#61: Cool Jazz Christmas in the Medieval Court Café

The Slick dashed into my john to take a leak; how romantic, I thought. In the front room of my studio garret apartment, I stripped off my civilian clothing and stood barefoot in my Ms. Megaton Man body suit, waiting. I wondered if he’d have the courtesy to put the toilet seat back down when he was through.

#60: Spotting a Roof-Runner

I was downtown doing some Christmas shopping—window shopping, really—for Mama and Avie, and wasn’t having much luck. I never knew what to get Daddy—Avie and I usually teamed up to get him a power tool from the hardware store at the last minute, so I was putting off any consideration of that gift entirely. My senior thesis was turned in, and except for a final exam tomorrow, my semester was in the bag. The following spring semester would be my last as a college undergrad. But instead of a sense of relief and anticipation, there was a knot in the pit of my stomach. I found myself worried about Dana, about what I may have done to screw things up and turn her into a megavillain. I dreaded when we’d meet again, when I would inevitably have to kick her ass.

#59: Mona Lisa Outer Drive

After Thanksgiving, things were hopping at the Union Stripe Café. A lot of businesses along Woodward Avenue booked our “banquet hall”—basically, another storefront adjacent to and about the same size as our regular dining room—for holiday parties. Even the professionals from the medical center, notorious for being stingy tippers, had to pay up—a fifteen-percent gratuity was automatically added to their collective bill. Some patrons got so drunk they still left change—only a few percent, but gravy for us wait staff. Some nights I was walking out of the restaurant with more than a hundred bucks in cash—good money in the early eighties.

#58: Megahero-Free Zone

“Look, Mama,” said Avie, proudly. “Clarissa’s wearing a dress.”
     “What’s the occasion, Sissy?” asked Mama.
     “You mean besides having Thanksgiving dinner with our Mama?” I replied. Avie and I were helping Mama take the turkey out of oven in her tiny new apartment near Eight Mile Road. “I can be traditional when I want to.”
     “You didn’t have to get dressed up for me,” said Mama. “But you do look nice in a dress for a change. I don’t think I’ve seen you in one since high school.”
     “Clarissa went by the house to pick up her old clarinet,” said Avie. “Daddy told her she was dressing too much like a boy lately and that she should grab some of her old dresses out of the attic, too, while she was at it. Only, they don’t fit her anymore. So he gave her money to buy new reeds and a new frock.”
     “Avie can’t keep anything secret,” I said. I stuck my tongue out at my half-sister.

#57: The Revelation from Missouri

I should probably mention that in my student days, especially when I wore my civilian clothes over my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, I was never anything to look at. I dressed down in the cooler months, September through May in Detroit. I wore jeans that were neither excessively baggy nor excessively tight; a baseball jersey, extra-large T-shirt, sweater, or school sweatshirt, depending on the weather; and a hoody, windbreaker, or baseball jacket over that. In really cold weather, I had a winter coat—kind of a weatherproof parka with a fake-fur hood. Oh, and I got an old army jacket just for kicks. I seldom wore makeup during the day, and I never wore my wavy, burgundy hair any special way other than sometimes pulled back in a ponytail. It wasn’t that I was necessarily going for the lesbian look—I never went in for plaid shirts and work boots, the de rigueur uniform of the brush-cut bull dyke; I just never wanted to attract sexual attention to myself when I was hoofing between my classes at the Arbor State Extension and Warren Woodward University campus. In a harsh city like Detroit, it seemed an eminently practical decision.

#56: Ms. Megaton Is Skank

“Then what did you do?” asked Avie. She sat at my tiny kitchen table, wolfing down cheese curls like they were goin out of style.
     “I took off his clothes, and then I knelt down…” I said.
     “Were you naked?” My half-sister wanted ever detail.
     “I had on my panties,” I said. “I was having my period, I told you.”
     “Was he lying on the bed?” asked Avie.
     “No; that’s a good point, Avie,” I said. “Gene was standing; I asked him to stand. He was uncomfortable about it, maybe because of the way the ceiling angles; he was nearly hitting his head. You know what he said?”
     “What?”

#55: Sex Drive in the Motor City

I need to backtrack here and explain a few things.
     You see, I had always thought the Ann Street house where I lived during my early college years was a commune. But it was no more a real commune than its basement rec room—which Daddy had built and where Yarn Man and I had holed up for a few lost weeks—was a real hippie crash pad. There was nothing at all about the lifestyle Trent, Stella, Pammy and I were living at the time that was truly communal, least of all in any utopian, sixties sense. We were all simply housemates who shared a living space. We each rented our own bedrooms and shared certain other spaces in the house. We didn’t buy food together or even eat together all that often; we didn’t have a set list of chores or obligations. We just cooperated and respected one another, and otherwise took care of our own messes. Otherwise, we all remained very suburban and middle-class in our outlook.