Once a friend of mine and I got lost going to Detroit's Mexicantown, a two-block strip consisting of an excellent bakery, a few Mexican restaurants, and various stores selling candles and sundries. When I mean lost, I mean for almost two hours. My friend drove, and I put on make-up. It's always like that -- I don't like to waste time in my house putting on my "face" as my elderly babysitter Betsy used to refer to the process, and I find that putting on eyeliner while going over bumps relaxes me. By the time we made it to the restaurant that day, I resembled David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust incarnation, and even though it was in the day and we were only going there for tamales, we ended up ordering beautiful flourescent-colored margaritas, the bright green color of candy, nothing found in nature, and we sipped deeply from them and found solace there. When I pushed myself away from the table to go to the restroom, I was drunk enough to think I looked great in three shades of eyeshadow that sparkled in the light coming in from the high window. Alas, when I woke up from the nap I took when I got home to sleep off the drink and the exhaustion of what should have been a fifteen minute trip that took hours, I noticed how everything had run together, like a child's watercolor.
For years, I never touched make-up, never thought about it. In the same way I used to tout my feminist ways by not wearing a bra (at barely a hundred pounds during that time, no one even noticed the "political" statement I was making), I didn't want to change the way I looked. I also eschewed sunglasses, sun lotion, or any self-protective measures besides carrying a gun. But times changed, and I changed and started wearing make-up for fun. I'm not an artist and have no creative aspirations save for the page. I can't make things beautiful like many of my friends, can't grow things or cook. And sometimes I need a face to meet the faces, a face that is like my own, but different. I still do my make-up when someone else is driving and in this way, my landscape shifts as I passively watch the miles go by as someone else decides where we are going and how fast we will get there.
Michelle's Spell of the Day
"The man is fiction; the mask is real." Paul Theroux
Cocktail Hour
Drinking dvd suggestion: Sopranos (Sixth Season) is out! I have been a very good girl and Santa delivered with the box set.
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Wednesday!
7 comments:
I was taken by a very circuitous route to the MGM casino in Detroit on Chistmas day for some eating and gaming fun. There's a lot of cigarette smoke in there and I think I became affected by it.
So your comparing your make up putting on in the car while driving to Mexican town as being like a Ziggy experience and the putting on of the "face" was your playing guitar?
Michelle I can understand the severe lack of time and doing things to get ready in the car to save some of that time but honestly how many margarita's did you and your friend have to get lost for a couple of hours while looking for a mile long stretch of street?
But honestly dear one I had to laugh at the following:
"I passively watch the miles go by as someone else decides where we are going and how fast we will get there."
Because you ALWAYS get there as fast as you possibly can (usually on the run and barely on time) and I am certain that when it comes to most if not everything YOU decide where the fuck you are headed to.
Passive... what a wonderfully comic image you gave me for today, that's like a sober Janis Joplin.
It may be you in an alternative universe but certainly not the Michelle living in this one.
Always Peace
Cajun Q
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R2C2!
I love you, your student Jason
Dear Michelle, another lovely view and post as always. Interesting pink camouflage for clothes and apparel hunting and mankilling in built up environs ho ho ho. Champagne toasts and caviar dreams dear one and a holiday season Bravo!
Back when I was single, I preferred dating women that used very little make-up. I'm still a firm believer in the minimalist approach to looking good. When I worked in a grocery store one of my duties was to scrape the excess meat off the floor of the butcher's room. A man used to pick up the excess meat in large plastic garbage cans. I asked him, "What's it used for?" He said, "For make-up."
It's used for soap.
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