Hello, Gorgeous

One night I went out with an old girlfriend to two local bars. At the first, we were among the youngest and prettiest women there. The mean age of the clientele was roughly fifty-one and we felt dewy and svelte by comparison. We languished there, sipping our beers and reveling in our prettiness pecking order, which we re-ascertained every so often as a gust of frigid night air ushered in a new gaggle of women. This may sound mean spirited, this sizing up, but we meant it less in a catty, mean-girl way and more as an ethnological study in Bar Trends of the Average North American Single Person. It was an underfunded study.

What really struck me, after a while, as this pageant of ordinary and some would say homely women poured in through the door, was how beautiful they all were. Mostly to themselves, for better and for worse. But I started to sort of fall in love with each and every one of them.

Now by most accounts, this crop, including us mind you, would not have won any awards-- would not have even been allowed to fill out the forms. These bodies were beyond pear-shape with booties and bosoms resembling all manner of cones and cups and bells and boards. From the very ample to the exceedingly wanting, these bodies defied convention in a variety of combinations rarely found in the media—actually more indigenous to factory town malls and the boardwalks of New Jersey. There were bad dye jobs and brittle blowouts, relentless wrists and unforgiving chins. There were too many hair cuts from the eighties and far too little clothing for their ages, but every one of these women looked beautiful to me and I finally figured out why.

And it wasn't because I was tipsy on my half a warm beer.

These women were beautiful because they felt beautiful. Having come straight from the triumph of Getting Ready For Saturday Night, every last one of them was beaming, emerging victorious from their quest.

They all took care to choose the right outfit, some spending fourfold the time and energy of the others, but all of them looking to accentuate the positive and play down what that lady in the dressing room at Macy's had referred to as her "challenge areas." They would hang up the clothing rejected on the bed when they got home later, they told themselves. They would touch up their roots next week. This was good enough for now. This would do for tonight.

Then they leaned in closer.

Some liked what they saw in the mirror more than others but they all pressed on. They futzed and tussled, smudged and scrunched, using a combination of what they'd learned over the years from magazines and big sisters, infomercials and best friends. Some still tried to recreate what that professional make-up artist had done at their cousin's wedding all those years ago, but most had it down pat. Then they all smiled, checked their teeth, said, "Not bad," and moved on.

Good taste did not come naturally to these women. In fact, it hid around the corner. Somewhere along the line, a woman grabbed a gold anklet that an old boyfriend had given her and another grabbed a sweater handed down from a sister too lazy to hand wash. Most of them remembered to tuck in an errant bra strap and forgot that their thongs were showing. And they all chose the dangily earrings that their best friends assured them, "Aren’t too young," even though, in the back of their minds, they knew they were too old.

Every choice was carefully arrived at because it made them feel beautiful, whether via the new voice in their head, recently replacing another after a milestone birthday, or a compliment paid twenty years ago still resonating in their mind. Each layer reminded them of ordinary events or traces of people that had brushed up against their egos, leaving them with just enough confidence to keep the momentum going. Then they threw on a coat, hit the lights and headed out the door.

And hopefully, if they were just a little bit smart, they didn't give it another thought for the rest of Saturday night.

As the bar swelled, I imagined other bars in Morris County, Vermont, Madrid, and Dubai. And as the dressing hour draped itself around the globe, I envisioned an enormous wave of self-esteem brimming in Ecuadorian women parting their hair to be braided, Tokyo teenagers buckling themselves into 4" wedgies, and Masai women adjusting collars of beaded rings. With the exception of Amish women and nuns, there were billions of women all getting ready for a night on the town, or the prairie or the tundra as it may be. Legions and legions of women all looking in mirrors or hubcaps or darkened clean windows on this Saturday night and at that critical moment, in an instant of radical acceptance, saying to themselves, "This is as good as I get," and then, "Let's go have me some fun." All of them arriving at the same notion of self-good-enoughness. Or else they never would have left the house.

And so we toasted to them, my friend and I, toasted, "To leaving the house!"

We finished our beers and slipped off our stools and as I snaked through the place towards the door, I mouthed the words, "You're all beautiful and I love you."

Then we went to the other bar.

The Other Bar was in another town, a fancier town. In the Other Bar, we were among the oldest broads, the mean age being closer to thirty. These women had also taken part in tonight's beauty ritual but with far greater results. We ordered a drink and stood off to the side and marveled at their radiant skin. Their round bottoms and perky boobs nearly saluted us. Their taught bodies and toned arms practically reverberated with gym-vim. They had expensive clothes and hair and shoes and wore it all so well. Taste had either been bred into them or arrived at via checkbook, but it all came together breezily and they all looked thoroughly divine.

My girlfriend and I sipped our cocktails in relative obscurity and quietly thanked the gazelles at this watering hole for giving us something shiny to look at. For adorning the room with glamour, dripping with desire, lousy with lust. They replied by giving us the occasional dirty look, which we took to be a local custom of welcoming and warmth.

I decided to love these women, too.

Yes, mine was an equal opportunity love, and I wasn't about to hate anyone because she's beautiful. Sure, this crowd probably arrived at their Good Enough Moment long before the last crew, but you never know, you never know. My "challenge area," gone undetected by the woman at Target, was that I had to try hard to love everyone for her efforts, applaud everyone for trying. So I made a concerted effort to find the inner beauty in even the most outstandingly spectacular long-legged, white-teethed, high cheek-boned, buxom natural blond in the room, regardless of her obvious personality flaws. It wasn't easy, but I did it. And I'm sure she's forever indebted to me. No doubt she would have thanked me as I was leaving. If she'd thought of it. Or even seen me. Or knew I was alive.

My girlfriend and I left and said our goodbyes. It had been a good night and we were tired. Happy tired, sated tired. We'd had our fill of beauty, inner, outer and under. And as I took my mascara off in the same mirror that had sent me off with a slap on the ass all those hours ago, I gazed at what would greet me on Sunday morning. Goodnight moon, goodnight body, goodnight face. Thanks for another Saturday night. Gotta love Saturday night.

Car Wash

The sun broke through at the car wash as I waited for them to finish up the part at the end, after the conveyor belt's wash 'n wind finale, when it's just mano a auto with rags on the dry tarmac.

Under cover of the cavernous, dimly lit garage, I stood keeping watch over all the detritus that I had removed from the car so as to get the Maximum Clean. A huge flat-screen television hung suspended, bolted to the ceiling, displaying our nation's very own Brittany Spears singin' as if nothin' had ever happened, as if most of the globe doesn't know what has. I watched for signs of emotional evolution in her every hip grind, arse bump and world weary head flick, but couldn't find any. I wasn't surprised.

A tall, very dark black man had been standing there also watching Brittany. It was his party that I was intruding on, so I kept to myself near the open garage door and tried not to interrupt his viewing pleasure. He wore big, baggy jeans and a loose hooded sweatshirt with orange squiggly designs on the front pouch pockets. He stood very straight and still as he watched and I started to wonder what was going through his head but then stopped my mind from going there as I would stop a child from storming the door to a private room that was occupied. Instead, I warmed my face in the sun.

As the three of us did our respective things, I anticipated my newly cleaned car. I'd been thinking a lot about money lately and how to cut back. Manicures were out as was the occasional back rub. Pedicures were further and farther between, as I let the polish growing out to the tips of my toes like gaily colored crescent moons. This seemed like an extravagance, paying to have the car cleaned by other people, and it was. But time was what it always is and I managed to rationalize it just this once, groping for a normalcy that was clearly floating away.

This morning had been the lowest ebb of the bleakest month of a notorious winter. A winter that had pitched a fury on the inside of my car, and I asked the maitre'd of the car wash if they really cleaned, I mean with a spritzer and everything, the inside of the car. Because that's what meant the most to me. (You know what they say-- it's what's on the inside that counts.) He assured me they they would do a good job so I went about unloading the contents of a small intercontinental container ship onto the floor of the garage.

The tall, quiet man finally spoke. "You take trip?" he asked. How could I tell him that the many bags of crap he saw splayed before him contained items that I consider impossible to live without-- not just for trips, but for always. There were two umbrellas and a child's car seat, a bag of assorted balls (soccer, tennis and foot), and the now ubiquitous bag of bags for grocery shopping. There's the glass break tool and the reflective roadside helper, our water bottles, my yoga mat and a sharpie. There was the bag of blankets for just in case I get trapped under an avalanche in remotest Piscataway, and the small duffel full of granola bars and space blankets, disposable rain ponchos and crayons, extra boy's pants, blank pads, a viewmaster and chalk for when we get trapped in a Delaware mud slide and have to spend a week in our car waiting for rescue crews to dig us out. There were three Dr. Seuss books, two car bingo boards and my travel make-up pouch so that I can look my best for the local news cameras and firemen who ultimately save us. And that, ladies and gentleman, is literally how I roll. A circus car of contingency with luggage for my baggage.

"Nope," I said, "no trip." There was a moment's pause as he surveyed the ground then looked at me. "You live near?" he said.
"Yup," I answered.
He continued, "The car wash is no so busy today. Some days, the cars are for long time, but today I go home early."
"It's a nice day for it," I said, because it was a nice day now as the sun warmed the ground and thawed my disposition. I smiled a wide, close-mouthed smile at whom I now knew to be a car wash employee then returned my attention to the TV where some humorless dude was singing his heart out in the same wide-legged stance as a generation of earnest rock guitarists before him. Mister Car Wash was obviously not from around here. Haiti, maybe or the Ivory Coast. I considered telling him that there was more to our fair country than music videos then chose not to take that one on.

Beyond the far open end of the garage, someone waved a rag and I gestured, that's my car. I began to make the first of what would be many trips to return the many bags of crap to their rightful place in my car and psyche. Half way through the second trip, Mister Car Wash asked if he could help me. I said, yes, thank you, because I couldn't think of a valid reason why I shouldn't accept, and as he stooped to gather three heavy bags in each hand, I got me to wonderin' about this tall, strapping man.

Sometimes I indulge myself in a sort of cosmic double dare fantasy, where I get myself knocked up with my second son, the one I should have conceived with my ex, the one we were supposed to adopt together. In my delusion I ignore the scientific and financial given that it's nearly impossible, this feat-- I've a snowball's chance in hell. But that doesn't stop me from my sitcom-y thoughts of luring some Harvard grad back to my sister's place in Cambridge for a night of carnal triumph and canned laughter that only happens in apartments with three walls. I've been thinking these contrived thoughts with nary a sidebar glance as to whether or not I would ever tell the donor or what I would tell my child should I raise him to cranky fruition. This is all assuming that the guy I have sex with has sex without protection, which would make him president of the kind of club I wouldn't want to be a member of. But Groucho Marx aside, none of that stops me from calling forth the fantasy and asking the cosmos to deliver him to me without delay.

As the last bag was loaded into the car I thanked Mister Car Wash and smiled this time with my eyes and teeth. He lingered there in the sun, taking out a cigarette, and putting it to his mouth I notice a largish cold sore on his lower lip. Huh, I thought. Bummer of a cold sore. And then he said, "You want to have date with me?"

Holy shit. He's standing right here. The man for my plan. My stud.

I looked at him with casual appraisal then flashed to the weekend ahead:

This 6' 4" answer to my dreams was no doubt a PHD in Haiti, I tell myself. And that cold sore is just the result of all the stress he's under from taking ESL night classes on top of his part time job at the car wash and full coarse load at Columbia Law School. Which he'll tell me all about as he cooks for me The Food of His Country, the beat of his favorite homeland music filling the air with novelty. I'll ask him not to make the food too spicy as I set a small table for two and he'll tell me how he plans to go back home once he graduates in order to help his own people. I'll make a mental note that I'll probably never see this noble guy ever again after tonight, which is OK by me, as I fold paper towels into triangle napkins and thank my body for ovulating. Then I'll scribble down his full name on the back of the car wash receipt tucked into my wallet, just in case my beautiful, brilliant, bi-racial child wants to Google his birth father one day.

Back at the car wash, he struck a match to his cigarette and I realized then what I would say.
"No thank you, I'm married."

And before it began it was over.

I guess all that baggage had been good for something after all. Maybe that's why I carry it around.

I wondered if I had some Ambesol in the glove compartment to give him as a parting gift but was pretty sure I didn't. Then I got into my car and drove away. The interior was pristine. It gleamed shiny black. It was cleaner than it had been in years. This car wash had done a way better job than the one I used to go to and I felt reborn, like coming back from a long vacation to a professionally cleaned house. My buoyancy was evident and there was a bounce in my manual shift. I felt like a million and seventeen bucks.

Then I sighed the sigh of a thousand regrets. The cosmos had double dared me and I had demurred. No thanks, I'd said to the heavens. But I've got me a spankin' clean car and you know, that'll have to do for today.