In My Room

I woke up in the middle of a flashback this morning, to my TV blaring the movie Desperately Seeking Susan. It made me immediately remember when I first moved to Los Angeles. I was living off Melrose  with another girl comic, who had just went on the road for three months. She had sublet her bedroom, to an old broken down Canadian sketch comic, who was a drunk, an insomniac, and worked off and on for Disney in some capacity. He was a bit of a creepy fella. 

I was trying not to strip anymore, because I wanted to be taken serious as a stand up. A few weeks before that, some comics that I met in the Valley, had come to the Jet Strip during my shift. It was my turn to hit the stage. I was begging all the other girls in the dressing room to take my place, explaining to them my situation. It was useless, and I'm pretty sure they just wanted to see me squirm. I learned that afternoon (yes, I stripped during the day to keep my nights open for comedy) that a girl should keep her trap shut when it comes to her dreams, in the dressing room of a strip club.

I had no other choice, but to put on the shortest song I knew, the Beach Boys song "In My Room." For exactly two minutes and eleven seconds - I strutted my little ass off, with as much faux pride and prowess that I could muster up. After my dance, I went over and took their drink order. Not for a second, did they let on that they knew it was me. Some years later, I would catch a curious wink here and there from one of them, which would invariably make us both blush and smile. I learned quickly that comedy had an "honor amongst thieves" mentality.

In those days, strippers loved that old Beach Boys song. It was handy when your heels were killing you, or your knees were sore from doing to much floor work. But mostly, it was used if you were in the midst of hustling a table, and wanted to get back to it, before the club's dirty dancer (a girl, who sucks or gives hand jobs in dark corners) stumbled across your "mark's" loosening deep pockets. I was never a dirty dancer. In fact, I tended to attract mostly "Captain Save-A-Hos" at the bar.  

Sometimes, at night after a failed comedy set. I'd retreat back to the old apartment off Melrose, and would find myself glueing and painting every second-hand thing I owned, into either the wee hours of the morning, or until the pacing chain smoking Canuck, would pass out in the bedroom next to me. 

A few years after my dancing career was put on the shelf, I read somewhere that Brian Wilson wrote that song because he thought of his bedroom as his kingdom, the one place where he could always feel safe. 

I realize now, that I was desperately seeking to make my kingdom just like Susan's.  Because that movie gave me permission to feel okay about not being normal, like all the other girls, I either saw, or was told to be. 

Strangely, Brian Wilson's kids go to my kid's school now. Sometimes during an assembly, I wanna go over to him, shake his hand and let him know how many stripper shifts were made easier for the women that were society's cast-offs, because of that slow, sweet and tiny little song. But hell, even I know that would just be wrong to do, while the principle is handing out Science Fair awards...