Walk of Shame

Way back in the day when I was young and single I made the club scene. You see I was struggling to make it on my own. I lived in a garage apartment with a roommate who seldom if ever paid her share of the expenses. Groceries were non-existent in our little abode but we always had something from which to whip a pitcher of daiquiris or margaritas. Now before you get all judgmental on me this was back in the days of Saturday Night Fever and the Bee Gees. It was Farrah Fawcett wings and Angel flight polyester leisure suites. I have always been one to dress a little off the fashion grid and you would often find me on my way to work in a purple 1940’s styled women’s suite with platform heels. I would be sporting my Charlie’s Angel’s hair and my clutch pocket book. I was a vision I tell you.

I wasn't Farrah I was Jacklyn Smith only with red hair and not as pretty or limber or rich.

Now back in those days we didn’t really know or if we had heard didn’t listen to the fact that you should remove the prior day’s make-up before you applied more. Nope not us. We would just apply another coat of Maybelline to our already caked eyelashes. We would spit on a Q-tip and swath on another layer of azure blue eye shadow and swipe some Dr. Pepper lip smackers on our lips and be ready to roll. We also had a habit of wearing control top panty hose under our Gloria Vanderbilt high waisted jeans with the little swan on the front pocket. We did this even though we only weighed 10 pounds soaking wet in order to have no lines under our jeans.

My daddy used to call these Crisco Jeans. Cause you had to slather yourself in Crisco in order to get them on.

Now the ritual was to get off work and speed home as fast as you could to change from your office attire into a totally hot outfit for the evening. This would either consist of the aforementioned jeans or a super tight shiny Danskin leotard and skirt outfit. I mean how could you dance like John Travolta and Olivia Newton John in anything else? You would change into this totally cool outfit and then break the sound barrier to get to the local disco before happy hour ended. You see in my hometown happy hour consisted of two for one drinks AND a grazing table. This table would be covered in finger food and it was free. Free I said. Free for the taking as much as you wanted until eight p.m. I ate almost every meal for two years at grazing time. This is where my story begins.

What the heck were we thinking? I do have to admit this is an improvement over saggy crotch to the knees jeans.

My roommate was tall and statuesque. I am 5’1” she was 5’10”. I was a strawberry blond with a light complexion. She was an olive skinned dark eyed beauty. Yes we were Mutt and Jeff, Lenny and Squiggy and Lucy and Ethel all rolled into one. One Friday night we had gone and feasted on the grazing table at the local watering hole. We then proceeded to put on our boogie shoes and dance the night away. We did the hustle and the electric slide until we could dance no more. We then went back to our humble abode and passed, um I mean fell asleep.
Melissa, my roommate had an early morning shopping date with her mother. We were sleeping way past the waking time when our phone rang. Melissa answered and immediately jumped out of bed saying “Yes ma’am. I’m on my way. No ma’am I’m not still in bed. I was um, cleaning the oven. Yes ma’am I’ll be right there.” She said all of this while doing the fireman pull up of getting dressed. She pulled her Gloria Vanderbilt jeans up as she was stepping into her fuchsia colored Candies mules and applying her new layer of mascara as she slid her fuchsia and white stripped v-necked La Costa polo shirt over her still curled hair. She then applied her lip smackers and looked at me and said “How do I look?” I peered up at her from my place on the couch, clutched my pillow a little tighter and said “You look great but I think you need some more mascara.” Now I have to stop and tell you that once you get about 27 layers of Maybelline Big Lash mascara in the hot pink and green tube on your eyelashes it becomes hard to hold your eyes open. The weight has got to be equivalent to 5 gallons of water. So my eyes weren’t as sharp or as open as they could have been.

Melissa grabbed her clutch and her keys and with her spider eyelashes ran out to her bright blue Camaro to meet her mother. She was gone for the longest time and I took the opportunity to catch up on some housekeeping and some Saturday afternoon old movie watching. She came in the door just as I was applying another layer of azure blue eye shadow in and attempt to get ready for another evening of fun and frivolity. She came in and threw herself on the bed and exclaimed “I could’ve just died from embarrassment!” Knowing that she had just spent the day with her overachiever mother I thought that Mrs. M was surely the cause of this statement. Then Melissa went on to say “I was at the Bootery, you know over there off of North First. They had the cutest pair of burgundy Frye boots and I thought they would look so cute with my new denim patchwork outfit I decided I would try them on. Mom said she would buy them if they fit. So the cutest guy comes out in a pair of really tight pair of pants and one of those really silky shirts. Gladys I swear he looked just like Freddie Prinze.

This is Freddie Prinze for those of you who are too young to remember Chico and the Man.

Anyway I put my foot out for him to slip it on my foot and he got the funniest look on his face. He looked at my leg and then up and me. Then he looked back at my leg again. I thought how rude! Then he grabbed a hold of something and started pulling. I could feel something in my pants leg start moving. You know what he did? He pulled out a pair of panty hose, complete with my pink panties from last night!”

Now by this time I have dropped my Q-tip and I have sat my glass of wine on the nightstand. I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t breathe. I was wheezing like an 80 year old smoker on the top of Mount Everest gasping for air. I was done for and there was nothing I could do about it. Then she looks at me and says “What so damn funny? I evidently had been walking around all day long with that one leg of panty hose dragging behind me and no one even bothered to tell me! Not even my Momma!”

I guess that was Mrs. M’s way of teaching her daughter a lesson. I just know it made for an entertaining evening at the club what with me telling the story and my giant friend threatening to kick my scrawny little butt.