Don't Sleep With a Bubba

by Susan Reinhardt

  Most of the children have had tough lives and stay with grandparents. Daddy drives a van and picks them up for church, delivering them early while the members take turns feeding them a hot breakfast of sausage and eggs, bacon, biscuits, grits and juice in the fellowship hall. They’ve made it their mission to ensure the children are exposed to the important things in life: God, good morals and the occasional outing to an amusement park.

  This birthday party for my dad was long overdue. He needed to know how much he was loved and appreciated, and sometimes words aren’t enough.

  Four bottles of wine, a jug of barbecue sauce, a state-of-the art spatula and a few Bibles later, he was beaming like a boy receiving a new bike. I’m sure he felt special, a feeling every person in this world needs from time to time.

  My mother, not to be outdone by the wine and Bible basket, had her own gift. Even though she’s a proper teetotaling Baptist, she’d pinned $20 bills all over a thong I’d given her as a joke, as if she was a stripper turning in the night’s tips.

  “My 70th was the best birthday I can remember,” my father said, eyes changing from gray to blue with the dew of emotion.

  My only regret was that we hadn’t done this sooner, or that I could have found a way, some form of understanding in my youth, to have made life easier on him.

  For this is what every good daddy deserves.

  Later that evening on the occasion of his 70th, we walk out to the carport and he doesn’t show me the stars but wants me to sit with him in his brand-new Murano with the killer stereo system.

  “Let’s take it for a ride,” I say, knowing with full confidence I can—and want—to be alone in a car with my daddy for as long as he keeps driving.

  Wings and Ass Bangs

  I showed my husband pictures of my high school and college years, thinking he’d enjoy viewing the woman he wed before her cellulite, eye-bags-arm hammocks-burgeoning front ass days.

  I recently became the not-so-proud owner of a front fanny, after having made fun in my first book of the white-trash woman who had a giant front region, divided with crack and all—just like a big old butt.

  Sure enough, Mama was right. You poke fun at someone’s flaws and you’ll get the same thing. I got it. A baby front fanny with lots of growth potential. It’s depressing, but I cover it up with giant Mee-Maw drawers, the kind I swore I’d never wear.

  This age is tough, beauty-and figure-wise. It’s along about this time of life a woman of my years begins to unravel, both mentally and physically, and it’s not unusual to see one of us breaking out the old albums trying to prove to everyone with a pulse and not on life support her glorious past captured by Kodak. You know what I mean. Nothing like whipping out the scrapbooks with the perky cheerleader pictures and those sorority-girl shots to remind us of the beauty we once had and let the person viewing the books know we had it, too.

  I’m not sure why I decided to show the albums to my husband after sixteen years of marriage, but here they were, laid out for his Bausch & Lombed eyes to behold.

  It was a time of life—a heyday of sorts—when everything was where it should be, high and firm. Instead of whistling and shaking his head and saying, “Whew, woman, you were a fox,” which was the 70s lingo for “hot,” Tidy Stu groaned and acted like he was looking at a Hagasaurus , as if the very images before him seared his retinas.

  I noticed he wasn’t staring at my orange bikini and pecan-brown, sun-fried skin. He was focusing on two flaps of hair glued to my skull, a set of wings even Heather Locklear never mastered.

  “That’s so rednecky and gross,” he said, his own head shining from lack of hair. “Nobody had those things where I grew up. What are they? Is it a joke or something? I mean that can’t be real.”

  He was talking about my Farrah hair. All of us hick chicks in Georgia who were trying to copy TV’s great beauties had a set of gigantic wings, compliments of Clairol hot rollers and Final Net, and lacquered so that no wind could put asunder.

  “They are called wings, hon, and I don’t mean to brag but I sported the finest pair in LaGrange, Georgia. You’re always puzzled how a goon like me was named Homecoming Queen, well, the wings did it for sure. That and the fact my boyfriend was in a rock band and I carried the black vote on account of Sharlette Willis being my second-best friend.”

  Tidy Stu is the only man I’ve ever dated who paid extraordinary attention to my hair. Most men wouldn’t notice if you dyed your hair blue, not unless it was your puss fur.

  The very first date I had with Tidy, he ran his fingers through my bleach-fried perm and commented the texture was similar to dried-up hay. I kissed him anyway, like a fool, and a year later I married him.

  And here he was making fun of my only years of wrinkle-free firmness.

  “That’s the ugliest pile of shit I’ve ever seen attached to a skull,” he said, and I closed the scrapbook and left the room. His obsession with hair only increased as the years went by and we accumulated dogs, children and more dogs, fueling his latest body-hair quirks. He spent virtually all of his spare time snipping, shaving, trimming, clipping, and either styling or eliminating every hair he saw.

  It’s almost ended our marriage, along with other things he does. Like shaving with that Norelco Spectra 8831XL that cost more than my engagement ring. He keeps it in the kitchen by the refrigerator and my Mikasa dinnerware, where’s he’s set up a toiletry shop—no matter that we have a large half bath two feet away and three full-size bathrooms scattered about the house.

  I am furious that he’s got his grooming station right next to my fine china. The poor man is suffering from Hairanoia and shaves his face six times a day. Just mosies over to the china cabinet and clips his nails, Norelcos his chafed skin and Lubriderms his dry spots. Whenever somebody walks by, his eyes glow a neon greenish hue and he begins a near quiver, reaching for his scissors, plugging in his Spectra 8831XL and growing red about the face.

  “Come here,” he’ll order anyone within earshot. “Get over here now!”

  At first we would play along with his hobby, but the more times we walked off with bald patches and hideous hairdos, the more we avoided his Little Shop of Horrors.

  It started innocently enough, before I gave birth to children who had hair he could botch and before we bought the Pomeranian with enough hair to keep Tidy happy for a lifetime.

  Knowing my mother was a beautician and used me as her dummy, he decided he would follow suit. Every time I saw his hands when they weren’t wrapped around his saxophone or penis, they were clutching a grooming tool.

  I made the tragic mistake at age 28 of caving in and permitting this budding hairdresser to give me a little trim. “Just a tiny snip in the back,” I said. “Just the back, you hear me?”

  “Just in the back,” he said, growing euphoric. “I’ll just cut off all this dried hay you call hair.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it—”

  “I know what I’m doing,” he said with the confidence of a man in denial. “It will look a lot better than those $70 haircuts you come home with every other month.”

  After two weeks of hearing this, I gave up and told this budding Vidal Sassoon to sharpen his scissors and have at it, at which point Mr. No License asked me to take a seat in a kitchen chair while he whisked a towel around my neck with the flourish of a true pro.

  I knew this was a mistake and tried to focus on something positive, like what he had done with our pitiful yard,
the success of his landscaping and turning a bare mud bank into a green paradise lush with dogwoods and rhododendron, periwinkle and Japanese Maples. I figure he thought he could just up and transfer those lawn-and-gardening skills directly toward a skull. Hair. Fescue. Ground cover’s ground cover, right?

  The scissors we owned back then were not meant for hair. They’d been used to poke holes in tin cans and leather belts, and to cut plastic, metal and other materials that won’t yield. As my husband wielded the dulled and damaged blades, I realized I was doomed. But sometimes a wife is just tired of arguing and gives in for the sake of keeping the peace, and such was my dumb mistake.

  The first sounds weren’t pretty: a whack followed by a yank of wet hair followed by nervous coughing on his part.

  “Only an inch,” I said.

  Whack. Tug. Chop. Snip. Cough.

  I reached back and felt a bare neck.

  “My hair! What have you done—”

  “I’m not finished,” this José Eber wannabe squawked. “Hush or I won’t be able to get it even.” He cut hair the way men mow lawns, each time around the head, the hairs getting shorter and shorter.

  Now for some women short hair is lovely, accentuating finely crafted features. But not for me. I could already feel its ghastly effects: my nose growing another half inch, a second chin rolling out of left field, teeth flaring like a mule’s. My heart did that irregular beat thing so I did the gorilla pounding against my chest, then tried to bolt.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, pressing me back down. “It won’t look right unless you let me trim up the sides to match.”

  I breathed deeply, inhaling the humid smell of hot water boiling on the stove for his mango tea. Meditate if you can’t medicate, I said over and over, my personal mantra for those times when I’m out of tranquilizers, and Vicodin and booze aren’t options.

  I felt a huge tug followed by a hacking of hair, as if he had a sling blade.

  “Careful. You have to taper that section. I don’t want the sides to look like that Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman woman.”

  Whack. Tug. Chop. Snip. Cough.

  “Who’s Mary Hartman?” he asked, followed by a hacksaw movement with his scissors, as if cutting down tree limbs.

  I reached up and felt two flaps of sideburns, big old nasty Mary Hartman sideburns, then I jumped out of the chair, gasped with disgust as I viewed them in the bathroom mirror, ran upstairs, locked the door and cried for two hours.

  Next I plotted sweet revenge. I’d hire a yardman to come in and uproot all his precious rhododendron, deleaf his maples and prune his azaleas to nubbins. Should he press charges, I’m confident a jury of nine women and three sensitive and estrogen-enriched men would acquit, and appearances on Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer would follow, all the rednecks in the viewing audience cheering at their screens, “You go, girl. He deserved it, giving you those ugly old Mary Hartman bangs!”

  In the end, I settled for a trip to Wal-Mart, bought a jug of gel, a can of mousse and some giant hair clips, but it didn’t fully work to brighten my mood, especially after two women pointed and snickered at me on the Health and Beauty aisle, and I heard one say, “I thought Elvis died in ’76.”

  This is when I hit the mall and purchased an adorable pair of suede boots, figuring, hey, if your hair looks like a rat’s Happy Meal, you might as well direct the eye elsewhere.

  And because I threatened to cut off sex for six months for his ruination of my locks, he stopped chasing me with dull scissors for a few years. It didn’t start up again until our children were born, one bald as a Chinese Crested and the other with jet-black tufts of downy hair that had his hands itching to sharpen his blades. I knew what he was thinking. It would only be a matter of time.

  Surely I could handle him and ward it off, since my very own mama used me as her guinea pig for ten years, beginning when I was four and she arched and waxed my eyebrows. I was so upset I climbed up on the sink and shaved them both off.

  That was just the beginning of bad hairdos throughout my life. As a result, I was semiprepared for my husband’s unlicensed and barbaric barbering.

  By first grade, I’d had half a dozen hairdos, one of which included a sky-high beehive during my first ballet recital. All the other little girls wore pigtails and braids, ponytails with large satin bows, and here I was with an updo like the singers in the B-52’s. Now, I know why the audience was laughing and flashbulbs popped in my direction. I understand who people were talking about when they said, “Poor, hideous thing. What a shame.”

  Mama explained she did the beehive so she’d recognize me from her seat in the nosebleed section, as we all wore the same pink leotard and tights.

  The worst, though, was the day Mama said she was about to make me the cutest little girl alive and took her shears to my scrawny skull and cut and snipped until there was barely a hair left on my head. I screamed and cried and pitched a tantrum that nearly blew an artery.

  “It’s a pixie, Susan. It’s the latest look and you’ll be the first to have it.”

  All I wanted was a giant wool cap and a box of Oreos. Even at 6, I knew the power of comfort food. I cried for hours, my face against the pillows of the guest room double bed draped in my great-grandmother’s quilt. Mama grew quite upset and concerned, thinking she’d perhaps given birth to a part-devil child, so she jumped in her aqua Plymouth, lit a Kent, and drove to the drugstore, returning with a bag and a big smile.

  “Wait until you see this,” she said, applying antibacterial ointment to the cuts on my head where her scissors had nicked my temple and forehead. “You know your mama loves you and has always promised if I messed up I’d fix you right back. Just like when you shaved off your eyebrows and I bought a black pencil and drew you in some brand-new ones.”

  “All the kids at school laughed at me and you know it,” I said. “During recess it ran down my face and Carol Ann uninvited me to her birthday party and called me monster face.”

  “Well, sugar, don’t you worry. Look here. Open this bag.”

  Inside was what first appeared to be roadkill. I carefully picked up a piece of squirrel-brown hair and pulled it from the bag.

  “They’re pigtails,” Mama rejoiced, clapping her long and lotioned hands. “Aren’t they precious? You just wait. Everyone will want them after you wear them to school.”

  I stared in horror at the two curly sections of hair that came with their own attachable parts. I felt the plastic hooks, wondering where on my quarter-inch hairs these things would clip. Mama rushed over and somehow managed to scrounge up enough hair to get them on, just above my ears, which, by the way, stick out like Ross Perot’s.

  I stared in the mirror, tears rolling down my puffy face. Mama hugged me, made a big pot of spaghetti and promised no more pixies. The next day I wore the pigtails to school and Mrs. Smith, my first-grade teacher, paraded me around to all the classrooms, showing her other teacher friends. I could hear the phoniness in their voices. “Aren’t those adorable?” and then the snickering, and when the doors to their rooms closed, the flat-out howling. My cheeks burned as if I had the flu. I thought any minute I’d vomit. The tile floors swayed and spun and, finally, I dramatically collapsed onto the big square tiles.

  It must have been the combination of mortification and the sickening smells of that old school in Thomson, Georgia. My nose filled with odors of old bologna and floor chemicals.

  “Are you all right, Susan?” Mrs. Smith asked, bending down where I was splayed like the dead. “Get up. We c
an’t have you scaring all the other children in this school, now just how selfish would that be?”

  As soon as she said the words, I threw up. I still thank God for that, because she took me to the office infirmary where nurses gave me ice chips and cold washcloths for my head. They removed my pigtails as carefully as one would a body part and didn’t laugh when they put them in a paper sack with my soiled dress.

  I got to wear clothes brought by volunteers specifically for children who’ve had bodily function mishaps and vomiting certainly counted and was less offensive than diarrhea pants. No way could I go back to my classroom where the likes of Cy Gasses, my true love and boyfriend, would see my hair and smell my sour breath.

  I guess all this prepped me for this latest phase of my husband’s barbering disorder, rearing its ugly head last year when our son turned twelve, our daughter seven and the Pomeranian four, and with more fur than ever.

  I like to call this his Barbaric Bangs Period.

  It was his mission to give everyone in the family a set of bangs that look just like Herman Munster’s, the kind of bangs well-meaning mothers used to pay barbers to cut for their poor sons and daughters, usually the ones in the special ed classes, bless their hearts.

  I never understood why if someone’s brain wasn’t working 100 percent, the parents felt it their duty to snip their precious and challenged child’s hair in a straight and geeky line four inches above their eyebrows—a sheet of half-inch-long fringe that did nothing for the girls and boys forced to endure what the mean kids called “’Tard bangs.” It was sad that the kids in special education had this hairstyle, and I wanted to make a law against cutting a wonderful child’s hair in this manner.