Dangerous When Wet: A Memoir (13 page)

The entire bar was laughing. Except for me.

I felt exposed, as if John Waters had snuck his camera into the living room of Mama Jean’s dream house during the Christmas morning that had just passed and from which I was still recovering. I thought of those old Polaroid commercials that showed the idealized reality of family holidays instead of the shit shows they actually were. I sucked down my martini as everyone around me seemed to laugh maniacally, their mocking faces taunting me like reflections in a fun-house mirror. It had been one hell of a Christmas, emphasis on
hell
.

*   *   *

Since I’d been living my New York dream come true, Mama Jean had been in her custom-built dream house for a few years. She and Dad had made it to Flamingo Road, a lifetime away from her loathed childhood house on Calder.

The front of the terra-cotta-colored stucco house with teal-green trim was Palladian in its symmetry: wide, triple-pane windows on the two ends of the house, slightly set back from the robust middle. Three tall windows were under the pediment of a high-pitched gable that sported a decorative oval window of leaded glass.

I remember the first time I saw it, when I returned from my junior year of college in London. I was slack-jawed from the moment I walked into the house—the foyer with its pink marble floor and padded fabric walls led into the twelve-foot-high living room, which flowed into a large, formal dining room, which opened onto a gallery of three sets of glass double doors, which opened to face a brick courtyard—to the moment I saw the new car she had waiting for me in the garage with a giant red bow that Dad had tied around it.

Unlike the formal living room of the previous house, with its Ethan Allen Chippendale knockoffs, which was never lived in but always sealed off and frozen in time like Miss Havisham’s wedding-banquet hall, this living room was meant to be shown off. The room was filled with antiques—Impressionist paintings in gilt frames bought at auction, a silver serving tray that once belonged to the movie star Gene Tierney. Hanging above the custom-made sofa of pale pink damask was a tapestry depicting a woman riding a horse on a fox hunt.

Dad pointed to the tapestry. “It ought to have a title, like a great painting.”

We cocked our heads and squinted our eyes, concentrating on the tapestry as we took up the title challenge.

“In Pursuit?”
I said.

“Uhn-uh,” Mama Jean grunted.

“The Fox and the Lady?”
Dad said.

“No,” Mama Jean and I said in unison.

Mama Jean sat up in her chair. “I’ve got it.” She clapped her hands.
“Cunt on a Hunt.”
The name stuck.

She loved that house and loved showing it off almost as much as she loved showing me off, especially at the annual Christmas parties she and Dad threw for
le tout
Beaumont. In front of the glass doors looking onto the back courtyard was the Christmas tree that I “helped” decorate. That meant that Dad and I did the work and Mama Jean directed: “No! Put Scarlett right in front—right there—in the middle where that bare spot is. Yes! That’s almost perfect.” (Dad had given her a Scarlett O’Hara ornament to make up for the coveted Scarlett doll she’d never received as a child.) The ten-foot artificial tree with twinkling white lights and pink and gold bows all over was crowned with a giant bow at the top from which matching streamers cascaded.

At one of those Christmas parties, right before the guests arrived, Dad took a photo of a thin Mama Jean holding her champagne flute of Asti Spumante, beaming with regal pride in front of the garland-festooned fireplace as three gift-bearing Wise Men made of gold Venetian glass marched in profile across the mantel.

Christmas was always her favorite time of the year, and she was forever trying to compensate for the disappointing Christmases of her childhood on Calder Avenue, with scrawny trees under which longed-for gifts such as the Scarlett O’Hara doll never appeared. Each Christmas had to be bigger and better than the last, and the Christmas tree, which was bigger and more elaborately decorated each year, could have no bare spot.

She loved giving as much as she liked getting. As kids, we always got what we wanted. Ronny got his dirt bikes. Jeffrey got his birdcages, fish tanks, mini-greenhouses, and everything that went in them. I got whatever toys I asked for, except for the Barbie makeup head, but then I intuitively knew never to ask for that. Dad had the burden of getting her what she wanted. One Christmas he gave her an expensive silk wrap dress of wide vertical stripes in bold primary colors. Mama Jean was a bold, color-loving gal.

She opened the box and unfurled the dress. She forced a smile as she held it up to her body. “Well, it’s the right size.”

“Honey, all those bright reds, blues, and yellows will look gorgeous with your dark hair,” Dad said in pale imitation of the kind of remarks Mama Jean would say when giving us clothes.

“I guess so.” She forced a smile. She was a terrible liar.

“You don’t like it.”

“I
do
like it. I do.” Those were the days when she couldn’t afford
exactly
what she did like.

I wanted so badly for her to like it. She wore it to a dinner party, and I oohed and aahed at the sight of her in it as she and Dad left the house. I told her that she looked just like Elizabeth Taylor. She’d heard this before and immediately posed: head turned in profile, lips in a sultry pout, glancing over her shoulder. “You think so?”

“Oh, yes.”

When they returned home, she said that the hostess of the dinner party opened the door and said, “Well, hi, Jean! Come on in with that loud dress.” I could see Dad’s face fall. She never wore the dress again.

At the Flamingo Road Christmas parties, I was always expected to be on display as her living ornament. The annual holiday routine quickly became Michahaze and me spending Thanksgiving with Mama Jean and Dad in Beaumont, and me back solo for Christmas.

After my first year in New York, Mama Jean offered to fly Michahaze and me to Beaumont for Thanksgiving. (There was no question that I would be home with her for Christmas.)
But Thanksgiving
and
Christmas, two visits barely a month apart?

After a day of showing Michahaze the sites of Beaumont, she let us in on her plan. “Now, since y’all are here, I would love it if y’all could help decorate the house for Christmas.”

“Christmas? We just finished Thanksgiving supper,” I said.

“I know, but I’ve got y’all here
now,
and I love my house when it’s decorated for Christmas. I’d leave it that way all year if I could. Besides, I bought your plane tickets. It’s the least y’all could do.”

The pattern was set. Michahaze and I would spend Thanksgiving in Beaumont decorating her house, and good gay son-in-law that he was, he always brought a large, expensive ornament for the tree. BOHs (balls of honor), Mama Jean called them. I would return solo a scant month later for the party, Christmas, and to de-decorate the house.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Michahaze spent the holiday with his family in Tennessee. We didn’t think we had rights to alternate Christmases together with each other’s family or simply have Christmas with just the two of us in New York, rights that our straight, married friends enjoyed. We were old-school queens in that way.

Every Christmas was the same party with the same decorations, and the same food, and the same people. Mama Jean was always dressed to the nines; her favorite hostess gown was a floor-length, lipstick-red St. John Knits dress with rhinestone buttons up the front, from Neiman Marcus. St. John Knits were the haute couture of rich, white Republican ladies. She’d parade me around as her living ornament and brag about me: “He’s up there in New York working on all kinds of big books, like
Scarlett,
the
Gone with the Wind
sequel, and Madonna’s trashy book.” Don’t get me wrong. I loved it. I basked in the praise but I felt like a fraud, because I was working
with
writers, as opposed to
being
a writer.

Then there was Christmas itself. I couldn’t stand my losing battle in the gift-giving sweepstakes. Mama Jean always went out of her way to give everyone what they asked for and what she thought they needed. When it came to choosing gifts for her, no matter how hard you tried to guess her tastes, the gift was never right unless she had chosen it. I fantasized about someday striking it rich and returning all she had given me and more, presenting her with that one gift that would balance the bill. We all learned that it was best to get her what she wanted, no matter the cost. Besides, you’d never be able to give her more than she gave you.

She had become obsessed with a pattern of china called Tobacco Leaf. She had a twelve-piece setting and was eagerly grabbing accessories—planters, vases, cachepots, anything with that damn pattern of cobalt blue, pink, green, and gold. The catalog copy at Gump’s in the Houston Galleria best described the pattern:

“Tobacco Leaf, one of the most prized of Chinese Export patterns, was developed circa 1780. The design shows the leaves of the flowering Nicotiana (Tobacco) plant upon which a small phoenix perches bearing a flowering twig in its beak. The joyous exuberance of the Tobacco Leaf pattern is undiminished by time.”

The summer before that Christmas, Mama Jean and I were at Gump’s in Houston.

“Come look. Quick!” she called. She was holding a Tobacco Leaf–patterned frog. “Isn’t he precious?”

“Just adorable.”

“If you were thinking of getting me something,
this
would be it.”

She raised her eyebrows as she put it down.
Excellent. Christmas is taken care of,
I thought.

Months passed before I called Gump’s to get the frog. By the time I did, they were out of it, but they had a bunny rabbit in the Tobacco Leaf pattern that was just as cute. And for the same price: $120.
Kind of steep on my entry-level publishing salary, but if that’s what the lady wants …

On Christmas morning I was playing Santa, grabbing presents from under the tree and delivering them to everybody. Mama Jean sat on the sofa in the living room underneath
Cunt on a Hunt
. Dad had just gone to check on the turkey in the kitchen. I knelt at Mama Jean’s slippered feet and presented the distinctive Gump’s box with its black grosgrain ribbon.

Mama Jean’s face was as excited as, well, a child’s on Christmas morning. “Is this what I think it is?” She untied the black ribbon.

“Well, go ahead and open it.”

She started to lift the lid on the box.

“I think you’ll like it, but…”

“If it’s what I think it is, I’ll
love
it!”

“Well, it’s not
exactly
—”

She spread apart the tissue paper inside. “Oh, and I have the
perfect
spot for this…” She pulled out the Tobacco Leaf … “
Rabbit?!
No!” She held the terrified rabbit at eye level and screamed at it. “This isn’t what I wanted! I wanted the frog!”

“Well, they didn’t have the frog. But don’t you think the rabbit is just as cute … cuter?”

“
No!
Not when I wanted the frog! Why can’t anyone ever get me what
I
want?”

I tried to explain, but it was like reasoning with a drunk. Or a lynch mob. Dad ran into the room to come to my defense. This was a rare moment because fights like this were usually between her and him or her and one of my brothers, but never with me. If he got involved in a fight with my brothers, it was to take her side.

“Oh, stop it, Jean! I can’t believe you.”

“Shut up, Earl! This is between Jamie and me.” But she made it between him and her to make it no longer between her and me.

“No wonder your mother hated Christmas. She always said that there was no pleasing you.”

“Don’t you
dare
bring my mother into this!” By now the waterworks were flowing (mine and hers).

“You always ruin Christmas!” she screamed at Dad, and ran sobbing from the room, abandoning me and the Tobacco Leaf rabbit. The next thing I heard was the screech of tires as her Cadillac shot out of the garage. I wanted to hurl the rabbit onto the pink-marble hearth and leave it shattered for her to see, but I couldn’t. She might have done that, but I wasn’t allowed to get angry like that. There was only one star in that house.

*   *   *

When I found myself in the Works, the gay bar around the corner from West Eighty-second Street, watching the Divine clip, it was too soon after that Christmas for me to laugh.

“Would you like another?” a shirtless bartender said to me.

“Excuse me?”

“Ready for another?” He pointed to my empty martini glass.
How did that happen?

“Yes. Beefeater gin. Up. Make it a double.”

“But it’s a martini.”

“Then don’t even
think
about the vermouth.”

I stared at the TV screen, which had been abandoned by Divine and replaced with a video of Madonna voguing. But I didn’t see Madonna. I saw that Tobacco Leaf rabbit where it had taken its final resting place on the living-room shelf, next to a jade-and-ceramic tree. It sat in silence, forever mute about its provenance.

The joyous exuberance of the Tobacco Leaf pattern is undiminished by time.

TWELVE

Verboten
in Zurich

It was nearly five
A.M
. when I came to in a Rodeway Inn motel room on the side of I-10 in Beaumont. The blond-tipped Walmart employee I had picked up at the Copa earlier that night lay snoring beside me.

“Shit!” I looked at my watch in disbelief for the third time.
How did this happen?
I asked myself, remembering how my much-needed night of freedom from Mama Jean’s house was supposed to be fun and painless: easy out, easy in, no one gets caught. I resented having to spend another Christmas in Beaumont, where I didn’t feel as if I could be an adult, which meant I couldn’t drink the way I wanted to drink. At twenty-four, I still felt like a teenager in her house and had to lie that I was going out with friends instead of to the Copa for a few drinks and maybe a little …