stripping it down & working it out

My friend Sellers may be only twenty-five years old, but she's still the smartest girl I know. And not only is she the smartest, but she's also the best kind of smart too -- subversive smart, so you don't see her coming with her smart smartness as it's wrapped up all pretty-like in great shoes and that unstyled style you only ever see in movies or magazines. I'm telling you, she's got her act together in a way that takes most people several lifetimes to achieve. (For instance, I've been born a relatively directionless, middle class, American of Irish Catholic descent for at least the past three go-rounds or so. Last cycle, Sellers was a very clever mollusk. 'Nuff said.)

Delightful catch that she is, Sellers is getting married sometime next year. The date has yet to be decided, but she and her fiance figured the pre-wedding celebrations (also known as the bachelor and bachelorette parties) needn't hinge on such a pesky detail, so a couple of weekends ago, we had a party. And by party, I mean week-long, all-out, out-of-town beach event, complete with two houses (one for the boys and one for the girls), food, drink and much frivolity. Not to mention bocce ball and strippers.

Let me say, I was in for the beach. I was down with the frivolity. A nice, chilled beverage while swinging on a hammock, rocked by a cool ocean breeze is always welcome. I can take or leave the bocce ball, but I was adamantly, stridently even, anti-stripper.

"Do you think we should get a strip.. . "

Me: No.

"But, it will be. . . "

Me: No.

"It'll only cost us. . . "

Me: No.

No, no and no. I practically posted signs and hired lobbyists to state my case for NO. See, I've been at parties where they've been hired before. It's always awkward. The room always seems somehow too small, the lights too bright and the aforementioned frivolity, free-flowing before, becomes suddenly forced when a man in a police or fireman's get-up enters the room. Plus, I'm sorry, but handcuffs are not a toy.

[Aside: Once on a date, this guy named Yuri handcuffed me and then couldn't find the key. It was horrible. There were tears. . . some minor hysterics. Eventually, he had to call his dad who had to use bolt cutters to free me. Of course, we were only four and it was a play date. They were the plastic so-called toy handcuffs he'd gotten for his birthday and so it was Yuri who was in hysterics because he didn't want his gift ruined, my liberty be damned. If it were up to Yuri, I'd still be shackled to his bunk bed. I'm telling you, it left a deep and as-yet-unresolved emotional scar. I ask you, am I the one getting married next year? Again, 'nuff said.]

But I was out-yesed (by everyone) and "Kyle" showed up, complete with cop costume and handcuffs. And I would have been mortified, except that I'd forgotten one, important fact: Sellers.

Sellers, the smartest girl I know. Advanced. Evolved. And more than capable of handling a nineteen-year-old in a teal g-string. (He said he was twenty-three, but the blush wasn't off his pride in his high school state championship wrestling title. If he was twenty-three, than I'm America's Next Top Model.)

So rather than the completely mortifying experience, past experience suggested it would be once again, it was wonderfully laughable and incredibly entertaining with Sellers playing the role of Gracie Allen to Ocifer Teal's George Burns. Seriously, it's a bizarrely apt analogy. She bumbled and obfuscated, acquiesced and assisted in such an hysterically funny way that poor Kyle's nudity was almost (almost, mind you) an afterthought. And all the while, she oh-so-carefully tucked dollar bills wherever she could. Needless to say the options were limited. When she attempted unsuccessfully to fold some of them under his necklace (the one he very probably got as a confirmation gift from his grandmother not so long ago), she suggested helpfully that perhaps he should invest in a studded collar -- the better to hold his tip money.

It wasn't until all was said and done, however, until the poor boy, completely upstaged by Sellers, was mostly dressed again, ("No, not the pants!"), that someone noticed his tongue ring.

"Yeah?" Sellers said, "I've never been with anyone who had a tongue ring."

"You should," Kate said.

"Really? Oh. Okay. I guess. . . " she demured and turned to Kyle, offering gamely, "You want to lick my forearm?"

But Ocifer Teal had had enough of being George Burns. "How about your neck," he suggested.

"Oh, okay," Sellers said and cooperatively turned her back, tilted her head and lifted her hair out of the way.

"Hmm. . . okay. . . alright. . . yeah?" She pondered, unaffected. "Try the other side," she proposed. "Right. . . I get it . . . uh-huh. . . ." she said thoughtfully before she abruptly jumped away, struck by a thought. "Ocifer Teal," she asked, suddenly serious and with obvious concern, "is this okay?"

"Yeah, it's fine," he said, confused by the sudden change.

"Okay, good," said Sellers, visibly relieved, "It's just, I wouldn't want to make you feel uncomfortable or anything."

Only Sellers.

But you see, that's what makes her so smart. So special. She never forgets the people behind the costumes, the make-up, the masks we all wear. She always responds to the mollusk in us all, vulnerable to the elements, struggling to survive and not nearly, by far, as clever as she.