Arts & Entertainment

Call us naïve, but we were shocked to learn the predominantly female audience at Melissa Etheridge's recent Fort Worth concert booed when she pulled a fan onstage to share a tequila shot...because she chose a man. Being of the male persuasion ourselves, we've always felt welcome at most of the area's lesbian clubs. We've heard tales that gay places like the gargantuan Village Station and Moby Dick aren't nearly as hospitable to women. Hell, there have been nights when the Station wasn't nearly as welcoming to us as, say, its next-door neighbor, Sue Ellen's. Over the years, Sue's has admirably maintained its balancing act of charming opposites--friendly but sorta elegant, universal but very specific in its identity, streamlined but able to hold a spill-over crowd. You can walk in dressed up or dressed down and feel right at home. And the small dance floor prevails as a place for socializing, not exhibiting your gym bod or your rhythmic skills. Maybe it's just the Cowtown gals who get pissy when a guy occasionally steps into the spotlight.

Based on our childhood memories of the cartoon series, we thought Casper The Friendly Ghost was about life after death, not the messy business of dying. This summer's four-city tour of Casper The Musical crawled into Dallas with vital signs barely registering and proceeded to meet a very long, noisy, smelly demise on the stage of the Fair Park Music Hall. Writers David Bell and Stephen Cole did a major overhaul from the show's disastrous London premiere, adding a scenery-chewing role that Broadway legend Chita Rivera stepped into between legit gigs. The subplot about reality-based TV programming and the World Wide Web--Casper is in danger of becoming a media mogul's pawn--was as inexplicably tacky as the flat, foldable sets.

"Most of my work is buffer work," Curtin says, referring to the performers, the paying patrons and the city authorities. "I have to make sure everyone's complying with the law. You have to remember, Dallas is a small town run like a small Baptist church. It's full of small-minded Baptist people waiting for us to screw up."

Since 1998, Curtin has played "den dad" over a one-block stretch of Cedar Springs--or "den mom" during those nights when he's attired as Edna Jean Robinson, his own oily-haired trailer-trash female persona. Five nights a week, starting at about 9:45 p.m. till unspeakable hours of the a.m., Curtin moves through the dressing rooms of the Village Station, Sue Ellen's, Throckmorton Mining Company and J.R.'s Bar & Grill. He has to make sure his boy dancers' buttocks are completely covered: Since none of Caven's operations are zoned as "S.O.B."s (sexually oriented businesses), they can't offer anything that even approximates nudity. And he sees to it that his female impersonators are zipped up, hairsprayed, lipsticked and properly introduced either for special events or for the nightly shows in The Rose Room, the Village Station's drag theater. Interestingly, there are problems common to both the boys and the girls where audiences are concerned.

"I run into patrons expecting too much for their dollar," Curtin says, referring to the tips that are given during midperformance. "They want the dancers to show their business. Or they get mad when the girls don't stop and talk to them long enough during a show. I have to smooth that out, but I also have to make sure that the patrons don't get too much for their money."

As far as the Rose Room's dressing area is concerned, all kinds of images spring to mind: scowling, vain, catty drag queens waiting to sink their red nails into co-stars who stole a move or got a bigger ovation--basically, Paul Verhoeven's camp classic Showgirls with an all-male cast. Curtin acknowledges that this may be true in other venues but testifies without hesitation to the professionalism of his artists.

"Performers come from all across the country, and they're shocked at how friendly and helpful our girls are. They'll let you borrow their jewelry. The Village Station hosts a lot of national title holders--Donna Day, Crystal Summers, Celeste Martinez. If you dedicate your life to something like this, you have to have discipline."

The hour before an 11 p.m. show at the Rose Room is a small tornado of activity. Kelexis Davenport borrows makeup; Cassie Nova is hunting for the can of Spam she uses in her act; Valerie Lohr invariably needs help getting her shoes buckled. Lohr also often requires assistance for the back zipper on her elaborate gowns, and there's only one tool for the job: A pair of needle-nosed pliers is always nearby. "Find the tool!" is a common call on a weekend night in the dressing room.

Once the music is cued, the chattering tables hush, and Curtin makes his introductions. There's only one rule in the Rose Room, and Curtin says it's broken every night--sometimes several times--no matter how often patrons are reminded. Maybe alcohol and hairspray fumes mixed in an unventilated space contribute to delusions of stardom. But invariably, someone near the front will think they're more important than the act--or think that maybe they are the act--and stand or step onto the tiny stage space. If Curtin were to post this rule, it would speak for the girls paid to perform: "Don't stand in front of my spotlight."

Performances happen nightly Wednesday-Sunday at the Village Station, 3911 Cedar Springs. Call 214-526-7171.

Yet Bradshaw insists physical rehabilitation is not the most significant part of his 11-year-old business, one that survives exclusively though donations. "In the long run the educational aspect of our organization is more important than the actual rehab," he says. On the Wing Again's educational programs are geared to spawn awareness of the ornithological residents living throughout the city and include the presentation of seven or eight live wild birds unfit for re-release into the wild for various reasons. Bradshaw says he also wants to educate the public on how to recognize when wild birds need to be brought in for care, and when to leave them alone. One of the most common mistakes people make is capturing a bird that appears to be struggling, only to discover it is a baby trying to learn how to fly.

Not surprisingly, the most common bird injuries in Dallas occur when birds--especially migrating birds--fly into the city's tall buildings. In such events, Bradshaw says he works as quickly as possible to put the injured birds back on their journey. "Sometimes they have to be transported to catch up with their migration," he says.

Perhaps the most unexpected thing to learn about Dallas' bird population is the number of birds of prey that make the skyscrapers their homes. Some, such as screech owls, even thrive in the city's environs. "They tend to live real well right in the city," he explains. "They nest in cavities and trees." In addition to owls, there are sparrow hawks, red tail hawks and great horned owls.

Bradshaw's path to North Texas birdman was unusual. A mechanical engineer by trade who configured equipment to be installed on airplanes (his wife is a librarian), Bradshaw says that he and his wife learned the rehab ropes by working with other wild bird rehabbers and sifting through books and publications. "With my wife being a librarian, we do lots of reading," he says.

By the time she opened Forest Lawn at Turtle Creek in 1994, her reputation as a national gadfly to the industry had begun. CNN traveled to Dallas to profile her and her claims: that the international funeral corporations--two of which split the city's business almost 50-50, she says--charge exorbitant and often hidden fees, take goods they buy wholesale and mark them up ridiculously and aren't honest about some of their practices.

"I was a free-lance embalmer [working for one of the corporations before she started Forest Lawn]," Henley says. "They'd lead relatives to believe that the embalming would take place at the funeral home of their choice, when in fact the body would be carted away to a centralized embalmer at another location." On more than one occasion, the family would ask to follow their loved one to the funeral home. "I'd think, 'Oh, shit,'" she recalls. "We'd drive to the home, let the family watch us take the body inside, then as soon as they weren't looking, turn around and load it back up [to take to the central embalmer]."

Such frustrations were paramount in her decision to open her own establishment. Like many in the business, Henley is licensed as director and embalmer; she does the lion's share of both at Forest Lawn, holding mourners' hands, preparing bodies and navigating through floral arrangements and religious rituals. Inside an antiseptic back room, she makes incisions with two tubes--one to push in the embalming fluid, the other to push out blood and bile into a urinal-like flush receptacle. She also does her own RA work--"restorative arts," that is. For corpses damaged in accidents, she takes liquid and scented wax skin and refashions ears, noses, cheeks and foreheads by hand.

She thinks it perfectly natural that more women have begun to gain her kind of status in the funeral industry. "We're nurturers," she says. "We're detail-oriented. Planning a funeral is like planning a wedding."

Still, no amount of preparation can anticipate all the variables for such an emotional event. "Funerals tend to bring out the peculiar side of human nature," Henley says. When asked to illustrate this remark, she describes a little scene that she absolutely, positively swears she witnessed. To wit:

One of her clients was an old man who died after a protracted illness. He had several grown sons, as well as an adult daughter from whom he'd been estranged for the last years of his life. Apparently, after her father's demise, she became interested in the possibilities of his will, and there was some feeling she might make a last-minute appearance at the funeral. Also, Henley adds, "I think she was a little, you know..." and taps her own temple.

Sure enough, as the priest read over the casket during the service, a car pulled up and out came the daughter in a trench coat and heels. Her brothers tried to ignore her, but she began weeping and wailing at the graveside, "It should've been me! It should've been me!" One of her brothers started calling her a "cunt." She, in turn, paused between sobs to call him an "asshole." The priest and the onlookers kept their eyes trained firmly down.

As her bellowing reached a crescendo, she threw off her trench coat--turns out she was stark naked underneath--and leapt into the grave atop the casket, again wailing, "It should've been me!"

"It was like somebody threw a firebomb into the crowd," Henley recalls. "Everyone scattered. The priest got in his car and left."

Her brothers spent several long minutes angrily trying to talk her out, but she refused. Finally, one of them said, "All right, it should've been you," picked up a shovel and started filling the grave with dirt on top of her. She scrambled out frantically, her hair and body coated with soil.

How did Henley get such a full view of the fracas? "We were hiding behind a tree nearby," she says.

Forest Lawn Funeral Home is located at 3204 Fairmount St. Call 214-953-0363.

One thing about winning racehorses we do know: Shortly after they've run a mile or so with a small person on their back, getting whipped most of the way, they would rather you not try to sneak up behind them and collect their urine. This, Bryan Higgins can confirm. He is a test technician at Grand Prairie's Lone Star Park. His unenviable job is to obtain 8 ounces from winning and placing horses to ensure they are not actually Ben Johnson--who, despite being hopped up on Canadian steroids, never tried to kick his sample-taker.

"There was this one horse last season that pinned me against a wall," says the 33-year-old Higgins. "I can't remember her name. She kicked me three times before I could move. But she missed my ribs, just got soft tissue."

But maybe you've recently been laid off, are desperate for work and don't mind dodging hooves for $10 per hour. Well, then, you will need two main tools to apply for a spot alongside Higgins and the rest of the test tech crew. The first is a whistle of the sort you make with your own two lips. Racehorses are conditioned from birth to urinate when they hear a certain cadence of whistling (birders, think the northern pygmy owl). This response is advantageous to a racehorse because full bladders do not generally produce faster times.

So after Higgins has snuffed his Marlboro Light under his Nike sneaker and given his horse a bucket of water and waited awhile, he will expertly observe "signs" that the animal is ready to urinate. "After 20 minutes," he says, "the male is going to drop, OK? I don't know how explicit you want me to be, but his penis is going to drop. I'll tell the guy walking him, the hot walker, Let's try it.'" Higgins will take the horse to a stall and start his whistle. Your reporter asked him to demonstrate his technique, and--I don't know how explicit you want your reporter to be--he felt the urge to relieve himself, so winsome was Higgins' whistling.

The second tool a test tech needs is a stick. Higgins could hold his 8-ounce sample cup with his bare hands, but horses, especially female horses, aren't known for their micturitional accuracy. Higgins claims he has not been hit in the course of duty, a feat made possible by something known around the test barn as Thunder Stick, which really isn't a stick at all. It is a 3-foot length of white PVC pipe, one end of which features a loop into which the sample cup is placed. Along its shaft, Higgins has written, with a black Sharpie, "Thunder Stick."

"Everybody has a favorite," Higgins says. "One of my buddies who works there, he always prefers this really long stick. He stays way away from the horse. I don't like the really long stick, because a young colt will eye you, and he'll see if you're trying to hide that stick behind your back. And he won't calm down till he's comfortable. You know. So I prefer the smaller stick."

Which is not to suggest that the smaller stick named Thunder Stick can always keep Higgins dry. He has to divide each sample. Half goes to Austin for testing; half remains in the test barn refrigerator set aside for horse urine (not to be confused with the adjacent refrigerator intended solely for personal use, storing brown-bag dinners and the like). In short, spills will happen. "I don't wear anything really, really nice," Higgins says. "I try to wear something that I don't mind if I spill a little urine on it." (A sensible policy that your reporter has adopted.)

No, Higgins' job is not a glamorous one. But maybe you're not dissuaded and you'd still like to apply, even knowing what you now know. Like him, maybe you just enjoy "being around the environment of the track." Well, there is one more thing you should know. For some of us, it is the most unpleasant part of the job: Wagering is not allowed.

Quarter horse racing at Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie begins September 20 and continues through December 1. Call 888-4-RACING for more information. Good luck.

"It's a great big deal," deadpans Daberko, who says he heads up the nation's only centralized penal cook-chill operation with tray service. This means that raw foodstuffs brought into a county warehouse facility in West Dallas are opened, prepped, cooked, fed into plastic bags and rapidly chilled before they are shipped out to Dallas' separate jail facilities. Once they arrive at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center kitchen, the food is portioned into special trays and then delivered to the appropriate Sterrett tower or shipped to another jail facility. Once at its destination, the food is quickly heated in contraptions similar to convection ovens, united with a tray containing chilled items, and served to inmates in the jail "tanks," which hold anywhere from eight to 24 inmates. "Nobody in corrections does what Dallas does," explains Daberko. "What everybody else does is they have a kitchen in each facility."

The logistical requirements for such an operation are daunting. The 18-foot-high walk-in cooler--more like a drive-in--occupies some 1,800 square feet. The kitchen holds four 200-gallon computer-operated cooking kettles. "We buy more corn than any grocery store in the country," boasts Daberko.

Menus are planned six to eight weeks in advance to avoid shortages of food items, which are often purchased by the pallet or the truckload. Meals are prepared three to five days in advance. To whip up the grub, Daberko orchestrates a team of nine salaried cooks and 55 inmates. The inmates are minimum-security birds jailed for nonviolent offenses such as check kiting. "We'll start seeing lots of open-container guys in here pretty quick," Daberko says, almost with relish, referring to the law that went into effect earlier this month prohibiting open alcohol containers in vehicles. "Tuesdays and Thursdays are terrible, because that's when the courts get geared up. We have days out here when it gets pretty tight. We spend all of our time training."

But keeping trained inmates inside the kitchen is not Daberko's only worry. He also has to keep inmates outside the kitchen reasonably content. To do this requires studious attention to some unusual meal characteristics. For example, the foods in hot meals have to be of similar densities. Otherwise, some will burn while others get barely warm. Color is also a serious consideration.

"The reason we deal with colors and things like that and try to get them to contrast is so that [inmates] can see distinctly that there are different things on the trays," Daberko says. They had a problem with appearances some years ago during the transition from older trays to the newer ones required for Dallas' centralized meal system. The new trays were shallower than the old trays, causing the food to flatten and spread in the compartment. To some, it looked like those with the older trays were getting more food than those with the new trays, even though the food was plopped onto the tray with the same 4-ounce utensil. Inmates protested vigorously, and several filed lawsuits.

Flavors are also a consideration. Recipes focus on complementary and interesting flavors--though not too interesting. "None of the Oriental things went over very well," Daberko says.

More important than all of these is the matter of texture and consistency. Every dish must be prepared so it can be consumed easily with just a plastic spoon. "We don't use anything metal that they can cut us with," Daberko says. And while he occasionally serves chicken thighs or drumsticks, he doesn't serve inmates the usual hearty Texas fare. "A pork chop bone makes a real nice something to stick you with," says Daberko, who has been stabbed on the job several times with handmade devices. "Anything like a beef bone or a pork bone, you can sharpen up. And you don't want to get stabbed too many times around here. Eventually one of them might hit something useful."

"My repo friends are as perplexed by my theater work as my theater friends are perplexed by my repo work," he says with a smile.

He followed a buddy to Dallas in 1984 after both were released from the Army. Savering didn't come from a particularly artistic background, but he was always interested in writing plays and acting. He says he was "compelled to [performing] and terrified by it" when he took a few classes at Brookhaven College and started taking small theater gigs, like playing a spear carrier in a Hip Pocket Theatre show. He'd already begun a series of jobs to sustain himself: repossessing furniture, then earning his private investigator's license and going undercover looking for drugs in warehouses as well as tailing cheating spouses.

As for why he never pursued that most clichéd of actors' survival professions, Savering says, "I'm too misanthropic to wait tables, and I think I'd go crazy stuck in an office cubicle for eight hours."

His raw, learning-on-the-job approach to stage work eventually revealed a natural inclination for live performance. He launched Theatre Quorum more than three years ago and found a host venue in the Mesquite Arts Center, attracting some of the city's finest actors to work with him. Meanwhile, he settled on full-time auto repossession as his primary income, and last year went so far as to buy his own truck and start CS Services. He works mostly for small car dealers who do their own financing and drives all over Dallas mornings and evenings hunting down folks who have defaulted on their loans. He averages 10 to 12 cars a week; 40 repos mean a good month for him. Matt, his Australian cattle dog, sits passenger side during most tasks.

The gig is about 90 percent waiting and 10 percent action, but the adrenaline of nabbing a cheapskate works for him. "I enjoy leaving crooks stranded at 7-Eleven," he says. "It's flexible. It pays well for the hours I put into it."

Auto repossession features its own vagaries, some of them dangerous. Savering has poked rottweilers out of back windows with a stick. People sleeping in the backseat (some of them mean drunks) have been discovered once he returns to the lot. Women have offered him sex not to tow their cars; men have dangled drugs in front of him. And, of course, there's the small fact that Texans are willing to defend their property with deadly force.

"There's an adage in this business that says, 'If someone comes out waving a gun in your face, they won't shoot you,'" he notes. "And that's true. When someone wants to fire, they're not going to give you warning."

Savering discovered this on--ironically enough--April Fool's Day 1996. It was 5:30 a.m. in Lancaster, and he was silently attaching a car to the back of his truck. As he pulled out of the yard, the glass shattered in his back window. There was a warm wetness on the side of his throat. He sped away, and the event was over before he realized that someone had fired eight rounds from a .22-caliber rifle at him. One shot had grazed the side of his head and pierced the cartilage in his ear. He found the bullet in his truck bed and keeps it at home.

Despite the constant risk, Savering intends to continue his business. Besides the money and the flexibility, the solitude complements his art nicely. "It's great for me, as a stage director," he says. "While I'm driving around in the middle of the night, or parked down the street waiting, I can direct a show in my head. I'll stew about what needs to be fixed, what can be improved."

Cohen founded his own private investigation firm, Investigative Resources of Texas, in 1994 after assisting collection agencies in their pursuit of big debts and in worldwide efforts to locate military deserters. He has abundant experience in insurance fraud and is a highly paid expert witness in different kinds of trials, but he considers one field a specialty: matrimonial investigation. If you're cheating on your spouse, he or she can hire Cohen to track your lying ass around the city, state, country and world to document evidence of adultery for divorce cases.

"Texas is going into its fifth year leading the nation in divorce rates," he says. "Dallas-Fort Worth is right up there. North Richland Hills, Addison, the Mid-Cities--they're all hotbeds for adultery. Highland Park is big, too. I've had some very rich, very eccentric clients from there.

"Generally speaking," he continues, "we have a stronger economy than the rest of the country. We have loose income brackets, discretionary income, people working for large commissions. All those create incentives to stray."

Marriages that turn stale often share some common traits: Both partners are working professionals with a combined income of $70-$120,000, children and a mortgage. And incidentally, contrary to the legions of spurned women pouring out their tales on daytime talk shows, Cohen says that in his experience, wives cheat on their husbands as often as vice versa. People choose to continue a troubled marriage either because they don't want to admit it's hopeless--and seek solace in other arms--or they simply crave both the stability of the institution and some variety on the side. They rarely travel very far for that extra bit: He estimates that in 80 percent of the investigations he handles, the cheater is having an affair with a co-worker. Perhaps strangest of all, that co-worker usually bears a strong physical resemblance to the spouse being cuckolded.

"If you suspect your spouse is cheating, then you're usually right," Cohen notes. "We're the only P.I. firm in Dallas I know of that does hard advertising. I have ads in topless clubs, health clubs, upscale restaurants. Imagine you're a guy who's worried about his wife. You have a couple drinks at a club, you walk into the rest room, and above the urinal there's an ad with a picture of a woman getting into a car and the line, This is your wife...but whose car is she getting into?' It plants a seed."

Once that seed is planted, and Cohen is hired, he or an assistant spends anywhere from 3 to 5 days a week for three weeks--sometimes totaling 12 to 15 separate periods of surveillance--to document what the courts call "a pattern of habit." Adulterers meet at restaurants or bars far outside their typical social circle, or are viewed entering and leaving each other's homes during odd hours. Cohen is always nearby--waiting in a car, or just a few tables away--to catch on digital video images of lovers holding hands, kissing, touching one another on the bottom. Sometimes husbands tryst with other men, wives with other women, but no matter the situation, Cohen halts his efforts after the couple departs a public space; while adultery itself is not illegal in Texas, spying on and taping someone in a private residence definitely is.

Paranoia runs in all directions: Cohen confirms he's been tapped for countersurveillance, in which spouses believe their husband or wife is having them followed and want him to prove it. All snickering aside, "I believe cheating on a spouse is morally and ethically wrong," he says. "It's very destructive. It wreaks hell psychologically on men and women. There are times when I've charged clients for counseling, because they spend hours and hours going over their stories, wondering what they did wrong."

Cohen's advice? "If you don't want to be married, get out. Otherwise, keep it in your pants. It saves everyone a lot of trouble."

Investigative Resources of Texas can be reached at 877-285-9519.

In the spring of 1996, Frenkel, then 37 years old, was pregnant with her first child. One morning, as she sat on her bed, putting on makeup, she felt something peculiar. "It was like an electric shock that was moving up toward my navel," she says. "And then I started feeling back pains. And I thought, 'What the heck is wrong?' I didn't know what was happening until I started bleeding.

"When I came home from the hospital, I was the one who had to do the cleanup. So I spent a lot of time praying about what to do to help other people who were in similar situations."

Thus from the umber stains of that stillbirth years ago sprang Frenkel's new business. She incorporated Crime Scene Clean-Up Services that same year. She says she went door to door, offering her services to people in whose homes and apartments and places of business had occurred all manner of messy, unspeakable tragedies. Teeth embedded in walls. Puddles of blood on Berber carpet. A bathroom shower raining on a dead man's face for two weeks.

She can now talk about her own reasons for getting into the business back then, but Frenkel closely guards the details of her work today. She has cleaned up the physical aftermath of some of the most publicized deaths in the area, but the emotional mess left by these incidents, some of them recent, can't be carted off in red bags for incineration. She'd prefer the families involved not have to read about any of it here.

One case she will discuss, though. About a year ago Frenkel got a call about a situation in an Oak Cliff apartment (she and her regular team of five assistants are always on call). So she drove there in her unmarked car with her tools and solvents. She pulled on a disposable white body suit and strapped on a particulate respirator. Plastic visor to protect the eyes. All mucus membranes covered. And Frenkel went in to deal with someone else's mess.

Seems a woman had decided to go out of town for an extended period, and she had decided, in the interest of convenience presumably, to leave five dogs in her two-bedroom apartment. "And these were not small dogs," Frenkel says. "We're talking big dogs. She left huge tubs of water and food for them. Long story short, the dogs ganged up and killed one of the dogs. Another dog died, I don't know how. The other three got trapped in the bathroom, very small bathroom, and chewed through the hot water line. The hot water was running the entire time. One of the dogs was actually boiled to death. It was a horrible, horrible situation."

Space prevents a full recounting of how difficult the entry was because of water pressure against the bathroom door or how hazardous the flea infestation had grown or even how quickly the dog owner, upon returning to town, found herself behind bars. But two animals did survive. What was left of the other three went into the red bags and the incinerator. Such material is handled like medical waste, and its disposal is regulated by the state. Frenkel contracts with another outfit to haul it off.

Frenkel handles about 70 cases every year. Unfortunately, she regularly turns away work because she's too busy. Since she started Crime Scene Clean-Up services, other cleanup concerns have entered the industry. Some have endured, but most have moved on because, according to Frenkel, they didn't understand "it's not a pleasant thing to do." This is called an understatement.

"The only thing that keeps me going, that keeps me from burning out, is that I do a lot of praying," she says. "We pray, and we fast. You have to pray. You can't do it without God. You just can't do it. You see things that people do to each other that are just horrendous. I can't do it apart from the Lord. I really can't."