…in the World of Fort Bend Politics
by Susan Bankston
I live in Fort Bend County, which is dangerously close to Houston. To get there, you go down Westheimer, turn left at Fulshear, and follow the This-Way-to-Kookyville signs.
I’m fixin’ to tell you a rock-solid perfectly true story.
Some of you are familiar with our local Spirit of Freedom Republican Women’s Club. They are real; they meet monthly. They are one of the few Republican clubs that doesn’t have a website of its own. I suspect that’s because they’re pretty much positive that the Internet is a tool of the devil, secular humanists, and Jennifer Aniston.
About five years ago, I took to calling them The Belles of Heaven Republican Women’s Club. It kinda stuck, and local folks—even Republicans—started calling them that. Well, The Belles have gotten their brassiere straps all uptight and grotesquely twisted over a new locally owned, female-run business: a mother-and-daughter bakery. Specifically, Nooky’s Erotic Bakery.
No, I’m not joking. Nooky’s opened on Highway 6 right in the heart of Sugar Land, within frosting distance of Tom DeLay’s home. It’s in a strip shopping center with other businesses. A mother-and-daughter team owns and runs it. They make bakery goods for wedding showers, birthdays, and people too grown-up for a Cinderella or Spiderman cake, but not so grown-up that they don’t want a birthday party.
The Belles of Heaven had their monthly meeting and Nooky’s got some free advertising. One local Republican blogger described The Belles as being “outraged” over Nooky’s. I can understand that. Women. Baking. Free enterprise. That’s the Trifecta of Torrid. Outrage is a valuable commodity, and bless their hearts, The Belles have cornered the market.
So, poor Criminal District Attorney John Healey, who is a man with absolutely no sense of humor—I mean that literally; we think he had a humorectomy—shows up at The Belles’ meeting and gets cornered by some really pissed-off women who want to know what he’s going to do right now to rid their fair city of the horror of cake.
Healey, as the blogger put it, was “rather put on the spot when he was asked to explain how this occurred.” Well, I imagine so! Envision yourself trying to explain how batter formed itself into a set of ta-tas. You gotta start with that whole springform cake pan thing, oven temperature, food coloring, and then some other stuff that Julia Child probably took to her grave.
I would think that not having a sense of humor would be a help in these situations. However, I am told that poor Healey walked out of the meeting smelling of Eau d’Pious and carrying 40 pounds of grief. It didn’t occur to him that icing is not a criminal act in Texas. In a rare moment of bureaucratic irony, it truly is not his job to do anything about this.
Personally, I think The Belles knew that, but brought it up just to hear dirty talk and get themselves all aquiver with outrage. It’s a scientific fact that outrage passes for foreplay in many far-right, conservative homes.
By three o’clock that afternoon, County Commissioner Andy Meyers, a man far too obsessed with other people’s hoochy-koochy activities to have much of his own, was issuing press releases and getting everybody in the county who draws a taxpayer salary to quit whatever they were doing and get, well, outraged!
Andy contends that Nooky’s Erotic Bakery is a sexually oriented business.
Honey, it’s flour, sugar, and eggs. If that gets you frisky, then you’ve got bigger problems than your diet.
Look, there’s a simple solution to this whole thing. Let’s take Andy over to Nooky’s and let him look at the cakes. If Andy gets unduly excited, and will sign an affidavit attesting to such, then I’ll help close the place down. I don’t know how we’ll certify Andy’s level of excitement. I haven’t worked that out yet. We asked Thelma to help, and she said, “Not even for a three-layer dinky cake.”
You would think that at some point these far-right-leaning femmes would realize that they should just shut up about sex. The more they talk, the more their male counterparts get caught doing really kinky stuff—and I mean kinky in more ways than just running for governor.
Thelma, Verdelia, and I are going to Commissioners Court when they discuss this, just so we can sit in the audience to point and giggle every time a commissioner says “nooky.” The county will probably have to hire a consultant to explain to one commissioner what nooky is, and to remind the rest.
Now I know that people in foreign states think I’m making this up. I am not. You can’t make this stuff up. That’s why I live here. I’m living in Wonderland!
Susan Bankston lives in Richmond, Texas, where she writes about her hairdresser at The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc., at www.juanitajean.com.
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