Southern Lady Code: Essays(18)

Don’t be embarrassed. We’re all adults here.

Except for that crying baby. It’s somewhere behind us, I don’t know its seat. See how I’m not craning my neck to give an infant the stink eye. I told you I was considerate. It’s not the baby’s fault that it’s crying. It’s not the parent’s fault either. Babies cry. Don’t complain. No plane was ever delayed because a baby was crying. No plane ever crashed because a baby was crying. So, face forward and pump up the soft-core pornography volume.

The pilot is making another announcement. He’s paused your candlelit sex scene (and everyone else’s marathon of The Real Housewives of Detroit Argue Next to Decorative Pillows) to tell us we’re grounded for another half hour. He’s turned off the “Fasten Your Seat Belt” lights. If we need to use the restroom, now would be a good time to go.

You’ll want to go to the restroom right after me. I was not put on this earth to straddle a commode. I wipe down a toilet seat like I’m giving it a tetanus shot.

I’m back. Why didn’t you follow me? Did you peek out the window? Did you finger my book? Just kidding! See? I’m hilarious. My sense of humor will be a ray of sunshine if our plane death-spirals into the frozen tundra.

You know what else will be a comfort? My lips against yours. My husband has given me permission to kiss whomever I want if my plane goes down. I am the kind of woman who always imagines kissing my seatmate, be he man, woman, or child of eighteen. Let’s be serious. If I’m going to be identified by my dental records or a Q-tip swab of DNA, I’ll kiss a sixteen-year-old. And that sixteen-year-old will die happy and thanking me for showing him the ways of womanhood. “The ways of womanhood” is Southern Lady Code for tongue. So, brace yourself! Once this plane is at a ninety-degree angle, I’m going to ride you like Slim Pickens rode the bomb in Dr. Strangelove. Yeehaw!

I told you I’m the most considerate person to sit beside. I told 17A the same thing. If he were awake, he would confirm this.





HALLOWEEN PEOPLE





I RSVP’d yes to a Studio 54 party because I’d been to one of the host’s parties before and it was my idea of a good time: me and my husband surrounded by fifty to sixty fabulous forty-to sixty-year-old gay men.

I told my husband, “I’ll buy a wrap dress and do my hair like Jaclyn Smith.”

My husband liked this idea.

He asked, “But what will I wear? I gave away my Mr. Kotter wig when you Marie Kondo’d the apartment.”

I said, “A fat tie or baseball shirt with an iron-on? Don’t worry, we’ll think of something.”

But we did not go to this party because I chickened out.

No matter how much I want to be, I am not a dresser-upper. Don’t misunderstand. I’m put together. “Put together” is Southern Lady Code for you can take me to church or Red Lobster and I’ll fit in fine. My closet has dresses, skirts, slacks, shirts, and blouses. I’m put together enough to know the difference between shirts and blouses. A shirt is stiff. A blouse billows. See, I’m educated, but there is a level of dress-up that reminds me of Halloween. And I don’t do Halloween. I do Christmas.

In this world, there are Halloween people and Christmas people. Halloween people trick-or-treat, enter costume contests, and march in parades. Halloween people like to be seen, but Christmas people like for you to come over and see what they’ve done to their place. We decorate our houses. We dress up trees. I am the kind of woman who has more tree skirts than skirts. My sister makes me a new one every year to match my tree theme. See, I have tree themes. I am a Christmas person.

I want to be a Halloween person, but I don’t like costumes. And, to me, a costume is anything I have to buy to attend an event: a wrap dress (Studio 54 party), a hat (Kentucky Derby party), or something that bares my upper arms (ball, benefit, or banquet). I don’t want to shop for anything with a “th” sound on the invite either. You know, the sound Daffy Duck makes when he lisps, Youuu’re dethpicable!

After the Studio 54 party, we got an invite to our friend Nicho’s fiftieth.

I almost RSVP’d no right away because it was black tie.

Black tie is the dressiest of dressing up.

The last time I wore black tie was for Nicho’s fortieth birthday party, which was black tie, but also a masked ball, which is dress-up on top of dress-up. For that, I bought a $300 red satin cocktail dress from a SoHo boutique. For my mask, I bought a pair of two-dollar black glittered sunglasses from Ricky’s (a Halloween store). Party guests who’d special-ordered Mardi Gras masks from New Orleans or outbid strangers on eBay for masks from the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut said my sunglasses were cheating. They let me slide because of my red cocktail number, but I didn’t ace the dress-up test. Now it’s been a decade since I dressed up and I worry that if don’t pick the right outfit I’ll be turned away at the door.

It’s happened before. At twenty-five, my husband and I were turned away at Lexington Bar & Books, which has a jacket-required dress code. I was cold and he’d wrapped his suit jacket around my shoulders. To be allowed in, they offered him one of theirs. I’m sure it was navy and nondescript, but I remember it as clownishly shameful: neon plaid and twelve sizes too large. We left.

My husband urged me to RSVP yes to Nicho’s black tie party. He said, “We’re not going to a restaurant; it’s our friend’s birthday. Nobody’s going to turn us away. Come on, we can’t not go because we don’t have anything to wear.”