Gayle's Panties

Velvet and I went down to Texas to visit Granny the Ho. She's gone past one foot in the grave to being up to her ass in it. Mother is coping well, but it's alarming to suddenly be responsible for the medication and diet of a person whose concurrent diagnoses require interventions that conflict. Fortunately, the hospice nurse, John, quickly told my mom that Granny should eat whatever she wants at this point in the game. If she's carried off one night by Chuy's enchiladas, it's a good way to go.

It was particularly good for me to spend time with my family after crawling out from under the episode with Rhonda Gayle, the Hillbilly Hustler. I was minding my own business when this woman contacted me through Classmates.com. Apparently we were the only two people from Spring High School who were glad to be living in New York City. I didn't know her in Spring because our social circles didn't overlap. She knew my sister, though, from Drama Club and Band. My friends were making tea from psilocybin mushrooms, smoking weed and hanging out at each other's pools.

As it happened, I had recently noticed some cases of Shiner Bach in my living room were approaching their expiration date and invited her over to help me finish up the beer. The next thing you know, it was Thanksgiving, and she'd landed on my chocolate brown velvet sofa surrounded by her meager belonging. At first, it was kind of fun to have a fellow Texan to hang out with. It was necessary to dismiss some of her opinions as drunken claptrap to carry on an extended conversation with her, but that's often the case with Texans. All in all, we had a lot to talk about at first. That may be Job One for a hustler - establish a camaraderie with the mark. Do some cooking to make yourself agreeable. I bought it, but I never trusted her because of what I saw the first time we were doing laundry. Actually, I was doing my laundry. She asked if she could throw a few things in with mine. Those "things" were skanky panties.

That her panties were in such a shocking state was awful enough, but that she would allow them to been seen by a stranger was decidedly White Trash. As a woman, I know that there are times when despite our most vigilant efforts, panties will be stained. We've been hand washing them in sinks for generations.

Gayle's panties looked like she'd worn them four times right side in and four times inside out. They were crusty enough for someone to have blown his nose in them. Naturally some panties had bloody crotch edges. I was horrified and must confess that I went totally High School Girl on her. My dear friend Gigi was already scheduled to stay with me over the long Thankgiving weekend, so I asked Gayle to move into a hostel - not such a big deal since she'd been living in hostels around the city for a year already. I also made it clear to Rhonda Gayle that she was not invited to join Gigi and me when we went out to Gramercy Tavern on Saturday. Even with cosmetics Gayle still resembles a pit bull. She alleges that she learned her make up tricks from a stylist when she was young and a model in New York. Even if that were true, she could pass for a Texas Ranger these days, and we weren't trying to attract lesbians. I felt guilty for being so shallow - which is probably why I already invited her to stay for Christmas while Velvet was skiing with Buzz Kill's side of the family.

I asked my mother if it was ethical to judge a person by the state of her panties during our
traditional Sunday morning phone call. My parents have been calling me at 8:30on Sunday mornings since I was a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin. They liked to know I was home since God knows I wasn't going to church, but neither were they. Church in Texas is often hard to take. That's one opinion Rhonda Gayle and I shared.

My mother was solidly against skanky panties under any circumstances. Actually, my therapist also thought it was a major red flag that Gayle would seek to include said panties with someone else's laundry. Boundary Issues galore. Rhonda Gayle was from the Wrong Side of the Tracks - not because her family were hicks without much money. They had money enough. They were simply greedy, petty crooks like small businessmen all over Texas and Louisiana. And they were red necks like you see in Easy Rider.

Rhonda Gayle proceeded to park her ass on my sofa for nearly a month. Velvet was appalled because she sat in her pajamas talking down to him about presidential primaries and world affairs. He stated early on that she was a racist who got all her opinions from CNN. He also said Gayle was so butch that she should have worn overalls, and he was right. That's probably why my ex-husband, Buzz Kill, could be forgiven for thinking she and I were engaging in sexual acts, although I will say that if he had seen those panties, he would have known I would not schtup so low. Nevertheless, it was rude of him to say he was counting the days until he could yank my alimony because of my lover, Rhonda Gayle the Texas Ranger.

By that time, she was sucking down vodka and I was footing the bills. I suppose we must allow that some people might say Buzz Kill was footing the bills since he paid the alimony, after all. One thing is for sure: Gayle spend as little of her own money as possible. Granted she was living on unemployment and staying in a hostel does cost $30 a night in New York City. But the woman went through amazing amounts of alcohol, and it all culminated in a Bloody Mary Juice Fast between Christmas and New Years.

Granny the Ho enjoyed the story of Rhonda Gayle and The Bloody Mary Juice Fast. She especially liked the part where I left all of Gayle's boxes with the doorman and instructed the doormen to call security if she tried to come upstairs. Doorman buildings are wonderful places to live.

My mother thinks that my letting Gayle stay even though she wore those nasty panties is a lot like when Granny let young folks living in a van use her garden hose for water. At the time she lived in a lovely house in the canyon outside Laguna Beach that her last boyfriend bought for her. The house had lots of decks and a large garden where Granny says she grew pot with the tomatoes. The hose ran down through the garden, so it was easy to get water to the kids. Turned out they were not college students. It was Charles Manson and them, but they hadn't murdered anyone yet as far as anybody knows.