BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

I've received numerous phone calls since writing in this column that sex should be illegal. While most callers supported my position, one message in particular caught my attention.

"Miz Bunch," the caller said, "If you just give me fifteen minutes of your time, I'll change your mind."

I always try to look at both sides of an issue so, in the interest of good journalism, I called Harry B. to see what he had in mind. We arranged to meet Thursday before car pool.

When I knocked at the door of Room 69 at the Flamingo Motel, a husky voice said, "Come right on in."

Harry B. sat on a twin bed, attired in a pair of white briefs.

I had expected a furry wrestler type, not the gangling fellow who posed seductively on the wagon wheel bedspread.

"Call me Weasel," he said.

I couldn't take my eyes off the man's taut buttocks and suddenly I felt ashamed. My husband Sonny's underwear was not half as white as Weasel's.

"What detergent do you use?" I asked.

"Spunk," he said. "Let me show you my sudsing action."

He began a sort of gyrating, primitive dance. It brought to mind a film from high school health class on diseases of the central nervous system. Lunging and hunching, he turned on the TV and flipped from station to station, settling on channel 12. The Gomer Pyle theme song was the perfect accompaniment.

Without realizing what was happening, I began to bump and grind. Transported back in time, I was once again a go go girl at a Jacksboro Highway dive. I was hot, a sex cat primed for the hunt. And my prey was any man in a hundred yard radius.

Weasel leered at me from beneath brushy black eyebrows. What was his strange animal magnetism that made me forget I was a married woman with a cholesterol count of 280, teenagers, and a overdrawn bank account?

We circled each other in a wild pulsating dance.

Sergeant Carter shouted, "Pyle!"

"Pull my love handle," Weasel panted.

My fingers were mere inches from him when I caught a glimpse of myself in the smudged mirror that hung over the dresser with its hotel Holy Bible.

Who was the out of shape matron bulging and quivering in a green polyester pants suit? What had happened to the sexy exotic dancer?

Who was this pathetic, wheezing pig?

I grabbed my purse and made my escape, peeling out in my '85 Suburban. When I got to school I pulled up shamefaced at the tail end of the car pool line, something that had never happened before.

What had got into me? I was a wife, a mother, a member of the 700 Club. And I almost threw it all away for one moment of total, earth-shaking passion.

Confidential to Harry B., a.k.a. Weasel,

You came close to changing my mind and my life. You almost made me give up my husband, my place in line, my family values.

How many lonely, susceptible housewives have you ruined? How many Women's Club members missed important committee meetings to fool around with you? How many church women let their egg salad spoil in the back seat while they clung to you on a dirty air mattress in a corn field?

Guys like you should be against the law.