Fancy

Guess what you guys? I have a paying subscriber! Somebody besides my mom! (Not that I don’t appreciate my mother’s financial support, but, I mean, you know). I never thought to monetize this space because a) I didn’t think I posted often enough to make it worth anyone’s while and b) well, to be honest, I just wasn’t confidant enough to turn that feature on. I must have at some point though and I must say that having someone pay to read my work has given me an unexpected boost of creativity!

Most people who offer paid subscriptions for their Substacks usually offer special content that’s just for their paid subscribers. I’ve been mulling over what that might look like here and I’m not sure I have come up with anything just yet. Ideas that I have tossed around were: posting some of my fiction here? But there’s not that much of it, really, in the grand scheme of things. I also thought about posting video of some of my burlesque performances, but there’s not that much of that either? I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just commit to posting more regularly for now.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming: Last week I came across one of those engagement farm accounts online that in order to get to people to respond asks a question like, “What’s the worst movie ending you’ve ever seen?” or “What thing that is super popular do you secretly hate?” only this time the question they asked was, “What was something that as a child seemed like something that rich people did or had, or something that signified wealth?”

I knew my answer immediately: Shrimp cocktail. I think it was the fancy cut glass goblet that it was always served in, which seemed somehow cocktail adjacent and therefore fancy. I always felt like a grown up when I was allowed to order at Red Lobster, which also seemed fancy to me in part because it was a sit down restaurant that we went to either on Sundays after church which required a drive over to another town, or on special occasions. Shrimp cocktails were reserved for special occasions and vacations and so were therefore always special.

The small town I grew up in had no sit down restaurants. A pause here to make sure you understand what I mean by “sit down restaurant,” which is different from a fast food restaurant where you place your order at a counter rather than sitting down and having someone come to your table and take your order. Hell, for most of my childhood we only had two fast food restaurants — Dairy Queen and Hardees. Though I just remembered that we did have a steakhouse. It was not a fancy steakhouse even though it did have the dark paneling that seemed to be de rigueur for steakhouses in the late 70s/early 80s. I don’t recall ever getting an actual steak there, though, only hamburger steak, which, while delicious, was not fancy in any way because it was something you could easily have at home. Also, it was the place we had our end of the year softball banquets, so, not fancy.

One of the softball banquets I referenced. I’m on the far left on the first standing row in the light blue t-shirt with the fake tuxedo on the front. As I recall I inherited that shirt from my older brother and I loved it so much. I have vague recollections of thinking that was fancy, too. It was a tuxedo after all.

I loved being fancy. I loved playing dress up and I loved pretty dresses. I was semi-obsessed with my mother’s gown and peignoir that had been part of her trousseau and I loved to swan about the house in it. If I could have found marabou slippers at Pool’s Ladies Store on the square my heart would have been content.

There’s a family portrait that we had done when I was maybe about seven or eight years old, possibly for a church directory, though that’s weird because my Dad is in the picture and he never went to church with us. But in it, we’re all wearing shades of blue. My dad and my brother are in navy blue suits and my mom is wearing a blue blouse and a tweed-ish vest and skirt combo, and I’m wearing a blue floral organza dress (polyester, of course). I don’t know whether I actually remember saying this or if I’ve only been told I said it, but I supposedly said, upon seeing the picture in print, “We look rich.”

I don’t know now what about it seemed “rich,” but perhaps it was because it was so formal and we all looked so polished and smooth. Or perhaps it was because it included all four of us, something that rarely happened since my parents were separated. I wouldn’t say my childhood was chaotic, but there was a looseness about our household that was somehow different from my friend’s houses in a way that I’m not sure I can put my finger on, except maybe because there was no father figure in our household. I don’t recall ever having a bedtime, for example.¹ My mother was not a meticulous housekeeper. Mind, our house wasn’t gross, just cluttered. She would much rather have been taking us to the creek or sitting around playing the ukulele² and singing folk songs with us or listening to her records than cleaning. (Which, now that I think about it, is funny because when I think of her listening to her records it was usually while she was cleaning the kitchen.) (I am not by nature a cleaner, either, but I married one and have slowly acclimatized). It just felt like when I went to other people’s houses there were more rules about what we could and couldn’t do.

Maybe all of this is why I connected so immediately with my friend K when she moved to town in fourth grade. There was that same looseness in her house, too, and no father figure, though there was a loucheness about K’s mom, Marie, that my mother didn’t have. It might have been her sporty green MG convertible, which seemed racy and incredibly exciting for our small town. Or it might have been the fact that she slept late, late, late and when she woke she was always in her satin robe with messy hair and a cigarette. She seemed glamorous, but also a little wild and a little . . . scary. Like, mothers weren’t supposed to be like that, you know? K and her brother seemingly had few rules. Going to K’s house made my house seem like basic training.³

Now, as a grown up, I’m pretty solidly middle class, though in all honesty, I feel rich. I have all the things that I once would have dreamed of. And I’ve traveled. I’ve been to New York. I’ve been to Asia. I once stayed at the King of Thailand’s favorite hotel, which was very fancy, let me tell you. I’m about to go to Scotland. I once flew on a private jet to Los Angeles for a book launch event. I went to the National Book Awards and saw Lavar Burton and Oprah. I did the electric slide next to Rita Dove. I have done some “fancy” stuff, is what I’m saying. But there will always be something about a shrimp cocktail that makes the little small town girl inside me feel like a fancy lady.

1. Though I do remember that I wasn’t allowed to stay up and watch Fantasy Island on Saturday night if we were going to church the next day.

2. I had to look up how to spell ukulele, which is ironic because that’s the word I missed at the district spelling bee. I always want to make that second “u” an “e".”

3. In sixth grade K and her brother moved away to go live with their dad and I’ve never cried harder in my life.