Is My Bow Too Big? How I Went From Saturday Night Live to the Tea Party (2 page)

It’s interesting that these critics never defend socialized medicine or liberal ideology with facts. Instead, they retort with a childish “you’re fat” or “you’re stupid.” What do those things have to do with socialized medicine? My theory is that they actually disrespect and despise Jesus Christ, and since I’m a representative of His, I’m an automatic target.

Being a liberal would be much better for my Hollywood career. So, explain your philosophy. Show me one country that has been blessed by Marxism. Make me a liberal! But until you do, I will continue to pursue the truth because we need to save this country… for my Scarlet, my Aubrey, and my Ever.

As the Percocet slowly seeps into my cells, my sweet child still spinning, and curious nurse at my side, I start answering the same ten questions.

Gymnast

You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up.

–George Orwell

I
’m staring at Dad’s hairy belly as he drives us to the beach in the gold Buick station wagon. I’m six. I don’t know why Dad has to do a flip off the pier at South Beach every week. He crawls up on the cement wall, with his back to the water, and throws himself backwards into a somersault, flying forty feet into the water. No one notices the first time, so he does it over and over until he gets an audience. He used to be a diver. He named me after the Olympian diver, Victoria Draves.

I think Dad just hates being normal.

Dad went to South Beach before it was hip, and read the Bible to Paul Zapp, a middle-aged ex-gymnast from Chicago, who was legally blind from a glue vat accident at a Penthouse Magazine factory. Despite this, Zapp drove his bike to the beach every day in his little black speedo. This beach thing is just too personal for me. Dad would have handstand and unicycle contests with Zapp on the pier, and quote Bible verses. He forced me and my brother Jimmy into contests too. Sometimes my ankles bled hitting the stem of the unicycle. If you got injured in our family, all Mom would say was “Piffle.” She was a nurse. She’d seen much worse. Dad would just say, “Do it again, and don’t hit your ankles.”

Dad thought it was shameful that Paul Zapp drank beer. Zapp made a profession of faith in Christ, but a few years later committed suicide by hanging himself from his chin-up bar. I asked my Dad why he was always befriending weirdos. He lifted his eyebrows and said, “Love your neighbor.”

Dad went next door to read the Bible to Mr. Ferguson. He was our unemployed gin-loving next-door neighbor. To show his Christian love, Dad would play the piano while Mr. Ferguson played a big marimba. Dad would go home when Mr. Ferguson started slurring. Dad would shake his head and say, “I don’t understand why anyone would want to lose control of their faculties!” Mr. Ferguson wired his yard under the grass with electricity to shock intruders. We were warned never to touch his yard. He ended up shooting himself in the head. When I urged Dad to become a preacher in his later years because his body couldn’t keep up with the gymnasium, he sighed, “Everyone I preach to dies!”

Sometimes Dad was the church pianist, but only in emergencies. His style was honky-tonk and raised too many eyebrows. During the sermon, Mom would intermittently hold my hand. She’d pick it up and handle it and stare at it like it was a work of art. She’d kiss it. She did the same with Jimmy, but not as much because she didn’t want to make him a sissy. Then she’d compare her hand to mine. Mine was small and chubby. My fingernails were always chewed off. Her nails were polished light pink. Her hand had big blue veins that stuck out like mountain ridges. I’d press them down and watch them slowly rise up again. She’d quietly chuckle, as if to say “Oh, to have young skin again.” I’d whisper, “What are these? Big freckles?” She’d whisper back, “Old age spots.” She’d shrug. There was nothing she could do about it. Time marches on. Someday it would happen to me, but being an adult seemed millions of years away. Grandma Dorothy would get in on the hand thing. She would slip her little old gnarly hand into my lap. We’d silently compare three generations of hands. Grandma Dorothy’s mountains and valleys were higher and deeper. Her age spots were rounder. The skin on her fingertips looked like it had been in the bathtub too long. Her knuckles stuck way out. Her hard, thick nails were always polished bright red. She had grace and dignity. She got a frizzy permanent in her hair every week despite there being hardly any hairs left to frizz. Her clip-on earrings made her earlobes turn bright red. She wore large yellow and orange plastic jewelry that wasn’t for sale in any stores I’d ever been to. Her dresses I’d never seen for sale anywhere either. She was from another time and place—Chicago in the forties. She smiled at me adoringly. Her bright red lipstick was slightly smudged and falling into the creases around her lips like little red rivers flowing from her mouth.

I was in church three days a week, and in the gym five nights a week. Church taught me that women should be modest. In the gym, everyone was practically naked. I concluded there must be a loophole for athletes.

One night when I was fourteen and sopping with sweat, I walked outside the Miami Dade Jr. College Gym to drink from the water fountain. I was wearing my favorite purple leotard with the zipper down the front. My hands were calloused and caked with chalk. My bare feet were dirty and as tough-skinned as shoes. The sticky yellow rosin didn’t just keep my feet from slipping on the balance beam: it was a strong adhesive that glued dirt to my feet. Endorphins were zinging through my brain. All my muscles from my head to toe felt squeezed and pumped and alive and tingly. For a fleeting moment, I forgot about all the reasons I hated gymnastics; the pain, the long hours, the repetition. I was alone in the hallway. I felt great. I was in shape. I felt confident. My future was an empty highway. I could do anything. The cement halls were dark and dirty. There were thousands of black globs of old gum polka-dotting the ground. I started to walk back into the florescent lights of the gym and, out of the corner of my eye, through the double doors, I saw a woman sitting on a stool in the middle of the basketball court. She was on the side of the gym that was walled off from us in the gymnastic gym. I squinted. She was that lady from
Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
show I’d watched at my Grandmother’s. Lily Tomlin. What was she doing here in the real world? She said, “Testing. One. Two. Three. One time we took Buster’s fir and parted it in the middle. Then we sprayed one kind of hair spray on one side and another kind on the other, and then we turned the hose on him and neither side held up.” A man was pulling the bleachers out. She was going to tell jokes to an audience and get paid for it. What a concept. I could do that! If I can do a round off flip-flop, back with a full—despite being genetically inferior—I could easily sit on a stool and tell jokes. Wow. I couldn’t wait to get on that open highway where I got to make the decisions. For now, they’re going to start wondering why I’m not doing sit-ups with the rest of the team. Dad told me I was genetically inferior. “We are
endomorphs
. Most gymnasts are
mesomorphs
—muscular. And your skinny best friend Elizabeth is an
ectomorph
—thin. Why did I have to be a gymnast if I wasn’t born for it?” Dad said, “Because genetically inferior gymnasts can win a gymnastics meet if they work harder than genetically superior gymnasts.”

When Dad took me to Jefferson’s after our daily four-hour after-school gymnastic classes to get his Poppycock and hot, fresh, giant cashews, he would tell me, “We have a flaw. We are carboholics. Carbohydrates are chemically similar to alcohol. If I ever had a drink, I’d be addicted immediately.” Then, he’d slowly eat the hot, fresh, giant cashews in front of me. I was very hungry. I hadn’t eaten since lunch at school. He’d offer me one cashew. And then he’d tell me that I should lose five pounds, “You’re okay for a normal person, but not for a gymnast.”

No one ever asked me if I wanted to be a gymnast.

How to do a Handstand

To hold a handstand for one minute or longer without walking forward or backward, you must kick up and fall down for five years.

Place your favorite foot out front, fingers stretched to the sky, lean forward, place your hands on the ground (a flat, hard surface is preferable), and kick up. If you kick too timidly, you won’t get up. If you kick too hard, you fall over.

At first you may want to lean your feet against a wall. Build up arm strength. Wear clean socks. Then gradually push your feet away from the wall and balance. I scrunch my fingers up like a caterpillar.

Bend your elbows, constantly wiggling them slightly, constantly adjusting. Knees are straight. Toes pointed. Stretch. Touch your toes to the sky. Head must be up: eyes looking at the ground space right in front of you. Hold it one second at a time.