BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Sonny's family has always treated me like dirt.

Before Sonny and I got married, Sonny's mother told me he could never have children, due to an accident in shop class. When Stormy was born nine months later, I almost fainted.

When you get married, you expect your spouse to put you up on a big pedestal which Sonny never did. Modeling for Lurlene's House of Style was the only way I could hang on to a few meager crumbs of self-esteem.

People go on and on about how they used to envy me when I modeled for the lunch crowd at Fuzzy's Tea Room. All that glamour and high fashion. Plunging necklines. Plastic clothes. The excitement of knowing there are about twenty eyes staring at you. Plus, I was the one who started all the new fads in Axel.

Little did anybody realize I went through $50 worth of panty hose every time I set foot in Fuzzy's. And I was only getting paid in leftovers--usually deviled ham, which I am not that fond of.

Life on the runway is not the funway.

Underneath my fabulous beauty I was hiding a broken heart. That's the way it is with us Marilyn Monroe types.

A beautiful woman is just a sitting duck for con men and ne'er do wells. We're usually pretty agreeable and will listen to any cockamamy story.

Which brings me back to Sonny.

Excuse me, but according to our marriage vows, isn't he supposed to cleave only unto me?

But now he's back cleaving unto his mother again.

Alarms went off the first time I met Sonny and noticed the tattoo. Sure enough, he turned out to be the biggest mama's boy you've ever seen.

It's one thing to change your mother's oil. Painting her toenails is a whole nother deal. Especially if you won't even hold my hand at Marriage Enrichment like all the other husbands do.

To think of all I gave up for that man. Exotic dancing. Cherry sloe gin. Nine other boyfriends. I traded it all in to be Mrs. Sonny Bunch, just a drudge with a lackluster life.

I've pretty much retired from modeling. Half the time I couldn't get my hair to do right, which is real bad for business at the beauty shop. Anyway Fuzzy's has been closed since that outbreak. My self-esteem has been at an all-time low.

Then suddenly out of the blue Minnie Ledbetter calls and says the Concubines of the Knights of Pythagoras (a fraternal order to which generations of prominent Axelites have belonged) will celebrate their 500th Year in America with a pot luck supper and style show. Fashions will, of course, be provided by Lurlene's House of Style.

Minnie says naturally I'm the first one she thought of. (I'm a perfect 14 and look like I've been poured into practically every outfit at Lurlene's.)

The hitch is--our husbands are supposed to escort us in special helmets when we wear our "After 5:00 Creation," which in my case is a strapless pink chiffon mother of the bride number.

And guess who's got to take his mother to bingo?

"It's not like she can take tap dancing lessons like other old ladies," Sonny said.

She's on a walker, and sometimes I feel like I'm being beat to death with it.

If his mother's bingo means more to Sonny than the most important Concubine activity this town has ever seen, then he can just live at the bingo hall and see if I care. Surely there's someone in this town who would be proud to escort a height and weight proportionate professional woman to the social event of the season.

My second cousin Cecil, who won the 1987 Cobb County Dance Contest on the pity vote because he had just been released from drug rehab, has volunteered to take me. He only comes up chest high on me but it will be okay so long as he doesn't get into the paregoric again.

I've been asked to mention that tuxedos are available for rent at Dub's Wagon Wheel. See y'all there.