Ricky laments being dragged to ballet class with Baby and contemplates a future of “happy wife, happy life.”
Along the way, he runs into Myles, gets laughed at by Big Mike and Intern Dave, and argues with Jeff about whether water is actually better for drinking than Rat Cola.
Podcast Script (not including ad-libs):
This goes in the second anthology.
So… I never did talk about New Year’s resolutions, huh? Well, the main thing I wanna change in 2025 is my bank account, but that’s gonna be a hard sell as Big Mike is a big believer in not exceeding minimum wage for studio staff and I ain’t got no time to take on a second job.
Well, at least I save money by living at home: as annoying as Mama Rat’s endless chore lists are, it beats the Hell out of paying rent. And Papa Rat does send me a little bit of money from Florida every month, too, but that’s our little secret. I don’t tell Mama that and I don’t let Big Mike hear about it neither lest he decide I can afford to work for him for free.
So, that’s my new year’s resolution: increasing my bottom line. Somehow.
Of course, Mama has all sorts of ideas about resolutions I ought to have, like going to college or at least trade school and getting a real job and quitting all the fun stuff in life like boozing and smoking (both kinds).
I just tell her I’ll think about it and get out the door as quick as I can.
Mama’s not the only one with a list of demands for me, though. Baby’s got a whole list, too: mostly fashion-related ‘cause apparently I dress bad.
Unfortunately, one of them is her insistence that I need to take up ballet so she can go back to dancing ballet and I really don’t know why she can’t just go dance ballet on her own time, but she signed us both up for the Adult Beginners’ Ballet class at Balleratina… which is weird ‘cause Baby ain’t no beginner but I guess she figured she would come down to my level.
And I couldn’t really come up with a good excuse to not get dragged to ballet class ‘cause Big Mike heard about all this nonsense from his daughters who are part of the Balleratina Facerat gossip group and he told me I have Monday nights off from now on to “go be a prancing Nancy.”
Ugh… I’d rather clean the studio toilets.
But… I gotta make Baby happy, I guess. “Happy wife, happy life” starts way before any wedding.
And y’know, it wouldn’t have been nearly as bad if I coulda just shown up in my sweat pants and my sneakers and my “Don’t Fuck With the Wongs” t-shirt, but apparently that’s not allowed.
Not even if I wore a plain t-shirt that doesn’t have swear words on it.
I was told of this just after Christmas when Baby demanded I take her shopping and I was thinking it would be regular Boxing Day sales but nope, she insisted I take her to the Ratsville Dance World shop. Which would have been no worse than any other shopping destination except instead of being told to follow Baby around and get loaded down with carrying stuff she was buying for herself, Baby waved over the saleslady and said, “Hey, my boyfriend needs a dance belt.”
“Naw, I already got a belt, Baby. See?”
“Ugh, no, Ricky, that’s not the right kind.”
“OK. I got a real spiky one at home. Or should I wear my old bullet belt? I also got a checkerboard one that’s kinda more of a pop-punk vibe.”
“No, Ricky, a dance belt is what you men wear around your waists for ballet.”
“Wait a minute… you promised me guys don’t have to wear a damned tutu!”
“It’s not a tutu, it’s a—“
Well, the saleslady came out of the back with this beige jock strap thong thing and she said, “It’s a support garment.”
“That ain’t no belt, Baby, that’s weird looking underwear!”
“It’s what all male ballet dancers wear.”
“Ugh… Baby, you sure you wouldn’t rather we take up some other kind of dancing? One where I ain’t gotta wear that kinda weirdo crap that’s gonna give me a wedgie?”
The saleslady insisted it wasn’t weirdo and that other forms of dance also require it, which I ain’t never heard of before, but in any case Baby just said, “He’s gonna need some tights, too.”
“Tights? Like SuperRat? I guess that’ll come in handy at Halloween.”
The womenfolk just ignored me and picked out a bunch of dumb frou frou crapola I was supposed to wear to dance class. Tights, weird wedgie undies, even tight white t-shirts.
Then I had to sit down and be fitted for ballet slippers.
“You sure I can’t just wear my sneakers?”
Again, the womenfolk ignored me and we left the store with a big bag of crap I had to spend money on that I didn’t want to wear for the dance class I didn’t want to take.
Sigh…
Monday came and it was time for the stupid class after a whole day of getting teased by the dudes at the studio. I picked Baby up from her house and she was already all dressed for class in her leotard and tights.
I was still wearing my normal clothes because why the Hell would I want to be caught dead outside of class in tights? I mean, they weren’t even orange SuperRat tights!
“Ricky! You’re not dressed for class!”
“I ain’t wearing tights to work, Baby.”
“But you’re not ready for class!”
“Ugh… If I gotta wear all that crap, I’ll get changed in the bathroom.”
Baby bitched about that but I just reminded her that if she’d’ve let me wear my sweatpants, sneakers, and “Don’t Fuck With the Wongs” shirt, I’d be ready already.
So that was a whole argument all the whole drive to Balleratina, which was unfortunately still there standing and not struck by lightning like I’d been asking the Lord every day since Baby signed us up for the class.
Then we went in there and the same nasty front desk lady who gave me a hard time when I brought my nieces to class was there, but unlike last time, she didn’t say I could just hang out in the waiting room. She pointed me to the changeroom and told me I had to go into Studio A with Baby after getting into the stupid wedgie undies and tights.
And I’d forgotten to sneak Baby’s phone out of her purse and lock it in the trunk of my car when I was getting the bag of dance crapola out, so there was no stopping her from taking photos and selfies to post on Instarat, no matter how much I scowled and told her not to post pics of me in tights on the internet for the whole world and all our friends to see.
Ugh…
For all Baby’s spazzing about not being ready on time, we were early and Studio A still had a class in it, so we had to wait in the hallway. In the interests of trying to keep my face off Baby’s Instarat, I squished it up against the glass of the little window in the door of Studio B so Baby could only take pics of the back of my head.
Imagine my shock when I saw what was going on in Studio B: there was Baby’s cousin Myles, jumping all around and dancing with not one but two ballerinas while some other ballet folks stood around and watched. The girls twirled and Myles leapt about slapping his hands in that “gimme money” kinda gesture and then he wrapped it up by smacking one of the ballerinas on the butt.
Just about knocked her over!
Fortunately, he caught her as she fell forward, but he did it by cupping a boobie… y’know, I almost wonder if he didn’t plan it that way. The girl giggled but this mean-looking old lady started yelling at Myles and I guess that was the teacher.
He just shrugged and rolled his eyes and then he spotted me and came over to open the door.
“Here for dance class, huh? You know you can tell Barbra to get bent, right?”
“Well… I mean…”
“This whole ballet thing is one giant shit-test, Ricky. And you’re flunking it.”
The mean old lady came over and glared at me. “Visitors have to wait in the waiting room for class to finish.”
“Well, I’d like to, ma’am, but the front desk lady said I have to come down to studio A and—“
“This is studio B.”
Myles piped up. “Meh, give the ratman a break. His dumb girlfriend is dragging him to class against his will.”
Well, Baby heard that and started yelling that she’s not dumb and Myles retorted, “Then why are you back in the remedial beginners’ ballet class instead of in here with us advanced dancers?”
I just kept my mouth shut, ‘cause Baby ain’t dumb but also I ain’t dumb and I learned a long time ago not to get involved with other people’s family quarrels.
Anyway, the old lady was yelling about interruptions to her class and I was thinking I’d have a chance to escape while everyone was yelling at each other but just as I was reaching for the bag with my normal dude clothes in it to make a break for the bathroom and change back, some other teacher lady called out, “Adult beginners, c’mon, time for class!” and Baby came running out of Studio B, grabbed me by the ear, and dragged me into Studio A.
We started out with stretches on some mats, which wasn’t too bad except for all the girls in the class giggling that I couldn’t bend much.
Finally, the teacher called out, “Alright, dancers: to the barre!”
I breathed a sign of relief and made a beeline for the door. “Oh thank the Lord! C’mon, Baby, first round’s on me!”
“Ricky! Don’t go!”
“What? She said it’s time to hit the bar!”
“No no no, the barre on the wall here!”
“They got beer here?”
Things were looking so much better all of a sudden… except then Baby and the teacher pointed to a railing thing sticking out of the mirrors.
Oh… crap… here I done got my hopes up.
So we did more exercises on the railing thing and the teacher kept telling me all the things I was doing wrong, but whatever. I didn’t even understand what she was saying most of the time. “Toes out. Knees out. Chin up. Tail up. Point your feet. No, not like that.”
Ugh… and I thought it was bad being banished to the waiting room when Suzie and Sherry had their class; I woulda killed to be banished to the waiting room on Monday.
Then we did some little steps and half-squat things in the middle of the room, and even some jumps, which were kinda OK but not anything near like what Myles had been doing. And then some more stretches on the mat and the teacher lady still said I needed to work on my flexibility in between classes by doing yoga.
And Baby piped up and said I could go to the same yoga class she goes to on Thursdays.
Great… just what I wanted… more girly stuff to do… ugh… and Thursday’s usually a busy day at the studio.
But at least that was the end of the class and finally I could get back into my normal clothes before me and Baby went to grab a pizza.
Worst date night ever… well, except for the pizza. That was kinda kick-ass.
Of course, if I thought the actual class was bad, that was nothing compared to the next day. You ever been so stiff and sore even your whiskers hurt? Yeah, that was me the next day, shuffling around the studio like a zombie the next day, barely able to get in and out of my car when I was running errands and fetching grub.
The guys all noticed I wasn’t my usual self, with Intern Dave snickering about me having January fever from going to the gym for the first time in a year… pfft! Like Dave’s ever been to the gym!
For his part, Big Mike was surprised ballet class bruised more than just my pride.
“Well, yes sir, that too.”
He just chuckled and said, “This is why you never let your women tell you what to do, son.”
Big Mike got a point, of course, but also, that kinda thinking is why he’s been divorced twice already.
Jeff, at least, was sympathetic, being a gym rat himself. “Sounds like you got a bad case of the DOMS. Drink a bunch of water and take a hot bath.”
“Water? Like… from the tap?”
“Uh… yeah? Or drink bottled water. Whatever.”
“I dunno if I ever drunk water before.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, man. We always drank Rat Cola growing up and now I drink beer and hard liquor as well as Rat Cola.”
“You’ve never drunk water? What kind of child abuse hellscape did you grow up in where you never drank anything healthy?!?”
“Well, I mean, sometimes we had juice over at Aunty Maureen’s house when we was little.”
“My God… what the hell…”
“What’s wrong with drinking Rat Cola?”
“Everything’s wrong with drinking Rat Cola!”
And then Jeff went off on one of his health food trips spewing about chemical this and toxic that… I kinda just stared and politely waited for the noise to stop ‘cause I didn’t understand any of the shit he was saying about biochemistry, but I guess the main idea is he thinks Rat Cola isn’t fit for consumption and also that drinking water is supposedly healthy for you.
I think it’s nonsense, personally, ‘cause if Rat Cola was really so bad for you, why would they serve it in school cafeterias? And they sponsor the Ratlympic Games, too, and those are all about health, ain’t they? But I didn’t want to offend Jeff so I just nodded and said “uh huh” a lot.
Jeff wasn’t done telling me what’s what, though. “You need to get a foam roller to massage the sore spots… also, have you tried yoga?”
“No sir, but my girlfriend’s trying to drag me to her stupid yoga class on Thursday.”
Big Mike and Intern Dave laughed but Jeff insisted that the stupid yoga class was just the thing. Ugh…
So I gotta take a yoga class in order to fix what gets broken in ballet class, which I gotta take because Baby insists even though I don’t wanna.
And I gotta get a foam something or other and drink water. Which I also don’t wanna do because that’s weird, man.
Maybe Myles is right but I’m pretty sure Baby’s get all mad if I told her to get bent.
So… I dunno, man… so far 2025’s shaping up to be a shitty year.
Links
Follow Ricky on Facebook: Ricky B. the Rock n Roll Rat Facebook page
And on Instagram: Ricky B. Rat on Instagram
And on Twitter/X: Ricky B. Rat on Twitter
But also on YouTube: Ricky B. Rat on YouTube
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