Just Raven

My friend Tammy is a dramaqueen. She always has been and always will be. She’s the type of woman who enjoys all those things women are supposed to like: Money, shopping, rich people, nice fancy clothes and she drives a very expensive rig. She doesn’t work because her old man makes a very good living. Tammy and I are forever arguing about the warrants of all things that make women beautiful and desirable. According to her, I’m too down to earth and too real.

That statement perplexed me. “You’re so real it makes me sick!” she said to me the other day. I asked her what in hell she meant by that.
“The fact that you can just get up and go off without any effort! You don’t do your hair, you don’t wear makeup and you don’t care what you wear!”

Yes that is me.

Then she told me I scare people off because I’m so…real…(I scare people off because I tell them the truth and most can’t handle that….) anyway she invited me to spend a day at the spa with her. (She goes once a week, isn’t that nice??)So I agreed to go, just to see what this mysterious experience is really all about. I hated just about every moment of it and will never go again. LOL.

First things first….off come the coats, Tammy’s long leather frock with a fur tail waggling around the collar; my old beat up suede jacket with sherpa lining- what a contrast. They take Tammy’s (twenty six pound) pocketbook and lock it away for her…ask me where mine is and I tell the woman, “Don’t have one”….

We went into this room where a woman told us to don johnnies (yes, white hospital johnnies)…I looked at Tammy with a “WTF is this for???” gaze and she reassured me it’s Ok, that we’re getting a massage. I simmered down a little and went along with this massage, which I will say was very nice. And relaxing. I would do that again.

Then it was hot tub time…which I have experienced before so it was no big deal. But the other ladies in there- you would think they were all having an orgasm or something. For the love of Gawd. I heard so many OOHS and AWHS I thought I was going to puke. Instead I put on my earphones. It’s nothing worth those expressions and when it was time to get out I headed right for the showers cause those tubs are nothing more than germ petri dishes LOL.

We got out from that and Tammy says: “Now, we’re going to get our feet done!” I looked down at my little feet and thought about it for a moment. I do my own toenails…I do paint them and it’s the only place anyone will ever see makeup on me. I use blue polish and it’s weird and I like it. LOL. Tammy notices that I am thinking hard about this and she says- “Oh come on! A little different will be good for yah!” So I allowed the man to remove the blue and do his thing with my feet…snipped nails and rubbed hot lotions and potions, used stones to buff and fluff (he did make many comments about how smooth my feet were - duh! nerd- I take care of them with the work I do.) He painted them this awful horrid shade of red….I like red….but not on my toenails. GROSS. ICK. I demanded he remove NOW. Before it even dried. Poor Tammy was mortified with me. Tough shit. Next act of torture was the attempted painting of my fingernails. I won’t say what I did to protect myself from that, let’s just say the man was abit shaken up. LOL.

While we were getting our nails worked on I kept hearing little yelps and screams. OUCHES and things like that. What in hell from? The next torture chamber Tammy wanted me to go into. The WAX room.

I don’t wax. I shave. Period. But Tammy insisted it wasn’t THAT bad (I know from experience) and she pleaded with me to let them do my legs. OK…whatever. A little pain is a good thing, I thought. Course they couldn’t do it because I had just shaved my legs so there was no hair for the wax to grip onto. SO the lady asks me if I want a bikini area waxing. She pulls out another vat of hot smelly gross wax and tells me to lay back. I whispered to the woman:
“If you so much as come within ten inches of my private areas I will KILL you. Let there be NO doubt.” She got up and left promptly. Don’t mess with me. LOL.

Now it was time for the MAKEOVER.

The what???? Tammy says she purchased a MAKEOVER for both of us. One of those deals where they glam you all up and take a picture. Right up her alley and the last thing I would ever spend one penny on. Oh my, I thought.
I hate this. I really do but I went along with it because Tammy had spent a lot of money on the day. I regret it so much.

They wash your hair and pour thick nasty smelling goops and gels and foams into it, drying it all out even more. They snipped here and there but I wouldn’t let them really cut any of my hair off. Then they get the Gawd damned blow torch (hair dryer) and tease, pull, twist, fluff and primp my hair all up into something that felt so strange. I felt my hair and there were no curls, no knots. Just flat and dry and icky feeling. Then, another teasing (which is awful because it just shreds the ends) and puff, puff, hairspray all over…I felt my hair then and it’s all stiff and beehive like.
My bangs were all lifted up and I could just imagine what I looked like. I almost cried.

They wouldn’t let me look in the mirror though, not until the makeup was applied.
THAT was true torture. TRULY. First they cover you with ick lotions and then comes the actual makeup.
Concealers to hide all the flaws. Foundation to cover the concealer and add “color” to your face, the gaybot guy kept on saying. Then eyelid creams and shadows- golden amber for your lids and gold dust for the brow area - “This brings out your grey eyes beautifully!” he exclaims, all excited like a kid with an ice cream cone. A little eyeliner, “kohl brown, opens up your eyes!” and then the mascara; “deep black to enhance the golden tones”….make me yuke I said back to him. He told me to stop rolling my eyes because it was difficult to apply the makeup. I’ve never seen so many people get excited over this foolishness but I don’t generally keep company with these types. I never felt so out of place.

The gaybot face painter took his time picking the “perfect shade” of color for my lips. But it’s not that simple you know. First we have to apply a base. Then a lip plumper. (A fucking WHAT I asked??) THEN liner around the lips.
Then finally the color. And he’s blind as a bat because when I ever saw the color he chose coming at me I protested until I was hushed, rudely. It was a brownish shade that had lots of little sparkle things in it. GROSS.

It was almost over. Thankfully. I felt so gross, with all this shit on my face. It was so stiff and it smelled terrible and I so wanted it OFF. I didn’t dare smile, not that I felt like it. Along back comes the dork with a fluff brush, puffing powder all over my face (so much that I sneezed); a final touch up of blush he tells me, a reddish brown color that reminded me of barbeque sauce for some reason. Then more hairspray.
Then it was time for the “showing”- we get to look in the mirror. I dreaded this. Cause I know how I will react.

Tammy is thrilled with her (same old same new) look; her hands cover her mouth in astonishment and glory. “Look at how this color makes my cheekbones stand out…” and “My eyes! I love the new shades” she goes on and on.

I look in the mirror and….OMG. It’s a stranger. Who is this person? With the phoney hair and porcelain doll like face?? Where are my eyes?? Where’s my rosy cheeks?? Where did my bangs go? Where did all the curls go?? Why is it when my eyes blink they stick together?? I HATED it.

And everyone there knew it. Especially Tammy. Who was speechless. I should have known better than to participate in this, but I did it to make her happy. Never again. This experience just proved to me once more, that natural is so much better. For me. I cannot fathom the thought of being so fake, with all this makeup and hair gunk all designed to “enhance” the real me. This isn’t enhancing. This is deception. Pure and simple. I looked nothing like me. The gaybot told me I was beautiful with the right colors and methods for application (so GAY sounding). He told me I could be a beauty queen if I wanted to be.

I disagree.

I’m beautiful without all that crap. I may not be a model and I’m proud not to be. I may not have perfect skin and perfect hair; I may have wild hair that does what it wants when it wants. All that makeup hid who I am. It presented me in a false manner to the world and I don’t like that. I would rather be seen for who I am, flaws and all, then all covered over and made up. And it’s a lot cheaper to live life with what Mother Nature has blessed you with. I’m too real? No. I’m just me and I don’t pretend to be someone else.