BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Remember summer love? Passion. Mosquitoes. Sweat.

I confess to making out with hoodlums in the graveyard on hot August nights. I'll admit I was a crazy thrill seeker, a spoiled playgirl who broke every taboo.

My life wasn't glamorous by any stretch. I was just your average teenage hellcat. I worked all season at the gator farm selling snow cones so my family could afford roach spray and baloney sandwiches. I went to church Sunday morning--prim, starched, looking pure as the driven snow, and won every Bible drill hands down.

Then--the summer after my junior year in high school--I caught an eyeball full of Mr. Smooth, the kind of boy who turns a girl's insides to fetid mush. You know the type --six foot five and built like a steam shovel.

It happened down at Devil's Bathtub, where the horseflies are big as your thumb. I was treading water so my beehive wouldn't get wet. An new group of studs showed up--in town, it turned out, for the 4-H swine show. Kind of on the goobery side.

Then I saw him. Tall and blonde. A Nordic god, nonchalantly stripping down to his Speed-o. He didn't know I existed.

His magnificent cannonball almost knocked me unconscious, deflating my beehive by several inches.

Deprived of my pride and joy, my crowning glory, how could I hope to attract him? I could pretend to lose my bikini top--that had worked with other boys. I could act like I was drowning. But what if he didn't care?

Suddenly Scooter Webb yelled, "Gar!" and all hell broke lose. The local kids scrambled out of the tank, leaving behind the helpless farm boys unfamiliar with the hazards of the deep.

Scooter and Red Gibbons--fast thinkers--hauled the pig enthusiasts out one by one with a pool cue. All of them except for my Adonis who, paralyzed with fright, clung to a busted Styrofoam ice chest, his lily white legs a tantalizing treat for the toothy fish.

I'll never forget the way his screams pierced the hot shimmering air like a switchblade. We stared in dull shock from the safety of the shore as the icy water turned blood red. Somebody do something, I thought.

Then it hit me--it was up to me.

"Mr. Gar, you don't want that stinky old boy. Come here. I'll give you something good to eat," I said, crouching on a flat rock and dangling my beehive below the surface. I would sacrifice my greatest treasure for a boy I'd never met.

My plan worked. The gar left its prey and circled menacingly before attacking my hair with primitive fury.

"Help. Help!" I cried, as it dragged me underwater.

Scooter grabbed my feet and pulled me to dry land. The gar, tangled in my sun-bleached tresses, flailed and fought.

My friends brought Leroy to shore. That was his name, the name I vowed to call my son, if I ever had one. He had to have six stitches.

He never even asked my name.

I had to get my hair cut short. They couldn't get the tangles out.

Sometimes at night I think of Leroy. Or when I see a garfish in the mud, dead and stinking up the place.

It reminds me of the summer I became a woman.