Excerpt from one Essay Saturday! (did that rhyme?)

That same weekend, from somewhere, I heard the word combination - Gaslight Girl, and discovered where they were.  On Monday, I hailed a cab to the city college I deemed as competitive as Harvard. 

 

“Gaslight Girl,” bounced in my head as I stood at the Lake Street and State Street intersection.  Bored of teachers saying, “Always expect a substance abuse relapse,” I placed my text books on top of a city garbage can and head straight for the Gaslight Club in the Chicago’s Palmer House hotel that stood prior to, get this, the telephone invention.  This is also the first hotel to have light bulb electricity, ever.  In 2011, we are lucky.  Today if the light bulbs weren’t working a guest would complain, “My husband had relieve his bladder without the light, just awful.  What are you going to do about this?  After paying all this money to your hotel?”

 

As well, it’s the oldest hotel in North America, at 131 years.  If the hotel is not haunted by now, it simply must be as close as you can get, to being haunted. For example, in 1861, the Civil War begins, in 1871, the original Palmer Houseopened but destroyed by the Great Chicago Fire, a year post fire, the hotel re builds.  Then, in 1933, the Gaslight Club opens its decorated doors.

 

Regarding the colligate stint, I thought, “Why bother?”  In part because I didn’t understand relapse until I began my own, relapsing. 

 

A youthful attractiveness helped secure that job, brainlessness didn’t matter.

 

 “I’m a Gaslight Girl!”  I yelled to anybody in earshot.  Immediately established, I could not sing so I became their hostess. The Gaslight Girls were big in the day in Chicago in the Palmer House Hilton, meaning a day in the 1930’s. We Gaslight Club Gaslighter’s went out of business shortly after I joined the team. The Gaslight Girls waitresses served and sang out loud. The idea of a singing waitress to entertain children would have been a good one.  But the gassed up girls sang, to men.   

 

Our costume was a fringed, low cut flapper dress. Never, was there a Gaslight Boy.  Lunchtime consisted of one table of business suited men with fat cigars. 

 

Excitedly I changed into my flapper dress and it dropped to my waist because of my little boobies. I inserted a padded bra and bingo!  “Welcome gentlemen, I’m your Gaslight Girl hostess,” I said and escorted that one table inside.  Using my new puffy breasts as a pillow, I returned to the hostess desk and dozed off. Our three hour shift over, we Gassy Girls hit Rush Street in an appointed limo. 

 

A gentleman lifted my hand and escorted me from a limo and said, “You’re so young to be a Gas Light Girl.”

 

I tugged down my new neck high breasts, “My voice is inadequate so I’m a Gas Light Girl hostess,” I continued to adjust my new chest pads.

 

“That’s great!  What do you want to drink?”

 

“Anything.”  I answered.

 

Several months later the Gaslight Club doors were locked.  A sign that read Closed Permanently left me curious. I thought, “I work here?”