Fleshpots. Curtains. Winners. No Toads.

Well…and we’re OFF!

Let me start by telling you how much I enjoyed your comments to the Curtains post.  Especially you lunatics who suggested the curtains might be in the basement.  Freddy Krueger is in that basement, along with the toad and the snake that James Earl Jones turned into in the Conan movie.  I’m with ‘rosarita’, who risks death crouching on the basement stairs rather than going in the actual basement during a tornado.  Yep.   Hell, I can barely walk down those stairs (there’s a hole in the masonry wall and one time I wobbled on the stairs, put out a hand to steady myself…and it went into that hole!  I screamed loud enough to be heard in Nebraska!  Took 6 months for me to even approach the stairs, let along walk down them.  El O hates my guts. ).  The Basement is NOT Happening.

c’mon down, dearie…

Turns out the curtains were (wait for it) in the linen closet.  Which I’d torn apart, twice.  But I was looking for a little zippered plastic case.  Not curtains rolled up in the corner.  Which is where they were, giggling up a storm.  They are now on the window.  The funny part, of course?  They give little visual protection (they are sheer-ish) at night.  But they give the illusion of protection and that’s all I needed.  The window is set back, behind an 9′ plum bush and about 100′ off the street that nobody walks on anyway.  So we’re good.

The Brothel Story:  I checked with my prima and yep! my Tia J was, in fact, a madam before she got all respectable and everything, becoming the grande dame and matriarch of our family mortuary business (her 2nd husband (and possibly her first, my great uncle) was a mortician – I really need to bone up on our family history).  Anyhoo, my mom lived just down the street from Tia J’s establishment and, longing for a more ‘average’ life  (her own mom owned a juke-joint restaurant and family legend has it that she killed  a  man with a cast-ion skillet – this was in the freewheeling 30s) she took an aversion to that lifestyle,wanting the White Picket Fence and everything.   The ‘soiled doves’ were pretty high-end doves and wore fine silks and satins and even finer French perfume.   My mom equated Chanel and Guerlain with courtesans and any overapplication of the No5 I adored were met with the withering phrase ‘you smell like a whorehouse on payday’.  She wore Coty because it was less expensive and therefore ‘respectable’.  Her bedroom smelled of L’Aimant and L’Origan and cigarettes and her nightgowns were zealously ironed cotton. NO silk.  The funniest part of this?  L’Aimant has always been waaay more animalic than No5 (the perfume it’s always compared to).  So for all her attempts to smell NOT like a ‘soiled dove’ she actually smelled skankier! Oh, mum!  Well, that’s okay – both those Coty scents are masterpieces.

But back to Tia J – nobody in my generation had the stones to ever ask her about this – it was only mentioned in passing by our parents who heard  it from their parents – but omg.  I would LOVE to know more about it.  Was it an actual ‘house’?  How did she manage it (as in actual management – I’m thinking it’s probably not much different than running, say, an accounting office, right?  I mean…you have people who are doing a job and they get paid.  Did they punch a time clock?  Taxes? ….

What did she wear?  Was she always in silk knickers and a kimono?  Or did she, as the Madam, wear a suit & court shoes.   Did she ‘entertain’  Special Clients (like Dolly Parton in BLWiT)? (don’t you just love all the quotation marks here but honestly….ALL THE QUESTIONS!

Most important:  what perfume did she wear?

Speaking of fleshpots, that tuberose is blooming its 18″ head off and the older blooms now have that sweet-skank smell associated with Fracas, Carnal Flower and Tuberose Criminelle.  Young buds smell like lemons rubbed on flesh – Susan Sarandon without the fish.  March and I wonder if florists’ cut tuberose smells different than ‘dirt’ tuberose (in-ground or potted).  Any thoughts on that?

The last of my liles have bloomed and are in a vase in my dining room.  The tubey is in the living room.  And I am in a perfume coma.  All I need is a silk nightgown and an ashtray full of cigarette butts and I’m in business!  Don’t judge me, Mom!

TiaJ & Mami, Pre-Respectable

Oooh!  Curtain Winners:  HeidiC, EllenM and Michele Caravalho.  Gmail the Evilauntieanita with your details – I’ll get some goodies out to you!