by Theresa Alan
“Yeah, but first I’ll dance around doing these fly girl moves to avoid getting hit.” Marin stood up to demonstrate, getting into it. The others liked the idea too, and started shouting out ideas all over the place. The Keebler Elf against the Jolly Green Giant! Xena against Barbie! The character of Jack from Will and Grace against Arnold Schwarzenegger! Ramiro would play Jack. Ramiro was awesome at talking swish. Whenever he played a limp-wristed gay guy type, the audience roared. They thought it was hilarious that someone they assumed was straight, super-masculine straight, could pretend to be so swish. It was a great big irony sandwich.
“How about this? How about feminist cheerleaders?” Ana said. “We’ll wear baggie jeans and t-shirts with varsity letters on them, and we’ll explain to the audience how for years, cheerleaders have encouraged male violence and aggressiveness with cheers like, ‘You’ve got to B-E A-G-G-RE-S-S-I-V-E, got to be aggressive, whoo!’ but no more. We’re a new breed of cheerleaders who encourage women to excel in their careers and their lives, because everyone needs encouragement. We’ll cheer men on to share more of the housework and take care of the kids.”
“It’s got potential,” Chelsey said. “It’ll be you, me, Ramiro in drag, and Marin, and instead of being all bubbly, we’ll be sedate and talk in a monotone. It’ll be fun to write the cheers.” Just then, Chelsey realized she’d completely forgotten about Rob. She turned to him. “Rob, you’re having a horrible time, aren’t you?”
“I’m having a great time. Your friends are fun.”
“You’d rather be home fooling around with me right now, wouldn’t you?”
“That would be a lot of fun too, but we can do that all Sunday and Sunday night, all next week. I’m not going anywhere.”
Chelsey’s heart did a back handspring. She hadn’t thought this might be a long-term thing when she slept with him three hours after meeting him. Well, okay, she hadn’t really been thinking about anything but how cute he was. Did this relationship really have a chance to become something, despite having the fact they had sex on their first date?
“I should probably get home and get some sleep before I have to get to work,” Rob said. “But let’s do brunch on Sunday. Come to my place, I’ll cook for you.”
“You cook?”
“Sure.”
Oh dear. She could very well fall madly, deeply, and passionately in love with this guy.
“Come by around 11. Is that too early?”
“No, that sounds great. I’ll see you then.”
After Rob left, the rest of them worked on scripts for the show until 4:30 in the morning. Some of the ideas they worked on were based on characters who had popped up now and then in their improv, like Ramiro’s and Jason’s After-School-Special Hector and Bob, in which exchange student Hector explains his Brazilian heritage, and Bob explains about American culture.
Jason/Bob and Ramiro/Hector stood up and started improvising to get some ideas out while Ana wrote it down.
Ramiro/Hector: “Good international friend, what is this? We do not have such things in my country.”
Jason/Bob: “Why, my good international friend, it’s called a china cabinet. White people buy dishes that are so expensive, they use them only once a year. And then they buy an entire piece of furniture to display these dishes they only use once a year. Then they buy bumper stickers that say, ‘Live simply so that others may simply live,’ and put them on all three of their cars and their SUV and their boat.” And so on. When they’d gotten all the mileage they could out of Bob and Hector, Scott chimed in with an idea.
“I want to do something on the three-minute dating thing.”
“What’s that?” Ana asked.
“Ana, what’s wrong with you? It was on Sex and City!” Chelsey said. “It’s where you go to these groups where they have like ten men and ten women and they pair up, two at a time, and every three minutes a bell rings and they switch to talk to someone else. The idea is you’ll click with somebody and see if you want to go on another date with them to get to know them better.”
“The scene will start at a bar so I can show off my cool moves.” Scott demonstrated his Roger Rabbit and Running Man moves. Because of his ganglyness, he was a natural at physical comedy. Just about any move he made was hilarious. “While I’m dancing, Jason or Ramiro can do a voice-over.” Scott imitated the voice of the guy that does every movie trailer ever made. “‘Chuck tried the bar scene. He took out a personal ad. Nothing worked. He was still just a lonely slob. Then he tried three-minute dating!’ Then I’ll sit at a table and interview you guys and you’ll all just be awful and then the bell will ring.”
“What kind of awful?” Marin asked.
Scott looked at her blankly. “I don’t know.” He thought for a moment. “Um, I need to flesh it out more.”
“Just a little,” Marin said.
“Why don’t we all be in the sketch,” Ramiro said. “We could have one person decide she’s found her soul mate and she won’t let go. Jason could be the object of affection and . . . Ana could stalk him.” Here everyone tittered. Ana’s long-standing crush on Jason was hardly top secret. The rest of them loved to razz her about it. “She could grab on to his legs like little kids do. We could do a bunch of sight gags with her popping up at different tables when he’s got his three minutes with a different lady. She could dress up as a waiter and try to sabotage things. Meanwhile, Scott, you’re going through all those horrible dates like you said. In the end, Scott, you and Ana end up together somehow.”
“I like it!” Ana said. It was disgusting how Ramiro could take a beginning to a sketch and give it a rough middle and an end in eleven seconds flat.
“So what are we going to call our show?” Marin asked.
“I know,” Chelsey said. “I had this dream the other night, involving Britney Spears, Scooby Doo—not the cartoon one, the movie digitally created one—and Satan. Satan traveled in Scooby Doo’s body, but we knew he was there, and it was our job to protect Britney. I think I was like one of her bodyguards or something, I can’t remember. But don’t you think that would make a good name for a show, ‘Britney Spears, Scooby Doo, and Satan’?”
Her friends just looked at her like she was a strange foreign creature they’d never encountered before. “I’m pretty sure we’d get our asses royally sued off,” Marin said. “I think we’d be breaking a jillion libel laws.”
“How about ‘The Comedy Hootenanny’?” Ana offered.
“You can’t use something that uses words like ‘comedy,’ ‘wit,’ or ‘humor,’ ” Ramiro said, rolling in his eyes at the obviousness of his point, like he was trying to educate a country bumpkin on basic concepts such as not wearing white pants before Easter. “Look at the shows Second City puts on or the stuff the Upright Citizen’s Brigade does. They do shows with names like, ‘Curious George Goes to War’ or ‘The Ice Cream Man Cometh.’ ”
“How about ‘Shangri-Ha,’ ” Scott said.
“You know what I think a step above that, Scott, would be ‘Don’t Come See This Show,’ ” Ramiro said.
“What are you saying, that you don’t like my title?”
“In summary: yes, that’s what I’m saying.”
“How about, ‘The Pirates of Pete’s Pants,’ ” Chelsey offered.
“But there is nobody named Pete in this group,” Ana said.
“It’s a play on ‘The Pirates of Penzance.’ Ana, for someone so smart, sometimes you’re a little loopy in the head. I think it’s best you hear it from a friend.”
“Yeah, I get that part, but I don’t see what it has to our show or us.”
“How about ‘Fried Peanut Butter Sandwiches.’ You know going for an abstract—” Scott began.
“That. Is. The. Stupidest name I’ve ever heard,” Ramiro said.
Ana started laughing. “It is pretty bad.”
The others joined in, and when Chelsey snorted, Ana fell right off her chair, collapsing with laughter. Scott pretended to be hurt, but soon he was laugh
ing, too. Teasing and tormenting one another was their primary form of communication.
When they finally recovered, Chelsey wiped the tears from her eyes and said, “I’m going to get a Stallion. Anybody want anything?”
“Bullsy, just say no,” Ramiro said.
“Admitting you have a problem is the first step,” Marin said.
“Actually Bullsy, the reason we’ve called you here tonight is: You have a problem. We’ve come together to perform an intervention,” Scott said.
“I don’t have a problem! I don’t! I don’t!”
“You do! You do!” the others chanted. They swarmed in on her and ended up in a group tickle fight, the usual conclusion to their “interventions.”
They laughed until their stomachs hurt and they were so tired they could barely peel themselves off the floor. And so they went home to bed, ideas for the show tumbling through their minds like pebbles in an ocean.
8
Quality Family Time
Ana thought that if she and her four roommates had been around in Renaissance times, Marin would have been the lovely, charming, fabulously wealthy queen, universally loved by all. Scott would have been, of course, the court jester. Jason would have been the king and queen’s children’s tutor, a simple but respectable role. Ramiro would have been the king’s advisor, able to come up with brilliant war-winning, destiny-changing strategies over pints of mead. Ana herself would be a scullery maid, working tirelessly for starvation rations and the first one to die off in a bout of bubonic plague.
Still, she loved her friends, though it wasn’t always easy. Living with Marin, Scott, and Ramiro meant that no matter how hard Ana tried, the house was in a perpetual state of chaos. It was like living with the kid from the Sixth Sense. You know when the Mom leaves the room for like a second and then comes back to find all the drawers and cabinet doors open? That was what Ana faced every day of her life. With the exception of Jason, her roommates were absolutely incapable of closing a drawer or door. Ana would dutifully close all the cabinets, and then in the span of time it took to blink, the kitchen would become a minefield of bruises and concussions waiting to happen—one quick turn into an outstretched cabinet door and you’d be flat on your back with a bump the size of shot glass on your forehead. Her roommates had never once replaced an empty roll of toilet paper with a full one, and they certainly never did their dishes. In the beginning, Ana had yelled and cried and cajoled, but it was useless. It was easier just to clean up after them.
She and Jason had become the de facto Mom and Dad of this family. Jason loved to garden, and that’s what he spent all his weekend days doing in the growing season. He took care of mowing the lawn, and he was the only person in the house who ever cooked. He would cook enormous vats of ratatouille or pasta primavera and salads with fresh vegetables from his garden.
Ana did all of the cleaning. If she left it up to the others, their bathtub would resemble a swamp and the rest of the house would look like it had been ransacked by Russian mafia members looking for the microchip that could destroy the world or what have you. But while Ana was bitter and resentful every moment she spent cleaning up after her roommates, she also loved them, and the good things outweighed the many bad sides of living with them.
Take this morning for instance. Ana made coffee, poured herself a milky, sugary cup and made one for Scott too, then padded barefooted along the hardwood floors to Scott’s room.
She noiselessly pushed the door open. He opened his eyes and looked at her.
“You awake?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m just laying here until I work up the energy to get up.”
“I brought you some coffee. That should help.”
Ana brought him the cup. “Scooch,” she commanded. He scooched. She put her coffee on the bedside table and lay next to him, so their arms touched. Scott, being the giant he was, had the largest bed in the house, and it had become the informal meeting place for the family.
“Thanks, but it’s too hot for coffee. It’s too hot for anything.” Between the sound of the fan in the window and the mini-swamp cooler on the floor, it was hard to hear him.
“You’re from Texas. You should be used to the heat.”
“Yeah, but in Texas they wouldn’t have even considered building a house without air conditioning. What’s wrong with these people in Denver?” Scott didn’t speak with a southern accent, though if you dared to say that he was from the south, or was in any way southern, smoke would come out of his ears and his head would spin around a few times. “I’m not from the south, I’m from Texas!” he’d yell, as if Texas was its own sovereign nation, which Ana suspected it might actually secretly be. He was fiercely proud of Texas. On the other hand, he’d moved from there at the first available opportunity, and Ana thought this spoke well of him.
Scott’s walls were adorned with paintings he’d done himself. He preferred oils and his work often had a surrealist, tongue-in-cheek theme. One of Ana’s favorites was of a family of four sitting at the dinner table. A mother, a father, a little girl, and a little boy—all of whom are naked. The girl is grumpily refusing to eat. She has her elbow on the table and her chin resting in her hand, her expression is beleaguered and long-suffering. The younger brother is making a mess, and the Mom is trying to clean him up. The father is looking absently out the window at the sunset red sky.
Scott didn’t paint as much today as he had in college, but he still had an easel in the corner for when he wanted a way to relax.
“What are you guys doing?” It was Marin, who scuffled toward them. Scott and Ana dutifully moved over to make room for her. She lay down next to Ana.
“We are being lazy slugs, mostly,” Ana said. “I think we need a theme song for our show. We can do it to the music of the Beverly Hillbillies.”
“I can’t believe it’s daytime already.” Ramiro walked into the room and took his place on the bed. “I’m so tired. I need a nap.”
“You just woke up.”
“But getting out of bed proved to be exhausting, and I need a nap to recuperate.”
“We’re thinking of a theme song for our show,” Ana said. “Hey, do we know anyone who can play the fiddle? A fiddle is really what we need. Maybe we can get the music from Deliverance.”
“Are you guys having fun without me?” Jason said, joining them on the bed. It was a cozy fit, but they could do it.
“We’re coming up with the theme song for our sketch comedy show,” Ana said. “Help us.”
“Let’s think of the great theme songs through the ages, and decide what qualities lead to theme-song greatness,” Jason said. “The Love Boat is clearly up there, in the top ten maybe.”
Marin got as far as “the” before the rest of them joined in, singing The Love Boat at the top of their lungs. They proceeded to sing every theme song they knew, moving through Cheers, The Facts of Life, Greatest American Hero, and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, among others. Amid much laughter and discussion over important matters like whether the L that Laverne always wore on her shirts really stood for “lesbian” (come on, Laverne and Shirley were just a little too close) they whiled away a very large portion of their day. Ana loved it, being wedged in with the people she loved most in the world, singing songs, laughing, and feeling absolutely loved.
9
A Proper Date
Sunday morning, Chelsey went to Rob’s apartment, arriving at eleven A.M. exactly. He lived three blocks away from the rest of the Spur of the Moment gang in Capitol Hill, near the library. She had been to his place the other night, but they’d been far too busy tearing each other’s clothes off for her to properly inspect the place.
This time, after he hugged her and gave her a long, sensuous kiss, she asked him to show her around.
“It’s only a one-bedroom apartment, so it’s not like there’s much to see, but I’ll give you the tour.”
His home was sparsely decorated, but clean. She wondered if he was always this neat, or if he was trying to imp
ress her. She couldn’t remember if it had been neat the first night she was here or not (she hadn’t been concerned with his house-keeping skills at the time). In any case, he wouldn’t have had much time to clean between Friday night, working a 24-hour shift on Saturday, and now, so it couldn’t have been that bad to start with.
There were only two pictures on the wall, and both were sketches of women. One was an old woman in profile, the other was a younger, though not young, woman, her dark eyes intense yet friendly.
“Did you draw these?” Chelsey asked. He nodded. “Are they of anybody in particular?”
“This is my mom, and this is my grandmother. They are both amazing women. They’re very strong women. You’d like them.”
Chelsey liked how he spoke of such reverence for his mother and grandmother. Maybe it was an Indian thing. She seemed to remember that Native American culture was more matrilineal than European culture. Then again, her knowledge of things Native American was rather rusty. Or more accurately, nonexistent.
The sketches were beautiful. She told him so. “Any other family?”
“I’ve got two younger sisters, a few aunts. They’re still on the reservation.”
“In southern Colorado? New Mexico?”
“South Dakota.”
“What brought you out here?”
“My dad got me a job fighting fires in Aspen about eight years ago. Then I got a full-time job at the fire station in Denver a year later and I started taking classes at the Art Institute, so I’ve been here ever since. I visit my mom and sisters a lot though. I try to go to every sun dance and powwow. It’s only twelve hours away. It’s a nice drive. Are you ready for breakfast?”
“Sure.”
“Mimosa?”
“Sure.”
After drinks he brought out the rest of the meal. Eggs benedict plus hash browns and toast. Oh Christ, Chelsey thought, more calories than she usually ate in two days. She just smiled and ate slowly. She tried to let herself enjoy it. She’d just work out a little harder tomorrow and restrict her calories for the next few days. Being a personal trainer meant Chelsey was incapable of not counting calories and fat grams of everything she put into her body. She told her clients that the occasional break from calorie counting was okay, but she herself had a hard time shutting off the habit.