The Art of Men [I Prefer Mine al Dente]

by Kirstie Alley

  “Hi, Daddy, what are you doing?”

  He chuckled, “Playing bridge.”

  “Oh,” I said, “I miss playing bridge.”

  “How’s Galveston?” Daddy asked.

  “I don’t know, it’s dark, I can’t see anything.”

  “How’s your husband?” He asked AGAIN, as if to remind me he was no longer the only man in my life.

  “He’s good, he’s sleeping. Who’s your bridge partner?” I pathetically asked.

  “Norma.”

  “Yeah, she’s good but not as good as me . . . heeheehee . . . bet you wish I was there . . . hahaha . . . what do you have for snacks?”

  “Kirstie Lou, go back to Bob. I’ll see you when you come home.”

  As final as that! Now my dad had not only broken up with me, he was refusing to talk to me. I’d never before or since felt that betrayed and alone. Now I had been betrayed by two men.

  When we woke up the next morning I rallied myself, and I’m pretty sure I instigated morning sex. Now that the other man in my life abandoned me, I was spurred onward to make a new life for myself as Bob’s wife. I threw open the drapes with a flourish to take my first glimpse of a real live Hawaiianesque honeymoon ocean.

  Ugh—the Galveston ocean looked like a lake. It had brownish, brackish water. No palm trees, no blue skies, no chicks in hula skirts, not even bikinis. The beach was not white or pristine. In the light you could see that the white bathrobes and towels were tinged with the gray-brown color of the ocean water.

  My memory of my honeymoon goes black from that point; I truly can’t remember another moment. The mind is like that, I think. When something is just too awful, it closes down to protect you from catching on fire.

  I do remember our drive home in Rosie, the name we had christened our pink $55 Rambler station wagon. Rosie ran pretty well but had no air conditioner. Galveston in June, and all 11 other months, is hot as hell and so humid that your clothes stick to your skin. On this June day it was approximately 105 degrees. The sweltering heat was unfathomable as we drove along in our pink coffin. Bob and I stopped at a roadside watermelon stand and bought three ice-cold watermelons. Bob had the guy cut one of them right down the middle. We positioned the cut half of the watermelon between us on the seat of the Rambler. As we drove along we scooped icy cold melon with tiny Dixie cups and slurped it to stay alive.

  The drive from Galveston to Kansas is flat, brown, boring, and uneventful. Bob and I made up songs to keep ourselves amused. My favorite was “Dead Dogs and Tires,” as there were several of each along the route, with the occasional dead armadillo. Bob has a very clever, acute sense of humor. He could always make me laugh until I cried. He was teasing me about how sad it was that all we had to return home to was a new sailboat after spending an awesome honeymoon in Hawaii.

  Drenched with sweat, sticky from watermelon juice up to our elbows, we cruised along singing, already fairly bored of our “alone” time. Then suddenly, there they were! Two hitchhikers! They were undoubtedly stranded because their car had broken down in the godforsaken heat, although we saw no car. My, they must have walked miles in the wretched sun, they clearly needed some Dixie cups of watermelon and a lift to the nearest gas station, I thought.

  “STOP!!” I screamed at Bob. “Stop the car! Come on Bob, if it was us out there, we would need help, too!”

  It was 1971, or ’72, or—hell, I can’t remember. The point is, hitchhiking and hippies were the order of the day! I knew this because I’d seen news footage of Haight-Ashbury.

  They came running up to the car and hopped in.

  “Thank you, thank you,” the weary walkabouts gushed. I noticed two things: neither of them had any teeth, and they had the distinct air of having escaped from a mental institution.

  “Where you headed?” my friendly husband asked.

  “Wherever you are!!! We ain’t got no place to go—guess you’re stuck with us!”

  Although I was the opposite of street smart, savvy, or forensically trained, it was clear we were going to be murdered.

  Bob and I survived our honeymoon and moved back into my parents’ house for the summer to play bridge. In July we drove to Manhattan, Kansas, to find a place to live. That’s where Bob would study veterinary medicine and where I would find a job.

  College towns are infamous for nonexistent low-paying part-time jobs. They are also known for high-priced, limited housing.

  Because of our vast array of pets, horses, dogs, cats, snakes, and raccoons, Bob and I quickly nixed the city life in lieu of country living. We found an 1865 stone farmhouse in Olsberg, Kansas, owned by a Mrs. Mildred Nelson.

  Mildred was probably in her eighties back then and probably the most decent, sweet, generous person I’ve ever met. She could see we were a young, struggling couple, so she asked, “Would sixty-five dollars a month seem fair to you?”

  The stone farmhouse had a living room, a huge dining room, a kitchen, a sitting room, two upstairs bedrooms, and one downstairs bathroom. On one side of the kitchen was a stove, a refrigerator, and counters with a sink. On the other side of the kitchen was a cabinet and a bathroom sink. The claw-foot tub and commode were behind a door by the kitchen/bathroom sink.

  The house was heated by a wood-burning stove and a gas heater in the living room. I’m pretty sure it was the first gas heater ever invented.

  Mildred told us that before we arrived in the fall she would have the $65-a-month stone house spruced up. I should mention, it was a $65-a-month stone house sitting in the middle of 80 acres of land! It had barns, stables, and outbuildings. All of it just for us. The big yard was lined with a Victorian iron fence butted up against 10-foot-tall ancient lilac bushes. The smell of newly mown hay and lilacs filled the air of Mildred’s house, once inhabited by Mildred and her husband, Peter.

  Mildred and Peter could not have children but were happily married until his passing, whereupon Mildred moved into town (which was a quarter mile from the farmhouse, with a population of 108). Of course Olsberg’s population of 108 didn’t all live “in town,” and a few had died that year so how accurate the census was remained a mystery. When a baby was born in Olsberg, Kansas, Bob and I would joke about running out with a bucket of paint and changing the sign to 109.

  We gave Mildred our deposit on the stone farmhouse—$20—and went to the “big” city, Manhattan, Kansas, to find me a job. I thought the ad said “receptionist at a dry cleaners,” but that quickly shifted to “laundry worker in a sweatshop” where the average temperature was 105.

  I took the job. I would start in September.

  Bob and I spent the rest of the summer playing bridge, riding horses, sailing, and loving each other like love stories in the movies. The summer of our first year of marriage proved to be magical.

  When we arrived at the stone house with our stuff that fall in Olsberg, Mildred met us at the door. So sweetly she said, “Welcome to your first home. I hope my choices of wallpaper are suitable for you.” Every room had been freshly painted and sweetly wallpapered with delicate, old-fashioned pristine papers. Each room a different paper that collectively made the 19th-century home look like a dollhouse. It was breathtaking. The only thing Mildred had asked me when we first rented the house was what colors I preferred. I had told her pale yellow, pink, green, and lavender. Each room was clean, soft, welcoming, and the perfect setting to become “fancy,” something I had always wanted to be.

  I will never forget how Bob looked standing there on the porch to our new “mansion.” It was evident I had married the man of my dreams and probably every other girl’s. God! Life was about to explode into our glory days!!

  I began by making our house “fancy.” My grandmother had passed away and left me all of her antique furniture: a modest but lovely dining room set, table, eight chairs, a sideboard, a hutch, and an antique six-foot-tall RCA Victor radio/record player. We went to an estate sale and bought furniture for the living room. We hit pay dirt, this 1940s four-piece set of sofa, love seat, and
two comfortably worn burgundy velvet chairs. We were getting fancier by the day. Bob and I would lug all the treasures in a borrowed truck.

  The stone house didn’t have pretty hardwood floors, so when we put our new finds atop the bland worn-out carpeting it looked shabby, not shabby chic, just shabby. I started collecting carpet remnants from the trash bins in Manhattan, Kansas, carpet stores. It was the 1970s, baby, and patchwork was king. We took all the multicolored, multitextured pieces and fashioned them into a carpeted patchwork quilt floor. The carpet of course was all brand new, just in pieces. We cut them in shapes—squares, rectangles, and triangles. When we were done it gave a groovy, mod look to our 1860s dollhouse—the perfect blend of antique and modern.

  There were no window treatments in our house, but my mom had bought me an early birthday present of fabric and fringe. It took several days, but I made curtains for each window. Bob stayed busy mowing, weeding, and edging.

  There were plenty of wildflowers to fill Ball jars and vases. We had finally hit the ranks of “fancy.” We were the fanciest self-made newlyweds I’d seen or known. While our friends starved, living in expensive, overpriced apartments in the city, we flourished on our 80-acre country estate. Married life was not only nirvana, it was supremely fancy.

  On one September morning, Bob and I drove into the city for his first day of vet school and my first day at the laundry. Rosie was running beautifully, our lives were in order, and everything was going as planned. I kissed my handsome husband good-bye, and we went off on our separate ways.

  The laundry was enormous, probably a 20,000-square-foot brick building. It was fronted by a tiny dry-cleaning store, which of course also took in laundry. Out of the 100 employees, 50 percent were mentally or physically challenged, 30 percent were ex-cons, 18 percent were prostitutes, and 2 percent were the huge black guy who carried a .45 and me.

  I instantly made friends with .45; I was naive, not stupid. This sweatshop was filled with washers, dryers, and mangles, which are enormous ironing tables with conveyor belts and rollers. The temperature of the room ranged from 100 to 120 degrees, depending on the workload inside and the temperature outside. We prayed for snow no matter what time of year.

  My fanciness was not an asset at the laundry. Turf wars and teams began to form. My team was comprised of hookers, crippled people, and the guy with the gun. Lest this get confusing, I’ll refer to us as the Crips. The mentally insane and the ex-cons formed the other team; I’ll refer to them as the Crims. There was a rhythm to this madness. Turf wars didn’t involve murder. The weapons of choice were linens, or at least that’s what I kept telling myself.

  At one end stood the team with the unironed, damp laundry, whose job it was to feed the sheets, tablecloths, and pillowcases into the massive, dangerously scalding eight-mangle machine. Awaiting the linens was the team whose job it was to rapid-fire fold the laundry, lest all the laundry flip onto the floor, getting them fired by the dreaded lead girls. It’s all fun and games for the feeding gang, but it creates fury in the folding gang. Things get nasty fast. The feeders shove the linens into the mangles as fast as they can. The folders frantically try to keep up. The meaner the feeders, the faster they shove. However, the gangs rotate every two hours, so the feeders can’t be too obvious about their war games. And if they have been terribly evil they know they need to brace themselves for the ultimate in laundry wars, the illegal double-layered linens! The Crims were made up of convicted felons and lunatics, so legality meant little if nothing to them.

  At the end of each day, .45 would walk me to my car to make sure I didn’t get raped or murdered. It was deeply appreciated. Each night Bob and I would drive the 20 miles back to our stone house wiped out, me physically, Bob mentally.

  On week four I was offered the lead girl position at the laundry, aka the girl who was going to end up gang-banged by Christmas. I said good-bye to .45 and resigned from the laundry the next day.

  Being in veterinary school is not an easy task—it’s actually brutal. Bob worked his ass off in school, and I worked my ass off keeping a fancy home. I became a nanny, and my work life immediately became better.

  Bob and I lived in the stone farmhouse until he graduated and became a full-fledged veterinarian. We said good-bye to the place that had been our first as husband and wife, good-bye to Mildred, good-bye to the bushel loads of lilacs, good-bye to the ghost who lived in the cellar, good-bye to the 107 people we left behind in Olsberg, and good-bye to the Billy Graham revival that occupied weeks of our lives since we only had one TV channel. We packed our dog, cat, and raccoon and were on our way to California. After all, there was gold in them thar hills.

  By this time I had less confidence than when I began my marriage, not having to do with Bob and me, but with myself. I was scared to death to leave Kansas. I had no skills or training. Bob was now a doctor, his brother was an oral surgeon, his brother’s wife was a scholar, and I was nothing. I knew I’d have to work in California, but it seemed I wasn’t even fit to be a dog groomer, and thought myself too stupid to be a mailman, fearing I couldn’t pass the civil service test.

  But here before us was our future: Bob’s looked bright and shiny; mine looked vacant. I had exiled myself into the oblivion of just being “Bob’s wife” and I was terrified.

  Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?

  —GROUCHO MARX

  The Art of

  Tornadoes

  BY THE time I was 24, I’d been married to Bob for four years. I was restless and bored out of my mind. Sex had become a torture, a kind of looming task that I was unwilling to participate in. Bob was the only man I’d had sex with. I wasn’t looking for someone else to shag. I was just chronically inventing ways to get out of “doing it”: ironing at three in the morning, feigning illnesses, can’t “do it” on my period, arts and crafts, gotta get up at five o’clock to get to the beach, back pains, deaths of pets, sad news of the uncle I’d never met passing away, it’s too hot in here, I electrocuted myself, I fell off my horse, the raccoon bit me, you hurt my feelings, I’m gonna throw up, I can’t get over Ms. NYC, we have guests, the dog fell off the roof, the chinchilla is eating the wrong food, I have to mow the yard, I can’t find the goose, my stomach is going to explode, I think my IUD is lodged in my uterus, we have no electricity, the shower is leaking, and “Hey, how ’bout that Halley’s comet?”

  I kept thinking about the second time I had sex with Bob when we were in my mom and dad’s room after they had left town to attend my cousin’s funeral. What happened to the girl who was dying to have sex with Bob, even when Jesus was warning her not to?

  There was this gilded oval–framed photo of Jesus Christ above their bed glaring at us. I was trying to be sexy and cool, but I seriously couldn’t fornicate in front of Jesus. I grabbed the portrait of the Savior, walked it into the bathroom, and turned it facedown on the counter, freaking out because the tile was cold and it seemed a horrible way to treat Jesus. I spread out a bath towel, nestling Jesus on the terry cloth, then covered the frame with another towel. Then I started worrying I was smothering Jesus, so I removed it. I turned off the bathroom light, and pondered whether Jesus hated the dark. No, these were not the calculations of a seasoned vixen, these were the thoughts of a 17-year-old girl who wanted to be a woman.

  So there I was in 1974, being the woman I’d always dreamed of being, with full permission to bang my brains out . . . but I didn’t wanna.

  Bob and I were living in California. My mind was still like a 14-year-old, my body was like, well, not a 14-year-old . . . I had curly, flowing hair to my boobs, with an athlete’s ass that had finally molded into the tiniest, tightest pair of Fiorucci jeans made. My once-embarrassing swimmer’s six-pack had now smoothed out to a concave slice of heaven—I thought the California boys were day-trippin’ at the sight of me sauntering down Hermosa Beach. There was no doubt in their minds—or mine—that I was “the shit.”

  I had resisted all advances, and b
y resisting I mean I’d flirted with every beach boy in my path but never acted on it.

  Bob and I had bought our first house, overlooking the ocean in Redondo Beach. We had a sleek, new white BMW. He was a partner in his veterinary practice, and he was breathtakingly handsome in his Dr. McSteamy sort of way. He was instantly an excellent veterinarian, and he was working really hard and assuming tons of responsibility.

  I, on the other hand, was restless, useless, jobless, sexless, lifeless, bored, with no direction. I was a great cook, funny, highly creative, with a fine ass that I didn’t want my husband to touch. I was worthless, actually. I’d become worthless.

  One day, while looking for a new cat in the LA Times classifieds, I noticed an artist advertising for a model. His name was Putt. I interviewed with him and got the gig of posing for his latest oil painting.

  He was a fine artist, he really was, but I made a bad decision to pose for his painting. If I recall correctly, Putt painted Western scenes; thus I was in some stunning dance hall gown, one shoulder up, the other draped down to expose one nude breast, a sultry painting. I guess we could say this painting was the modern-day version of a sex tape floating around in someone’s living room or gallery now. But I quickly learned that husbands don’t like their wives posing nude, even for accomplished artists. Of course I already knew that, didn’t I? To this day, I think I did it as some covert revenge for Bob cheating on me with that NYC beauty queen my junior year.

  My husband was furious when I told him, and rightfully so. He thought I was at home cooking his dinner, I’m sure, instead of posing seminude for a local artist. It was also so unlike me, as I was modest to the point of Victorian prudishness.

  This marked my turning point—I’d degraded myself, and Bob helped me degrade myself a little more. He called me many names; the most impressive one started with a C. I knew what I’d done was wrong, that I wasn’t a nude-y kinda girl. I felt like shit, like the whore my mother predicted I’d become. It really screwed with our marriage.