BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

When your husband gets caught with a topless dancer, you ought to be able to take to your bed. People from the church should bring you little sandwiches on a tray, as if you were the bereaved wife of a man killed trying to rescue a barn full of puppies in a snow storm.

Everybody should feel as sorry for you as you do for yourself.

Instead, the gossips in this town crawl all over bad news like maggots on a dead possum. No one has so much as brought me a cookie. I could starve to death for all anyone cares.

I called Juanita Stallings to see if she'd pick up a loaf of white bread. After all, she IS the chairman of the home-bound committee. Her husband said she wasn't home.

She's probably out doing good with the Do-Gooder Brigade which is what started this whole damn mess. A pet project of Brother Dickey Webb at Goat Head Baptist, the group takes pictures of license plates on the vehicles parked at Krystal's XXX. Then they find out the owner's name and send him a letter which is usually intercepted by his wife.

Krystal's is on Sonny's route and I can't help it if the models go through a case of Ol' Red a day. Oh, what's the use? Who am I fooling? The letter lays it out in black and white. My husband, the father of my children, was at a sleazy porn store from 2:00 to 5:00pm last Friday.

I'd be willing to give Sonny the benefit of the doubt if he hadn't talked my baby brother Jimmy Ed, who's already on probation, into meeting him there. Not to mention totally ruining the reputation of my cousin, Little Ronnie, a truly gifted singing evangelist.

"I was on official business," Sonny said when I showed him the letter.

I didn't have time to listen to his lies, with Ronnie's fiance in hysterics and Mama calling to cuss me out cause Jimmy Ed was back in jail for possession of pornography.

The saddest thing of all is the break-up of Ronnie and his bride-to-be. Ronnie and Donnetty were a match made in heaven. At least that's the way it seemed when both their families vanished over the Bermuda Triangle two years ago. Everybody thought they were made for each other--both liked spaghetti and meatballs. They loved the poems of Rod McKuen.

Now I know why XXX places are considered bad.

Ronnie left Donnetty in the lurch. Pinky Dilweather, an aging Las Vegas showgirl who works at Krystal's, took Little Ronnie under her wrinkled wing. Now he's head over heals in love with her.

I tried to talk some sense into his numb skull. "Pinky was spinning things on her bosom when you were just a glimmer in your father's eye," I said. "You and Donnetty are both members of the X generation--y'all have things in common."

"My relationship with Donnetty was only puppy love," he said. "What Pinky and I have is full-grown dog love." He wouldn't listen to reason. It was like his body had been taken over by a spore from outer space.

Much as I wanted to lie in bed eating ice cream and licking my wounds, I realized I had to do something before Krystal's XXX broke up every home in Axel.

Little did I know I would wind up in a tattoo parlor with an ex-Hell's Angel.

[To be continued.]