Job #47 A Cinderella Story

Just beyond the realm of normal everyday life, lurks a grisly cult like fanaticism that fogs the minds and opens the wallets of normally clear thinking adults, leaving them utterly helpless over the powerful pull of the Children’s Birthday Party.
Unwittingly I fell down this bizzaro rabbit-hole when I landed a gig as a character for kid’s parties.

I applied for this job hopeful and naïve. I thought: kids parties, that’ll be fun! I should have known there’d be trouble when I was sent through the interview process used by the FBI. Then I had to audition by parading around a carpeted office, channeling my best Snow White while a starched panel humorlessly took notes on my every move and vocal nuance. Having survived that, I was subjected to an extensive background check and a series of vaccinations.

Somehow I made it through the elimination of 50 or so applicants to the final three. I felt like I’d gotten into Harvard or become a green beret or something. My success probably had to do with English being my first language and white being my primary skin color. Not that these employers are racist, but most of the popular princesses are very Caucasian and speak in full sentences.

There I was, spending my weekends as Cinderella, Bella, Jasmine, Clowns, Power Puff Girls and of course, Snow White. I worked the mental health maximum of four parties a weekend, driving my little pick-up truck to the most obscure parts of Southern California, costume changes and piñatas flapping in the wind.
At first I enjoyed the adventure, it was awesome to show up at a stranger’s house in an elaborate costume and make their day super-duper special. Kids worshipped me, moms tipped me, dads winked and asked if I ever wore my costumes off hours. But the sweet tootsie-roll filled days couldn’t last forever and I began to notice signs that I was spinning out of control, fraying at the pantaloons, losing myself in the world of “make-believe this is a good job.”

The magic lifted one day when, in full clown regalia, including white make-up and rainbow wig, I was driving home from a three-year old’s birthday reception and listening to a very moving piece on NPR about the regrets of fighter pilots in Afghanistan. It was so sad, so haunting; I was brought to tears. Then I was brought to sobs, and finally, uncontrollable hysterics. I was crying my blue painted eyes out and did not get the irony until a van of kids started yelling “Don’t cry Miss Clown, don’t cry!”
“Oh no!” I thought in a panic, “I’m a clown and I’m crying!” I stared in horror at my face in the rear view mirror. What had happened to me, what had I become? A crying clown for god’s sake! I had become the biggest cliché to make it into the cliché hall of fame.

I began to dread my days of jumping castles and cake. Always when dressed in a plushy polyester animal suit it will be over 90 degrees out, but when nearly naked as Ariel the mermaid, the temperature will dip suddenly to 20. After months of screeching in a cartoonish falsetto over the din of ruthless whiners I was developing vocal nodes. I sounded more like Marge Simpson’s sisters then a Bambi eyed princess. But I pushed on. The birthday fantasies of the single digit set resting heavily on my shoulders.

Then it got abusive. I was dressed as a Power Puff Girl: blue mini dress, white tights and a giant bobble head with a huge mesh smile to see through. This particular family decided their kid needed an “authentic piñata experience,” so they blindfolded him, spun him around and armed him with a large stick. The birthday boy, drunk on sugar and ambition, hit the air around him harder and harder with each ninja inspired swing. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh and CRACK! He hit something! The piñata? No the Power Puff Girl’s arm! Magically it appeared as though it didn’t hurt her, because no amount of pain could wipe that giant animated smile from that big head. But behind the mesh grin tears streamed down my very real face. By the next day nasty blue and purple bruises covered my arm. Diligently, like a good tin soldier, I showed up for my gig as Snow White. The family gasped in horror as I walked in, a sweet Snow White with an arm like hardened junky.

The job ended the way they usually do for me, very badly. I was exhausted, I felt a flu coming on and I needed a day off. I tried to call in sick but my work ethic was immediately called into question and I was instructed to get a note from my doctor. “My DOCTOR?” I yelled, “How could I possibly go to a doctor? With my imaginary insurance or with the buckets of gold at the end of the rainbow?” No, no doctor and no note. With that I shoved away from the candy coated poison world of children’s entertainment. Left to drift again in a sea of career choices.

Babies, the Epidemic

There is a an epidemic of baby-making among my friends and I'm terrified.
Here's the thing, my friends used to be cool.
We were post neo-feminist-anarchists. Joanie had a green mohawk, Astrid was a lesbian, Lori couldn't fall in love unless she was on ecstasy.
None of us were gonna have babies! We thought: there are enough people on this planet, we're crowding each other out, were killing ourselves off.
It wasn't even like we planed to be independent career women, we were just rebellious and angry and idealistic. The world was fucked and we'd be damned if we were going to buy into all it's backwards fascist systems. We'd read the “Feminist Mystique” and “Backlash”. We'd been date raped, we knew what the world was like.
Now it's all wedding this and baby that. Now its picking colors and matching names.
It's boring and depressing and awful.
Not dangerous, not defiant.
“You guys should totally have kids.” Joanie suggests.
Me and Greg? Kids?
I don't know.
“Well,” she says “decide soon, you'll avoid a lot of tests.”

Soon I'm gonna be the age where it's called a geriatric pregnancy. I'm fine: healthy, strong. My uterus on the other hand is like, “has anyone seen my hearing aide”.
Okay if I get too old we can adopt. Lots of fun: adoption. We can get a cute little baby girl from Cambodia, and when she grows up Greg can run away with her and marry her like Woody Allen did.

“Tell Greg you want to have a baby.” Joanie commands.

When either of us brings up having kids the other pretends to get diarrhea. What if he stays undecided and my now in limbo uterus withers away and dies an old crusty uteral death while his energetic little gents can just go popping around looking for some fresh young ovaries to call home.

I can't have a child, I can't even clean up after myself, I can't even clean myself. I leave the house without deodorant almost everyday! What's that gonna be like for some poor kid, “Oh sorry mommy left without you again today, I know it's hard cause you're still breast-feeding...”
I might be awful after I have a baby, all stretched out and pissed off.
And sex? With a baby in the house?
Brad and Angelina don't even do it anymore, and they're the sexiest people on the planet, how could average sexy people like Greg and me survive that?

And can I really trust him with a baby? He has worse ADD then me, he might leave it on the top of the car and drive off or something. And he can be rude, what if he's rude to the baby? If that mother fucker is rude to my baby I will kick him in the balls.

My career is a pregnancy. I am pregnant with ideas, I am pregnant with opportunities, I am pregnant with hopes and dreams. I am pregnant with a baby elephant, that's what I am. A giant one ton baby elephant that feels ready to come out, but wait, not yet, another month, another year another couple of years...never. I am pregnant with a colossal baby elephant and it never comes out. I just carry this thing around in pain until I die. I keep thinking it's coming, I get contractions, I do the breathing, the water breaks. Oh my god, how am I going to deliver an elephant, I'm a human, a very small human. Contractions, pain, nothing comes out.

What if nothing ever happens, no real baby, no real elephant. I grow old and penniless with my cats who get old and incontinent.
I could be the weird old aunt to all these kids. I could wear funny hats and bake ugly cookies for Christmas presents. People would point at me in the grocery store, “that crazy old lady, she was really going somewhere, but no where came too fast and she lost it.”

It's just more feasible to be a total loser then to have it all. They warned us girls not to want it all. Career, husband and baby; one, two, three. It should be easy. Like a shopping spree, “There's the career aisle, the husband aisle is there and the babies are available at the check out next to the candy and magazines, you have 20 minutes... go!”
Then I can say I've taken care of that! And sit down with a book without feeling like I'm wasting my life away.

I've had glimpses of motherhood. Recently I transported my cat on my lap in the car as I drove (very Brittany). He was so scared he peed all over me. Then he shit on me. I still love him, that's mother-like.
And the tomato seeds I planted are starting to burst through the soil, that's like making babies.
Except you can eat them.

I know one day it's just gonna happen. One day I'm gonna look at a baby and the baby will look at me and it'll cast it's spell on me like Medusa. Suddenly there'll be a dull ache in my fallopian tubes and it'll travel up to my heart which will swell with some sort of mystical mothering type of love and that will spread to my brain and my eyes will blur with a rosy fog and I'll turn to whatever man is around and use him in a way I have never used a man before.
And then I'll have a kid and I'll be someone's mom and someone's baby's mama. And if all goes well everyone will grow-up and I'll grow up too and no one will be an elephant.

Being a Good Person

I never thought it was going to come into question whether I was a good person or not. I was pretty sure on the continuum from "good person" to "evil bastard" I easily fell around "decent citizen" with a general intention to always be good or at least better.

Well, I am just about ready to give up trying to be a good person.

Being a good person has gotten way too hard and complicated. It used to be all you had to do was smile at your butcher and not kill your spouse. But now, in today's world, you have to follow more and more rules every day. Rules that seem that seem to split and multiply right before your eyes like gremlins. Rules that aren't based on law, just the ethic that once you are aware that you are ruining the world with everything you do, you should make an serious effort to change.

Now, to be even a decent citizen, you have to recycle and drink organic fair trade coffee and buy clothes that weren’t made by children in Cambodia and make-up that wasn’t tested on bunnies. And make sure you drink your filtered water from reusable canisters, but not plastics because those are made from petroleum which funds terrorists and pollutes the air. And that is on-par with beating children with canned vegetables in a polyester pillowcase.

Still, you have to smile at your butcher, but watch out who you smile at because it may be misinterpreted. Don't smile at the homeless guy, but do smile at the black guy and the Arab guy so you don’t look racist, but not too much so you wont be accused of displaying liberal guilt. Certainly don’t smile at the group of Mexicans outside the Home Depot, because they may mob you. If you really want to help them, write to your congressperson about immigration laws. Definitely take the time to learn about immigration laws.

You should also smile at that bitch at work, even though it’s fake and you know she hates you and wants to steal your handbag, your job and your spouse (I'd kill him!) Smile at her because it’s better to spread love, not hate. If we all just fill our hearts with love and forgiveness the world would truly be a better place.

Not a better place for all the abandoned animals at the shelters though. Millions and millions of sweet, loving doggies and kitties are unnecessarily killed every year in shelters. So make sure you fix your adopted pet. Don't ever buy a pet; adopt! Only total jerk-offs buy their pets now a days, everyone knows that.

It stands that you should still not kill your spouse, unless you’re kinky and you’re role-playing and it goes horribly wrong. Or he’s dying already and you’re killing him is a mercy euthanasia thing that you two agreed on together. In which case that's a fascinating moral dilemma that may land you on Oprah (who is the very embodiment of all goodness). Then you can write a book about it, and your book will become a movie. And when people comment on your amazing success you can sadly look down because you would give it all up for one more day with your deceased spouse. Cue tear.

We've destroyed the oceans by the way, so make sure you don't eat fish which is full of mercury. Not to mention eating fish somehow encourages Japanese fishermen to slaughter dolphins, so you should probably boycott all fish. And don’t eat corn or wheat or fruit because we’re raping the earth to get that to the table. And once the Earth is raped to death where will we go when we want to watch TV? And for God's sake, don’t eat chickens, cows, or pigs. They are are considered holy in some cultures and they can contemplate their existence and are tortured before you buy them all divided up and wrapped in plastic in the meat section. So don’t smile at the butcher after all. He’s a dick.

It's all just too exhausting. I care about these things, I really do. But I can't do it all, no one can. If you knew someone who did everything right, they'd be super self-righteous, obnoxious and annoying, like a vegan. And one day after living so virtuously they'd snap and probably kill their spouse.

This is Frankie, dressed as Ann Margret.