Week 3 of Bein’ Undercover Brothers (and sisters) In Christ

Typical Wednesday Night Choir Rehearsal:

6:45 Turn into the pitch black, empty neighborhood street on which the boxy house of God stands and add our car to the handful already parked next to it.

6:50 Eavesdrop on Winzdee naight pruhyr meetin (trans: Wednesday night prayer meeting) as we enter and head for the stairs. The following was overheard the first Wednesday night, word-for-word:

The Wolf: I have the acid reflux, you ever have it? Oh, I have it so bad.

Nose Hair: Yayus, so does Lois. You know, she slipped off of her pillow and her acids started comin’ back up.

Why would pillow slippage cause the return of the acids?

6:51 Descend the stairway into the musty, damp bowels of the church and begin picking our way through the bizarre maze of corridors in attempt to reach the choir room. Make one wrong turn and you’re in the bathroom, a dreadful little hole in the wall with linoleum flooring and cracked, mauve, laminate countertops. Head for the sink and you behold a small dingy vase holding a bouquet of fake daisies (that have managed to wither and yellow like a fresh bouquet) and a basket containing two bottles of lotion, both of which are just about ¼ full and covered in that congealed and hardened lotion mass  that gathers on rarely-used containers. Somehow this whole scene is upsetting, reminiscent of an old nursing home or dentist office bathroom, and you run away as quickly as possible.

6:57 Locate the little choir room just in the nick of time and enter to be greeted by radiant, elderly faces and exclamations of “Voltron!” and “Nelson!” and “We are SOOOO happy to have you!” This inordinate praise began from the first moment we entered this space. Before they even had a moment to discern our relative worth or godliness, this group of nearly-dead were heaping upon us all manner of praise. After the very first rehearsal during which Nelson merely sightread some alto jams and Voltron hammered out some accompaniments, back row bass singer Jabba (yes, as in the Hutt) stirred from his idle position, opened his watery eyes wide and bellowed, his giant belly expanding and contracting exaggeratedly as he spoke, “You have breathed new life into this kwahr (trans: choir). We thank yuh.”

7:00 Take my seat next to the only other alto, Laughtrack, and exchange our regular greeting, “Altos are the best.” This apparently is a joke that we share. After the first rehearsal, when she was laughing and gushing about my existence then laughing some more—“Oh it’s so good to have another ayul-toh (trans: alto) in this kwahr—I responded, “Yeah, altos are the best!” and I put my hand up for her to give me a high-five. At the time, her giddy laughter did not indicate to me that she found this comment any more amusing than she did the myriad other things to which she reacted in the exact same manner. Laughtrack, a lady in her mid-sixties and always dressed in scrubs, received her blog-moniker in the most predictable way possible: by guffawing, giggling, chortling, and chuckling CONSTANTLY at everything that is uttered. However, apparently my comment about altos struck her as particularly hilarious, because the following Sunday after church, an avuncular energetic, balding man approached me and introduced himself as Laughtrack’s husband, saying, “Laughtrack told me ALL about that ayultoh joke you told! Heh! Ayultohs are the best! Whew! That’s a good one!”

7:05-8:00 John Arbuckle, our choir director, instructs Voltron to bang out the SATB parts and drags us through spotty reading of the 10 pieces we are working on for the Christmas program. (J. Arbuckle—openly gay to the secular world but has yet to come out of the sacred closet—shall be profiled at length soon.)

Laughtrack and I sit to the far left on the middle row, right in front of Jabba and his bass posse, perfectly positioned to hear him come in whole measures too early or howl out notes that have long since ended according to the music we have in front of our faces. Close to Jabba is a cohort of lady tenors, among whom is the Oracle, the wise-est and most venerated of the entire group, who I have yet to hear utter a contraction in conversation. She recently brought Voltron and Nelson an entire pecan pie inside a ceramic dish. When I assured her that we’d return the vessel in which it had been delivered to me, she insisted, “No! I shall not be wanting that to be returned! I will not be accepting it! It is yours to keep!” The rest of the crew is sopranos, including Big Geezy. Between the 13 or so of us, I’d wager that about 9 know how to read music, and of those 9, 5 may be able to do it with any kind of accuracy at any given moment.

8-8:15 J. Arbuckle opens the floor for prayer requests, and all manner of illness, injuries, and impending deaths amongst the group’s acquaintances are discussed. Bottom line: everyone is dying in the church, like, tomorrow.

8:15 Prayer and wrap-up. Usually Oracle leads the prayer, wowing all of us with her grandiose Georgia-southern drawl and her complicated and esoteric but powerful grammatical constructions. However, on rehearsal night #1 of our Methodism, J. Arbuckle insisted that we create a circle with our bodies, hold hands, and enact a kind of open-mic prayer, to be concluded with the joint singing of a verse of Amazing Grace.

I. Am. Not. Kidding.  

It was at this point that Voltron and I were both living on the verge of bursting into explosive laughter and ruining our characters entirely. As we gripped one another’s hands tightly, squeezing at every moment of hilarity, one of the bass posse members prayed, “And Lord, watch over my granddaughter, who was hit in the head with a twirlin’ flag as her marchin’ band was presenting a musical piece to the football crowds.” My body ached with the need to expel the humor from my breast as this solemn pronouncement was followed up by the warbly strains of “I-I wuuuuuuuuunce wuuuz laaaaaawst! But nooooooooooww, Ahhhhhhh’m found.”

 8:15-8:20 Return our music to our little designated cubby holes and listen to the ever-resounding pronouncements of “We love you, Nelson and Voltron!” or, as they like to call me, “Voltron’s better half,” as if I were the half of him that contained the vital organs such as the lungs, heart, and liver while he carries useless things such as the appendix, cuticles, the belly button, and an extraneous toe. We grope about in the hallway-maze, find the stairs, hop in our car, let out a good chuckle and a well-placed expletive as if to cleanse the palette then head home only to return on Sunday.

Day 1 of undercover atheism

Before entering the hallowed halls of Jehovah for the first time, Voltron and Nelson had to not only practice our reverent facial expressions (which we did much in the way that a movie protagonist amps him or herself up in the mirror before asking someone out on a date, trying out potential introductory phrases or coy smiles, except for in our case, we were workshopping the patented praise-song hand-raise accompanied by the serious head-nod and upward gaze) but also had to nail the wardrobe. Voltron opted for a Ned Flanders, khakis-and-green sweater look while I went more in a teacherly direction: ever-so-slightly high-waisted (in other words, not high enough to be high-waisted on purpose thus falling somewhere in the mom-jeans fit area) black pants that billow out awkwardly in the hip/mid-thigh region and an innocuous, cream-colored sweater. Perfect attire for not only avoiding a display of sexuality but for also actively repulsing others around me with my body.

It was in these getups that we first infiltrated the new scene of our undercover atheism, ready to get to the bottom of this institution. Unfortunately, I did not immediately get a chance to test out my character as, upon arrival, Voltron was whisked away by a stalwart, no-nonsense woman who we shall refer to as Frau Blucher, and I was left in the parlor to wait as Frau and other members of the committee interrogated him to ascertain his godliness and piano abilities. From the parlor, however, I was able to come to several immediate conclusions about the nature of this establishment. For example, two tiny, tacky chandeliers on an enormous ceiling bespoke the failed attempt at cultivating an atmosphere of grandiosity and luxury for the lord; the card table on which the Operation Christmas Child pamphlets were fanned out foretold a neediness-only-exists-far-away-and-neediness-consists-of-lacking-toiletries philosophy of service; and the claw-foot, rigidly upholstered, rock-hard divan on which I sat prophesied that the mean age of these particular churchgoers was probably something around 70.

The latter hypothesis was bolstered by the subsequent arrival of Big Geezy. Coming in at a solid 4 foot 10, this ancient woman ambled into the parlor as her ride to and from church that night, John Arbuckle (the choir director, yet to be introduced…will come later), sped quickly through the sitting area, waved a hello, and darted away to attend to official, secret church business. She introduced herself and plopped down next to me on the divan, and within 5 minutes I had learned the bulk of her life story. Here’s the upshot: everyone she’s ever known or loved (two husbands, 9 brothers and sisters, other relatives) is dead. She lives in a 5 bedroom, 3-car garage home of loneliness. She can barely see 5 feet in front of her, yet somehow succeeded into getting her driver’s license renewed. As she told the story of that most recent trip to the DMV, her weak, bony legs dangled off the couch not reaching the floor, and her shiny gold slippers fell off one by one onto the carpeted floor revealing gnarly toes withered and bent to one side as if a great wind had blown them permanently in the same direction. Fearful of seeming rude by staring, trance-like at her feet, I concentrated now on her face, but was seized with the desire to run my finger over the deeply corrugated skin of her upper lip. HOW CAN SKIN BE SO LOOSE?

We spent an hour together waiting for the great pianist-finding-committee tribunal to end and choir rehearsal to begin, in which time I developed a warm feeling for Big Geezy. Between her lamenting having prettied-herself up for her driver’s license renewal appointment, insisting that “the man in the DMV would have treated me better had I spent all night drunk in a car and walked in that morning stinking of alcohol” and her singing an ode to the beauty and excellence of rocking chairs (“I could rock and rock and rock all day.”), I decided that she needs to be our church friend. Think of the amazing parties we could throw in that giant house and how grateful she would be for the company of whomever in the world decided to show up. We could paper the whole town with invites, open the doors, and watch magic unfold. The objectives for our undercover operations are shaping up, but number 1 on the list is to befriend Big Geezy in a serious way.

In the coming installments: recap of the sermon entirely based on the movie Gravity, get-to-know-the-choir, and hunting out the insidious shadow people.

From one snake-charming institution to another...

It’s been over two years since Nelson blew his cover at Podiatry. Two years since I’ve had a front row seat to the circus of consumerism. Two years since I played usher to the clambering crowds coming to worship at the altar of material goods. Two years since I submitted my body as a pawn to the gods of capitalism, becoming the fitting room snake charmer and luring others to bend to the gods’ wills and purchase, purchase, purchase! And oh what delights, wonders, and horrors did I discover. It is only right, then, that Nelson’s next persona be in an equal position of wooing others, of appealing to emotions, of using rhetoric to persuade the masses to join in a great and influential machine that is over and above them with a force seemingly too great to counter. Thus Nelson, no longer a Podiatrist, stripped himself of the chunky jewelry, grew out the edgy haircut, and hung up the color-blocked tees only to don the billowy, ankle-length, skin-covering sack-like garb of the righteous. Nelson Mandela is a Methodist.  

Just as Podiatry was at the same time a social experiment and a means of cash-getting, Methodism currently serves as a source of income for my household. My spouse, who will henceforth be known as Voltron, has recently wrested a Methodist church pianist position from the cold, bureaucratic, nearly-dead fingers of the pianist-finding committee. In an act of solidarity, I have agreed to not only attend this institution but lend my snake charming voice to the alto section of the church’s choir. Just as he did at Podiatry, at church, Nelson will play a part; this time, Nelson shall play the part of the devout, crafting a character with the right dress, turns of phrase, and, of course, the perfect prayerfully communing with Jesus face. 

Stay tuned to the next post for the introduction of a few of the cast members: Big Geezy and Nose Hair.

Blunder # 3: Nelson’s mask comes off

Podiatry boasts a “generous” discount for its employees.  If we desire a full-priced item of clothing, we pay a mere 60% of the full price.  If we desire a home item, we pay 75% of the price.  Anything on sale, however, is available to us at the price listed on the tag.  But every once in awhile, when employees are least expecting it, the company announces, via email, surprise periods of time during which ALL goods are 40% off to its employees.  These periods are called (for the purposes of this blog) THE AGE OF PODIATRY.  

Being excellent times to actually purchase some quality things for somewhat reasonable prices, all employees look forward to THE AGE OF PODIATRY.  We whisper excitedly and semi-constantly about when the next AGE may be.  “Haven’t had an AGE in awhile, you think it’s coming?”  “I heard we’d have an AGE after this next markdown.  I sure hope so.”  “I’m waiting for an AGE until I buy that vase.”

A few weeks ago, we got the messiah of all emails: “Announcing THE AGE OF PODIATRY now through Sunday!”  It had, indeed, come immediately after a payday; they get you right when you’ve got cash in the coffers.  Having only purchased a few candles throughout my time as an employee and anticipating the overwhelming number of August birthdays I have marked on my calendar (3 family members, 4 good friends), I suddenly decided that it was time to break down and truly give in to THE AGE OF PODIATRY.

I meant to do my shopping immediately after a shift when I was still in costume and makeup, but once my time to clock out came round, all I could think of was getting out of there.  The days left in the AGE were dwindling, and I had yet to do my massive bout of shopping.  As I scrubbed the bathtub while a pot of mustard greens were steaming on the stove (I was cleaning the house and making dinner for a pair of friends coming to stay the night), I realized with horror that if I did not stop what I was doing and dash immediately to Podiatry, I’d miss my window of savings.

But what about Nelson?  If I went then and there, it’d be ME going into Podiatry, NOT Nelson.  I needed an hour at least to get into character, and what with the dinner to prepare and the catbox left to clean, I didn’t have that kind of time to spend on my facade.  The choice was clear: get in and get out as quickly as possible.

As I drove over to Podiatry, I began to realize fully just what a grand mistake this was.  I’d chosen the entirely WRONG moment to be caught without a disguise.  The miserly side of me refuses to let our thermostat go below 78 even on the hottest of days; thus I was particularly sweaty and red-faced from a day of cleaning at that moment.  My outfit of choice: oversized, burlap-resembling shorts and a faded racerback tee that I claimed after finding in a dryer somewhere.  Oh, and a sports bra.  I smelled like bleach-cleaner and sweat.  My legs were unshaven.  My hair looked like a mushroom cloud around my head.  

It was in this state that I rushed madly into the store, carrying my own bag and shoveling things in it left and right.  I ran into Tiny Tim first.  He gave me not just a once over, but a twice and three-times-over, his head literally moving from the top of my body to my shoes three times in order to fully take in the horror he was witnessing.  “Yeah, heh, I know, I’m uh...still cleaning my house! Haha!  But I ran over here in the middle of chores because I just, you know need some...” I looked at what I was clutching in my hands--dish towels for my mother-in-law-- “dishtowels with birds on them!  Haha!”  He smiled an odd smile and pranced away on his chopstick legs.  

I dashed from fixture to fixture, hiding behind towers of candles or racks of long dresses to conceal myself yet could not seem to escape coming across other coworkers as the floor was crawling with them on what seemed to be a busy sales day:  Zebulon, Mama Skaggs, and of course Moonblood who I’ve come to dread as of late.  (Moonblood’s one of those who literally ends every shift with a clothing purchase, wearing only the latest fashions displayed in the store...never seen her repeat an outfit...and how can she afford all of these luxuries?...living at home and spending all of her Podiatry earnings on body-coverings, not on rent or food.)  Moonblood had just returned from a 2 week family vacay to various European countries.  “Oh wow, I guess I haven’t seen you in about 3 weeks then,” she said in reaction to me as she rung up my pile of purchases, giving me the thrice-over as did Tiny Tim.  When not regarding with curiosity the things I was buying, her slit-like eyes were burning into my body, deconstructing the mess she observed before her and trying to connect me with Nelson.  

My things unnecessarily wrapped up in the signature Podiatry tissue paper and thin packing tape, I headed for the door, weaving in and out of the various fixtures obstructing my quick exit, turning a last time to see my colleagues puzzled faces turned in my direction.  

The ruse was up.  

Nelson's final bow

Here I sit on the couch, out of breath after a frantic on-foot trip to Walgreens where I went--slightly tipsy--in order to attend to an emergency: the cats were hungry and we’d already served them the last scoop of dried pellets to be found in the bag.  I had just consumed a single Paulaner hefeweizen and one third of a glass of 2 week old cabernet sauvignon (to be fair, I thought it was fresh).  As I jetted out of the house in the direction of the little store, I realized in the light of the evening sun that my dark brown cotton dress was covered in short, white animal hairs.  "Great,” I muttered to myself, “this’ll just add to my prowess...bloodshot eyes, ashy, chlorine-coated skin, stiff, unkempt hair; I’m gonna turn some heads in there.”  After an afternoon at the mini water-park with a four year old, I was left suffering from a stubbed toe, a mild case of housewife’s knee, and the beginnings of pinkeye.  Limping a bit from my pool injuries and swaying slightly to and fro from the influence of one unit alcohol taken on a relatively empty stomach, I was pleased to find few people in Walgreens and hastily conducted the transaction.    

But I’m home now.  My weekend babysitting gig is through, the cats are satiated, and I’ve just discovered a fresh bottle of merlot.    

This is my life: living in a sports bra and cotton tees from one errand to the next, having fun cooking with my man friend, then worrying about how long I can leave the dishes in the sink before they start attracting fruit flies.  When I’m me and not Nelson, I don’t worry about ruching or empire waists or “back interest” and nerdy chicness.  And now I can be me all the time.  Let the celebrating begin!  

My run as Nelson came to an end at noon yesterday.  As the curtain fell for the last time, I slipped out backstage, opting not to take an elaborate series of final bows preferring to make a quiet exit.  An arduous child-wrangling afternoon ahead of me, I needed to avoid a long chorus of cutesy goodbyes from my coworkers.  So I drove away from Podiatry for the last time like it was any other day.

I’ll reflect on the experience in this space as opposed to trying to process it while still in the store, surrounded by things that I felt a serious urge to buy and by people who, while nice, I never felt at home with.  In the end, my time at Podiatry was a lot different than I expected, and I learned a lot.  After explaining blunder number 3, the blunder that heralded the end of Nelson’s career, I will begin to pick apart the Podiatry world, examining its constituent parts, and making conclusions about this wacky world in which we live. 

Blunder Number 2: Birds, birds everywhere

Before the doors are unlocked every morning at Podiatry and the quivering ball of humanity that had previously been pawing at the windows for entry is finally allowed to surge through our faux-rustic doors to begin grabbing at that particular day’s assortment of luxuries, we have a morning meeting.  It is at this moment that we learn a litany of facts about how the company as a whole is performing, how our particular branch fares in comparison, and how much money we are expected to weasel out of our customers for the day. 

(Personally I feel that, although this information can be somewhat interesting at times, it is of little use for us, the underlings, to actually know.  I believe that they throw these numbers at us in an effort to coax us into feeling that we have some kind of true stake or ownership in the swirling shitstorm of corporate, bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo that takes place entirely outside of our awareness or control.  Whether or not the company makes their sales quota for the day does not mean that my hourly wage rises to a reasonable rate or falls to the slave labor category.) 

If time permits, after we do the numbers, we participate in a product-knowledge-building activity.  I previously explained JIVETIME!, wherein we select and try on clothes from the salesfloor based on some kind of game-like prompt and then compete to have the best outfit (I’m not kidding).  This is but one example of product-knowledge-building during morning meetings.  Some activities consist simply of reading about and discussing the design philosophy behind the latest fashions and “concepts” as they call them.

The other morning’s product knowledge chat began with a prompting question from Zebulon: “So what are the new trends you see in the pieces we’ve been receiving and putting out for the fall collection?”  

Ask me to see trends in national literary movements over the span of a couple of centuries, and I'm dandy.  Ask me to spot trends in some clothes in a store, and I start to sweat.  

There are two ways to fool someone into thinking you have some kind of knowledge.  The first is to answer confidently but with something vague.  The confidence throws them off of the scent of your stupidity, and the vagueness hints at the possibility of knowledge.  The second tactic is to listen to the expert knowledge of others then do some creative semantic tweaking; say what they say using bigger words or with a different example.  

Maybe I hadn't consumed quite enough coffee for my brain to be properly functioning at the time, but I was the one to voluntarily vomit out the first answer, unfortunately employing neither tactic.  "Well, I've noticed a lot of bird prints lately," I said, looking around for some nods of approval.  Stares.  "You know, there are birds on things?  Like on that shirt over there?  And that...thing...over there?"  

More stares. 

Zebulon finally spoke, "Yeah, but, I was kinda talking more about, like, textures and themes, you know?  I mean, Podiatry kinda always has a bird motif going on."  Everyone nodded.  I realized she was right.  Apart from knowing for sure that there will be expensive things, you can almost always count on there being bird things in Podiatry.  Not everywhere, but somewhere there's a bird, watching you.  

"Well, what I was getting at was how our new stuff is really, you know, nerdy chic, like lots of structured, masculine stuff with an edge."  Tiny Tim chimed in, "Yeah, it's like, very...collegiate....but feminine."  Way to use tactic number 2, TT: semantic scrambling of stuff people already said. 

Much like my cape of fear incident, the magnitude of the failure did not encourage me to work hard at recovery.  It was an admit defeat and retreat moment.  The punctures are forming fast in my hot-air balloon of a story; how much longer can I stay aloft over the expensive, bourgeois, retail landscape that is Podiatry?

THE CAPE OF FEAR

As my time at Podiatry wears on (clothing retail pun intended), Nelson’s glossy facade is beginning to weather much like a golden obelisk marking the middle of some Italian piazza that has been exposed to hundreds of years of precipitation.  Whereas in the early days, my performance shone brilliantly, my bit has become harder to sustain as the rust gathers on my facade and the cracks begin to show.  I feel like Sinbad’s character in the smash-hit film and timeless classic Houseguest; initially able to fool the world into believing him to be a world-renowned dentist only to become subjected to a series of ever more difficult tasks impossible to fake.  And where did he end up?  Well, if I remember the plot correctly, AND I DO BECAUSE I LOVE THAT MOVIE AND WILL UNTIL THE DAY I DIE,  even though his true identity is discovered, he still ends up with a sweet book deal and a red Porsche.

I fear that, soon, my identity will be found out.  (But worry not, dear readers, for I have no doubt that a career as a novelist and a new automobile is in my future just like it was for Kevin Frank of Houseguest.)  Why does Nelson fear that the Podiatry community may soon turn on him and  instead of lavishing him with applause, throw weeks-old, moldy tomatoes at him on stage from their seats in the audience?  3 substantial blunders, my friends.

First, the cape of fear.  I was on a fitting-room roll for two months, relying on my master instincts to kick in and give me the perfect hook-line-and-sinker when customers came out looking like clowns.  “You look dashing,” I could say with a wink, and they’d head for the register, wallets already drawn.  That is until I met the cape of fear.

More sweater than cape, these hideous things had been hanging in the sale room for ages, cast aside by the sane, inspected cautiously by the adventurous, and touched by the fools.  But until this day, no human had been asinine enough to actually TRY ONE ON.  Out comes...we’ll call her Elmo...wrapped in the cape.

Let me try to explain what this thing is.  Pattern and colors: (I’ve got Sinbad on the mind, so I’ll keep going with him as my referent for awhile) A mix between a Cosby sweater and the perplexing conglomeration of shapes and colors you’d see on one of the jumpsuits Sinbad wore in his early 90’s stand-up specials.  Cut: A sweater, one side of which came down to the hip, the other side of which hung like a towel on a clothesline all the way down to the floor.  

“How do you wear this?”  she asked, tentatively. 

I knew I was in a bind.  “Uh,” I stammered, unable to truly recover from the disgust bubbling up in my body in reaction to this garment, “I, uh....” her stare went straight through Nelson and into my true self.  I rushed over to where she was standing in the mirror, trying to recover.  “You...TIE it!” I said quickly, grabbing the yard of extra material and twisting it into a knot with the other side which gave it a kind of straightjacket look.  

She regarded herself in the mirror and said, skeptically, “I...don’t think that’s quite right.”          

“Well,” I said, about to proffer another response, but realized that the hole I’d dug was insurmountable.  My character deflated entirely.  “I...DON’T KNOW,” I admitted and shrunk into the shadows to lick the wounds of defeat by humbly folding $100 pairs of yoga pants for backstock.

The other two blunders to follow...