Beauty Dish

Wednesday, May 26, 2004

Among the Craters I pilfered my son's iPod for my Million Brochure Walk yesterday. At least it felt like a million brochures. I started with fifty Campaign 12 brochures stuffed in my backpack and two boxes each of Cellu-Sculpt, Imari fragrance, SlimWell peanut butter crunch diet bars, and Planet Spa mud mask samples - stuffed in my trusty kilt. The bars littered my left butt cheek with small rises like huge hives, and I realized that my body imitated a horrific Before photo for both the SlimWell and Cellu-Sculpt products. Fifty brochures. Such a long walk for a drop in my catalog bucket. I turned the corner of my street and walked toward the condos framing the lagoon. I passed the faux French Country style Bel Age elder care facility, and listened to two dogs barking behind the stockade fence. I opened a SlimWell bar, took a bite, and chucked the rest over the fence. Snarls and scurries and one yelp later the dogs were silent. I left a brochure swinging on the fence gate, one finger print of peanut butter staining the cover. A little girl in a Catholic school uniform sat on a glider seat at the edge of the condos. Her long dark hair lay on her shoulders in two pigtails tied with green ribbon. Her mom is one of my regular customers. I waved. "Hey Moooooooooom!" she yelled, turning her body toward the open door. "It's the makeup lady with the funny skirt!" The kilt is now my Official Trademark Item. I've gotta post that photo. 3:49:10 PM    doorbell  []   Turkish Delights I had breakfast with my Turkish friend this morning. We sat in a diner surround by tire stores and piercing salons on the Pacific Coast Highway. I wanted to hear what happened prom night when he pretended to be "Mister J," private driver in a black beauty modern carriage. He ate a huge Spanish omelet with homefries and rye toast. My legs ached with the fatigue of a hundred hills of Avon brochure delivery yesterday, and I stretched them under the table and rested my feet on the red vinyl booth seat next to my friend. The waitress is the spitting image of Eddie Falco, and every time I meet my friend she says, "The regular?" and fills a pot of hot water and places it on the scarred formica table next to a basket of herbal tea. I'm always hyper and happy here. Something about breakfast on the coast in a diner filled with young marines and pierced ladies makes me laugh, makes me break out of my skin. My friend isn't a great storyteller. He stutters and squints. He sells coffee by day to churches and organizations. If you saw him sitting in the diner, eating a big omelet, grimacing at the bad coffee, balding gray head and crooked teeth, you wouldn't think he was a brilliant man. But he is! He's the smartest person I've ever met. He once studied philosophy and argued with the best-known minds on the planet. They called him "Aristotle" and predicted he'd go far in the world of ideas and internal mirrors. But the universe gave him a swift poke in the side, and he dropped out of graduate school after a realization that the world was greater than even philosophical truth. Now he sells beans and eats eggs and cares for his elderly parents. He's happy. "So, c'mon, tell me! What did they say when they got in the car? What did they do? What did you say? Did anyone suspect you were my friend?" I peppered him with questions, bouncing up and down while the vinyl squeaked and sighed beneath me. "Oh. Right. I told them I used to be Michael Jackson's private driver. You know. Until his legal difficulties. I used to drive busloads of little boys to the ranch." "What?!" I screamed with delight! "Did they believe it?" "Oh. Sure. Ya. They believed it. I couldn't shut 'em up." Mister J continued eating, poured cream in his coffee, while Waitress Eddie leaned on the counter, reading the Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times. 10:42:15 AM    doorbell  []

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