trim and a shave
Down at Jolene’s South End Boutique and Spa, the ladies come for hair repair and a weekly update on gossip. The B&S is conveniently located just down the blacktop from the Diner so while their menfolk pile on another layer of winter cholesterol, the women can slide in for a touch-up. Jolene and her cosmetologically adept staff — meaning Wanda and Ronald — offer everything from henna highlighting to full perm. And, of course, like most retail establishments on the capitalist frontline here on the South End, they offer everything from local artworks and gifts to a plentiful assortment of salon products for the woman in search of a temporary bulwark against gravity and age.
In other words it’s a fine environment to get things off your chest. Jolene is adept with a scissors and a necessary brake when the ‘unburdening’ gets excessive, but she knows, like most of us on the frontier of a receding civilization, the bitch sessions are not only cathartic, they’re as close to entertainment as we’ll get in the daytime. Subjects range from Jolene’s no-account sister-in-law’s messy affairs to why there’s no damn holiday in America celebrating a woman. Because men make the damn holidays, that’s the short and not so sweet of it… Ronald might pipe in there’s none for gay men either but a moment later, scissors snipping like a crab on steroids, he’ll be off on a tangent about so and so’s snide comment about his new nose ring. The salon is as abuzz with snide comments as it is with hairsprays and clippers. Us men rarely pick up the missus there, and if we do, the place goes eerily silent.
Two Toke Tom has his hair coiffed by Ronald. It changes color every month or two, blue streaks substituted for red locks. One of the boyz at the Diner asked him what they talked about in there, like it was the Rosicrucians meeting in a graveyard after midnight. Two Toke just smiled his Cheshire Cat stoned smile, put a hand to sizzling hot purple stripe and said wistfully, Girl Talk.
If I want to keep abreast of current events, it might be time I got my own south end’s trimmed down at Jolene’s. But I probably won’t tell the boyz…
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