BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

She is an oil barge listing dangerously, a disaster waiting to happen, her hulk heavy with suffocating ooze. He is water fowl, a fish, a turtle--unaware of looming danger--having a fun time at the sea shore.

--Juanita Stallings, from Ode to Grecian Formula

Next week I'm going with my family to South Padre Island--spring break capital of the world--where I expect to be relegated to the side-lines like a discarded condom.

I am "damaged goods," having injured myself beyond any reasonable expectation of ever having fun again. The fun of a walk on the beach. The fun of bungee jumping. The fun of diving drunk off a balcony into a swimming pool full of margarita mix.

The doctor says I should probably stay indoors as much as possible. This time I fell into a man hole but, with me, it's always something. Calcium-deficient bones. Doughy white skin. Head lice.

My husband Sonny's digging out his itsy-bitsy Speed-o, the kind the millionaires from Monterrey wear. Of course their tans are better. And their buttocks firm. But Sonny likes to set an example for the college students. "My generation invented getting drunk," he bragged last spring. He offered to teach them the latest steps. "You guys are missing a chance to dance with the man they call the white James Brown," he yelled after them. Then he got even drunker and fell asleep in the sun. At the clinic they prescribed an ointment and over-the-counter pain medication.

I've learned not to expect too much. Last year Stormy couldn't go in the water, having cut her hand while making a fake ID with her frog dissection kit. And Destinee had just pierced her belly button and was fighting off an infection. And then there were the jelly fish. And the giant squid like the one in Sphere.

Even so I like spring break. It's chock-full of events I don't think you should have to give up just because you're somebody's mother. But it's been years since I entered the wet T-shirt contest--back when Destinee was still nursing. I got a Big Johnson T-shirt and a free carton of cigarettes just for trying out.

That night a jar of scalding hot baby meat blew up in my face as I took it out of the microwave. Blinded, I hit my head on a cabinet door, and immediately thought of Samson--how the strongest man was reduced from hunkiness to helplessness. Was it a message from above? Made sightless as much by tears as beef, I loaded my starving offspring in the car and swerved through the merrymakers, dimly seeking the island's only drugstore where I bought a pair of eye patches.

I spent the rest of the vacation listening to television, as the babies made-do with the remnants of the exploded beef.

Every year I vow things will be different. Every year it's a new injury, as if fate conspired to recast me in a timid, modest, matronly mold. The shark attack. The broken toe caused by running from a shark. The surf board rash. And now this man hole sprain.

To top it off, Sonny informed me last night my panties are too tight. He said this in his Speed-o as he packed his James Brown records. Is it my fault I had to abandon the fifteen minute aerobics regimen I performed religiously every morning in order to rub sunless tanning lotion on his pale backside?

It might not be so bad if I had someone to keep me company in the condo. We could play checkers and watch The Price is Right.

The millionaire wives from Monterrey don't have to worry about their panties--you can see the tiny cannula scars on their thighs. And their tan, firm millionaire husbands don't have to worry about someone coming up to them from behind with something besides tanning lotion.