My Trip Down the Pink Carpet Read Free Page B

and my favorite aunt Dot said, “Daddy, when you talk like that in front of the children it makes my skin crawl.”
    Granddaddy Griffin cocked his head inquisitively and said, “Well, Dot, what does your heinie smell like when it crawls past your face ?”
    All of us kids just hollered.
    When Grandaddy died, I was performing with a melodrama troupe in Bakersfield, California. It was my first acting job after college and I was in heaven. I was making $165 a week! My mother called and tearfully told me, “Your biggest fan passed on this morning.”
    And he was. He really was my biggest fan. Even toward the end, when he was crazy as a bedbug and did not recognize anyone else, I would walk in the room and he’d say, “Leslie Allen, can you help spring me out of here?”
    I had other fans from the beginning. When I was little, I think both Peggy Ann and Mary Lucille took one look at me and thought, He’s going to need some help!
    They circled the wagons, as only true Southern women can do, and created a secret garden where it was okay for little boys to play with dolls. How sweet is that? It was also okay for little boys to read about Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew instead of those rambunctious Hardy Boys. And it was okay for little boys to make potholders and sew doll clothes. I was “artistic,” and they encouraged me in that arena. But somehow, even at a young age, I knew it was best to not let Daddy into our little secret garden. So even though I was allowed to do what I wanted, I knew it was somehow shameful.
    My daddy, Allen Bernard Jordan, was a man’s man. He was as handsome as a movie star. Even though he stood a little less than five feet five, he was in possession of an easy kind of masculinity that both awes and terrifies me—and that I am extremely attracted to. I’ve been in therapy about that for years.
    My daddy used to call me “son” as if he was in deep pain. He’d say, “Oh, son,” and it would sound like “sohhhn.”
    One of my early ambitions was to be a go-go dancer. I used to sit and watch the dancers on a TV show called Hullabaloo, which was the MTV of my generation. I was transfixed as the dancers wildly cavorted on white platforms. I knew it took a lot of practice to achieve that level of expertise, so I pushed all the furniture in the living room out of the way and commandeered the coffee table. Once I had mastered “the Jerk,” I moved on to the next level, which included “the Swim” and “the Hitchhiker.” After several weeks of intense practice, I also had “the Batman” and “Mashed Potato” under my belt. By the time my repertoire included “the Dirty Dog,” which involved a whole lot of hunching and some really intricate facial expressions, I was on my way.
    My poor daddy would come home and his firstborn son would be feverishly go-go dancing on the coffee table to “Wipeout” by the Safaris.
    “Daddy, watch me do the Pony!” I’d squeal as I hopped from foot to foot, jerking my head back and forth.
    “Oh, son, ” he’d sigh.
    My career hopes were dashed when I noticed that one of the boy dancers on Hullabaloo had bleached bangs. This was before even the Beach Boys had bleached bangs, and I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I talked my friend Charlie into helping me achieve my new look. We took hydrogen peroxide and combed it through my bangs, which promptly turned bright orange. When confronted by my daddy at the dinner table, I swore right over my Chef Boyardee ravioli that I didn’t know what had happened. I just woke up that morning and there it was. Orange bangs. Can you believe it?
    He did not believe it.
    I got a good whipping for that. Not because I bleached my hair but because I lied. The whipping apparently did not do a lick of good, since when I was growing up I could lie with the greatest of ease. I have been in therapy about this, too.
    Anyway, it was so disheartening. If I couldn’t even get away with bleached bangs, how on earth