BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Saturday night Sonny and I tasted the wild side of life. One of Sonny's co-workers from the bottling plant persuaded us to go with him to a swingers club. Earl and his wife, Alice, have been singing the praises of The Rusty Screw for months.

"It will do wonders for your marriage, Sweetie," Alice said. "We used to go to those marriage encounter deals all the time and, believe me, there's no comparison."

I was reluctant. Would I fit in with the sophisticated set that frequents such places? I wore my pink chiffon, having been told that the Screw (as the regulars call it) looked a lot like the set of the Lawrence Welk Show.

I even borrowed my mother's rhinestone poodle brooch. It makes me feel sick to think about Mother ever pinning it to her breast again now that it has been defiled. It witnessed scenes you can usually only see on cable or in a $15 an hour motel room. Two couples gyrating in a kind of high cholesterol sandwich with four beef patties loaded with extra cheese. Ladies old enough to be my grandmother showing off their garter belts.

I had to drink five Bud Lites before I could set foot on the dance floor. Right away, people came over and started frisking me, as if they were looking for something concealed on my person. Suspecting they were after my mother's brooch, I started doing the boot scootin' boogie to evade them. So what if I was the only person doing it? At least I got home with my mother's poodle.

I wish I could say the same for Sonny and his Bodacious belt buckle. You'd think he would have noticed when his pants fell down. My theory is he was dehydrated from working in the yard. Anyway, I lost him in the crowd and the next time I saw him he was sitting in a woman's lap. Who knows what had become of Bodacious, which is extra sad, given the bull's recent demise.

Of course, by then there were lots of men in their boxer shorts and several women were traipsing around in baggy nylon underwear. It was exciting in a way--like if you got to be an extra in a Russ Meyer film full of skanky women and sweaty old men and they were engaged in a kind of ritualized mating dance that would make a peacock blush.

A woman I recognized as Jasper's Sunday school teacher climbed on her dance partner's shoulders and began yelling, "Hi Yo, Silver!" Which reminds me--at our junior high school dances there was always a teacher on hand to measure the distance between a girl and boy with a sawed-off six inch ruler. Suffice it to say there were no one at the Rusty Screw performing such calculations.

By 2:00am I'd had all I could stand. "Find your clothes and let's get out of here," I told Sonny. In the dark, he picked up a pair of fishnet hose instead.

I wouldn't dream of going back if it weren't for the solid evidence that swinging makes a marriage stronger. It certainly cured me of fantasizing about overweight middle-aged men in brown socks and khaki shorts with gold medallions nestled in their gray chest hair. And Sonny couldn't keep his hands off me when we got home.