Bawdy in Bermuda

This is the text from my Heeb Storytelling piece. My vid battery died near the end, but this is the gist.

(Martha Frankel, the author before me, had spoken of Quaaludes and whor-as. And blamed herself for the dearth of the drugs on the market nowadays.)

I actually have done a Quaalude Martha, and it was at my friend’s wedding at a synagogue. That’s about as Jewish as my story gets. Three years ago on my 30th birthday—the most Jewish part of this is that if my mother were not an anxious Jewish mother, this never would’ve happened.

So it’s my 30th birthday, I’m in Bermuda with my family. We had a nice dinner, we went back to our resort, which was a lot of honeymooners, adults, not young kids. And this was around the time of Natalie Holloway, that girl who was abducted in Aruba or whatever. She was like 16; I’m 30, okay.
(Laughter.)

You can imagine where this is going. So we get back to the hotel, and my mom likes to party. She’s really cool, my parents are very cool, ex-60s liberal hippies. So we get back to the Reefs and there was a wedding party going on. This was also the time of the movie Wedding Crashers. And my mom was obsessed with that movie. We’d had some wine, my mom says:

“Oh, a wedding! Wedding Crashers! Let’s crash the wedding!”

So we crashed the wedding. It was a crowd full of Canadians, really nice, really young. We partied with them for a couple hours and mom says she’s going back to the room, will leave a key for me outside the villa.

I should preface this by saying I’m not a slut.
(Laughter.)

I’m a lot of things, but I’m pretty virginal. So basically mom goes back to our little bungalow around 1 in the morning. We’re staying in this condo type of thing that’s a little hike from the main resort. I end up partying with this whole group of Canadians—girls and guys—who’re staying at the Marriott next door. (Remember, there are no cars on the Island.) We end up going over to the Marriott at like 2 a.m. They’re like in the pool skinny-dipping. I was the only clothed one, because I’m a Jew.
(Laughter.)

I was wearing boxers and maybe a bathing suit top or something.

Long story short—remember it’s my 30th birthday so give me a little leeway here—I end up hooking up with this Canadian guy. We go up to his room. And this is, you know, 2 in the morning in Bermuda, my parents and brother are staying in the resort next door. Well we go up to his room in the Marriott, and I end up falling asleep. The next thing I know, we wake up to pounding on the door—there were no fluids exchanged by the way (laughter)—I’m in one bed, he’s in the other. I look at my watch and it’s like 7 or 8 in the morning.

He opened the door: two Bermudan police officers are at the door.

“Are you Stephanie Green?” one of them asks.

“Uh, yes.”

“Can you please call your mother?”

And now the shit really hits the fan. I’m like, “huh?”

So the guy—I totally forgot his name. . .”
(Uproarious laughter and clapping)

“Hey, it was three years ago, okay? So the guy is in his boxers and is so nice. ‘Omigod, omigod, I’m so sorry I was totally going to walk you home.’”

We start freaking out and getting our shit. So he walks me outside the hotel room in his boxers and no shirt and locks himself out. (Laughter.) I was in my clothes from the night before, and I didn’t plan this but I was wearing these shoes. (I say, looking down at my three-inch high, platform Chanels.)

(Laughter from the girls.)

Now, this is another Jewish part—who does the walk of shame in Chanel but a Jew?

(Laughter.)

So he walks me through the lobby of the Marriott, which is a huge convention hotel, with boxers and no shirt on and I’m fully clothed from the night before.

(Laughter.)

So, I end up doing the walk of shame on a two lane highway with no walking path in Bermuda. And I’m you know, trying to run in these heels on the road, no sidewalk. I walk in and the whole family is like, “Where the fuck were you?”

(Laughter.)

My mom had woken up in the middle of the night—she never wakes up in the middle of the night so I figured I was safe. You know I’m 30 years old, they know I party.

“I woke up in the middle of the night and you weren’t there!”

“What the hell did you do mom?”

“We-eeeeell, I woke up and you weren’t there, so I called the lobby and there was no-one there till six in the morning so I went to the lobby at six in the morning. And I told them that you were with a bunch of Canadians in a wedding party.”

“I don’t know the name, but they were in the Canadian wedding. . .”

So the front desk guy calls the mother of the bride.

(Gasps and laughter.)

I’m not kidding. At six in the morning. The mother of the bride comes downstairs to the lobby at six in the morning to comfort my mom. My mom’s probably crying, hysterical, whatever. . .”

(Laughter.)

The mother of the bride starts naming guys, is it this one, that one?

They figure out who it is and the mother of the bride assures mom that he’s a nice guy, I most likely had not been abducted and that I was safe with what’s-his-name.

“But Natalie Holloway,” blah, blah, blah.

(Laughter.)

I’m 30, you know!

They get the police, who call the hotel room, we don’t answer and that’s how they ended up at the room. Even my brother, who’s totally laid back, lives on the Lower East Side, was like, “Stephanie what the fuck?”

(Laughter.)

“Dude, why the hell are you getting involved?”

“I was up all night waiting for your ass too.”

“Oh, please, you know you went back to sleep.”

“It was a little hard with mom moaning in the other room!”

“Mom, you hung out with these guys, you met them, you saw that they were upstanding, professional guys!”

“But Natalie Holloway!” blah, blah, blah.

(Laughter.)