hotel where the geezers assumed we were hookers.
Sometimes, life offers us only two choices. And we’d made ours. This time, I had perfume and Altoids, plus a stick of Secret Solid.
Hollywood and the Mee-Maw Panties
T his is not happening. It’s not. Really, it can’t be.
Oh, no, no, no. I think it is true. I’ve gone through the scenario dozens of times, and there’s no getting around it.
The ONLY pair of Mee-Maw drawers I own—and I borrowed these from Mama—are missing. I’m talking about the world’s ugliest and most gigantic pair of once-white, now-gray, great-granny panties are AWOL, which also stands for Absolutely Wickedly Offensive Ladieswear.
Yes, gone. I should NEVER have packed them. This isn’t the type of undergarment a dignified though cracked Southern Belle takes on her first trip to Los Angeles to try and impress the VIPs at HBO headquarters in Santa Monica, now is it?
Of course, my only pair of Mee-Maw knickers have long been known to bring nice, smooth lines to the tight fit of a certain pair of khaki pants. And so this is what won the atrocity a spot in my suitcase.
Since my mother is not fond of Mee-Maw panties, I’m wondering how she came to own them in the first place. Maybe, she, too, had an outfit that would work only if such a hideous undergarment was worn to give the body a natural, I’m-not-wearing-a-thong shape. I’m guessing the drawers must have come from my great-great-grandmother who, at 94 was caught in bed with a 32-year-old traveling salesman who didn’t seem to mind such britches.
If I wanted to wear the super-snug khaki capris, there was no other choice but the elephantine underwear the size of a nightstand, no elastic left worth mentioning.
This was LA, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Sherman Oaks, and I was the Hick in the City and on my way to Sex in the City headquarters and didn’t want panty lines showing. The Mee-Maw drawers were my salvation. They seemed to slenderize, chewing off chunks of upper thigh and disguising inner legs intent on greeting each other in a chafing hello.
The ten square yards of panty were great. They gave me confidence, along with my Prada shoes bought on eBay. I even waved to Olympia Dukakis, feeling the swish of voluminous nylon as I moved across Santa Monica Boulevard on my way to convince HBO to pick up the TV show my friend Robert Tate Miller, a hugely talented screenwriter, and I had worked up from material in my first book.
Someone, I don’t remember who it was over there, liked the book so much they called for a meeting. I flew out first chance I could get and sat on the plane next to a woman coughing up damaged lung chunks and sounding as if she had TB. It was my thirty-six hours of Almost Fame.
HBO headquarters was like stepping into an even more modern version of the Jetsons, with space-age furnishings and electrifying color everywhere. I couldn’t exactly tell the chairs from the tables and sofas. I’m almost positive, looking back, that I sat on a fuzzy hot pink watercooler by mistake.
After a thirty-minute wait, in which I nearly died of six heart attacks, Rob and I cruised with pretend calmness into the offices of two vice presidents young enough to be our children. They gave us Fiji water and fifteen minutes of their valuable time. I got all nervous and couldn’t shut up, but Rob called his agent afterward and said, “It went great. Couldn’t have gone better. It’s a good thing Susan flew up for this because a phone conference wouldn’t have worked nearly as well as them meeting her in person.”
Two weeks later we heard the news from Rob’s agent.
“They loved your TV treatment and thought Susan was fun and entertaining, but overall felt there wasn’t enough sex in the story lines.”
Oh, my mother would be so proud.
After less than two days in California, it was time to pack everything up and head back home. My thirty-six-hour trip to LA. Gone in a sneeze.
To think I was a guest in a fairly famous screenwriter’s home—a beautiful semipalace with its own basketball court and swimming pool right outside my bedroom window. To think I cleaned every speck of dirt from that room and properly made the bed before I left, extra careful I’d left nothing behind except a KitKat on their pillow, the toilet tissue pressed into a beautiful triangle at the tip.
To think I’d done everything right and then…then…Oh, no, please let it not be so!
Almost as soon as I returned from my quick little mission, I felt something punch my stomach. I couldn’t breathe. No. No. Please, God. I searched the suitcase a hundred times. The Mee-Maw panties had gone missing. I’d better call Nancy Grace. She’d understand. She’d do a segment for six weeks. I know she would. God love her and the time she takes with missing people and maybe even Amber Alerts for lost undergarments.
OK, don’t panic. Think, think, think.
Think “spin.” Write the hostess a letter. It doesn’t matter she’s perfect and rich and wears Dolce & Gabbana intimates. Deep breaths. Pen and paper. Good, thick paper, not the cheap kind from the Dollar Mart.
Dear Robert and Lady Tate Miller
I must thank you so much for the warmth extended during my brief visit to your lovely city. The guest quarters were more than any weary traveler could ever hope to enjoy. I thank you for the pleasure of staying in your inviting and tastefully exquisite home and the charming company offered. Please know you are welcome in western North Carolina anytime.
Again, many thanks,
Susan Reinhardt
P.S. I imagine this may sound odd, but as I placed my suitcase under the bed, I did notice a rather large nylon garment somewhat the size of a tablecloth, bunched about near the headboard. I figured it was part of your delightful Great Dane’s bedding and left it alone. Again, you guys were the best!
Erma Bombeck Country
I called the airport to confirm the ticket for a flight to Dayton, Ohio, leaving Asheville on a chilly March afternoon. The man on the other line couldn’t understand a word I was saying, nor could I figure out most of his native tongue.
OK, for the record, no one swoons over an accent the way I do. For some women, it’s men in uniform; for me it’s an accent. I don’t care if it’s drawling Southern, Australian, Jamaican or Brazilian. Talk to me all day, honey pie. That is, unless I’m trying to get my plane ticket confirmed and figure out a friggin’ way to get a unicycle on a small Delta carrier.
The gig I was headed for I was afraid I wasn’t qualified to handle. Somehow, through too much wine and a crowd of rowdies, I ended up becoming one of the keynote speakers for the semiannual Erma Bombeck National Writers Workshop in Dayton and was leaving on a jet plane, though the ticket man couldn’t understand my Southern and I couldn’t understand his Burmese.
For those who never knew and loved Erma, she was quite simply the best—my personal columnist hero. Every two years in her city of Dayton, the Writers Workshop bearing her name has a three-day hoopla of activities, sessions and keynote speakers attended by hundreds worldwide.
Dave Barry—The Dave Barry—was to be one of the keynotes. And I somehow got roped into “following” his act the next day. He gets the nighttime tipsy crowd. I get the hungover or tea-totaling lunchers. How does ANYONE
