BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Last night I dreamed I was going on a trip but my suitcase was too heavy. I opened it and discovered it was full of cans of soda pop. The dream reminded me of the times my family went to Mexico and my mother made us live on squirt cheese and Fresca--so we wouldn't swallow worms and die. I have since learned that alcohol kills worms. That's why I always drink a lot, no matter where I am.

Drinking helps you in many ways. If you fall off the bed, for example, your body is relaxed and you might even sleep through it. It helps you forget what a rotten creep you are. It helps you socially as well, as I discovered recently at South Padre. I made about 100,000 friends, starting when we were stuck in traffic on the bridge to the island. My husband Sonny was driving. It gave me the chance to chat with spring breakers through the window.

"Do you believe in love at first sight or do you want me to drive by again?" I asked some guys in a truck plastered with A&M decals. "My dad must be a terrorist cause I'm the bomb," I told a hunky body builder type. "Your father must be a fisherman because you look like trout," I said to another boy.

"Roll up the windows, Dad," my daughter Destinee pleaded, as she hid on the floor of the car.

So I jumped out and began climbing into other people's cars, using the pick-up lines I had learned from years of hanging around bars. Usually, I try not to flirt with strange men and boys in front of my children. The malt liquor I was drinking had lowered my inhibitions, I am ashamed to say. At least it showed Jasper and Destinee the dirty side of getting drunk.

At last we got across the causeway. The island was teeming with college freshman. Many had signs that said, "Show us your titties!" They were yelling the same thing over battery-powered megaphones. Some girls complied. So did a disgraceful woman old enough to be my aunt on the parking lot of the Circle K. It was shocking and caused a three car pile-up and when we got home Jasper asked me to make him an appointment with a counselor.

But soon things began to look up. On the beach, sponsors were handing out condoms, suntan lotion and deodorant, the staffs of spring break life. Friendly young men with fraternity tattoos poured cups of beer for young and old alike. Jasper forgot about the scene on the bridge and gave me some of his.

Some boys from a different fraternity made an old man in a Hawaiian shirt stand on his head and drink a beer. It was terrible. They poured beer down the leg of his Bermuda shorts and laughed at him when he fell and broke his sunglasses. But they gave Sonny a new beer--which showed they weren't so bad after all.

Sonny entered a dance contest and won a free t-shirt and I took advantage of the opportunity to phone my mother for five cents a minute, another deal offered by spring break sponsors.

"Hey, Mom, I'm partying hardy," I said but I think she misunderstood me.

"Try Gas-X," she said. "And next time take your own cheese."