Has Anyone Seen My Pants? (14 page)

Later, Michele and I found ourselves at a bar that had a mechanical bull. We stood at the bar and made fun of all the dumb girls who were embarrassing themselves trying to ride it, until we had enough cocktails in us that we thought it would be a good idea for us to ride it, too.

The next morning we packed up to leave: me to my dad’s and her to her house just a few minutes away.

“My ass hurts,” I complained as I zipped up my suitcase.

“You landed right on it when you fell off the bull.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“I’m pretty sure I got video of it if you want to see.”

“No, I’m good.”

“Do you want to go get breakfast before we take off ?”

“No, I should get going.”

“Okay.”

“Are you sure I’m not a bad person?” I asked her as the valet pulled my car around.

“For not wanting to get breakfast?”

“Because my grandpa died yesterday and I reacted by riding a mechanical bull.”

“Well, the mechanical-bull ride was a reaction to alcohol, not death. And for the last time, you’re not a bad person. Everyone deals with grief differently.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who deals with it on a mechanical bull.”

“Probably. But your grandpa would have been proud of you last night.”

“No way! I was only on that bull for like two seconds.”

“It was more like one, but that’s not what I’m talking about, stupid. I’m talking about how you got onstage and made people laugh even though you were hurting. That’s not an easy thing to do. And you were really, really funny.”

“Huh.” I pondered. “I did feel like it was a really good show. Maybe I’m just funnier when I’m sad. Maybe I should always try to be sad!” I said with a smile.

“That’s not . . . sure, try that,” Michele laughed.

On my drive to my dad’s, I thought about my grandpa. I thought about how I used to see him every time I visited my
dad in the summers, but that slowly started to fade into seeing him every other time, then to every few times. There was never a discussion or a reason for it, it just was. Once he moved to the retirement community he and his wife were living in when he passed, everyone involved seemed to have decided it was too far to drive to the other’s house. And once I moved to California, I saw him a handful of times, but that was about it, and at that point I’d lived here for fifteen years. I was always the Christmas-card-sending granddaughter, too. And I’d get one back a couple of weeks later. Then after a while, I stopped getting cards back, so I developed a very mature “well, fuck that” attitude and stopped sending them.

But I had some good memories of my grandpa, mostly of his playing the harmonica, which he was really, really good at. He also did a spot-on Donald Duck impression. These were the things that my father and I sat up and talked about that night while we polished off a couple bottles of wine.

T
he funeral was a few days later, in Sun Valley, California, where he and his wife had been living for the past decade or so.

“Is Jeff coming?” I asked my dad, curious if his brother was going to make it out for the service.

“No, he wants to, but he and his wife and all the kids just moved to Arizona. He just started a job and it would be too hard to get here.”

“Oh. And he can’t take off work for the funeral?” I asked sadly.

“It doesn’t sound like it. I know he really wants to, but I think with just starting and just moving . . .”

“Yeah, makes sense,” I said, even though I wasn’t sure it did.

In a way, I understood, and in a way, I didn’t. But I also knew that I had just spent an afternoon trying to reach that side of my family through social media outlets, so who was I to judge? I didn’t know their situation and I shouldn’t pretend to.

As I got ready to drive the hour and a half or so out to my grandpa’s funeral, I felt really, really single. There aren’t a ton of times it truly bothers me that I’m single—just vacations and weddings. You know, times when you just wish you had a date so nobody thinks you’re a lesbian when you share a room with your friend and nobody looks at you all sad when you go find your name card and sit down at a table full of couples.

Going on almost five years of being single, I have focused on the “plus” sides. I have learned to brush off the comments of people back home in Arkansas who “can’t believe” I “still haven’t gotten married!” I’ve come to terms with the fact that all of the cousins on my mom’s side whom I used to babysit are now married and have children, while I run around the country telling dick jokes. It’s the life I chose, and whether it sounds like it or not, I’m very, very happy. I’m proud of myself and I know my family is, too. That’s what matters the most to me.

But on this day, I added “funerals” to the short list of times I hate being single. I just wanted someone in the car with me to
talk to about how I felt about my grandpa’s death—someone who wasn’t my dad or a distant cousin on Facebook. But I didn’t have that person in my life, and I sure wasn’t dragging a girlfriend out to a mobile home retirement community on a Sunday afternoon. Imagine the lesbian rumors I would have sparked in those old hen circles.

Mischief wasn’t a fan of car rides, but had he still been alive at this point I probably would have resorted to popping him in the passenger’s seat just so I felt a presence next to me. That said, I guess it’s good that he wasn’t around anymore, because showing up to a funeral with a cat would have probably been considered “rock bottom.” So, I did what I always do when I have to go to an event without a date: I got a bikini wax.

That’s right, I got a bikini wax before my grandpa’s funeral. I didn’t get one because I thought I was going to get lucky—that would have been creepy. Plus, that’s really never why I get one. I get one because it makes me feel better. I think everyone has an image in their head of a woman who has been single for a long time and doesn’t have a ton of sex: her legs are hairy, she has one speck of paint left on her big toe from the last pedicure she got before she gave up, and . . . she has a giant bush. She has all these things because who cares? She ain’t got no man! She doesn’t need to do all that silly maintenance, right?
Wrong.
I do all of that stuff for me; I always have. It makes me feel good. And if I do happen to end up nude with a gentleman, it’s a bonus for both of us that I’ve kept up with my business. I’ve had mediocre sex before, but in the middle of it, when I looked
up to see my nicely painted toes over a pair of shoulders, I still considered it a win.

I arrived in Sun Valley—a place I would not recommend to anyone—freshly waxed, sporting the obligatory black dress and a pair of heels. The service was held in the community recreational room. It was a depressing place, I can’t lie.

Why is everyone here so old?
I thought as I scanned the crowd, looking for my dad.

“Because your grandpa was old,” my dad said as he approached me, clearly reading my mind.

I took in the scene: round tables with paper linens on top, deli trays straight out of the grocery store, giant jugs of lemonade and water.

“This is so depressing,” I said as I looked at my dad, tears welling up in both our eyes.

“Your grandpa was happy here, Bones,” my dad said as he hugged me, calling me by his childhood nickname for me.

I knew he was right and that was all that mattered. Maybe what depressed me more was that other than my dad, stepmom, stepsister, and grandpa’s wife, I didn’t know any of the people there. I didn’t know anything about the last several years of my grandpa’s life. But apparently, my grandpa never mentioned me to any of them either, so I called it even in my head and took a seat on a cold folding chair.

My dad had put together some really nice pamphlets with photos and remembrances of my grandpa. There were pictures stuck to cardboard, full of memories of his eighty-eight
years of life. When I found some with me in them, I’d stare at them, trying to remember how I felt in each photo. I found a few pictures of us from a cruise we went on when I was in high school, and I knew in those photos that I felt annoyed—because I was in high school and I was on a cruise with my grandparents. So I kept scanning, until I landed on a photo of us at Disneyland.

God, I hate Disneyland,
I thought.
Why do I look so happy?

The answer was simple: I used to love Disneyland. When I was young and I’d come out to visit my dad, we’d go to Disneyland and make it a game to stay up as late as possible. My dad would chant, “Twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock!” when he’d see me and my sister start to fade from a full day of riding Space Mountain and eating churros, encouraging us to make it until Disneyland’s midnight curfew. I’d go home to Arkansas sporting mouse ears with my name on them, showing pictures to my jealous friends, telling them tales of the Magic Kingdom.

I smiled, satisfied that I had found a happy memory with my grandpa.

“You used to love Disneyland,” my dad said as he stood next to me.

“I know. Why did I like it so much?”

“You weren’t old enough to know better.”

“True,” I laughed.

The service turned out to be quite lovely. His friends got up and said nice things and told funny stories. My dad gave a
heartfelt speech. For a service in a brightly lit hall in 105 degree weather, it wasn’t so bad.

When I got home that night, I had messages from my cousins on Facebook. They all expressed their grief as well as their regret that they weren’t able to attend the funeral, and that they didn’t know their grandfather better—one of them had never even met him. A few days later, I received a letter (like a real, handwritten one) from my uncle Jeff, also expressing his grief. It was such a beautiful letter; I sat down and wrote him back immediately, probably the first letter I’d written in years.

The one constant in all of the correspondence was that we all agreed it was fucked up that we had this family we didn’t even know. Life is precious; family is precious. We shouldn’t be taking any of it for granted.

Our communication dropped off again after a few weeks. But I know we all meant it when we said we missed each other. We just have a weird way of showing it.

Two Hundred Cigarettes

T
here was a good four-month stretch in the beginning of 2013 when I spent every evening on my balcony, drinking an entire bottle of wine, listening to country music, and smoking a pack of cigarettes. I’m not a smoker and I prefer vodka, so, in what I assume was a depression, I didn’t even have the decency to abuse myself with things I really liked. And since, as I’ve mentioned a few times, I felt my social life was suffering due to my professional life, this also was not a proactive way to spend my time off. However, it was all I wanted to do and all I could bring myself to do.

These smoke-filled nights, I’d turn on my television, keeping the volume down so that it didn’t interfere with my country music but would allow some other movement in my house—it gave me the feeling of having other people around without actually having to allow other people around. It was a sad scene, comparable only to what I imagine the prequel of any episode of the Oxygen channel’s
Snapped
would look like.

I didn’t tell any of my friends what I was doing during those evenings, blowing off fun dinners and whatnot with the excuse that I was just tired. I guess that wasn’t really a lie, because smoking a pack of cigarettes and drinking a bottle of wine every night is exhausting. But one night I picked up the phone (me? Calling someone?) and told my friend Liz (a.k.a. “Two Rings”) what I’d been up to.

“It’s okay, Sarah. You’re just depressed. Don’t beat yourself up over this,” she offered gently.

“Okay, thanks. So it’s okay?” I asked tearily.

“Well, no, I mean you have to stop doing it but just don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“When do I have to stop doing it? It’s really kind of nice.”

“Is it?”

“No.”

“Then stop.”

Liz was right: I wasn’t enjoying myself, obviously, and I needed to break the pattern. Of course, it took a little while to truly break it. For a few weeks I’d do things like go meet friends for dinner but jet out early so I could get home, smoke a couple of cigarettes, drink a glass of wine and listen to one country song. I was like a sad addict, weaning myself off of my sadness slowly. I just wasn’t ready to go cold turkey, plus the chair on my balcony was really comfortable.

M
y mom is also a big fan of country music, and like me, of Luke Bryan. But she has what is bordering on an unhealthy obsession with him. At first I thought,
Well, she just really likes him because he’s super ho
t,
because—well, he’s super hot. But she straightened me out one day by letting me know that she likes him because he is (a) amazing and (b) really grateful for his success.

“Oh,” I told her. “I thought it was because you wanted to do it with him.”

“He’s much younger than me, Sarah, don’t be ridiculous. Plus I love Eric.”

“Well that’s a relief,” I laughed.

“But if I was single . . .”

“Let’s just leave it at you love Eric.”

O
ne Christmas, I surprised her with tickets to a Luke Bryan concert. She wanted to see him live before she died, and since according to her that could be any minute, I decided to help her check that off the bucket list. I hid the tickets in a country music magazine, which I then wrapped. Christmas morning, I was so excited for her to open that gift, which is unusual for me because usually I’m just focused on counting how many presents I have in my pile in comparison to my sister’s pile. Yes, I’m an adult.

When she unwrapped the country magazine, she stared
blankly at it for a second and then smiled.

“Oh, cool, you got me a subscription to
Country Weekly
!” she said, genuinely excited.

Fuck, she seems really happy and that would have been so much cheaper.

“Well, look inside the magazine, Cheryl!” Eric said impatiently. He wanted to see her face when she realized she had Luke Bryan tickets just as much as I did. Plus, he had a couple of his own presents left to open and she was cutting into his time.

When she finally saw the tickets, she stared at them for a while and appeared to be sweating. For a moment I thought we actually were going to lose her.

“These are tickets to see Luke Bryan,” she finally said, slightly emotionless.

“Yes, yes they are.” I nodded.

“But I’m not Allen Davis,” she said, reading the name that was on the tickets.

“Oh, I know. I got them off of StubHub, that’s just who I bought them from.”

“But they won’t let me in if I’m not Allen Davis, will they?”

Clearly my mother had not yet delved into the world of StubHub, but after a few minutes of gentle explanation, she got it.

“Oh my
GOD I’M GOING TO A LUKE BRYAN CONCERT
!”

“Yes you are!” I laughed.

“Honeypot, we are going to a Luke Bryan concert!”
she squealed to my stepdad, using their endearing yet nonsensical
pet name for each other.

“I know, Cheryl. Sarah told me about it before she bought them because she wanted to make sure we could go. It’s in Missouri.”

“Missouri . . . in February,” she said, her brow furrowing.

“What’s wrong, Mom?” I asked.

“Well, what if it snows and we can’t go?” she asked, the fatalist rearing her ugly head.

“It’s going to be fine, honeypot,” my stepdad assured her.

And it was fine. It did snow, but they still successfully made it to Missouri to see Luke Bryan, although on the day of the concert, her coworkers concocted a very official-looking text informing her that the concert was canceled due to weather. They’re real jokesters over at that funeral home. But they didn’t fool her for long, as she realized that her phone number wouldn’t have been attached to the tickets. Allen Davis would have gotten that text, because Allen Davis was the poor fool who gave up his tickets to see Luke Bryan, and she was no Allen Davis.

A
bout a year later, just around the time I was weaning myself off of sad balcony time, the subject of my mom and I going to see a Luke Bryan concert together in Tulsa came up. I don’t get back to Arkansas that often and she and I had never taken a trip to do anything like that by ourselves before, so it sounded like it might be a good idea—except the part about
Tulsa.

By this time, Luke (we are on a first-name basis now) had been on
Chelsea Lately
, so I had met him. I came onstage during his interview and “crashed” it, which was a pre-written bit, but he didn’t know it was going to happen; however, he was a great sport about it. I also informed him that my mom was his number one fan, to which he responded:

“Well, any time you guys come to a show let us know and we’ll do a meet-and-greet.”

Now he’d really fucked himself.

I contacted his tour manager and set everything up so that when my mom and I went to his show in Tulsa, she’d get to meet her idol. Then I called her and informed her what was going to happen—no way I was going to surprise her with this one; she needed time to process it all so that when she did meet him she didn’t completely humiliate both of us.

“We are going to meet him?” she asked flatly. She was way too calm about this; it was very serial killer–like.

“Yep, it’s all set up!”

“Oh my God, I can
’t believe it!”
She squealed.

“I know, it’s going to be so fun,” I told her, relieved she was showing emotion again.

“Okay, so you’ll fly here Friday night and we’ll drive to Tulsa Saturday morning?”

“Oh, I was thinking I’d fly into Tulsa and just meet you
there. I have to go back to L.A. Sunday, so it doesn’t make sense for me to fly to Arkansas first, then drive an hour and a half.”

“Well, how am I going to get to Tulsa?” she asked.

“Well, I figured you’d drive.”

“Well, I don’t know how to get there.”

“Mom, I used to fly into Tulsa all the time and you guys would pick me up.”

“Yeah, but Eric drove, I didn’t pay attention how to get there.”

“Well, it isn’t that hard and your car has GPS.”

“I don’t want to drive myself to Tulsa! What if something happens?”

“Mom, you drive every day. Why are you talking like you’re ninety-seven years old all of a sudden?”

“I drive every day here, not to Tulsa!”

“Mom, it just doesn’t make sense. It’s all this extra traveling for me and all I do is travel. I just want to go to Tulsa because it’s easier.”

“Well, maybe Eric can drive me,” she offered, not backing down on her inability to locate Tulsa.

“But we only have two tickets.”

“He can just hang out in the hotel room while we go to the concert.”

I knew that my stepdad would do exactly that if she asked him to, so I sucked it up and said I’d fly home and drive us to
Tulsa and back.

“Oh, good!” she said, relieved. “It’ll be fun. Road trip!”

“Yeah, road trip . . . to Tulsa.”

“Oh, Tulsa is fine. What hotel should we stay in? We should stay in one close to the venue because I bet traffic gets really bad right before and we don’t want to be late, could you imagine if we got stuck in traffic and couldn’t move and just missed the whole thing . . .” She started reeling, worrying about potential disasters as usual.

“I’ll find a hotel close to the venue and I’ll book our rooms.”

“Rooms?”
she repeated. “We aren’t sharing a room?”

Coming off of my depression, I wasn’t sure sharing a hotel room with my mom in Tulsa was the way to go. I mean, I’m an adult! Aren’t adults supposed to have their own rooms? But I could hear the disappointment in her voice and knew I was going to have to suck it up again. Plus, if I was sharing a room with my mom I wouldn’t be able to come back after the concert and drink and chain-smoke. Without knowing it, she would be kind of like my sober companion.

The day finally arrived and my mom and I headed to Tulsa. We checked into our hotel, my mom excitedly telling the girl at the registration desk that she was going to meet Luke Bryan that night.

“Wow, that’s awesome.” The girl smiled.

“Yep. My daughter here is on TV and she met Luke one day and told him I’m his biggest fan so he said he wanted to
meet me.”

The girl looked at me, either trying to place my face or figure out if my mom had Alzheimer’s.

“That’s exactly how it happened,” I said as I took the hotel keys from her hand.

Mom and I got ready; I put on my brand-new cowboy boots that I was uncomfortably excited about and she put on her Luke Bryan T-shirt that was about two sizes too big for her.

“Mom, that shirt is kind of big,” I told her as I put on a final coat of mascara.

“It’s a men’s medium,” she explained.

“Well, tonight why don’t we get you a woman’s T-shirt? One that fits?”

“I don’t like those. I’m sixty-three years old, I’m not going to wear a belly shirt.”

“They aren’t belly shirts, Mom. We’ll just get you a large woman’s—”

“I don’t like those shirts, they’re too tight in the tits.”

That was the end of that discussion. Mainly because I was shocked to hear my mom say the word “tits.”

The whole day, I was terrified that something would go wrong and we wouldn’t get to meet Luke Bryan. But minus a couple of instances of being sent to the wrong window to pick up passes, everything went smoothly, and before I knew it my mom and I were backstage, ready to meet Luke. It’s possible I was more excited than her.

His tour manager pulled us to the side while the regular meet-and-greet went on. We weren’t there for that bullshit! We were getting one-on-one time. I started sweating.
Seriously? This always happens when good-looking men are around! Must be that early menopause,
I thought as I clenched my armpits.

“Sarah?” I heard the voice of an angel (Luke Bryan) call out. “You got your momma with you?”

I looked at my mom and she looked like she was going to pass out.

“I sure do!” I said in a weird
Beverly Hillbillies
–type tone that I’d never heard come out of my mouth before.

He called us into the room and went right to my mom for a hug, then to me. He talked to us for like twenty minutes, babbling nonstop about his tour, asking me how work was, and taking my mom’s advice on which songs from his album should be released first. At one point, he mentioned something about FM radio, and my mom interrupted:

“AM, FM, XM, too . . .” She smiled, quoting his own song lyrics to his face.

I wanted to be embarrassed, but I couldn’t be. It was adorable and he loved it. Plus, when I was in my early twenties I met Vince Neil at a restaurant. After politely saying hello, he excused himself to the “little boys’ room,” to which I responded by excitedly shouting the lyrics to “Smokin’ in the Boys Room” right to his face. At least now I knew where I got it.

Luke’s tour manager reminded him that he had a show to do, so we took a photo with him and headed out to our seats. It’s slightly annoying that you can’t see my cowboy boots in this picture.

The rest of the night was really fun; he put on an amazing show and my mom and I sang our hearts out. We have equally terrible voices.

After the concert, my mom thought maybe I should text the tour manager to see if there was an after-party.