip club—and submitted it to the LA W
eekly. They offered me a hundred dollars as a kill fee. They wanted to do something about the Short Stop’s role in the Rampart scandal, as immortalized in Training Day, with a sidebar about cop lust, written by someone who wasn’t me. When the article came out, I felt proud, even though it wasn’t my writing. At least it was my idea. I called Brad. We hadn’t talked in months.

  “Did you see the article?” I asked.

  “No,” he answered. “Where?”

  “In the LA Weekly.”

  “I don’t read that paper,” he said. I should have known that. “Did you write it?”

  “Not really, “ I said. “But you should read it anyway.”

  Brad and I met up in an Echo Park alley later that evening. He was in his pickup truck, just off duty. I had walked down the hill from my apartment, wearing my ripped cut-offs, with the LA Weekly folded under my arm to give to him.

  We exchanged pleasantries, did that thing when you ask about new relationships to let each other know you’re over it. He had met a nice girl who worked as a dispatcher. I was dating a TV writer. We agreed it was for the best.

  “For a while there, Jill, I thought I was in love with you,” Brad said.

  I smiled. I decided not to tell him that I had thought I was in love with him, too. Instead, I said, “I’m just glad you found someone.”

  We hugged each other, and kissed one last time for good luck. He got in his truck and drove off. I walked back up the hill. It wasn’t until I got home that I noticed I had forgotten to give him the paper.

  8

  Shoemaker’s Daughters

  The Shoemaker’s Children is one of those ye olde parables about a man who possessed the skill to make comfortable shoes at a reasonable price for the entire village, yet left his own children’s feet unshod. Unshoed. Unshod with shoes.