Buttermints vs. Beer

The choice kinda makes itself, no?

In this month's Raleigh News and Observer column, I test the limits of my Sainted Southern Mother's (TM) sense of humor by writing about my wedding. (Yes, I am aware of the typo. It happens.)

The full transcript of my testimonial is here. It killed. And we did it before the Sopranos finale.

Don't stop believin'!



1/7/10 2:15 PM
BRIDE'S MOTHER FLUSHES COMMODE FROM GIFT REGISTRY

News & Observer, The (Raleigh, NC) - Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Author: Leigh Ann Frink, Correspondent

My Sainted Southern mother's e-mail response, after viewing the link to our Home Depot
gift registry, was swift, impassioned and emphatic:

"Remove the commode from your wish list. I will buy y'all a commode!!!"

Steve and I had no idea what we were doing when we registered for wedding gifts.
Neither of us had done it before, so we just went for it.

We were combining two households' worth of furniture, linens and crockery into one and
didn't need anything. So we figured, since people would be buying us stuff anyway, we'd
ask for things we could use for home-improvement projects to expand my small house to
double its occupancy from one person/one cat to two people/two cats.

It seemed logical to us to put a commode on our list; after all, we needed one and
figured it would make a great house-tour story someday. "This is our guest bathroom.
Aunt Martha gave us the toilet as a wedding gift."

We just wanted to get married and skip forward into "happily ever after" as quickly and
painlessly as possibly. What doe-eyed naifs, babes in the woods we both were at the
tender age of 36. We actually thought we could pull off a stress-free engagement and
wedding.

"Here's what we're thinking would be fun," I told my mama over the phone. "We could
get matching mechanics' coveralls, print 'Bride' and 'Groom' on the backs and get
married at Slim's. The bartender has a mail-order ministerial license."

It is possible, I found out on that call, to feel a withering gaze down a long-distance
phone line.

And so the negotiations began.

My mama would have been delighted for me to get married back home. My memories of
weddings in the Methodist church I grew up in always went this way: a reading from the
book of Ruth about the woman leaving her family to join her husband's, a piano-
accompanied rendition of "The Lord's Prayer" sung by a great aunt, and an exchange of
vows pledging obedience. The ceremonies were always followed by a reception involving
ginger ale punch, cake and butter mints in the fellowship hall.

These weddings were always heartfelt and lovely, not to mention over and done with in
an hour. But I didn't want to drag 40 people all the way down to Shallotte to witness my
being struck by lightning after all those years away from the inside of the sanctuary.
Another option on the table was the opulent, three-day extravaganza complete with
dinners, brunches and partying the night away. I have had some fabulous times at
weddings like that over the years, but when Steve and I briefly discussed throwing one,
we both felt instantly worn out.

After what seemed like years of debate, we reached a wonderful compromise, deciding
to get married here in Raleigh at Mordecai Chapel in a Unity ceremony Steve and I
worked with our minister to create.

It was dreamy. My dread-locked, 6-foot-1 in heels sister towered over my side as my
Best Woman. Across from me was my very favorite person, flanked by his mortified,
profusely sweating, 14-year-old son and Best Man. We agreed not to segregate our
attendants by gender, so our assorted people, men and women, stood by our sides,
looking stunning in the getups we made them wear. (Seriously, those dresses could be
worn again.)

We didn't want our friends and family to be bored during the ceremony, so we included
them. We brought our mothers into our rose ceremony and assigned friends to give
readings and "unsolicited" testimonials.

As for our own testimonials to each other, we were too nervous to read them and asked
the minister to give them for us. And so a distinguished, gray-bearded man who had
probably never heard of Journey spoke these beginning words for me:

"I was just a small-town girl, living in a lonely world. I took the midnight train from
Shallotte."

Later on, at the reception at Slim's (my half of the compromise), I asked my Sainted
Southern Mother if she had gotten the joke.

"No," she replied, "but everybody else was laughing, and that made me laugh. I've
laughed all day."

Then, she gave me a check, explaining that it should cover the commode we wanted.

Contact Leigh Ann Frink
at frinkink.com.

Caption: PHOTO:2
Edition: FINAL
Section: LIFE
Page: 1D
Column: OUR LIVES
Record Number: 0812160125
Copyright (c) 2008 The News and Observer

The smell of a fog machine would be nice right now

I am in a stinky, horrible little mood.

Friends are getting laid off right and left. Those of us who haven't yet gotten the axe are living in a constant state of fear that we'll be next. Print media is dying.

So I hate that I wasted all my angst being young. But the market for angst was better in the late 80s and early 90s when we could dress in black and be rivets.

To be sure, I personally had no pretty hate machine to rage against back then. I had a (low-paying) job in publishing, a supplemental part-time job as a cocktail waitress at a concert venue and had yet to experience tragedy. But at night, I was a darkwaver.

It started when I was a sophomore at the University College of London. I had only recently segued out of Duran Duran into the Cure. The Camden Ballroom changed my life. Like an aspiring drag queen dressing for the first time, my first pair of Doc Marten's and the music of Bauhaus, Neubauten and Ministry opened my eyes and made everything feel better.

Lacing up my boots, squeezing into corseted jackets and putting on my fright makeup after a day of working for or waiting on mean people was pure joy. Being in the club, amongst the beautiful weirdos, the smell of fog machines and clove cigarettes was bliss. Stomping around the dance floor, pushing and shoving and sweating within the chain-link enclosures, was ecstasy.

It's been so long, and I'm so old now, that I don't think about it much. But when I miss it, like right now when I wish I could just dress up and thrash, I miss it hard. Here's to Club Zero back home, the Fallout Shelter here in Raleigh, Bar Sinister in West Hollywood, the Batcave in NYC and my beloved Camden Palace. I had a great time.



Footnote: Four suburban teenagers, described in the N&O as "goths" (meaning they shopped at Hot Topic at Cary Town Center) brutally killed another kid. That adds to my icky hurt tonight.

If you've got it, flaunt it

Here's where I could call my Sainted Southern Mother (TM) out for making fun of Christmas cards with people's pictures on them. She was completely appalled when Rex and I borrowed a baby and sent this out to 40 people seven years ago:



But I got a card in the mail just now and recognized my mama's handwriting on the envelope. It was addressed to Leigh Ann Frink and Steve Plowman, and I teared up a little. My mother and I went round and round about me not changing my name when I got married.

I teared up a lot, though, when I opened the envelope and saw my parents' first ever Christmas card with their picture on it. Glad my mama decided it wasn't tacky anymore.



So really, how cute are my parents? Need more? Here they are, 43 years ago when they were dating, after my mama saw my daddy coming out of a Beatles movie and yelled, "Call me!"


My mama reads my blog (which is why my stories are all PG), so please leave comments telling her how purty she is. Please? It'll take away from the "I can't believe you would post those pictures!" fussing at I'm expecting.

Re-Post: Princess Brat

I originally wrote this last summer in a fit of grief. Decided to take it down, as it was still ouchy, and took some awesome comments down with it in the process.

But just now, Nitzer Ebb's "Join in the Chant" popped up in my iPod, and I thought of my friend Alan yelling, "Tired, tired, tired," at the DJ in 1995, dimply face turned skyward.

And I want to tell y'all about him. Again. For keeps.

-------------------------

One random day in the mid-90s, my lifelong best friend was explaining to her boyfriend Alan that I had been less than a demure, studious, soft-spoken child. I balked at her description and she said, "Face it, you were a brat." "I wasn't a brat!," I protested, "I was a princess."

The two of them and my then-boyfriend and I were all joined at the hip back in those heady, youthful, dive-bar dwelling days. It wasn't unusual or weird at all for Alan and me to talk on the phone or go out drinking while our other halves were working dinner shifts.

Alan, with his shaved head, Einstürzende Neubauten tattoos and year-round leather was the ultimate rivet, so I was a little surprised when he decided to form a Hole-esque band and asked me to front it. "But I can't sing," I told him. "Doesn't matter," he replied, "You have cool clothes and can spit beer on people." He'd already decided on a name: Princess Brat.

So Alan set about teaching me to play guitar. He had an old spare electric, which happened to be missing a string. He showed me some basic chords that didn't require the missing string. I spent a few nights strumming them, unamplified as I didn't have a speaker. Took me three days to recognize, to my horror, that I was playing "R-O-C-K in the USA."

That was the only song I ever learned how to play on the guitar. I got bored soon after and we went back our old routines. The two couples eventually broke up, but Alan and I remained friends and kept in touch for a while after he moved to Asheville eight years ago.

Al-Pal left this mortal coil this week. Rest in peace, old friend. I'm spitting out this Bud for you.