A Brief But Suggestive History of Cleo's Parties

Flat out - they are the stuff of legend, and anyone who's lived in Raleigh for any period of time has attended one, or knows someone who has. No, seriously. I've broken the ice at more than one gathering by discovering a fellow alumnus of her infamous 16th birthday. That was the party that set the bar for the rest. When we arrived at it her mom was hitting the beer bong (among other things), and she was in good company, which completely freaked out my nice Catholic girl friend Ms. Q and our hopelessly square and preppy escort. They totally cramped my style that night, dammit!

Ask Bea about the birthday dinner party where she had to sit in the shitty seats with my sister-in-love, a vile bitch of an English teacher, assorted sycophants and bizarros, and my older brother, who can put even the truly illiterate to shame when he chooses to. Oh my god - he jumped up and down on that teacher's last nerve, with his deliberate dumb redneck-isms, to the great delight of the rest of us. And the birthday party that I dragged Bea to, where we ended up outside (because Sweet Baby Jesus, it was Open Mic Night inside the party) hanging out with this pair of brothers who were talking FBI conspiracy theories, and how their dad had been on an insider track for something like Roswell or Hangar 54, or something like that. I kid you not, and they were (in my opinion) a delightful reprieve from the usual attendees of those parties; overly theatrical, gushing and patently insincere. The kind of people who bring me out in a Tourette's rash, and make me want to scratch my privates publically, just so they'll go away. Hey - don't judge - it works.

So I knew when we went to Cleo's birthday party this past month that something would happen, because come on - something always happens at her parties. Bea and I arranged to stay the night, so we could tie one on responsibly, We arrived armed with mighty pillows and a bottle of Captain Morgan. In retrospect, we really should have known better than to go with the Captain. He is a bad influence, and has caused me to walk on my ankles or worse, sing like Ethel Merman on more than one occasion, but take him we did.

There were some old familiar faces at the party and it was great fun to reconnect with them, but there were a few new faces, one of which was a guy who had been around Cleo's party circuit for awhile, but somehow we had never met him. He was cute, articulate, self employed, liked cats, and most importantly, single. He also took a shine to Bea. Once the Captain kicked in, I assumed the role of Drunk Buddha, and advised Bea that she "needed to go break a few rules" that evening. The not so drunk, and infinitely wiser Cleo handled the finer points of luring the proposed couple out on the deck, and clearing the house. Then, taking Drunk Buddha (me) by the hand, she went upstairs to wait it out. We giggled together sitting up in her room, just like old times.

Now the rest of this saga can only be related by Bea, as it is her story to tell. She has not been very forthcoming, seeing as how she is very firmly a nice girl, who immediately feels guilty for sins of the flesh, but she did write this recently, and this, so maybe I'm the bad influence, not just the Captain!

I Blame The Cat

Oh my god, I am so tired - I can't think, I can't type. My brain is like bruised fruit - mushy, dented, and brown spotted. Coffee isn't working it's usual magic either; it's just giving my little mental hamster the shakes as he runs on his squeaky, creaky wheel, shrieking, "Never give up! Never surrender!" (My hamster is a big "Galaxy Quest" fan, in case you didn't know)

So why, you may ask, are you beyond fatigued, O She Who Tapdances through life? (Do you really talk that way, O Reader, my Reader? It's kind of freaky, but I like it!)

Well, it's not because I threw open my house for an impromptu dinner party on Saturday, in honor of Cleo. I cleaned like a mad woman all day, cooked a fabulous huge meal, and then threw down like the aforementioned lunatic as well. No, no, that can't be the cause. There weren't any Party Fouls to stress over - my brothers both managed to not set anything on fire, and I completely missed Bea lying on the kitchen floor for a brief respite, so I was all zen, in a skunked kind of way.

It certainly has nothing to do with me staying up too late, every damn night, in spite of the school regimen being in full swing. I have a mission and that mission is to kick Scrabble Maven's advanced ass so far down she can't ever get back up.

No, no, I blame the cat. Jezebel. The cat who sits outside my bedroom door every night, meowing piteously every quarter hour, like a Regulator clock, only with cat noises. I try to coax her to come in and get settled, I'll give you the pillow honey; but she's got a bad case of Perpetual Wrong Side Of The Door Syndrome, so either she comes in and out all night, with me getting up to escort her, or she has to sit outside and cry. Jezebel is otherwise my favorite cat, but she's killing my deep REM sleep single-pawedly (single cattedly?), every quarter hour of my night.

Yeah, that's it - it's the cat! It's ALL her fault!

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In Case You Missed It-
To hear all about the dinner party and how Bea ended up on the kitchen floor, go read Trapped Under Something Heavy - right now!!!

A Night At The Palace

I couldn't resist - I had to throw out a few crumbs , just to tease you.

Okay. Are you ready? You sure? I could go do the meme I'm supposed to do this week...No?

So we arrived at the palace, just a few minutes after 6 pm. The eroding driveway was so overgrown that Bea almost missed it, and when I pointed it out, she said, disbelieving, "Really? Is is safe?" I led her up the brick stairs that were almost invisible under an invading blanket of ivy and we were met at the top by Cleo, who hugged us both and asked after all the family.

See now, it would have been harder to get through, but infinitely better blog fodder if she had been doing her on-stage thing. Now you all think I'm making up the Sarah Bernhardt/Cleopatra thing, which I wasn't, but then she had to go and act all normal and shit. It's like some kind of radar or something.

We went in and settled ourselves on the wonderful old screened porch that sits atop the garage. It's always been one of my favorite spots in this house, and it's certainly one of the coolest. There was a drape that hid the door from view, and as a child, I would hide there when I'd had enough of playing, enjoying Cleo's escalating ire at not being able to find me. Bea and I had brought along a cooler of party beverages, but Cleo was just coming off a 9 day juice fast and was drinking vegetable broth, so she abstained.

There, are you happy? She was drinking vegetable broth, instead of eating, for crying out loud, and that's only the tip of that girl's iceberg. The last time I went to the beach with her she freaked out all the local color with her hairy arm-pitted, sun saluting yoga stuff. Folks just aren't that groovular around here.

We talked about her mom, and her last few months. We brought up the obligatory ancient history and discussed possible whys for some of her mother's more traumatic and showy moments in parenting, how it affected all of us in different ways. We didn't eulogize the woman, but neither did we eviscerate her, because where does that get any of us, especially now? I was relieved to hear Cleo talk about her mother in such an insightful way; glad I wasn't going to have to pick her up and re piece her sense of self back together. She seemed to have found deeper understanding and peace with her mother, in those last months spent together, and for her sake, I was grateful. Closure is so important in getting on with your life, and easier to achieve with a living person.

I asked her if she remembered the time we were approached in the park by a man in a trench coat. He wanted to show us "a little something" and our answers were polar opposites: she said yes, and I said no, as I dragged her from the park. Since that particular memory is from the same period she had blanked out on years before, I wasn't surprised she didn't recall it. It is my fate as a historian that I remember what others forget.

We also talked about our love lives and what we were doing in the here and now. Cleo included Bea in these conversations, and was a kinder, gentler hostess than I have ever remembered. All in all, and rather anti-climactically, we had a lovely evening together. Even Bea would concur.

Dammit.

I feel kind of ashamed of myself for building you up, just to say, "Yeah, it was alright", but Cleo did tell me she's planning on having one of her famous birthday parties in October. Now those are never staid or dull.

So stay tuned - October is just around the corner!

What Was I Thinking?

Sweet Jesus!
It's the last weekend before school starts and the guys are going out of town.
That means Bea and I should be whooping it up, except...

Except that I've committed us (in every sense of the word) to a Saturday night of sipping fruit juice (fruit juice! dammit!) in the house of a dead woman, while we watch her daughter, Sarah Bernhardt, perform the role of Cleopatra.

Yeah, that was me, freakin Joanie of Arc, who signed us up for this gig.

Bea, true friend that she is, has been very gracious, but I know this isn't her idea of fun. It doesn't help that, even after 20 years, Cleo can't remember Bea's name. It's the kind of girl she is, and a big part of why I keep my distance from Chez Cleo.

"Nobody puts Bea in a corner."

So Bea, I want to apologize in advance for the blatant rudeness you will be subjected to tomorrow. I cannot thank you enough for going with me into the Palace of Self Absorption, and being the lifeline of sanity I know I'm going to need.

So, sushi? It's on me...!

Muddy Waters

The phone call came today, from my friend whose mother died. I was afraid she would be brittle and unyielding in her coping; impossibly imprisoned in her fairy tale tower of protection, but grief had levelled her. On the phone, she sounded like the girl I knew so long ago, her older, more interior self. As we talked a million memories, some muddy and indistinct, others crystalline, bobbed to the surface of the silty depths of my mind.

Reaching for those memories down in the sludgy bottom of my consciousness, I hesitated. My fear of what might be lingering, lurking there in the sediment, forgotten, kept me from trawling through that dormant, long buried past. For now.

I think it's time to drain the pool, and clean out the debris.

We are getting together on Saturday to visit with each other, to reconnect. In part, to pay my respects, but also to grieve together, something I'm surprised to discover I need to do.

As much as I have vilified her mother, painted her as a narcissistic monster of selfishness (and she was), as an adult I recognize her impact on my life. I realize that my memories are colored in crayon, the memories of a child, and there were undoubtedly undercurrents and dynamics I was ignorant of that played into the scenes I witnessed. I owe it to myself and my friend to steel my nerve and dig into that past, if only to affirm our bond to each other as situational siblings, but maybe also to make some sense of the things that haunt us both.

Exploratory Soul Surgery

The elderly mother of a childhood friend died over the weekend, and I went to the reception/wake that was held for her. I hadn't spoken with my friend for a couple of years, partly because she moved out to Arizona, and partly because when she did come home to visit she always wanted to reconnect with 20-30 friends at the same time, in a celebrity/paparazzi kind of gathering, which, in my opinion, isn't really about reconnecting with any of those people - it's about stroking an ego and feeding an exhibitionist's jones for attention. Maybe I'm just inflexible, but I just can't stoke that bonfire of vanity.

Walking into that house took me back to 10 years old. I instinctively looked to see if there was still a curtain by the entrance to the screened porch to hide behind. The energy of her life, the deceased, was still palpable in every room, or maybe it was just my vivid memories. I stood testament to so much in that house. A stream of folks wandered in and out of the reception. I recognized some, but others were too transformed by time for me to easily recognize them. The big elephant in the house that day was the absence of my friend, at her mother's memorial. Her older sister made excuses for her absence, explaining she had to attend a yoga workshop out west, but her rolling eyes added an editorial I understood too well.

The story, the dynamics that set this scene in motion, go much deeper than a simple power struggle. Despite having several sisters, my friend was, in many ways, an only child. She was a post-40 Whoops child, and her sisters were all but grown up and out of the house when she came along, so she enjoyed and suffered the full brunt of her mother's attention and neglect. Her mother was a very bright woman, both academically and artistically, but she was also extremely competitive and often angry at the world around her. Her marriage broke up when my friend was about 3 or 4 and she never remarried, choosing to live and raise her youngest daughter alone.

I don't think I can effectively summarize the myriad stories of my childhood that played out at their house, that are part and parcel of my friend's no-show. Some are good stories. Little girls playing dress up with a box of antique petticoats, riding side saddle on almost as antique Schwinn bicycles, transformed by imagination into glorious steeds. Dazzling late night parties peopled by local celebrities and politicians, where we were introduced as a pair of precocious princesses, and oh, how we loved to play the part! I enjoyed a rarified upbringing in that house, exposed to books, art, theatre, politics, and the then burgeoning feminist movement, and I owe all of that to my friend's mother. But there are darker stories of her influence as well.

Some are downright nightmares; cataclysmic storms of misplaced rage, apathetic neglect of both her child and her home. In my mind images of spacious rooms with elegant furnishings; a baby grand piano in a room full of windows, antique portraits of ancestors hung above family heirlooms, are juxtaposed against images of a refrigerator full of spoiled food, a basement crawling with almost sentient mold, and a woman whose variable moods and deadly temper made me grateful for my own batshit crazy parents, and the fact I could go home at 5 o'clock. We were never quite sure what would tip her off; a dirty towel on the floor, a broken ashtray, but we knew, once she got going it wasn't going to end until someone was shredded and in tears.

My friend told me once about a bad experience she had while partying - that she had all these really traumatic images of her mother and her grandmother boil up and she couldn't tell where it had come from. She thought it had all been a product of her inebriation, but as she described the images to me, I was horrified. They weren't fabrications, they were suppressed memories of her childhood. I knew what they were because I had been present for many of them, and it is not my luck in life that I can forget, though I wished I had, so I could have feigned ignorance for her sake.

I can't say with authority why my friend wasn't there at that memorial/wake/reception. All I can tell you is what I know of what came before, and even then, I feel like there is a ghost who wants to shut my mouth.