Diary of a Clown/ Piece of Cake

Piece of Cake

In my early days of delivering singing Telegrams for “Western Onion”, a popular Singing Telegram Company in the 1980’s, I was asked to deliver Singing Telegrams in a number of various different costumes and Characters. My least favorite Telegram to deliver was “The Cake Telegram”. No….I didn’t pop up out of a Cake, I was a Cake! Number one: picture having your Dinette Table Pinafored over your shoulders. Number two: it wasn’t exactly the lightest costume to carry around with me in the City, especially if I had other costumes, props and helium balloons on me. It also wasn’t the easiest thing to fit through a Door!

One of my most memorable Cake Grams was to some middle aged man who was some Big Shot at a Bank. The Telegram took place at this High rise Apartment in the Upper East Side of Manhattan with about 50 of the Recipient’s up scaled Friends and Co Workers.
I was led into the Bedroom to get changed, first into my Leotard, and then the 20 pound Cake Costume was placed over and around the shoulders of my 90 pound body. I then needed a couple of people to help me get this Monstrosity through the door! I finally make it through the door and past the crowd of conservative looking Yuppies. Conservative…my Butt!! When I finished singing my song and started to walk away, I was interrupted by a rhythmic type of clapping. They (Men and Woman) then all started very loudly singing the melody of the Stripper Song. At first I stood there frozen until they broke out into a chorus of: “Strip! Strip! Strip!” At that point, I completely took over and managed to gain complete power of the room by doing all of these Cake Jokes. For Instance “Why You Lil Ol Devil Cake, You”, “You know you can’t have your Cake and eat it to!” “Oh that’s so SWEET of you!”….to name a few. I managed to have a cleaver comeback for every Wise Crack and probing for me to strip, plus I managed to as graciously as possible, make it back to my changing room, get paid and get the heck out of there!

While I was headed back to the Path Train to Jersey, where I was living at the time, I heard a voice behind me say “Hey, you really handled yourself like a Pro back there!” I turned around to the presence of a gorgeous Blond Haired Blue eyed man in his mid thirties wearing a suit. I looked around to see if he was talking to someone else, but no one else was around. Responding to my confused look, he responded….”You were the Cake back there, weren’t you?” I replied with a stunned “Yes”. He introduced himself as John, one of the Guests at the party. He again repeated himself “I really like the way you handled yourself back there”. “We were not exactly an easy crowd”!


He then went on about how most of the people at the Party have high pressured Executive jobs at the bank, (himself included) and they don’t exactly know how to handle themselves when they’re let out of there cages, so to speak. As we were talking, I was praying to myself that he would want to continue this conversation over dinner sometime. I was new to the city and he wasn’t exactly typical of the Grease Monkies I would meet in South Jersey. I guess G-d was working overtime that night, because my Prayers came true!

As I floated back to Jersey City that night, I started planning my future with John, in my mind that is. He was the one, I thought. He was Gorgeous, rich, and had a great sense of humor.

The following weekend, we met up in Manhattan and he took me to this very up scaled restaurant and later to a Desert Place. I was really comfortable with him and felt we had some kind of Chemistry together.
As we were walking around the City together, we passed a Jewish community Center. I think it might have been “Brinai Brith Woman’s Association”. “Why are those Woman lighting candles, it’s not Sunday. I being Jewish, explained that is was the Jewish Sabbath and we were also in the middle of the High Holy Days as well. At that point, it was like someone just pulled the wool out from over his Eyes and his sophisticated worldly demeanor turned out to be no different from some of the (not all) narrow minded prejudgeous people I was trying to get away from when I left South Jersey. “How do you know so much about that?” “I’m Jewish”, I replied. You’re what?” I might as well have told him I was escaped from Prison! Needless to say, our Dream Date had turned into a Nightmare! He had flagged down a Cab since we were both headed to the same part of town. He was really quiet inside the Cab, and when it came time to pay, guess who ended up footing the bill? I offered to pay anyway, but I didn’t expect him to respond with…”Sure, you can afford it!”
It took me a long time to get over that one. I tried dating only Jewish Guys after that and none of those relationships seemed to work out either, for various reasons. You can imagine how long it took me to tell my southern Baptist Boyfriend from North Carolina, that I was Jewish, a few years later. When I finally did, he responded with….”I thought all of you Easterners were either Jewish or I talian”. That was the last time I had to lie about my background. We’ve been together for almost 16 years now.