Chapter 2: Shut Down

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, welcome to the Orion Room. Put your hands together for her first Chicago hometown performance, comedienne and part-time ballerina, Starr!”

The announcer’s voice was dramatic, and the applause was polite. The auditorium was about two-thirds full and people were still entering, hoping they weren’t late for the real headliner, Danny Carlisle. Starr entered in her tutu and bowler hat with her trademark paint under her left eye.

Hello Chicago! It’s so good to be back home! I’m Starr and Chicago is where I was born, raised, and wore my first tutu. It’s the only thing that stuck from my year of dance lessons. I love my tutu!

Girls all go through a period in life when they want to be a ballerina. Little one-year-old me who could only barely walk would stand with my hand on Grandma’s knee and wiggle my shoulders and torso in a dance. That’s approximately the same way I dance today. At three, I was spinning in my dances until I fell over and couldn’t stand up. Sometimes I still dance like that, too.

Then I was told I couldn’t be a dancer unless I took dance lessons. I hated dance lessons. They wanted us to do all kinds of ridiculous moves and stand in stupid positions. I hated it. But I loved my tutu! To me, what I needed to be a dancer was not to plié, but to wear a tutu. I quit dance lessons. I kept the tutu.

I know three girls from my first dance class who are now professional dancers. One is with the Metropolitan Ballet, and two are in a strip club in Las Vegas. And here I am standing on a stage in Chicago making fun of them!

You know what we have in common? We’re all still wearing our tutus! You can’t be depressed when you’re wearing a tutu. Well, maybe if you’re a guy you can be. I’m not being judgmental, but you should try it. Get out your tutu and wear it to the office. Wear it to the grocery store. Wear it to your kid’s little league game. You’ll feel much better.

The tutu is only one reason I’ve had a great 1969. I got recruited to open for Danny Carlisle while I was visiting Las Vegas this summer. Wow! What a ride! You’re going to love him. We’ve been on the road for twenty-two weeks in twenty-one cities. No wonder I’m horny!

I have really missed my family. I have a boyfriend and three sister girlfriends. I see you down there, clutching your boyfriend’s arm, laying claim to him. Don’t worry. I don’t want your boyfriend. But if you dump him, I might be interested in adding you to our family. You’re cute. Yeah. Four girlfriends are not enough. We should have a fifth in our little clutch. And not one you drink.

You are projecting the questions in your head so loudly, I can hear them in mine. That’s because you have the same questions everyone has. I talk to other women. They all have the same questions.

“Starr, don’t you get jealous when one of the other girlfriends is, like, with him? You know, doing it?”

No. Let’s put an end to that previous generation bullshit. I don’t get jealous. I get relieved. My boyfriend loves me. Some nights while I was on the road, we talked on the telephone for a couple of hours, even though I’d come off a show and it was near midnight in Las Vegas, which makes it two in the morning for him, and he had class at seven-thirty in the morning. By the time we’re done talking, the best he can hope for is three hours of sleep before he has to get up and try to keep his eyes open through a day of college classes. That’s not even because he was up late. Everyone has to struggle to keep their eyes open through seven-thirty a.m. classes. Even the professor.

But the important thing is that I got to talk to him and let him talk me down from my post-performance high and fall asleep with his voice in my ear, and I didn’t even have to fuck him! One of the other girlfriends already took care of that! And when I’m home, I’ll take the hit for them and it will be fun and I love it! We’ve never managed to all live together in the same place at the same time for more than a few weeks. We all have lives. We’re on the go. We’re in college or on the road or raising a kid.

Yeah. Among the four of us, we have one child. And we all love her like crazy, man. She is the sweetest, cutest, smartest, lovingest little girl in the world. And I didn’t have to push an entire human being through my vagina!

I love my sister girlfriend for going through that and giving us a baby to love, but not have to take home at night.

This year, though. I tell you. It’s been crazy. We got tired of being lied to by Democrats, so we chose to be lied to by Republicans for a while. Same war. Same escalation. The president says we’re going to bring all the soldiers home from Vietnam, but first we need a million more to send over there. So, what we’re going to do is make the selection process of who to send into the death machine fairer. We’ll have a lottery.

First of all, you might have guessed I’m against the war and against the draft. But my reasons aren’t the usual ones. My reason is because of what it’s done to college. Guys who would never have considered college if there was no war are taking out huge loans to finance an education they didn’t need or want, but the only way to stay out of the army is with a college deferment.

It really brings the quality of prospective college boyfriends down a few notches. One guy came up to me after class and asked me out. Nice guy. Pretty good looking, in an “I just got out of high school” way. He’d even asked me for some help studying. I knew this guy was struggling to pass his classes and stay deferred.

Okay, lots of us struggle with tough college academics. But failing basket-weaving? Come on. All he ever really wanted to do was drive a tractor on his daddy’s farm. And that’s what he should be allowed to do without struggling to make grades in classes he doesn’t want to take.

But we’re going to make the draft fairer. Did you know that the first day of this month, just a few days ago, they drew capsules out of a giant mayonnaise jar in Washington, DC, and decided that every male born on September 14, between 1944 and 1950 would be the first ones drafted and sent to Vietnam.

Now, let’s simplify this so that everyone here understands what the draft lottery actually is. I’m going to randomly select a month of the year from a glass jar and find it’s July. Yeah, that was random. I made up the decision at the last second. Now how many of you here in this room were born in July? I don’t care what year. July wins the lottery.

Look at all of them! Statistically, it should be about 1/12th of the people in the room. Now, don’t move from your seat or suddenly become compliant and follow all my instructions. This is just an illustration. We’ll ask all the people—no, we’ll order all the people—born in July to go over there and stand against the wall. Then I’m going to be blindfolded and will be given a gun. I don’t know what kind of gun. An army gun, bitch. And it’s loaded. Let’s say with a thousand bullets.

Once I’m armed and dangerous, I’ll just start shooting randomly toward that wall. You can duck. You can move around. You can hide behind the person next to you. But I’m going to shoot a thousand bullets in the direction of that wall.

I’m sorry to say that the law of randomness that I just made up, says I’m going to kill some of you. I don’t know how many. It’s all according to chance. I might shoot twice in the same place, so hiding behind someone else didn’t help. I got both of you. I might point at the ground, just as you dove for it. Sorry.

Oh, you might get hit and not die. You could just have a flesh wound. You could have a punctured lung. You could have a broken back. Worst of all, you might lose your pecker. But a whole bunch of you who weren’t killed outright are going to be wounded and possibly maimed.

The rest of you get to go home. You’ll be better people for having served and survived, right? Oh, you’ll still have nightmares about a crazy girl in a tutu shooting at you. People will think you’re stupid for ever having obeyed her order to stand against the wall. You’ll wake up screaming in the middle of the night to stay away from the Orion Room forever. You’ll still flinch every time a car backfires. But you’re a survivor. You’ll be better for it.

Once the smoke dies down and the wounded are carted off and those who survived are seated and laughing about the whole experience, we’re going to draw another month and say, “Everyone born in February, up against the wall!”

I admit that the lottery is a “fairer” way of deciding who gets a chance at dodging the bullet than simply saying, “If you’re black, stand up against the wall.” There’s a draft board in this state that did exactly that. Every minority male who became eligible in Hunter County and didn’t have an educational deferment and wasn’t physically unable to serve in the military was drafted over the past three years. This lottery thing had better put a stop to that unless by some miracle, every black baby is born on September 14.

If you were born on September 14, 1944-1950, you are 1,000,000 times more likely to be killed in Vietnam in the next two years than if your birth date had been June 6.

“Starr, that was dark,” you say. “We came here to be entertained and to laugh.”

Yeah, you’re right. I’m sorry.

I thought it would be a really funny bit, because if it was really horrible, we’d do something insane, like end the war in Vietnam and withdraw all our troops before another single life is sacrificed there.

Or else we’d hold a lottery among those serving in Congress, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Pentagon, and the Oval Office and the first third of those drawn would be the first ones sent to Vietnam to fight for the profit margins of RMK-BRJ, Caterpillar, McDonnell Douglas, the President’s Club, the entire military-industrial complex, and Nixon’s re-election campaign.

You ladies who are out there dating and trying to find Mr. Right ... Let’s hear it if you’re out there. No more gross illustrations about killing you if you raise your hands. Give a shout. Understand that guys our age are getting killed at a higher rate than at any time since World War II. We need to learn to share the ones who are left. Here’s the secret. You should consider your girlfriend’s boyfriend and suggest—to her, not to him—that you share him. Because here’s a little known fact. Guys have just three conversations in them.

The first date, “Oh, he’s so funny and charming.” The second date, “He’s really smart.” The third date, “He’s such a caring and sensitive person.”

But if you aren’t sleeping with him by the fourth date, he’s repeating himself. He’s used up all his date conversation. At that point, he has three things to fall back on: Sports, politics, and the great recipe his mother has for macaroni and cheese. You’ve heard everything else.

But if you have sex, and don’t want to get pregnant, you’d better be protected. I’m talking about illegal birth control. Did you know contraceptives are illegal? It might even be illegal for me to stand up here and talk about them.

“Yeah, Starr, but what about rubbers. You can buy them at the drugstore.”

Only for the prevention of disease! You can’t buy prophylactics for the prevention of pregnancy.

It’s the law.

You know, it’s weird. Lots of things are backward. The Supreme Court ruled in 1965 that married women have the right to contraceptives. Well, in general, the supreme Court is a hundred years behind the times. It was only two-and-a-half years ago, on June 12, that the Court got around to saying, “the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.”

Well, thank you very much for giving me control over whom I marry. Only three years after the Civil rights Act of 1964, and two years after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. What we need now is a constitutional amendment that changes the legal voting age to eighteen—along with granting other fundamental rights accorded to adults—to eighteen-year-olds.

But where was I. Not on a political campaign. You didn’t come here to listen to that crap. You’re still trying to understand exactly what my tits are saying.

What I was trying to say is that the court, as usual when they’re dealing with new issues, got this one backwards. It’s not married women who need birth control! It’s unmarried women! The way I read that ruling is that the Supreme Court believes it’s better for single women to be pregnant than married women.

This is almost 1970. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll, baby! We can get everything except the drugs that make sex and rock and roll not end up in a baby. Do you really think that at twenty years of age, living on my own, with a boyfriend who loves me, that I am not going to have sex? With this body? You’ve got to be kidding.

But I’m so afraid of getting pregnant! I had to come up with my own solution. I sewed a latex glove over my vagina. And I still make my boyfriend use a rubber. If the kid gets out of that combination, we’ll name him after Harry Houdini.

Really, I’m so susceptible to drugs that I could probably get along on half a pill. What’s the worst that could happen? I get half pregnant?

I’m such a lightweight that if I walk into a room where someone smoked a joint within the last, say, six months ... I get high! If I was high, I would have finished my routine out here and be back in the dressing room fucking my boyfriend by now. You’d have to record me and play me back at half speed in order to understand my jokes. I know, that wouldn’t help some of you.

I had surgery a while back. No, I’m not going to tell you what I got operated on. I’m not sixty! And my boobs are my business. I was laid out on the table ready for the doctor and I met the anesthesiologist. He was so nice. He had a soft comforting voice. He held a mask above my face and said, “Now, Starr, I’m going to put this mask over your nose and mouth. Just breathe normally and count backward from ... Never mind.” In the time it took him to give me the instructions, I was already asleep.

I see you are, too, so I’d better boogie. You’ve all been so nice. I’m Starr. That’s with two Rs and a big ass. Ess! Does this tutu make my ess look big?

When we all finally got home Friday night, Beth was psyched up and rolling about her big opening in Chicago. Patricia had stayed home and got Toni to bed, so we tried not to be too raucous. Ronda and Anna joined Patricia in bed and I stayed up with Beth, eating chips and drinking tea. I didn’t think that was a particularly good combination, but eventually Beth started to wind down and we went to bed. She cuddled up to me and went straight to sleep without any loving.

We all tried to be quiet in the morning to let her sleep. I danced with Toni and then took her out to the park to push in a swing. She loved that and if I could have stood it, she’d have stayed in that swing seat for hours. As it was, she was almost ready for her nap by the time I got her back to the apartment.

By that time, Beth was up and moving and getting ready to leave for the theatre.

“Why do you need to go over so early?” I asked.

“We’ll get together and talk about last night’s performance. If I need to make any adjustments, I’ll need to rehearse a little. They’ll probably want me to cut the whole lottery thing—or at least to figure a way to shorten it. They make a lot of allowances for me, because I’m still experimenting. But I’ll need to decide if I’m going to do biting political satire or if I’m going to do the laugh-a-second repartee. These are my last two performances before I’m off indefinitely and I want to leave them all with a good impression,” Beth said.

“Wow! I just didn’t have any idea of how much goes into a show like that. You make it look so easy and natural on stage.”

“Are you coming tonight? You know it will be different.”

“Yes. Someone had to stay home with Toni, so tonight it’s Ronda and Anna and I’m bringing Patricia,” I said.

“It’s always like that, isn’t it? I guess we were kind of spoiled in Las Vegas by having her grandmother stay with her so we could all party. Do you think I’ll be okay when it’s my turn to babysit?” Beth asked.

“Oh, yeah. We won’t throw you into it with no practice or backup. After you’ve been back for a while, it will just be part of the natural flow of things,” I laughed. “Do you want me to take you to the theatre?”

“Thanks, but I already called a cab reservation. He should be here in a few minutes. I didn’t want to make it hard on anyone to ferry me around. You know, I could have just called home and Deke would have come to get me. Mom and Dad are coming to the show tonight. And probably that Adele woman.”

“Adele’s not all bad. I had to speak sharply to her once when she tried to put the moves on Patricia. But the last time I had lunch with your family, she was fine.”

“You don’t know what it’s like to find out your own mother is the lowest in the pecking order and that your father orders your mother’s slave master around.”

“I have to admit, that sounds really weird. Did she try anything with you?” I asked.

“No. I guess Papa gave her strict orders that she was to keep her hands off Val and me. If she tried something, I think I would lose my membership in the pacifist community.”

“I don’t think there’s a membership. Oh, is that your taxi?”

“Yeah. I’ll see you after the show tonight, love.”

“Love you. Break a leg.”

She was off.

She did make some changes to the lottery section of her routine, tightening it up and making it shorter. It actually got a couple of laughs. Patricia, unfortunately, had hold of my arm in a death grip. She didn’t consider it all that funny.

We slipped out after Starr’s performance and met her at the stage door. She wasn’t staying for the final performance of Danny’s tour. The three of us went out and had a late dinner at an International House of Pancakes that was open twenty-four hours. If you want pancakes at ten o’clock at night, that’s the place to go.

Beth had changed clothes, but she still had her eye makeup on. Patricia mentioned it.

“Yeah. I guess I’m hanging onto Starr for as long as I can tonight. I’ll be putting her on a shelf for a while and going back to school. It’s going to be so different,” Beth said.

“What do you need to make the transition easier,” I asked. I’d been practicing being supportive and not just telling her what she should do next. Ronda had told me I had a tendency to do that.

“Hmm. Maybe provide a hundred or two enthusiastic people to applaud me at least once a week? That might help,” she said.

“That’s probably possible,” Patricia said. “We could probably get that many to applaud you just for wearing a tutu in public. You know Toni’s going to want one soon.”

“Oh, I hope so. Aunt Beth will have fulfilled her role,” Beth laughed. “Seriously, you know, the whole applause thing is addictive. I didn’t start out being funny to get approval or applause. I started out to make people laugh. I think my stuff turned kind of dark over the summer and I want to figure out how to get back to just being someone who makes people laugh. I need to break the addiction to approval.”