Beauty Dish

Balls to the Wall

Last fall, Avon Corporate made a power play. The hell with serving half the world! We're applying phallic logic! They printed thin glossy catalogues featuring items like battery-operated nose hair trimmers and NFL pajamas. A Men's Catalogue, oh baby yeah. And good Avon Lady that I am, I bought in. I ordered two hundred brochures, pictured the fat neighborhood bookkeeper with the closet full of red plaid shirts buying moisturizing face cream and an extra-large spritz bottle of RPM cologne. I might double my earnings, I thought. I might meet a cute single guy in need of soothing eye cream and a soft pair of fingers to apply it. This Men's Catalogue is brilliant, I thought. Brilliant.

Three months later one hundred fifty Men's Catalogues taunted me from my bedroom floor. No one wanted them. No men sifted through the slick pages, carefully considered the benefits of daily exfoliation. My female customers laughed when I tried to slip them a Men's Catalogue or two to give to the homeboys ruling their sun. You've gotta be kidding, they said. My man barely showers. He ain't gonna start spreading Ab Cream on his love handles. It's a joke, right? I'll just order him that soap-on-a-rope in the regular Avon book.

So I tried stealth brochure drops - leaving those aging books stuck under the windshield wipers of every pickup truck in town, placing one or two next to the girly mags covering the coffee table at the barbershop. But no beauty-hungry men called. My demonstration nose hair trimmers gathered dust. One week before the damn catalogues expired, I still had close to forty glossies littering my floor. Oh crap, I thought. That's fifty cents a book thrown away. I searched the newspaper for some event where men gathered - a demolition derby perhaps, or a bear hunting convention. But Southern California doesn't host a whole lotta manly man get-togethers, so I squished the paper into a small ball. As I reached over my head to toss the wad into the trash, the words Men's Bowling League caught my eye. Oh! This is it! I unwrapped the paper, read the small notice about the winter league finals and nodded my head. Yeah. Bowling. Yeah.

The following Saturday I dressed in my shortest skirt and a yellow-striped Avon tube-top. I applied extra Avon lipstick in 24-Hour Red and lined my eyes with a black Glimmerstick. I spayed as much Avon Advanced Techniques Hair Spray as my dark brown locks could take and added my highest Avon heels. A healthy squirt of Goddess fragrance completed the ensemble. If your regular sales avenues fail, use what ya got, I thought, hiked up my tube top, stuffed those forty Men's Catalogues in my backpack and headed for the bowling alley.

The circulating lights around the Surf Bowl sign seemed to wink at me as I parked in the decaying asphalt drive. I could smell the salt and dead fish of my ocean mixed with the exhaust of a thousand Sunday drivers and the acrid smoke of a group of smokers hiding behind the dumpster. Every time the door opened a waft of sixties surf tunes blew from the alley. The smokers turned in unison to watch me click up the cement stairs. The wind picked up and my skirt rose above my panty line.

No one noticed me walk inside the alley. All eyes were on a string of electronic scoreboards, each displaying a team name across the top and individual players in a neat row along the left-hand side. A team named "Spare Me" rose to their feet with a holler, fists pumping the air as a middle-aged man in a Hawaiian shirt printed with naked hula dancers rolled the pins down, rolled a strike.

They look like good prospects, I thought. Six men sat back down in molded plastic chairs, all late-forties, early-fifties, all in need of some serious men's Avon. A tall man with a shock of gray chest hair escaping from the collar of his Save Our Oceans t-shirt stood, picked up a black ball and stuck two fingers and a thumb in the holes. The track lighting above him bounced off the sheen of the ball, created disco lights on the floor. He twirled around three times as his team-mates chanted "strike, strike, strike, strike," lined the ball to his eye, swung his arm back with a step, let 'er rip. The ball flew from his hand as if it held a hidden magnet, flew straight for the pins, left just two standing. The team lifted beer bottles in unison, tilted heads back and swallowed deep sips. I made my move.

"Hey, guys? Can I sit with you? I have some good luck Avon stuff for you." I didn't wait for an answer, sat cross-legged on the floor at their feet. "Now, guys. Be honest. You wear those bowling shoes all the time, right? How many of you have athlete's feet?" I started opening my backpack to retrieve a handful of samples and a demo tube of Avon Antifungal Foot Cream. The men still held their beer bottles; their mouths open in surprise. "I mean it, guys, I have something that can help. Don't be shy. Speak up!"

A short man with his pants belted far below his stomach clunked his bottle on the floor. "Oh what the hell. I've got athlete's feet." He began to untie his shoes.

"Bob! You're up! Wait and do that later, man!" Hawaiian shirt man pointed to the scoreboard overhead.

"Nah. Maybe she's good luck. Remember the night we snuck the cat in?" The men nodded, looked thoughtful. Bob continued to remove his shoes. I squeezed a generous dollop of cream in his hands and told him to rub it in and around his red toes. I had to breathe through my mouth to avoid smelling them, praying the peppermint and menthol in the product would cover up his nasty foot odor. The men stared at Bob, watched him massage his toes, replace his socks, custom made bowling shoes, stand and grab his ball, a lively glitter green one, and he twirled, they chanted, he rolled....STRIKE!

"Damn. She IS good luck." Hawaiian man pointed to the quietest team member, a shy balding man wearing adventure pants with a million pockets. "Take your shoes off, Fred. The championship is at stake!" He moved his finger from Fred to me, and though he pointed at my head he looked straight at my tube top. "And someone get this lady a beer!"

Between turns, I showed the men my brochures, spritzed each of them with Wild Country cologne, each time at the lane meant another beauty procedure. They covered their hands in Silicon Glove hand cream. They lifted their shirts and applied Mesmerize roll-on deodorant. They bowled like pros, too, one strike after another. Maybe it was the Avon, maybe it was the beer, I didn't know and they didn't care.

"Hell, I'll wear lipstick if our scores keep this up!" Bob stood, prepared to take his turn, look at me expectantly, spoke to my breasts. "So. What's up this time?"

"Uh, we went through all my demo products. I have some Ask Me About Skin So Soft stickers. How about if I stick one on your shirt?" Bob shrugged his shoulders, stuck his chest out. I tried to avoid pressing the sticker onto any stray chest hairs but in Bob's case this was difficult at best. He grabbed his ball and twirled. I looked at my sheet of stickers. Hmmmmmm. I removed another one, stuck it on one of the alley's own balls resting in a tidy row behind me.

"Excuse me? Spare Me Team?" A beefy man with a Surf Bowl manager's shirt and cargo shorts strode toward our lane. "No excess people allowed in the lane during a tournament. This woman must leave." He spat out the word "woman" like I had cooties.

"No way, come on. She's our mascot. Besides the Pin Fall Wizards have a woman at their lane." Hawaiian shirt man opened his arms wide to indicate a group decision. The manager stuck his hands on his hips.

"The Pin Fall Wizards have an infant in one of those - whatchacallit - baby carrier things. That doesn't count!" He pointed at me then pointed at the door. "Out."

I started gathering my leftover materials, started packing demo products and my stickers in my pack. One of the stickers stuck halfway out from the sheet so I removed it and plopped it on another alley ball. The manager's nose turned from red to violet in anger.

"And stop putting stickers on my balls!!!"

Bob lifted his beer. "You wish."

The men exploded in laughter, the manager grabbed my arm, man handled me out the door. But a few days later Hawaiian shirt man called, ordered foot cream and cologne and deodorant for all team members. "Lady, you have no idea how this has changed our game."

"And I bet your wives and girlfriends like the changes too, don't they?" I patted myself on the back, imagined the world a much fresher place with six beautified bowlers.

"Hell, they don't know about this shit. We're only using this stuff during league play."

doorbell []