Yesterday, when I was sitting listening to Emmy winner Leslie Jordan as he was telling a story about buying underwear for a famous actress, I thought of the times when I assisted Mimi as well as a couple drag queens in buying some personal belongings. I’d tell you who the famous actress Mr. Jordan was talking about but I don’t have her permission, plus it gives you a reason to get off your butt and go buy his hysterical book.
But back to Mimi. When I was in college, I worked at Rich’s department store. One Tuesday, I took Mimi there shopping. Tuesday’s were senior citizen discount day. So with that 10% off from that and my 10% employee discount, Mimi got a good deal.
Well Mimi went in the ladies hosiery dept. and bought some pantyhose. When she got home she tried them on and was in love. Well from that day on she would call me at least twice a month to pick her up some more. I would always begged to put other things on the list as I did not want to go to the register with just ladies pantyhose. Plus, Mimi was not what you call petite, so I would constantly get teased by female co-workers for these purchases. My friend Denise even said to me on day, "Aw come on, Kev. You don’t have to lie we know they are for you."
"But Denise I said I’m a petite leg, what would I be doing with queen sized? "
"Use it as body stocking," she retorted.
If the embarrassment of shopping for hosiery was not enough. as Mimi got older her bladder got weaker. So she use to send me to the local drug store to pick her up some Depends. Again when ever she would place her order with me she only had that one product on the list and never needed anything else. Unfortunately, at this time department store and the job was long gone.
So I had to shop for the incontinent product amongst strangers. Well, to save myself the embarrassment of just buying the Depends, I would proceed to buy out half the store is crap I did not need.
I have to admit though, Mimi’s shopping assignments came in handy later in life. I was at a local gay bar to watch my friend David perform in a drag show. Well one of the queens didn’t have any pantyhose, so I offered to take her to the local Wal-Mart and pick her up some. Well, when we got there she was too embarrassed to purchase them, because like Mimi, she was not a petite girl. So I snatched the hosiery out of her hands and said, "Give’em here, I buy this size all the time for grandma!" I marched right up the register purchased the hose and we went on our merry way.
Unfortunately, my assisting drag queens was not 100% successful. As there was the time, I was at a party and there was a drag queen there who want to emulate Mariah Carey in her "Heartbreaker" days. You know the phase when she cut off the top of here jeans so they were low riding. Well, since I wasn’t driving that night, I had a few cocktails and offered my services to make the jeans up in Mariah’s style. Well, I cut a little too much off. I proceeded to cut the button off the top of the jeans. Well in hindsight, what I should’ve done was keep the button section on and just do a tuck under.
Well later that night, we all went into the city to a discotheque. That’s when we ran in to the drag queen, who was now three sheets to the wind and using at least half box of safety pins to hold her pants up. Whoops! So, I won’t be participating in the next season of Project Runway.
