Camp Strange

A man called my cell phone. I didn’t catch the call, heard the ring as the shower pelted me with heat and hope. He left a short mes­sage, just a macho first name and tele­phone num­ber. I stood in the bath­room, heat pour­ing from my hands, dialed his number.

“Hi! Is this Rocco? This is Birdie, the Avon Lady, return­ing your call!”

I sounded ridicu­lously alive, bright, as if I stood on the cor­ner of Fran­tic and Spas­tic hold­ing a dozen pink bal­loons. I applied the new Avon Super Shape Anti-Cellulite and Stretch Mark Cream to my belly with my left hand as I lis­tened to his plea. I tried to remem­ber how many days I had been using the prod­uct, tried to tell if it  was doing any good at all. Not really, I thought.

“Oh good. Good, good, good, good, good. I need an Avon Lady. Next Fri­day night. Not tonight. Next Fri­day. For a party. How much do you charge?”

He spoke in tiny bites, his voice a breathy growl. I stopped mov­ing. My hand stuck to my belly, a dab of unrubbed cream beneath it. I cleared my throat.

“Ahem. Uh, Rocco? I am really not sure what you’re ask­ing. I don’t hire myself out for par­ties. But heck, I might, if you need me to do makeovers or some­thing. Can you tell me a lit­tle more about your party?”

I closed my eyes and waited for what I knew would be an unsa­vory answer.

“It’s, you know, one of those bachelor’s par­ties. For my friend. He’s get­ting mar­ried next Sun­day. We don’t need makeovers. We need a girl. You know. A girl. I looked in the phone book but there ain’t noth­ing like that around here. Julio told me to call the Avon Lady. He said you were kinda old but still hot.”

I glanced at the hand press­ing stretch mark cream into the belly that looked exactly 40 years old to the mir­ror in front of me. I squinted my eyes, tried to see beyond my own expec­ta­tions. I guess I’m not that bad, I thought.

“Rocco?”

I used my sul­try tele­phone sex voice, waited for him to say Yeah.

“Yeah? Heh heh heh.”

Rocco gig­gled, as if the antic­i­pa­tion of hav­ing an Avon Lady shed lotions at his party was the biggest secret fan­tasy of his life.

“Lis­ten up, Rocco. This is impor­tant. Avon Ladies don’t strip. We don’t strip. Not even a lit­tle. We don’t nor­mally attend bach­e­lor par­ties, either, but I would be happy to drop off a nice gift bas­ket of prod­ucts from our Men’s Cat­a­logue at the start of your party.”

I said “gift bas­ket” like it was a chap­ter in the Kama Sutra, like I promised six­teen unusual posi­tions with mas­sage oil and san­dal­wood incense. Rocco didn’t peep. I heard him breathe, heard his brain cells whirl into activ­ity. Should he say yes? I didn’t give him time.
“Rocco, I’ll be there right at the start of the party. I won’t come in, mind you, I’ll drop it at the door. But this gift bas­ket will be the.… best. gift. bas­ket. of your friend’s life. Now. The charge will be one hun­dred bucks, even. Can I expect a check or cash?”

Rocco mum­bled his answer, gave me the party address, and I hung up the phone.

I ped­aled my bike to Wal-Mart the day of Rocco’s party. I left it teth­ered to the dented mail­box stand­ing sen­try by the gar­den depart­ment and headed inside, past a canned pyra­mid of refried beans, past the lit­tle boys’ clothes, past toi­let bowl cleaner and push-up bras and boxes of Lit­tle Deb­bie treats, straight to the clear­ance cor­ner. Sure enough, I found just what I needed — a huge green woven Easter bas­ket for the princely sum of one buck. I pried the pale plas­tic duck off the han­dle as I waited in line and handed it to the middle-aged cashier with my hand­ful of loose change. She didn’t blink, just stuffed it in a wire bin filled with hang­ers and dis­carded mer­chan­dise as I waved good­bye. I hung the bas­ket on the right side of my han­dle bars and headed home.

My two boys watched as I art­fully crum­pled pieces of pink tis­sue paper and lay­ered it in the bot­tom of the bas­ket. I added a spritz bot­tle of RPM, a Mes­mer­ize Soap-on-a-Rope, a bot­tle of Avon Bug Guard, and three dis­con­tin­ued (and two-year-old but still smelly) Avon vanilla-scented candles.

“You’re charg­ing how much for this basket?”

My older boy wrin­kled his nose. I looked at the goods. The han­dle of the bas­ket was dis­col­ored where the duck used to perch, so I rubbed it, tried to soften the harsh edge, but the oils from my hand made it worse.
“Nev­er­mind how much. This is Avon Lady busi­ness, young man. Now you two clean your rooms and get ready for your club meeting.”

My boys shuf­fled down the hall. I heard them shove toys under the beds, hide dirty clothes in the closet, heard them change from school duds to Star Trek uni­form in antic­i­pa­tion of the Sci-Fi Club movie night. I stared in my own closet. What does an Avon Lady with a gift bas­ket wear to a stag party? I sifted through my clothes, looked for some­thing demure, chaste, some­thing that screamed No Strip­ping! A knock at my bed­room door inter­rupted my thoughts, and I cracked the door to see my youngest son in his yel­low Sci­ence Officer’s shirt.

“Yeah? What do you need, honey? I’m try­ing to get dressed!”

“Mom! Can you wear your uni­form, too?”

Why not? I grabbed my Star Trek Voy­ager Captain’s uni­form, the full-sized one-piece one with the vel­vet pip­ing I made for Hal­loween, and decided it was the per­fect foil for a hand­ful of horny bach­e­lors. I added my gold-toned com­mu­ni­ca­tor pin and a pair of seri­ous black boots and cor­ralled my unruly hair into a com­mand­ing French twist.

“Ok, crew! Front and center!”

My boys fell into line and we marched to the car, the boys with stacks of dog-eared comic books, me with my gift bas­ket and the direc­tions to Rocco’s house. I dropped the boys off at the recre­ation cen­ter as twi­light hit our hills. I left them with an offi­cial salute and pointed my car toward the rail­road dis­trict, the poor­est sec­tion of town. The vanilla can­dles gave off a chem­i­cal scent as I passed the train depot. I rolled down the win­dows, hiked the fan up to “high,” tried to force the sickly sweet odor as far away as I could, but other smells invaded my senses, made me roll the win­dows closed. Rusty cans and glass liquor bot­tles sprin­kled the sides of the road like heavy for­got­ten con­fetti, the signs of someone’s plea­sure turned envi­ron­men­tal haz­ard. The splayed body of a dead dog hogged the mid­dle of the street. The legs and arms formed a cross like a canine cru­ci­fix, and I swerved to avoid it. The sun con­tin­ued falling behind the Rocky Moun­tains. I switched on my head­lights just as I found Rocco’s street.

I parked my car nearly a block away. It was obvi­ous which home housed the party. The thump, thump, thump of crank­ing bass shook the air. I felt my inter­nal organs vibrate in time to Latino rap. I wished I car­ried a real Star Trek phaser. I climbed the rot­ten stairs lead­ing to Rocco’s door and hov­ered at the top. The unmis­tak­able bump and grind of cheesy porn music wafted through the door, mixed with the clink and pop of a thou­sand beer bot­tles and the rap base­line, an unholy sym­phony. I brushed the front of my uni­form, arranged the gift bas­ket neatly over my arm, and took a deep breath. I rang the bell, but I could tell it didn’t work. I knocked.

A scut­tle of foot motion frac­tured the noise. Some­one switched off the movie, and a pair of click­ing shoes stopped at the door. I felt a cold eye inspect me through the peep­hole. I smiled my best Starfleet greet­ing. I heard the hard catch of a breath, then a Span­ish swear. I wasn’t pre­pared for what came next.

“Oh, man! It’s a Narc!”

The sure hic­cup of a dead­bolt slid into place, bulging the door slightly out of its frame. I could see shad­ows run­ning this way and that through the crack, and heard hushed voices in anx­ious code behind the relent­less Latino rap. The man at the door didn’t budge. I could almost feel his breath through the pine. I rapped the knuck­les of my left hand against the door and yelled.

“Hey! I’m just the Avon Lady! I’m no Narc! I have a gift bas­ket for Rocco! Open up! Avon Calling!”

The man’s eye loomed in the peephole.

“Avon? Why you have that uni­form on?”

He coughed. I extended my right arm with the bas­ket and tilted it so he could inspect the con­tents. Sev­eral more pairs of feet col­lected behind the door, fol­lowed by the muf­fled sounds of push­ing and shov­ing, jock­ey­ing for ocu­lar position.

“That’s no Avon Lady.”

“Lemme see!”

“Who wears shit like that? Feds?”

“Yeah, that’s the Avon Lady. I see her around town. She’s got a, whatchamacal­lit, you know, a Yoda cos­tume on.”

“She’s the stripper?”

The dead­bolt released and the door opened. Five young men stepped back, let me enter. Another half-dozen guys milled about in the back­ground. Empty pizza boxes cov­ered every pos­si­ble sur­face in the room, and the spaces between them were accented by empty Tecate cans. The room smelled like pep­per­oni and green chile and booze and pot. A poster of Che Gue­vara hung lop­sided over a beige che­nille couch. A pile of rented adult DVDs sat on the floor. I almost stepped on one sport­ing a bleach-blonde Latina’s gen­er­ous backside.

One of the crowd stepped for­ward. He wore low-slung baggy jeans and a black t-shirt with the Vir­gin of Guadalupe on the back.

“I’m Rocco.”

He pulled a can­vas wal­let from a back pocket and removed some bills. We exchanged goods.

“So are you like the Avon Police? Heh heh.”

The men laughed. I held the money in my hand. My uni­form had no pockets.

“I’m a Starfleet Cap­tain. Ever see Star Trek?”

The men shrugged their shoul­ders in uni­son. I couldn’t tell if they meant Yes or No.

“Well, it’s a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than what you were watch­ing before I arrived. Now, I don’t know who the lucky guy is, but this gift bas­ket has some items that will make you irre­sistible to your sweetie. I wish you a won­der­ful life!”

I turned to leave with a short wave.

“Hey, Lady! Wait!”

Rocco motioned to his posse to sit. They mean­dered to the couch, to the floor, push­ing boxes, crusts, and cans out of the way, one of them park­ing his butt on a stained par­ti­cle­board cof­fee table. Rocco handed the gift bas­ket to a slight man in black can­vas pants and a wife beater. He pawed through the con­tents, lifted the paper with the Bust Sculpt instruc­tions to his eyes, held it close. His lips moved as he read.
“So why you wear­ing Star Wars? This some kind of joke?”

Rocco’s voice chal­lenged me, chas­tised me, accused me of inter­rupt­ing their stag party with some kind of white chick slap in the face. I stood for a moment, my heart beat­ing too fast, too scared. The rap song ended and a new song began, one I knew, an upbeat love bal­lad called “Es Por Ti”  by sul­try singing hunk, Juanes.

“Hey, I love this song!”

I paused, let the music move through my uni­form, find my heart, let it slow, slow, make my pulse match its gen­tle beat. I closed my eyes, tried to think of a way out the door, a way out of trouble.

“Rocco, come here. Let’s dance.”

The men Wooooooo’d, fanned them­selves in fake pas­sion. Rocco’s eyes grew wide. He didn’t know what to do. I raised one Spock eye­brow and motioned to him with one fin­ger and my lop­sided smile.

“Come on, Rocco. I love this song.”

Rocco grinned and moved for­ward. I lifted my col­lar away from my neck and stuffed my cash inside my bra. The men gig­gled. I aligned my body and arms to dance the Cumbia. I fig­ured he would remem­ber the steps from child­hood, from a Grand­mom or aunt with Latin cul­ture on her mind. He took posi­tion, and we danced. He smelled like pot, like six bot­tles of after­shave, like chile and beer. He knew the steps and I let him lead me through the mine­field of bach­e­lor excess.

“Lis­ten, Rocco. I wore this out­fit because my son asked me to. Star Trek is cool. It gives my boys hope that our world isn’t lost. You should watch it some time.”

I whis­pered my mes­sage as the song ended. The men-boys clapped and nod­ded in satisfaction.

“She’s all right. She can dance.”

I waved good­bye, let myself out the door. One plain­tive cry fol­lowed me outside.

“Hey! Ain’t she gonna strip?”

This story would end here, with me a hun­dred bucks richer, one dance older, one stag party wiser, but some­thing I didn’t expect hap­pened. I stood in line at the drug store last week, still recov­er­ing from strep throat, a bag of strong cherry lozenges in my hand. A man walked past me, a man I rec­og­nized. A man from the party. He hov­ered next to me, rubbed his mus­tache with his hand, then lifted it in the split-fingered Vul­can salute any Star Trek fan knows.

“Larga vida y prosperidad.”