The Thong Also Rises (7 page)

One of the summers when I was eight and my brother was six the car we called “Lemon” had the audacity to overheat in Badlands, South Dakota. Besides throwing a crimp into our packed agenda, it left us stranded, like the cliché, on a lone desert highway. When we piled into the front seat of the tow truck, my and Allen's skinny legs dangled limply above the floorboard. Mom squished up against Dad with the window rolled all the way down.

We had an Aunt Sherry who lived outside of Rapid City, and Mom informed us we would be staying with her until Lemon got fixed. Allen begged her to take us to a real hotel like the one in Cincinnati with the vibrating beds. I asked who Aunt Sherry was and why we'd never heard of her. “She's your Uncle Jack's first wife,” Mom told us, “they were divorced before you were born.”We'd never met Uncle Jack either. I'd only ever heard Mom talk about him in that tone she used with her adult friends. “The last one he married was going to get deported,” she'd say. “He was old enough to be her father.”

Aunt Sherry came to get us in an old blue pickup. Allen and I rode in the back and ping-ponged around the truck bed every time she pumped the brakes. “You two O.K.?” Mom would holler from inside the cab every now and again. Aunt Sherry wore short cut-off jeans and cowboy boots, and we could see her boobs through her t-shirt.They weren't like the boobs in Dad's nudie magazine, the same magazine I once whipped out in front of our babysitter and she nearly died of a coronary. “What,” she gasped, horrified. “What would your father say if he knew you were reading
Playboy
at the dinner table?”

“He lets me read the articles,” I lied and then tried not to spill macaroni on the grown-up girl's privates. No, Aunt Sherry had real swingers, more like my mom's, and it made Allen and me giggle.

It felt like forever before we finally pulled into Aunt Sherry's driveway. She hopped out first, and Allen and I staggered to stand up on our sea legs. “Now you kids,” Sherry spoke to us slowly, “stay away from Bruno the attack dog and don't go near his duck 'cuz they are friends. And if the geese give you any trouble wave your arms in the air and pretend to be bigger.” As soon as I heard the words dog and attack in the same sentence my hands got clammy and my eyes rolled back in my head.

“Oh come on, Colie,” my mom tried to coax me out of the truck two hours later, “you can't stay out here all night.” I could and I would. I could not fathom being mauled or pecked to death.

“The rattlesnakes will get ya, if ya stay out here at night,” a deep voice rumbled that apparently belonged to my Uncle Brooks. Uncle Brooks wore black socks with sandals and his legs were plastered with mosquito bites, but his authority on rattlesnakes had me bee-lining for the house.

“Do I look bigger than the geese?” I screamed mid-sprint, flailing my arms in the air. “Dad, open the door, here I come.”

“You look like a big 'tard is what you look like,” Dad scolded when I reached him. “Run with your arms down, sissy, it's faster.”

“Oh honey,” Sherry said soothingly. “The geese are out back for the night.”

Two days had passed when Aunt Sherry decided she had had enough of us asking why there were thirteen dressers in one room and none in another, or why we couldn't drink water from the tap, or why Uncle Brooks only wore one sock when he fell asleep in the yard. “We're going to the pool,” she announced after breakfast. “Get your little swimmers on, let's go.”

“Yippie, yippie,” Allen and I jumped up and down. “Let's go, let's go.”

For as long as I can remember my dad and brother wore matching Speedos to the pool—a father/son ritual our whole family agrees haunts my brother to this day. Dad would parade around proudly in front of the pool girls when Mom had her glasses off; my brother's little orange trunks fell off without fail on the slide. By the time we reached puberty, we forbade our father to sit with us at the beach. “Don't come near us in that ball buster,” we'd warn him.

“All the Canadians wear Speedos,” he'd tell us proudly. “Why shouldn't I?”

“Because you're not Canadian, Mr. Banana Hammock, now beat it.”

“Would you two be nice to your father,” my mother would murmur without looking up from her book and then Dad would sulk and head farther down the beach.

Aunt Sherry knew everyone at the community pool in Rapid City, and she was still gabbing at the concession stand when we stripped off our nylon shorts and scurried for the shallow end. My feet burned on the pavement so I ran faster; Allen clasped the sides of his Speedo and tried to keep up. We didn't get out of the water until Aunt Sherry offered us a popsicle. “I want cherry,” I told her, and she started rummaging through her purse.

“This looks red,” she announced and surfaced with a dripping piece of wax paper from the depths of her big, black body bag.

On the way home, Mom was worried because Aunt Sherry was talking funny and the brakes in the truck still didn't work. When we pulled into the driveway, Uncle Brooks was sprawled on the lawn like a rotting carcass. His comb-over was wafting in the breeze, and Bruno's duck was pecking at his head. When he suddenly sat up and started sputtering, “What the hell…what the hell are you people doing up so early?” we all jumped back in our seats.

Sherry staggered out from behind the wheel and hollered at him, “Brooks you dumb shit, it's four in the afternoon.”

“Well goddamn,” Brooks coughed dumbfounded. “Well goddamn if it is.”

Later that night, Sherry didn't take the chicken out of the freezer in time to defrost for dinner, so we had hot dogs outside on the picnic bench. Brooks stood on the lawn chair and vacuumed bugs off the lantern, while we shouted at each other like old people.

By morning Dad was on the phone with Lemon's mechanic, and he had that serious look on his face. Mom stood behind him whispering, “How much? How much?” and he motioned her away. Allen and I had a new game where we
took turns jumping on the couch to make dust clouds. “Aunt Sherry,” Allen blabbed during bounces, “at night when we're camping, Mom pees in a bucket in the camper.” I started howling until Mom slapped my leg.

We left Aunt Sherry's at dusk because Dad didn't want to drive Lemon during the day when it was hot out. We spent the next four weeks touring the country in the dark like a band of little refugees. First, though, we headed to that place where the faces were carved into the mountain. “Whose faces are they, Dad?” we asked anxiously.

“A couple of ugly guys with big noses,” he told us.

“Do I have to be eight?” I probed.

Mom yawned and answered, “We'll have to wait and see.”

Nicole Dreon works for ESPN's X Games in their research department, where she interviews adrenaline junkies on a regular basis. She is an East Coast transplant who headed west after college in search of cowboys, but is still single nine years later due to her fear of horses. Nicole recently climbed and worked on a documentary film about the Rwenzoris Mountains of Uganda. The only time she's set foot in an office was to work for Points North Heli-Adventures in Alaska, where she traded a paycheck for heli-time. When she's not on the road, she calls Truckee, California, home.

We woke up at daylight a few hours later to the sound of the roosters. I rolled over and noticed a familiar image. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a perfect smile, and an absurdly proportioned figure. Barbie sheets! I LOVED Barbie throughout childhood and may even harbor a secret desire to be Barbie with her great life, car, townhouse, wardrobe, and boyfriend Ken. She can do anything. And here I was in the middle of the jungle in Bolivia sleeping on Barbie sheets. I never had Barbie sheets at home. I was never even allowed to have the Barbie car or townhouse.This was true splendor. When we finally got ourselves out of the Barbie comfort, we
went to inquire with the hotel owner about the river boats. The owner sent us down to the river, but mentioned that she didn't think that the boats were running this time of year. We checked out the small town. Small houses built of wood with thatched roofs, animals running around, and beautiful vegetation. Not a tourist in sight. We were lucky there was a hotel there. With Barbie sheets no less.

—Joanna Popper, “The Back of the Bus with Mom”

She was dripping with sweat but beset by a wardrobe malfunction.

N
ATHAN TAUGHT
B
IKRAM YOGA
,
THE
I
NDIAN DISCIPLINE
of yoga in a room heated to 100 degrees (the idea being that it relaxes your muscles, releasing trapped toxins and allowing you to efficiently sweat them out). I'd been put in touch with Nathan through my friend Kate at the Australian Tourist Commission in Sydney.

Our date was tonight, but in his message Nathan suggested I come to his class that afternoon, then we could go straight on to our date afterward.

Unfortunately, I'd had my phone switched off. Date Protocol: I felt it was bad form to take a phone call from your next date while the current one was still in progress— and now it was already afternoon. I stuck out my arm and hailed a cab downtown.

I arrived at the Bikram center with five minutes to spare. As I dashed up the steps, I caught sight of a completely gorgeous man disappearing into a room, steam already condensing madly on the windows. He was followed by a
group of star-struck women (and a couple of men). If that was Nathan, I could see why the class was so popular…and why the classroom was hot and steamy. (I'm always happy to embrace my
inner shallow
.)

But I'd been in such a rush I hadn't given any thought to what I was going to wear. The bra I had on was O.K., but no way was anyone going to see me going lotus wearing a thong.

I went careening over to the woman sitting at the reception desk (so far, yoga was proving anything but relaxing) to see if they had a spare pair of shorts I could borrow. No, but “go to Gowers on the corner,” she told me shortly, looking with disapproval at her watch. “They're real cheap and you'll pick up some shorts for nothing. Once the class has started, you can't go in, though, so quick go, go,” she shooed.

I raced across the street to Gowers, but all I could find cheap was a nasty pair of men's gray Y-fronts. I held the packet at arm's length and examined it speculatively. Nathan was gorgeous and these men's briefs were ugly, ugly, ugly. But I'd never wear them again and they were only nine dollars, so sod it, I was in a hurry. I shoved some cash at the sales clerk and dashed back to the center. In the changing rooms I ripped the knickers out of the package, and, without stopping to inspect them, shoved them on, pulled my top off, grabbed my bags, and bolted for the yoga room.

I got to the doors just as they were locking them. There wasn't time to introduce myself, so I quickly walked into the class, past mats full of limbering ladies to a free spot at the front of the class, and sat down.

Nathan stood before us, lithe and muscled to the point of being edible. As he walked us through the first positions, I attempted to bend my upper body over my extended thighs.
As I strained downward, I caught sight of my pants for the first time.The thick gray flannel was so stiff that the Y flap at the front was poking straight out in a disturbingly suggestive manner. Embarrassed and trying not to draw attention to it, I quickly reached down and pushed the flap back into place.

But it was having none of it and sprang straight out again, veering purposefully like the rudder on a sailboat.