Queen of the Oddballs

by Hillary Carlip

  Say, “Hey, Rodney, we’re Angel and the Reruns and we got some-thin’ for you” as you hand him your hot-off-the-presses record. Watch as Rodney puts on his large headphones, fades out the record that’s just ending, and talks into a microphone. “This is KROQ, Rodney on the ROQ, and some visitors just popped in that I want to introduce. What’s your name again?” Answer “Angel and the Reruns” as you chomp on a piece of chewing gum. Keep cool as Rodney takes your 45 out of its sleeve, puts it on a turntable, and says, “They’ve brought us a new song and, well, they just look so great I’m gonna do something I rarely do. I’m gonna play their record without even listening to it first. What’s the name of the song?” Lean into the microphone and say smoothly, “‘Buffy Come Back.’ Right girls?” “Right Angel.”

  As your song plays on the radio, observe Rodney leaning back in his chair and listening. Notice how he laughs everywhere he should and taps his foot along with the beat. When it’s over and Rodney leans into the microphone to say, “That was fantastic. Angel and the Reruns in their radio debut. Great song. We’ll be right back,” wait until he hits a button and a commercial comes on before you and the girls shriek with excitement.

  Don’t overstay your welcome. Thank Rodney and head to the door. Stop in your tracks when the man with the blue mohawk bursts in, saying, “The phones are lighting up, man. Looks like everyone digs ‘Buffy.’”

  When Rodney asks you to stick around, shrug like you’re a rock star, and say, “Yeah, okay. I guess we could stay a bit longer.” When he then asks you to answer some phone calls on the air, keep up the ruse—especially when some of the callers are friends of yours, even your mother, pretending, as you previously planned, to be random listeners who freaked out over the song and are requesting to hear it again.

  Three weeks later when “Buffy” has become the number-one requested song on KROQ, drive down Sunset Boulevard with your dog, Paisley, in the backseat. As you pass Laurel Canyon, where as a teenager you staked out Carole King, sing along with Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” on the radio. When you drive by the Source restaurant, where every time you go for watermelon juice or brown rice pancakes you see some famous musician, start to feel lightheaded as you hear a familiar keyboard riff. Pull over to the side of the road when you suddenly hear your voice. On the radio. In the middle of the day. On a station other than KROQ. Scream, “WHOOO HOOOO!” as Paisley joins in, howling. Finally feel good about yourself. Well, feel good about Angel.

  Over the next several months, as “Buffy Come Back” spreads to local stations, then national, and then international, becoming, as the DJs call it, a “cult hit,” dive in even more deeply, taking the band to the next step: (a) Do a photo shoot, which results in a smoky black-and-white Avedon-like 8 x 10; (b) Write a press release, headline claiming: “JAILBIRDS TURN SONGBIRDS”; (c) Put together packets with the release, the photo, and the record; (d) Create another persona to be Angel’s assistant—use a fake name you’ve used in your past and, as Madelyn Evans, call newspapers and magazines to hype the story of the band; (e) Send out packets to media; (f) Answer the phone that rings endlessly; (g) Write more songs and rehearse with the band; (h) Drive from store to store distributing the records out of the trunk of your car.

  Drink lots of coffee and find good under-eye concealer to hide the dark circles.

  Do interviews with the newspapers and magazines who respond to your packets; then, once they are published, excitedly read the pieces that say things like: “Move over Go-Go’s. Los Angeles seems to be the perfect spawning ground for all-girl groups who have a tendency to bullet to the top…. As long as the group can stay on the good side of the law for a while, it looks like it’s hitsville for Angel and the Reruns, L.A.’s bad girls gone good.”

  Book the band on television shows—Alan Thicke’s Thicke of the Night and a daytime show featuring Leslie Uggams called Fantasy. Perform twice on Dance Fever with guest judges from your favorite reruns, including Lumpy, June Cleaver, and the Beave himself from Leave It to Beaver, who are all appreciative of your exaltation.

  Spend a month shooting the film Bachelor Party and hang out with the up-and-coming star of the film, Tom Hanks.

  Get one of your songs into the movie Grandview, U.S.A., starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Patrick Swayze.

  Do everything on your own. Explaining to someone else how to do things rather than just doing them yourself takes too long, and you can’t be sure they will be done correctly. So as Angel and the Reruns get increasing attention and opportunities, discover your energy waning. Be careful not to careen toward total exhaustion and burnout.

  Decide it’s time to perform live: (a) Look for a club; (b) Book the club; (c) Rehearse even more; (d) Design flyers; (e) Distribute flyers; (f) Do sound checks; (g) Have “Madelyn Evans” call local news stations and build up hype.

  On opening night, do interviews with CBS, ABC, and NBC news, as well as several magazines and newspapers.

  During the run, continue doing your best—not just for the sold-out audience, but also for the reviewers in the house.

  Excitedly await a specific review in the important music magazine that could catapult your career. When the issue hits the stands, buy up all the copies.

  Go home and sit on the couch with Paisley while you read the review. Smile with satisfaction when you read: “Refreshing concept…impressive chops…solid talent.”

  Suddenly feel the loss of breath and sting of tears when you get to the end of the review.

  Read it again, just to make sure you read it correctly the first time. “This group—minus Angel—can be charming. It seemed the only one who couldn’t sing (or act) was Angel herself.”

  Sit very still, stunned. Try to figure out what to do with these devastating barbs. If the reviewer is saying Angel can’t sing that’s one thing. But to say she can’t act.…Angel’s not acting. You’re acting as Angel. It’s a direct slam to you, and that’s why you chose to hide behind Angel to begin with—to avoid the kind of harsh judgment from others that you already heap upon yourself.

  Try to catch your breath, which is, indeed, eluding your chase. For days your lungs feel like a dirt-filled vacuum bag. When you finally go to the doctor and find out you have a serious respiratory infection and have to stay in bed for at least a week, you’re not sure whether you’re pissed off or grateful.

  While confined to your bed, drinking teas of licorice root and eucalyptus, meditate, ponder, analyze, dissect. Look through old journals of yours as you try to discover/uncover what led you to this point. Reclaim your history.

  Stumble upon a quote that moved you enough to include in your journal ten years earlier, though you have no memory of writing it there. Read the quote, by Joseph Chaiken from his book, The Presence of the Actor. “In former times acting meant simply putting on a disguise. When you took off the disguise, there was the old face under it. Now it’s clear that the wearing of the disguise changes the person. As he takes the disguise off, his face is changed from having worn it.”

  Know that, thanks to Angel, your face has indeed changed and decide it’s time to take off your disguise.

  As weeks and months pass and your deeply ingrained insecurities and judgments start to creep back to the surface, oil on water, realize it’s once again getting harder and harder to look at your own face in the mirror.

  See #2.

  1985

  I take on another persona—Mindy Greenfield, co-creator of Cindy and Mindy’s Rent-A-Fan Club. We get loads of press, and everyone, including People magazine, thinks I’m really Mindy Greenfield.

  Go on the game show Sale of the Century, which I’m really good at when I watch at home. Except when taping the show, I suck. Luckily no one knows it’s me sucking because I appear as Mindy Greenfield—wig and all. (P.S. Mindy won a crystal punch bowl set.)

  Vera, one more alias I assume, gets her own show, Confidentially, Vera, on KCET, local public television.

  New York City drug dealers introduce crack cocaine to the stree
ts, while Whitney Houston scores her first hit with “You Give Good Love.”

  Coke changes its original formula and introduces “New Coke.”

  I move into a 1910 Craftsman house with my manager, Sam, and his boyfriend, Ken. We lease-to-own, and in a matter of months we’re able to buy the house with money we make from renting it out as a location for film and TV shoots. Sylvester Stallone hawks ham in our living room, Keith Carradine is thrown through the glass of our porch window, and snow falls in our kitchen.

  Sam and I create a TV show called “It’s a Miracle,” which features true stories. Every network we pitch it to passes, saying “No one watches reality shows.”

  My brother meets the woman who will become his wife and the mother of his two children.

  I study the “Course in Miracles” with Marianne Williamson, am rebirthed underwater in a bathtub, perspire heavily in an hour-long Native American sweat lodge ritual, and take “Making Relationships Work” classes with Rev. Terry Cole-Whittaker.

  The Case of the Inexplicable Birthday Treasure Hunt

  Despite my parents’ desperate attempts to break me from the habit, I’ve always had to sleep with a light on. When I’m sleeping with someone, then I’m okay turning it off, but not when I’m alone. This is probably one of the reasons I am a serial monogamist.

  After my five-year relationship with Danielle ends—and she runs off to be with someone else the day after we break up—not much more than a month passes before I start seeing Nora. Two women together tend to become family—sisters, mothers, daughters, partners, best friends—so there is rarely a breakup that is clean. And my relationship with Danielle is no exception. Five months later we still desperately miss each other, weep on the phone when we speak, spend much of our time together, and she even sleeps over at my new house, though I won’t go near her new apartment, where she spends time with the “other” woman who I kindly refer to as “that bitch with the mole.”

  I have been clear with Nora from the start, letting her know that I just want to date—my heart still broken, I’m in no position to be in any kind of committed relationship. And she doesn’t seem to mind, or at least she says she doesn’t.

  Most of the time I feel confused, torn, and drained.

  So when the phone wakes me at 8:00 a.m. on the day before my twenty-ninth birthday, I am annoyed that I have to start another listless day so early. I turn off the vintage cowboy lamp by my bed and answer.

  “Is this Hillary?” a woman’s voice asks.

  “Yes, who’s this?” I mutter.

  “I’m calling to let you know you must pick up a package waiting at the Bullocks department store gift-wrapping counter at exactly four p.m. today. Ask for Mrs. Blanchford, and say the word pistachio.”

  “What?”

  “Four o’clock. Exactly.”

  “Who’s the package from?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” the anonymous voice replies before swiftly hanging up.

  Ever since my Girl from U.N.C.L.E. days I’ve remained a devout sleuth. Over the years, even well into my twenties, I have read and reread Harriet the Spy countless times, and solved every case in the Encyclopedia Brown boy detective books, cheating and peeking at the solutions in the back just once or twice, and only for the most complicated whodunits like “The Case of the Mysterious Tramp.”

  Any good detective would shudder with excitement receiving a phone call like the one from Mrs. Blanchford. But not me. Not now. These days it takes everything in me just to drag my ass from the living room to the kitchen to retrieve a butterscotch Jell-O Pudding Pop.

  For the rest of the day I use most of my energy avoiding work and debating whether or not the trip to Bullocks at “four o’clock exactly” is worth the effort. The only thing that finally propels me to climb in my car and drive to the department store is the thought that whatever awaits me might be from Danielle.

  I arrive at the third-floor gift-wrapping section six minutes before the appointed time. An elderly, well-groomed man working behind the counter is the only person in sight.

  “Is Mrs. Blanchford here, please?” I ask.

  “Sorry Ma’am.” He looks up from curling a lavender ribbon with a scissors. “No one by that name works here.”

  “Are you sure? A Mrs. Blanchford called me at the crack of dawn this morning. She said you were holding a package for me. Oh….” I suddenly remember. “PISTACHIO.”

  “Ah,” he lays down his scissors. “You must be Hillary.”

  He slips into the back and returns a few seconds later carrying a box. I look up at the board of samples above his head and note that my mystery sender opted for Gift Wrap C, the paper with a treasure map motif.

  “Can you please tell me who this is from?”

  “Sorry, my shift just began,” he says. “I haven’t a clue.”

  I thank him and head to the ladies room. I’ve never been very good at receiving—much more comfortable giving. Whenever I’ve had a birthday party, I’ve insisted that no one bring gifts, and if people ignored my request, I couldn’t bear to open presents in front of them. I’d wait until they left and then send a note later: “Love the pixie salt and pepper shakers, thanks a mill!”

  I know I will have privacy inside the ladies lounge. I walk onto a floor of tiny brown and beige tiles neatly arranged like candies in a sampler box. I sit down in a folding chair and tear open the package to find a white terrycloth robe so plush, just holding it in my lap is comforting. Under the robe I discover a small piece of fading yellow paper, with a note written in a scrawl that even an ace handwriting analyst couldn’t pin on anyone specific.

  Clever. I walk over to the pay phone on the wall and beep into my messages, waiting to hear a familiar voice saying, “Surprise, the gift’s from me!” Instead my lone message is from an old black man with a throaty Louis Armstrong–like growl.

  “Hey, yeah, I’m calling to give you your next destination.”

  He rattles off an address that’s over a half hour drive towards downtown, then adds, “And Mama, bring that robe you holdin’ and hurry now. You got a six o’clock appointment. Don’t be late.”

  I sit down on the tile floor, and for the first time in months, I start to laugh. Then come the questions. Should I actually run off to some mysterious unknown location just because an unidentified man told me to? What if this is some elaborate plot to harm me? Or worse, some lame practical joke? Maybe it’s a wild goose chase leading to nowhere, sent from someone I know in a misguided attempt to lure me out of my heartbroken funk?

  Intrigued as I am, I’m not sure I’m up for this. Frankly at this point I’d prefer to put on my new robe, go to the bedding department, and cuddle up on a Serta floor model. But the sleuth in me wins out over the jilted ex-lover in me, and I decide to head downtown.

  While driving south on the Hollywood freeway, I ponder “The Case of the Inexplicable Birthday Treasure Hunt.” Too bad I can’t just peek in the back of the book to solve this one.

  It could be from Danielle. Even though she is involved with “mole bitch,” we still constantly talk about trying to see if we can make it work again. Maybe this is her way of taking the plunge, proving to me things could be different, that we don’t have to take each other for granted the way we had toward the end, that the future might hold exciting surprises….

  On the other hand, it could also be from Nora. Sexy, fun, spiritual, creative, adventurous, and compassionate, Nora possesses every quality I ever dreamed of in a lover. Well, except for two: she isn’t Danielle, and I’m not in love with her.

  It also could have been dreamed up by one of my many brilliant, supportive friends who all know it’s been a tough breakup for me. Maybe one of them is trying to cheer me up on my first birthday in five years without Danielle.

  I head east on Beverly until I finally find the address on a nondescript cement building sandwiched between a hand car wash and a piñata outlet store. As I pull into the parking lot, I notice two children crossing the street. On
e is holding a set of bongos, the other an Ouija board. Everyone is suspect.

  I carry my robe into the building, where scents of jasmine and lavender greet me. A sign behind the counter informs me that I am at a spa, one that features mineral hot springs. A perky Chinese woman in a white lab coat smiles. “Hello. Can I hep you?” she asks in a heavy accent.

  “Uh, yeah, I think I might have a six o’clock appointment for something?”

  “You name?”

  “Hillary Carlip.”

  “Oh, sure, sure. Come on. You got robe? Good, good.”

  The woman leads me into a locker room. “You not have much time for soak. You scrub in fifteen minutes,” she says as she hands me a key to a locker and leaves.

  I look around, hoping to find someone familiar lounging with a towel turban on her head, waiting to surprise me. But all I see are completely naked strangers. At least my mystery gift giver knows me well enough to realize I’m not going to parade around nude in front of anyone. I inconspicuously slip off my clothes, swaddle the terrycloth robe around me like a heliophobe on a trip to the beach, then venture out to find whatever it is I’m supposed to soak in.

  Once I round the corner, I gasp at the sight. A stone cave with tropical plants growing inside, surrounds a pond of steaming mineral water. A small bridge crosses over the water, with vines clutching and twisting on it. Next to this glorious grotto I see two steam rooms—one featuring a thick foggy mist, the other dry and hot, smelling of eucalyptus. Several naked women sit soaking in the hot pond. I stand and watch as one climbs out, immerses herself in a smaller cold pool, and sighs with pleasure. The place is an Eden of steaming lushness. Checking to make sure no one is looking, I slip off my robe and ease into the near-boiling water. Thoughts give way to pure sensation and I soak in the nowness for what later feels like a long while. I am only startled back to my mind when an elderly Chinese woman calls my name, breaking the silence.