The Stupid 365 Project, Day 13: Gardenias
October 13th, 2010
My mother was born into gentility, or at least the Los Angeles version of it. Fourth-generation (very rare here in the 1940s), social register, coming-out party, Hancock Park mansion — the whole little-princess-many-maids-engraved-invitation world. No one talked much about the fact that the guy who made all the money, four generations back, did it as the city’s biggest plumber. ”Trade” was far behind and forgotten by the time my mother was a troublesome teenager, tiptoeing off to the movie studios to work as an extra and sneaking the first of what would eventually be hundreds of thousands of cigarettes.
My grandparents were worried about her, and they were right to be. At the age of 21 or 22, spoiled, imperious, and ridiculously beautiful, she married a penniless Irish adventurer from Chicago who had already, in his middle twenties, run away to sea, lived in China, fled the Communists to the Philippines, and had a vision — on the deck of a ship in the middle of the China Sea — that told him he should fly airplanes. So he came home to risk his neck for a living and stole my mother from her parents on his way to the airfield.
By the time I was nine or ten, my father was a successful aerospace executive and we were living in Washington, D.C. where my mother adorned Republican circles and was frequently photographed with people like Pat Nixon. As a slumming aristocrat, which was how she always saw herself, she decreed that my brothers and I should learn proper social graces, and Miss Courtney entered our lives in a cloud of Parfum Guerlain.
Miss Courtney undoubtedly had A Story but I never got to hear it. Born to a manor house somewhere well south of the Mason-Dixon line, she had been shipwrecked on the rocks of financial necessity and had, as my mother once put it when she didn’t know I was listening, come down in the world. Still,with a combination of exquisite manners and the iron hand of a Prussian general, she was perfectly qualified to run a Cotillion.
So: the Cotillion. I believe it ate up most of Saturday afternoon and evening. Twenty or thirty kids, simmering with resentment at being all dressed up and in the company of the opposite sex on a weekend day, ate a dainty meal with fearsome gentility — much dabbing of lips with linen napkins — and then, as if that weren’t torment enough, adjourned to some big room with a wooden floor and a record player, where we boys paired up with girls to learn dances that no one had done for 20 years.
And therein lay the rub. When I was nine, I was short. Most of the girls were tall. All of the girls wore vaguely menacing corsages made of fresh gardenias, pinned above the left breast.
Gardenias are not a lightly scented flower. That blossom-bedecked spot above the left breast was just about level with my nose. The music would start, we would do a simultaneous bow/curtsy, and I would take the girl of the moment into my arms and spin away with her on a bright swirl of music. And into a queasy, heavy, reeking cloud of gardenia fumes.
The room in which we danced was tightly closed against drafts. The heating system was fearsome. Thirty sweating boys and girls supplied a level of humidity I wouldn’t experience again until I went to Bangkok. And then there were the gardenias.
Generally speaking, I made it to the Fox Trot. At the opening bars of the Fox Trot, I wove my way drunkenly between the couples, found my way into the boys’ room, and lost my elegant lunch. Then I’d rinse out my mouth and go back for the next partner, the next dance, and the next nose-full of gardenias. By the end of the Cotillion, I’d lost all of lunch and part of the dinner I hadn’t even eaten yet. For years afterward, I could smell a single gardenia all the way across a football stadium.
That which does not kill us, however, makes us stronger. I survived. I even, after several decades, got over my loathing for gardenias.
I just wish someone would ask me to Fox-Trot.
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11 Responses to “The Stupid 365 Project, Day 13: Gardenias” -
Eric Stone Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 9:10 am
“That which does not kill us, however, makes us stronger.” See, maybe you are Nietzsche. But then, I’ve often thought that sentiment doesn’t leave much room for that which doesn’t kill us, maims us.
Oh well.
By the way – your ReCaptcha thing is a pain. More often than not I need to try it several times before it works.
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Suzanna Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 11:15 am
Sorry about the traumatic Cotillion experience. Is there a pattern emerging here? The Sombrero Dance and now this?
It’s a miracle you still want to Fox Trot but if you teach me a few steps I’ll take a crack at it.
Thanks for another great little read.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 11:41 am
Eric, Neitzsche R Us. That which does not kill us can also amuse us, bore us onto a stupor, or teach us that it’s not a good idea to snatch food away from a pit bull. We have a GREAT interview with a reCaptcha expert tomorrow — all about it. But in the meantime, block and save your message before typing in the characters. Also, if the characters are just totally out of the question, you can use the little circle of arrows just to the right of the space where you’re supposed to type — just click on it, and you’ll get something else.
Zanna, dance has been a recurrent nightmare in my life. In the original ending to Cinderella, the wicked stepmother and the awful stepsisters were made to put on red-hot iron boots and dance until they died. (This touch didn’t make it into the Disney version.) That’s sort of the way I feel about dancing.
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Kari Wainwright Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 1:59 pm
At one time I thought I loved the smell of gardenias. Until I bought a packet of gardenia-scented bath powder while on a trip. First, I simply placed the shopping bag with the powder on the back seat of my car. After driving awhile and being overwhelmed with the aroma, I decided to open a suitcase and put it in there.
It was still overpowering.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and wound up tossing it in a trash can at a rest stop. I probably ruined the whole rest area for everyone for a day or so.
But at least I didn’t lose my lunch!
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Phil Hanson Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
That which doesn’t kill us makes us wish it had. Some things are worse than death; dancing and aromatic suffocation qualify.
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EverettK Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Jeez, Tim, you should NOT dance. Ever. So far, we’re two for two AGAINST dancing. Have you got any feel-GOOD dance stories? 
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Pat Browning Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
Loved your memory of gardenias and the fox trot, Tim. Mine are happier. I love the smell of gardenias. One sniff transports me back to my junior-senior prom at Oklahoma A&M College. I never did learn to do a proper fox trot but my prom date was a good sport about it.
Thanks for a good laugh. Your blog and the Chile miners rescue (now almost over) are the best things that happened all day.
Pat Browning
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Gary Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Tim, thank you for a fascinating glimpse into a past world. Considering what most of endured during our upbringing, Nietzsche must be right about it making us stronger. Or perhaps Heath Ledger was right, when he said it makes us stranger.
To have survived house servants – I had them too, in colonial Papua New Guinea – and still be happy to do your own housework. To have survived Miss Courtney and the Cotillion – in my case Miss Debbye and elocution lessons – and still be able to relate to people. To have survived the foxtrot – in my case the quickstep and the waltz as well – and still be able to look at girls without squirming.
Well, Kipling must have been right too: It’s made us men, my son!
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 13th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
Ahh, Kari, so nice to know that someone else is gardenia-intolerant. I think they should be banned on airplanes, along with cigarettes and peanuts. As for losing lunch, it wasn’t much of a lunch.
Phil, that’s very funny — that which doesn’t kill us makes it wish it had. I often wished I were dead as the hour for Miss Courtney drew close.
Everett, dancing is not something I willingly do. See the original ending of “Cinderella” in the answer to Suzanna, above. Sort of sums up how I feel about it.
Thanks, Pat. I was up until 1 AM watching live feed of the rescue without a translation and, at times, crying like a baby. God bless them all, and I hope the ones whose wives just learned they have mistresses, and whose mistresses just learned they have wives, stay alive even longer above-ground than they did below. The fox trot was simple if one was not doing it in a gelatinous cloud of gardenia fumes. And I promise to send you any gardenias anyone sends me.
Gary, no one who spells Debbie as Debbye can be trusted about anything, and she’s probably the reason you sound like you do. (Gary is an Aussie who sounds like Mayfair.) And I didn’t actually see the girls. All I saw were the gardenias.
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Jaden Says:
October 18th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Learning the Fox Trot is one of my lesser goals in life(way below the rich-and-famous-or-at-least-marginally-successful-author goal and the Clint-Eastwood-just-called-and-he-wants-to-make-your-movie fantasy). Sadly for my own blogging efforts, I have no unfortunate dancing experiences. Even with my current partners, my little dogs Luca and Willow, who are learning canine freestyle moves with me.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 18th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Jaden, thanks for stopping in. The Fox Trot is so simple you can practically do it with one foot, a real white people’s dance. And you may not have tragic dancing stories to share with us. Who, for example is teaching whom the freestyle canine moves? And is YouTube in your immediate future?
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