New episode of my embarrassing audio admissions!
I’ve only learned how to dress myself appropriately in the past few years. I used to get Delia’s catalogs back in middle school, folding down the corners when I saw a “cute” khaki skirt or blue tankini, but I never actually bought anything. Actually, I remember my dad flipping through the catalog once, too, and saying “They have some nice stuff. Maybe you should order from there!” But I think I was too scared to branch out. I just wanted to play it safe, to wear my Mervyn’s shorts and my Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups t-shirt.
Funny story about that shirt, I got it while filming Thomas and the Magic Railroad in Pennsylvania, after I met some extras who worked for Hershey’s Chocolate. After I told them how much I loved Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, they came back the next day and filled my trailer with Hershey gear, and enough chocolate to last for months. (I think that was also the same day we were filming on a train through Amish country, and two young Amish children, a boy and a girl, came up to watch. They didn’t say anything, just stared. I hope it didn’t scare them, and I’m glad it was just a kids’ movie they were seeing being made and not anything scary or violent.)
I loved that Reese’s shirt, and wore it all the time, until the day in eighth grade a strange boy with mean eyes made a grabby hand motion at bust level and said “‘Reese’s Cups,’ huh?” Middle school boys ruin everything.
Well, it needed to be retired at some point, I suppose. By that time, my dad had remarried, and my stepmother was more than willing to take me shopping for cute clothes. I branched out ever so slightly, but usually I just ended up wearing her hand-me-downs, especially to drama and choir rehearsals—lots of stretch pants and oversize t-shirts and track suits. A boarding school frenemy told me I dressed like a “forty-year-old lesbian,” and that became my nickname.
Funny that now I’m only eight years away and maybe two Kinsey numbers away from being an actual forty-year-old lesbian, and now I’m getting advertisements for the kinds of clothes I should have been wearing back when that was my nickname. I suppose it could have been worse, I could be getting ads appropriate for my other high school nicknames: “The Virgin Mara,” and the one I got at theater camp because I was the only one in my room who wouldn’t admit to having crushes on girls, was “The Token Straight Girl.”
Some nicknames age better than others.
(And now I want peanut butter cups.)
Stuff I Did This Week: Got the news that tickets for a live show I will be on this September 11th, The Secret Society of the Sisterhood, are now on sale! I did this show a year and a half ago and I absolutely loved it, and can’t wait to do it again. The lineup is fantastic, too — I’m so happy to be sharing the stage with the fantastic Cameron Esposito and Akilah Hughes, who I know and love, but also Jackie Fuchs and Kay Hanley? Amazing! If you’ll be in LA, get a ticket!
Fake BBC Show of the Week: Brekkie with Berrycloth
Midnight Confession #19: Misfits and Miss Legits