Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Memoir) (2010) (11 page)

"That's the trapeze instructor. Raptor."

"Raptor? Boo," I said. "I don't think so. Raptor made that up."

Let me make it clear that while I respect the right of all individuals to reinvent their identities according to the tacit promise of the American Dream, I have nonetheless always found it pretentious when people abandon their birth names, as when a low-level art gallery employee named Maureen gradually begins calling herself Char, or when your sister's college roommate announces that we are no longer to call her by her given name (Sarah Hostetler); instead we are to call her Lettuce. On this topic, I also want to mention that I had a boyfriend in college whose roommate legally changed his name from plain old Billy Smigs to Alistair John William Smythe III. Really. Alistair John William Smythe III, as if the name came with a tweed jacket and a pipe. Of course this effort to procure dignity immediately backfired. Poor Smegma (as his many detractors then called him) was mocked for the rest of his college career. On the other hand, the tightly knit group of feminists surrounding Sarah Hostetler did obligingly agree to call her Lettuce.

"Funny story," Hannah said. "We had breakfast with Raptor on our last day there, and Phil asked him how he had come to get such a plum job at Club Med. Raptor said that about five hundred trapeze artists had shown up for the interview, so he knew that he'd have to come up with something that would make him truly memorable."

"Can you imagine if you were on that hiring committee?" I asked. "You'd have to keep those margaritas coming to get me to sit through five hundred trapeze acts."

"Well, but no. That's not what they did. Raptor walked into a room that had ten or twelve Club Med executives sitting at one long table. They told him that he had two minutes to impress them-'Okay, go,' just like that."

"So what did he do?"

"He imitated a raptor."

"A
veloci
raptor?"

Hannah made like a vulture and/or a lizard, cawing and dipping her neck, a passable imitation of one of our American icons, the predacious carnivore from
Jurassic Park
. "He said that ever since then, they'd called him Raptor."

I was willing to admit I'd made a mistake. "Impressive. Bravo for the man recently known as Raptor."

The Club Med's style of interviewing was striking, and I wondered if there were some possibilities here for academia. For every assistant professorship, there are often five hundred qualified applicants. Currently the protocol is to cull the top vitaes, and to solicit dissertation chapters with their accompanying letters of recommendation. We eliminate the obvious duds at the annual Modern Language Association meetings, whose interviews constitute round one. Round two consists of an invitation to three of the most promising scholars for a grueling campus visit in which candidates must strut their stuff in a three-step, two-day interview designed to bring tears to the eyes of the cockiest applicant. First, candidates must present their scholarly research at a question-and-answer forum. They are also required to lecture to a roomful of strange students, engaging them in a dynamic conversation about a literary text they may never have taught before, demonstrating their sophisticated pedagogy in discussion management, all while the hiring committee scribbles notes in the back. Finally, and here's the kicker, candidates attend at least two lunches and two dinners with potential colleagues. At these festive events the members of the hiring department frequently attempt sly yet legal strategies to fish for information about the candidates' marital status and sexual orientation. (Sidebar: Hey! It might be amusing to hand this job to my sister-in-law Staci!)

It seemed to me, though, that Club Med was onto something. Perhaps we needed to rethink those agonizing campus visits. Maybe what we needed instead was to sit back and invite those Ph.D.s to a two-minute demonstration of a memorable skill or behavior. If I personally ever went back on the job market, I could dazzle the hiring committee by draping my own leg around my neck. Revolting, true. Off-topic, sure. But memorable, given the fact that I am forty-three.

I had another question for my sister. "What was Raptor's real name?"

"Stuart."

"He doesn't look like a Stuart."

"Some people don't," said Hannah keenly.

"Phil looks like a Phil," I pointed out.

"I would think twice about dating a guy named Stuart," Hannah admitted.

This seemed reasonable, as the only Stuart I knew liked to wear a long-sleeved aubergine T-shirt that said in pink cursive THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE. "What other names would you have a hard time dating?"

"Dennis," she said decisively.

"Good one."

Our cousin Dennis collected salt and pepper shakers in the shape of sporty-fresh woodland creatures. Also he displayed them prominently in a custom-built cabinet in his dining room. He had a pair of pert whimsical ceramic skunks that had often figured in our musings on the extended Loewen family.

"You?"

"The obvious answer is Bob," I said. Hannah waved her hand in priestly absolution. "Naturally. Bob would be problematic. As would Nick."

By now we were standing in Hannah's spacious closet. She and I were drinking tea, doing a little holiday cleaning. My motto, like Nick's, was IF YOU HAVEN'T WORN IT IN A YEAR, THROW IT OUT! Hannah interpreted this motto as "If you haven't worn it in a year, put it back in the closet and save it for your nine-year-old daughter's adult years, a mere decade away!"

Considering whether or not we would date nonexistent suitors took us straight through the long wall of jackets and tops. By the time we hit the skirts, we had rejected all of the following hypothetical romantic partners.

• Men named Dwayne or Bruce

• Men who have the high strange laugh of a distant loon

• Men who expect us to put them through grad school and then who as soon as they graduate with their law and/or medical degree demand a divorce and/or embark on a madcap romp through the gay personals

• Men who are so nervous that on the first date they have written down on three-by-five-inch index cards conversational overtures such as "Do you like your classes?" after which these men tuck said cards into the glove compartment, presumably to serve a function of social lubricity later in the date; but because your legs are so long, they accidentally knock open the glove compartment, scattering the index cards over the car mat, where you can't help but read them, appalled

• Men who are easily fifty-five years old when you are
eighteen
, which is just plain creepy, especially coupled with the fact that these fifty-five-year-old men are in attendance four out of five nights at the restaurant where you are hostessing

• Men who hang out in bars and/or lounges called the Pepper-mill, Beethoven's, Nibblers, Parrots, and Crackers; and although your sister informs you that the place you misremembered as Parrots was really named Crackers, Parrots is a bad title nonetheless, and if this restaurant exists somewhere in America's heartland, as it surely must, then you categorically refuse to date any man who darkens its doubtless faux teak doors

• Men with a certain dance move involving a single knee, repeatedly raised, and a sidebar finger-snap, not unlike the character of Betty or Veronica in the high heyday of Archie cartoons, with said dance move not appearing to be retro but rather serious there on the dance floor at Crackers, with the Schmitter also shakin' his thang, but a little less goofily, trying to impress your sister who has flown in from Florida for Thanksgiving, and both guys obviously congratulating themselves that they have scored a date with blonde sisters.

"Our dating history would make my friend Carla cry," I said. "She thinks I'm too choosy when it comes to men. I'll tell you what takes the cake, though," I said. "This happened to Lola before she moved to Italy. She was living in San Francisco after her divorce, and she met this guy she was on the fence about, but he kept talking about his cooking. He said he wanted to make her a gourmet meal."

"So? What's wrong with that?" Like me, Hannah perks up when a man can cook. "What's wrong with this skirt?" Hannah peered at her rear reflection over her shoulder. "Does it make my ass look like a party tray?"

"A little," I said. "Lola was house-sitting a friend's condo, and this guy shows up with a grocery bag full of cool ranch chips, a jar of Prego, and a thing of prefab dried spaghetti. Correct me if I'm wrong," I said, folding the rejected skirt, "but if a man is teetering on the brink, a bag of cool ranch chips is gonna seal his doom forever."

"What is cool ranch-I've seen those flavors on Allie's field trips."

The previous night we had imbibed a fair amount of wine under the auspices of learning how to talk like wine snobs. Now I couldn't resist showing off my new skills. "Some kind of corn chip with artificial flavoring. I believe it shows with a Velveeta topnote and a bracing character of radish, which then gives way to a powdery suggestion of sour-cream-'n'-chive, ultimately yielding a powerfully robust beer-belch finish."

"Sicko," said Hannah, standing in her underwear with her hands on her hips.

"Hey,
I'm
not the one who brought the cool ranch appetizer. So Lola said that during dinner it became painfully clear that there was no chemistry whatsoever. This guy excuses himself after dinner, and she thinks that he's just gone to the bathroom."

"And who wouldn't have to go to the bathroom after a bag of chips? Poor guy, he was probably gassy for days. Zip this up."

"Well," I said, obediently zipping, "the guy remains gone for a curiously long time. Finally she gets worried, so she goes to tap on the bathroom door. But the bathroom door is open. He's not in the bathroom."

"This story is starting to creep me out," said Hannah.

"Lola goes into the only place she hasn't checked, the bedroom. And there's the guy, stretched out on the bed, completely naked-"

"Ew!!"

"And he has posed himself like some kind of centerfold gone horribly wrong-"

"Unbelievable!"

"And here's the punch line: he has an indescribably tiny erection. That he's proud of!"

"A peenie!"

"A teeny weenie peenie," I affirmed. "Lola said it was the smallest thing she'd ever seen, like a fuzzy caterpillar."

"What'd she do?"

"She just stood there, amazed and horrified in the doorway of the room. But suddenly a flock of ducks flew up from the water feature in the gated community outside the bedroom's sliding glass door. The ducks began quacking up a storm as if in response to the guy's wee genital salute. Poor Lola couldn't help bursting into laughter. And she burst into laughter all over again when she told me the story, twenty years later," I added, "so it must have been pretty damn funny."

"Funny, yes, but tragic too. A man's not to be blamed for his genital deficiency. However, he has
complete
control over the appetizer. Amazing that Lola had the chutzpah to laugh to his face. I wouldn't have, no matter how much he deserved it."

"Me neither. Remember Mr. Epp?"

"Who? Does this dress look timeless or church-lady?"

"Church-lady.
Easter
church-lady. That neckline is just beggin' for a choir robe." I hummed a few bars of an Easter cantata that the Butler Mennonite Brethren Church had often presented on Palm Sunday.

Hannah looked confused for a second until she placed the tune: "Paid in Full." Then she ignored my advice and put the church-lady dress back on the hanger. "I'll wear this to look in on Phil's mother. You were saying?"

"Mr. Epp was a guy I dated."

"Mister? Why are you calling him Mister?"

"I can't remember his first name."

"That's a little weird." Hannah frowned. "So what about this Mr. Epp?"

"Maybe I never mentioned him to you. I agreed to go out with him on the strength of a single pick-up line. This was in Kansas years and years ago, when Dad was teaching for a semester at the Mennonite college in Hillsboro. You were away at college, and I had flown in for a visit. I got direction-turned coming out of the college gym. So I'm standing there on the step for a second, trying to get my bearings. A guy pauses and says, 'Can I help you?' And I say, 'Yes, can you tell me where I am?' And he smiles a slow simmering smile and says, 'You're in Kansas, Dorothy.' I thought that was cute enough to go out with him."

"That's pretty cute," Hannah admitted. "It ain't no bag of cool ranch chips. But I take it that your Mr. Epp was not consistently cute?"

"No. It turned out that the Kansas line was the high point. It was all downhill from there. He was one of those guys who get maudlin after two beers. Mr. Epp was driving me home through some rural wheat fields. It felt very rural. And guess what he starts waxing sentimental about?"

"His peenie?"

"Close.
Losing his virginity.
"

"But why?" Hannah asked blankly. "Why would any man talk about such a thing on a first date?"

I shrugged. "Why are there cool ranch chips in the world? It's a question for the philosophers, like the ongoing presence of evil. All I know is that Mr. Epp made a big wet confession of it, in a voice all sloppy with emotion: '
It was in a field like this, under a moon like this, that that little thing called Virginity was lost
. . .'"

"Faugh," said Hannah, grimacing. "Did you kiss him goodnight?"

"I most certainly did not," I said, indignant. "I have
some
standards. I gave him my hand to shake."

"Did he shake it?"

"No." I grinned, knowing how this would gross her out: "He kissed it."

She made inelegant gagging noises.

"Some women like that kind of faux medieval gallantry," I observed.

"Some women like a cool ranch flavor too, but that doesn't make it right. Pour me more tea," she ordered, queenly.

"Gladly." Continuing to show off my witty wine-tasting know-how, I declared, "This tea shows with a devil-may-care dash of cinnamon and a lusty topnote of Darjeeling, with a protracted but bold finish, as if eager to post pictures of its cock on Gay.com, using its wife's computer."