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Leé del libro de Fran:
Chapter One (Capítulo 1)
In the Beginning
My
assistant informed me that I was being summoned by the president
of the company, my boss - a king among kings and a
barracuda. But how else do you get to the top at his age? I
opened the door and saw him: a snake in Armani. "Come to
Daddy," he said in anything but a fatherly tone, and I
obeyed as he pulled off his crocodile belt and cracked it against
his massive mahogany desk. How could I have let myself get into
this situation, and why couldn't I bring myself to stop? But he
was my addiction and I, his slave. As I stood before him, my
thighs quivered and my nipples hardened as he slowly unbuttoned
my blouse with one hand and began to reach under my skirt,
sliding up between my legs with the other . . . NOT!!
Sorry, those things totally don't happen to me, but Jackie
Collins once said on a talk show that if she didn't grab her
reader in the very first paragraph, she was screwed. Meanwhile,
I'm quoting Jackie Collins, so who's screwed - her or me?
Actually, I've been with the same man since I was fifteen, my
best friend and soul mate, Peter Jacobson. I often say that I can
recall a time when Peter had no hairs on his chest, and
now the hairs on his chest are gray. He's thrilled when I
tell people that.
We both remember the first moment we laid eyes on each other. I
was walking up and he was walking down the stairwell in Hillcrest
High, Jamaica, Queens. Me with my Farrah Fawcett wings and
eight-inch Goody Two-shoes, him with his dry-cleaned blue jeans
and David Cassidy layer cut. Peter later admitted he thought I
was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen, and then I spoke .
. . who knew the combo would intrigue him even more, but it did.
"You gotta face out of Vogue and a voice outta Selma
Diamond," he often quips. Well, whatever turns ya on!
We became instant best friends. He used to walk by my house
pretending he just happened to be in the neighborhood, and he
would linger in front of my apartment building, hoping I'd come
out. The funny thing is, he wasn't in front of my building at
all, and that's why I never came out. He was two houses down and
lucky nobody called the police on him.
A lot of people ask what we attribute our seventeen-year marriage
to. Screaming! We fight, we yell, and we sometimes hit rock
bottom just like everyone else, but we both want our marriage to
work. So we don't hesitate to seek therapy when we have problems.
A good double session with the shrink clears a lot of shit. I
think the one thing that Peter and I enjoy most is laughing. A
good laugh till you cry. We used to get thrown out of more high
school classes because we couldn't stop laughing. The teachers
wouldn't let us sit together because of it, but something would
strike one of us as funny and the other would just instinctively
know it and glance over, and before you knew it, we were kicked
out of class again. We became inseparable.
We even worked together, except for my brief stint as head
chicken fryer at the Chicken Jamboree. I used to bring tons of
chicken and sweet potato pies home for Pete to eat, except I
never cooked the chicken long enough, so it was raw in the middle
and the pie was always half-frozen. I couldn't master the
techniques. So I decided to leave my career in poultry and moved
on to become cashier at the Main St. Movies, where Peter was
already usher. Again, we constantly got in trouble for laughing.
In fact, once fifty dollars was missing, and they thought Peter
and I were in cahoots. How dare they! We marched ourselves into
the main office to clear our good names. Finally, they believed
us, but we never felt comfortable working there again. I don't
know, maybe I should have stuck with my career at the Chicken
Jamboree. Peter quit and decided to try his skills at
Baskin-Robbins, but he was fired because he was too creative. He
used to take the straws out of the wrappers to put them in the
whipped cream of an ice cream soda to give it a little style.
Some panache. Something to look at. Well, he was canned. It was
actually quite traumatic for him. "What did I do? I sold
more than any other salesman." But he just packed up his
scooper and never looked back.
My husband will be the first to tell you that he comes from a
weird family. A Jewish father, a Catholic mother who had a Jewish
mother, and both of them converted to Unitarianism, then moved to
a practically Hasidic neighborhood. Needless to say, he had a
hard time fitting in, but I think he found solace in my family.
We were loud and demonstrative.
Peter used to get a kick out of going out to eat with my family.
My father took on the accent of whatever nationality of food we
were having. Peter used to sit there with his mouth open. My
father thought he would be better understood if he were Mr. Lee
at the Chinese restaurant or a Mafia don at Stella D'Oro's
Italian trattoria. It was pretty scary.
My parents, Morty and Sylvia, treated Peter as their own. Once,
during a storm, my mother got an urge for an ice cream sundae
with chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and wet nuts. Oh, she was
hinting and hoping that someone would run out during the storm.
Peter finally got the hint as my mother practically pushed him
out the door. A half hour passed and half-drenched Peter came
back with the sundae. Oh, my mother was all atwitter.
"Here it is, Ma. Chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce,
whipped cream, and nuts. Enjoy." My mother's face dropped.
"What's wrong?"
"Oh, nothing, it's delicious," she said, as if she had
just found out that Kathie Lee had left Regis.
"No, really. What's wrong?" Peter asked.
"Well, if you must know, the nuts." Huh? "I wanted
wet nuts."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Peter told her. She stared at him with
her best starving-mother look. "You don't want me to go back
and get the wet ones, do ya?"
"Would ya? I mean, I just can't enjoy it otherwise." He
braved the storm so my mother the kishkila (someone who really
enjoys their food) would enjoy, and she did, and he still tells
the story today.
He relishes making my mother laugh. She once had to stop traffic
in the middle of Kissena Boulevard because he'd imitated her and
she'd gotten so hysterical that she'd doubled over and started to
pee in her pants. She couldn't move. She just loves it when Peter
makes fun of her. As I'm writing this, she's telling Peter how
she's too nervous to eat before she flies while she's sending my
father to get her the corn muffins because she didn't like the
cranberry so much. Peter loves my parents and treats them as if
they're his own. There's nothing he wouldn't do for them or vice
versa.
Now, I come from a very humble background. I was born in New York
City, well, actually Queens, well, actually Flushing, and honey,
it's a world away from Manhattan. When I was a young child my dad
worked two jobs to support us, but when he got home he always
made sure he kissed me and my sister, Nadine, good night, even if
we were fast asleep. We felt his love. And my mother, the most
loving, happy person I'll ever have the privilege of knowing,
created an adoring, wonderful, and safe environment in which we
kids were able to blossom. They always said, "We don't have
a lot of money, but we're very rich anyway." And we were.
My bedroom and my parents' shared a common wall, and over the
years I recall so much laughter coming from the other side of
that wall. It was music to my ears as I'd lie in bed and stifle
contagious giggles. I like to regard them as Hansel and Gretel
because they've never been spoiled or jaded by life but take
genuine pleasure in the simplest things. A happy family, good
health, an ice cream sundae with wet nuts, and a two-dollar movie
at the multiplex pretty much answers all their prayers,
especially if they can sneak into another feature.
While shoving myself into my Sergio Valente jeans for school one
morning I heard Harry Harrison, a local deejay, announcing that
girls between the ages of thirteen and seventeen should send in a
fifteen-dollar check or money order, along with an entrance
application, to compete in the Miss New York Teenager pageant.
Not what you'd call a terribly discriminating contest - I mean,
anyone with fifteen bucks and carfare to Manhattan got in - but I
saw this as my ticket to stardom and quickly sent in the money. I
remember finding the perfect dress at Macy's. Even back then I
realized the necessity of looking wholesome, so on the day of the
contest I tried my best to look as "white bread" (the
industry term for Midwestern) as possible and wore a long
bone-satin dress with a soft shoulder ruffle (very Mary Ann
Mobley), a tasteful pair of two-inch pumps (ya know, stewardess
shoes), and three coats of royal blue mascara (whoopsie). Well,
honey, you can take the girl out of Flushing . . .
The contestants were all primping backstage. You could asphyxiate
yourself on the hair-spray fumes. Thank God there wasn't a talent
competition, because none of us could do anything, but there was
the oh-so-important question and answer portion. One contestant
told the judge her hobby was sewing, to which the judge asked
what it was she liked to sew. And in her authentic Brooklynese
she responded, "Uh, rips and tears . . ." Hello?
Meanwhile, she won, but I placed as first runner-up and left with
a fifteen-dollar trophy in my hand. Well, at least I broke even.
Today the trophy sits on my vanity in the bedroom set of The
Nanny, but then I felt like such a loser. I couldn't believe
I'd lost to the rips-and-tears chick, but my mom explained,
"Fran, placing first runner-up is not bein' a loser, you're
a winner . . . it's the three hundred other girls without
trophies who are the losers!" Ma always had a way of making
me feel better with what we on The Nanny call simple
Queens logic. She's right, I thought, and proceeded to follow
through with my plan to use my title as a door opener. Each day
after school I would dial talent agencies and introduce myself
with my new title: "Hello, my name is Fran Drescher and I'm
the winner of the Miss New York Teenager pageant!" So
I exaggerated a little, sue me. Meanwhile, I got myself an agent.
Copyright © 1996 by Fran Drescher
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