Cinderella Awakens From a Nightmare

"If I were an enchanted Prince would I be working in a nursing home, wiping someone's ass?" the frog asks.

A few days away from her 76^th birthday, Cinderella has a terrible nightmare: She is preparing for a New Year’s ball and cannot find a pair of shoes that fit.

Her fairy godmother, long dead, is in the dream, too, taunting her.

“That’s how it is when you get older, babe,” the godmother cackles. “The feet spread. Maybe you should go in sneakers. Better yet, don’t go at all.  Nobody’s going to ask you to dance.  Maybe you’ll get a spin around the floor from a gay Duke but it will be, as the Grimm Brothers used to say, a Mercy Fuck. That was going to be their second book. ‘The Little Mermaid and the Mercy Fuck’. I shopped it around for them, but nobody wants a fairy tale that’s a downer.”

“Me included,” Cinderella says, annoyed. “You’re my fairy godmother. Why aren’t you being helpful? Conjure me up a pair of elegant evening shoes; Nine wide with a round toe and a heel not over two inches.”

“‘Me, me, me; gimmee, gimmee, gimmee’”, the fairy godmother says. “That’s what I spent my whole life dealing with and what did it get me? A room in a nursing home that isn’t even a private with a giant frog wiping my ass.”

A giant frog appears.

“At a certain age it is absurd to try to be sexually attractive,” the frog tells Cinderella.

“Are you an enchanted Prince?” Cinderella asks excitedly, for though she is almost 76 she has not stopped hoping.

“If I were an enchanted Prince, would I be working in a nursing home?” the frog says.

This is when Cinderella awakens, glancing at her bedside alarm clock which, before it was magically transformed, had been an almond Hershey bar and still gets a little mushy if left in the sun. The nuts reveal that it is 3:30 a.m.

“That is the last time I will drink Lactaid fat-free milk with sugar-free cocoa before going to bed,” Cinderella thinks. “What can that unpleasant dream have been about? I have beautiful shoes for the ball. I had a lovely day with friends. The market is on the upswing. Is it possible that I, an independent princess who has supported myself since I was twenty, am nervous about going to a ball stag?” 

A strong wind, which seems to answer, ‘Yup!’, rattles the windows of the one-bedroom Manhattan co-op in which Cinderella lives alone for, after divorcing the Prince’s cheating ass and shacking up with a series of penniless sitar players, newspaper photographers, and writers, Cinderella has decided single is the way to go. Also, the options on fairytalematch.com suck.

Trying to fall back asleep, Cinderella knows, will be fruitless.

“I will clean the bathtub,” Cinderella thinks, as she gets out of bed. “That is a healthy expenditure of nervous tension. I will exhaust myself physically and then I will be able to sleep.”

So Cinderella scrubs and scrubs, using these little Magic Sponge eraser pads her friend Cheryl told her required only a gentle wipe, which is not true at all. You have to rub really hard, which, on the bright side, Cinderella thinks, may improve her lats. After much toil the tub shines, but Cinderella is still wired.

“I shall clean the stovetop,” Cinderella thinks. “That will eradicate these absurd anxieties.”

So Cinderella gets to it, using Mr. Clean and scouring powder and stainless steel pads and finally, for that teeny area between where the flame comes out and that metal ticking thing, Q-tips.

“I have a bad feeling that cleaning with Q-tips is a sign of a Compulsive,” Cinderella thinks. “I remember seeing it in an old movie; it’s the tell that the heroine is a controlling, anxious person who has to loosen up to love, which she does by getting involved with a thief played by Kevin Kline. Romcoms give us such important life lessons. Perhaps I should find a thief.”

It is just at this moment Cinderella spots something moving on the kitchen floor. A waterbug! The biggest, ugliest waterbug Cinderella has ever seen. Normally, when this happens, Cinderella screams and calls the super and he smashes the waterbug dead and she gives him a twenty. But Cinderella can’t call the super  in the middle of the night so she runs into her bedroom and slams the door.

“Oh, c’mon, Cinderella,” a teeny voice hollers, “Don’t be like that. Just plant a big wet one on my syringe-like beak! I am in truth a midlist writer, who was turned into a waterbug by my agent and can only be transformed back by the kiss of an interesting older woman who can drive stick. And her belief that I will finally be able to sell my book.”

“Noooo!,” Cinderella wails.  “Another penniless sitar player!”

“A poetic way of putting it, but yes,” the waterbug says. “I do not at the moment even have my own place – unless you count the drain pipe. But I’ll listen to your My Day stories, I’m good company and in all my seventy years, nobody has ever thrown me out of bed and told me to get dressed in the hall.”

“Do you think it would work if I blew you a kiss?” Cinderella asks.

“Maybe for twenty-four hours,” the waterbug says. “But it would still be great to get away from the sink.”

So, Cinderella blows the waterbug a kiss and he is transformed back into a penniless writer.

Cinderella and the penniless writer go to the ball and though Cinderella has an escort, she has to put everything on her tab and the writer flirts with every woman under forty and embarrasses Cinderella by getting drunk. Also, when they get back to Cinderella’s place and conk out, the writer snores. Cinderella is relieved when, just as he prophesied, the writer morphs back into a waterbug. She rings the super and gives him a twenty to squish him.

Then Cinderella returns to bed and sleeps soundly.     

Moral of the story: (Correct answer below.)

A)   When somebody tells you the first time he’s a waterbug, believe him.

B)   Given the choice between a waterbug and a penniless writer, send out for pizza.

C)   There are worse things than going stag to a party on New Year’s Eve.

Correct answer: D) It’s time to start paying for this column.