Stanwood and Gomorrah
Down at Sheila’s Shear Salon, the place is abuzz with talk of the new strip joint coming to downtown Stanwood. “Male strippers! It’s about time,” Candy, the new stylist at the end chair exulted. “Bring those bad boys up on stage and let us treat them like sex objects. I say if they could open a Bikini Barista in Stanwood, we can have our own pleasure palace too.”
Jenny Wilson, deputy Carl’s wife, looked up from her People magazine article on Jennifer Anniston’s latest beau so swiftly Sheila nearly snipped off an earlobe. “That puritan crowd up there in the floodflats isn’t going to let a sex club open up, not in your lifetime, not in their Uff-Da town.” “Well,” Candy said in mid-curler twirl, “I can dream, can’t I?”
“Half that town is empty storefronts,” Cheryl Walters mused from under the dryer hood. “You’d think they’d welcome about any business opening up before it becomes a ghost town. Jack Gunter has half a dozen galleries up there, probably the only thing keeping them solvent.” “And he’s got nudes in a lot of those paintings so who’s kidding who about dictating morality,” Candy shot back. “Bring on the naked men, I say.”
Sheila weighed in from over by the cash register. “Be careful what you wish for, Ladies. They got heroin, they have cock fighting. There’s meth and every drug known to Eli Lily sold down at the high school. Medical marijuana and pot stores are gonna be on every corner, you watch. They have big city crime now, home invasions, break-ins while people are watching Wheel of Fortune. It isn’t Mayberry any more, that’s for sure, and now they want men parading their ya-ya’s up on stage. Don’t know about you girls, but I’ve had enough ya-ya’s to last me two lifetimes.”
The salon fell silent in momentary deference to Sheila’s much discussed divorce two years ago from her Ex, Walter. He’d been laid off at Tri- City Foods at the ripe old age of 51 and promptly retired, drank beer all day with his loser buddies and thought he could rest on his laurels until Social Security kicked in. Well, not if Sheila had anything to say in the matter. Which cost her a few black eyes. And cost him a marriage and the last steady income he’d see in long while. After sufficient pause, Candy resumed setting Cheryl’s curlers. “Stanwood and Gomorrah,” she sighed wistfully. “Uff-Da, ya-ya. Equal rights, crazy nights.”
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