The Asylum by Simon Doonan Page B

can be annoying, but it can also be a force for good. Such was the case with the Morty debacle.
    On the morning of the girdle and the blood-infused urine, Monique and her jangling keys came into my office and plonked a piece of paper on my desk. I winced slightly. Paperwork frightened me. My personal motto was taken from “Private Life,” a popular Grace Jones song at the time: “I am very superficial. I hate anything official.”
    Monique hoisted herself onto the corner of my desk and gulped her cup of joe.
    â€œThis is our union contract. I took it home last night and read it.”
    While contract reading was like crack cocaine to Monique, the same could not be said of me.
    â€œOh, God. Poor you. Quel bore!”
    â€œI am assuming that you, being the big limp-wristed pansy that you are, have never bothered to read it.”
    I went over to the interior window which looked out onto the studio floor and waved encouragement at my busy creative colleagues. They were a frenzy of papier-mâchéing, stapling, and glue gunning. In the near corner a window dresser was ratting an auburn B-52s wig, stabilizing it with can after can of superhold hairspray while another queen tried to attach a chicken-wire tiara onto the top.
    â€œI am more interested in fluffing wigs and figuring out ways to make showgirl lashes out of ostrich feathers than reading contracts.”
    â€œLet me give it to you in a nutshell,” said Monique, hooking her thumbs into her belt loops and puffing out her bound chest. “This contract details our pay-raise guidelines and pensions and medical. The works.”
    She picked up a ratting comb which happened to be on my desk and tweaked an organic sesame seed out of her teeth using the point and then continued.
    â€œIt’s a great contract, by which I mean it’s a great contract if you happen to be over sixty, which none of us motherfucking are.”
    â€œExcept for one person . . .”
    â€œMorty! Morty wrote this contract.”
    Not only was Morty a member of my display team, but he was also, as chance would have it, the head of the window dressers’ union. Yes, I kid you not, there was
a
window dressers’ union
. And we, the flotsam and jetsam of humanity who constituted the display department, along with the gals and gays at every other store-display studio in town, were all members of Morty’s window-dressing union.
    Monique proceeded to show me how the contract was only beneficial to a certain girdle wearer.
    â€œWhat’s to be done?”
    â€œWe need to decertify out of the union.”
    Suddenly I saw Monique on the ramparts, like a reverse Norma Rae. I saw placards too.
    WINDOW-DRESSER FREAKS LEAVE UNION.
    STAPLE-GUN QUEENS AND GLUE-GUN DYKES GO ROGUE.
    HEAD WINDOW DRESSER KNEECAPPED AFTER ATTEMPTING TO DEUNIONIZE.
    â€œGrab your clutch-purse. We have a meeting in HR in five minutes.”
    Monique threw all of her considerable weight behind this new cause. Over the next few days, she and I spent entire afternoons locked in meetings with union lawyers and store personnel. She banged the table a lot while I stared into the middle distance. I had no idea what they were talking about. I missed my wigs.
    It was a tense time. Morty took off his girdle and replaced it with a foot cast. He walked around with a knowing smirk on his face, saying nothing, doing nothing.
    Then, without any warning, he dropped a massive bombshell.
    Morty announced that our display union was being swallowed up by the United Steelworkers. I had no idea what this meant. It sounded terrifying.
    According to Morty, there was no way in hell we were going to be allowed to secede. And if we knew what was right for us, we would “not fuck with the big boys.”
    â€œBut what if the big boys want to fuck with us?” joked Priscilla.
    Chuckles aside, we knew there was no denying the fact that Morty had played an ace. How could Monique, just a simple