What has Deandra been up to? Seems like what most people in her position, rearranging chairs on the Titanic. Instead of looking out and seeing the boat anchor slowing her life and giving her slow kid after slow kid, she's gonna work on herself. By work on herself, I mean get some tattoos, and piercings, of course. Piercing #10 should be the one that turns things around, never mind it's on her hoo-haa and well few people will see it. A tramp stamp just seems like the perfect dose of color on one's back to add respectability and charm.
Joey had indeed installed those power seats in his car, but forgot to reinstall the seat belts and one night while out celebrating another pennant by the Yankees, even though Captain Charming was born and raised in Texas, well he got T-boned and his car was totaled. Not to worry, stupid drunk people never get hurt, he of course got thrown from the car, but his head broke his fall. Even though he was still himself, he lost his will to drive. He declared himself retired from the rat race. If my Princess wants me to work, she'll drive me to work, and with that, he cut his driver's license and bought himself a shiny bus pass.
Deandra swore she would not stoop to being his taxi, but week in and week out, there she was, driving him back and forth. She still told herself nobody takes advantage of me, hardly anyone was left in her life to listen, much less believe her rants. This time would be different at last, she had foolishly followed her mother out east with Joey the passenger man and two rugrats in the back. No sooner had they landed in Florida, when her mom decided to move to New York. She was convinced by her coworkers at the latest minimum wage endeavor to do a little stripping, they all did it, after all, and allowed for some extra cash to rehab Joey possibly back to driving and maybe even making more than her for once. Joey quickly found work, in real estate, he spun one of those big arrows on a street corner advertising the newest community down the way.
She was not comfortable with the idea of stripping, not because it was demeaning, but she felt fat and self conscious, having grown up a chunky kid. In reality, with her second kid, she had looked better, but overall, at least while she held onto the tail end of her twenties she was good enough to dance for a couple afternoon shifts. The manager made no bones, told her, lose 20 lbs and you can dance the night shifts, where the money almost doubles. There was the rub though, idiots could give advice and she would shine right to it, anyone with real knowledge, and she insisted it was some sort of trick. So no, she refused to lose even one pound, she had come this far on her own, now was not the time to start listening to men.
There she was dancing and jiggling about on the stage one summer. In walked Wife and I. This was the summer before Chubs was to graduate, but he managed to get a co-op job at Disney and we had gone alone to surprise him. Of course, being Mr. Perv, we would check out the local titty bars any chance we got. At first we didn't recognize her, she was older, hair curlier and gold-ish, glamorous and trashy all at once, nothing like the young girl who had grown up next door playing with our son. After a few minutes she realized who we were and she excused herself from the stage, meaning she ran off behind the curtains.
We weren't sure what to think or do. There had been a time we cared for her, thought of her as the daughter we never had, but those bridges get burned over time. At some point, the attitude just makes people turn away, I certainly didn't need the lack of respect I felt when we last talked years earlier. Eventually, she came out. Maybe she had been crying out of shame, maybe she was just defeated and always looked like this with the bloodshot eyes, maybe she even had a little shot of something running through her veins, who knows. All we felt was that this was a ghost of the person we knew. How are the kids? How else do you start a conversation with someone you're not sure wanted you to see her? Hubby, heard he got in some sort of accident? Fine, fine, everybody is fine. Cool, what can we say, if the person wants to be icy cold, it might be best to part ways, there were other strip bars for us. We got up and started to leave, she very awkwardly stopped us. "hold on, where are you staying, can I see you all again?" Tears started, "I treated you all badly, and you were there for me more than my family at times, I am sorry."
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