Turning to the best possible source of a woman’s beauty—a g*y man—I called my dear old friend, Curtis.
“I’m ready,” I told him.
“Thank God,” he replied.
Curtis and I had been pals since freshman year of college. He was from Nebraska, of all places, and I’d taken him home for Thanksgiving so he could see the ocean for the first time. He’d stood there, stunned and lovestruck, and hadn’t been back to the Cornhusker State for more than forty-eight hours since. At any rate, Curtis and his long-time partner, Mitch, had joyfully agreed to become my style consultants. These guys made the Fab Five seem like Neanderthals: Curtis’s fair-haired, blue-eyed-angel looks set off his wicked sense of humor, while Mitch’s dark, Byronesque beauty and uppercrust accent suggested generations of robber barons and too many Cary Grant movies. They looked perfect together, and, as far as I could see, they were. Their relationship was so blissful and solid and charming that everyone who saw them together felt happy inside, except for the zipperheads who beat them up periodically if they ventured too far from home.
Since college, Curtis and Mitch had lived in Provincetown, that mecca of homosexual freedom, beautiful gardens, charming shops and fabulous food. The boys owned and operated the Pink Peacock, a beautiful bed-and-breakfast that showcased their genius for interior design. And, true to stereotype, Curtis and Mitch adored women and absolutely reeked of good taste in all matters related to the female form. I had no compunction about placing myself in their well-manicured hands.
So it was that on a cold, blustery Wednesday, I drove up to P-town in my rapidly aging Honda. The drive was glorious, a straight shot up Route 6, the highway that runs down the middle of the Cape. I passed groves of stunted pitch pines and postcard views of salt marshes, zooming along in fourth—my overdrive had never worked—joyfully singing at the top of my lungs to “Rosalita” by my other boyfriend, Bruce Springsteen.
I turned off Route 6, passed the rows of cheerful beachside cottages and navigated down Commercial Street, where galleries and cafés hugged the narrow road. Parking was no problem this early in the season, and I easily found the salon recommended by Curtis and Mitch. The boys themselves frequented this place, and they had gorgeous, lustrous hair, robust cuticles and no visible pores.
Inside, the walls glowed a gentle apricot, and the soothing tones of classical piano music drifted out of discreet speakers. The guys were waiting for me. Their friend Lucien was the owner of the salon and had agreed to “do” me personally, an offer that Curtis and Mitch viewed as quite miraculous. As soon as I walked in, the three g*y men descended upon me, clucking as if I had just arisen from my deathbed. I couldn’t blame them. A Boston University sweatshirt and jeans so old they were nearly white did not exemplify the height of g*y male fashion.
Extremely tall and buff, Lucien had the ebony skin and dangerous cheekbones of Grace Jones. He also sported a fabulous British accent, which I suspected might be fake. “Fantastic to meet you,” he said stonily. He grimaced as he pulled the elastic out of my ponytail, running an elegant hand through my heavy hair. “Better change, duckie. We’ll be here all day.”
Well, that’s what I was here for, after all. Cut and color, makeup and manicure. I had turned down the pedicure, embarrassed at the thought of someone else cutting my toenails. As I pulled on the chic black robe, I could hear my pals discussing my situation with Lucien.
“She’s set her cap for a man,” Mitchell said in his trademark 1940s lingo.
“Who hasn’t?” sighed Lucien. “Save the two of you, of course.”
“She’s going for a whole new look,” Curtis volunteered. “Professional but interesting and youthful. She’s a doctor.” Here I smiled at the pride in my pal’s voice. No friend like an old friend.
“Right, Cinderella!” barked Lucien. “Why don’t we start with the facial? I’ll need to work from the bottom up on this one. Let’s see if we can do something about that wretched winter skin.”
THREE HOURS LATER, I had been highlighted, brushed, teased, shorn, pumiced, waxed, detoxified, moisturized, astringentized and practically spanked. My cuticles throbbed from the orange stick abuse. My face still stung from the punishing, acidic toner. Scalp tingled, burned and itched from the hair color. Eyebrows screamed from waxing. Could they be bleeding? People really did this willingly? The boys wouldn’t let me see how I looked…. They’d draped a sheet over the mirror so we could do the “reveal.” I tried to remind myself that this was all for a greater good, but even picturing Joe’s perfect face didn’t make me feel better.
As the foiled highlights set in my hair, Lucien escorted me to the makeup area. “Time to fix that face!” he announced. Sitting me down, he began to apply cotton ball after cotton ball of paste-like foundation over my still-suffering skin.
“That color seems a little light,” I commented as he opened another bottle.
“Just sit back, love, and we’ll choose for you.” Clearly, my opinion mattered not one bit. I let Lucien scrub my face with a rough sponge, coughing as he poofed powder onto my cheeks. “There’s simply no cheekbone visible, is there?” he sighed. “Well, we’ll have to fake it.”
“I’ve always tried…” I began.
“Darling, don’t speak. Just sit back and let me work. Mitch, precious, tilt that light just a tad? Brilliant. Now, Millie, is it? You’re going to love me for this.”
As Lucien applied every makeup item known to mankind, Curtis and Mitch began to look a little…concerned.
“Do I look okay?” I asked, trying not to move my lips as Lucien dabbed Product Number Four upon them.
“Ah…” began Mitch. Lucien shot them a heated glance.
“It’s very…dramatic,” Curtis attempted.
“Well, what did you want? Boring?” demanded Lucien. “I thought we’d done boring.”“I’m sure it’s great,” I soothed. “And you’re right. I’ve done boring. Time for a little flair.”
“See?” hissed Lucien. “Right-o, we’re done here. Back to the sink.” He began removing the foil wraps from my hair and rinsed my head. I yelped as the hot water hit my tormented scalp.
“Sorry!” Lucien sang out cheerfully. He adjusted the faucet so that the water turned ice-cold. Back at the cutting area, though, he settled in, brushing and drying my hair with a dexterity I knew I could never achieve.
“Ready?” he finally purred. Curtis and Mitch exchanged worried glances. With a quick, smooth move, Lucien tore the sheet from the mirror.
The first thing I saw was my eyebrows, or rather, the lack thereof. Granted, they were a bit unruly before, but now they were no longer recognizable as human eyebrows, so thin they looked like they were one hair thick or drawn on with a very, very sharp pencil. The skin around them was puffy from the waxing, and even the grotesque amount of makeup Lucien had applied couldn’t quite mask the redness.
And speaking of makeup…my skin was now pasty-white except for angry slashes of brown (“cheekbones”). I looked like I had just drunk deeply and satisfyingly from the neck of a wayward virgin, thanks to the arterial red on my lips. My eyes, tightened by the minimizer/astringent therapy, looked tiny, ringed in thick black. I glanced in alarm to Curtis, who had the honesty to look away, ashamed for his part in this fiasco.
“What do you think?” cooed Lucien the Nazi.
“I…I…” I had no answer. My brain reeled.
“Your hair is lovely,” Mitch said kindly, apologetically.
I forced my gaze north of those eyebrows, and…oh. My hair—thick, heavy, somewhat schizophrenic—looked fabulous! Now, layered, chic, at least eight inches shorter, it was lighter, too, a vibrant, glowing mahogany. Shiny waves floated about my face, sophisticated but casual. I loved it, thank God.
“Wonderful,” I said to Lucien. Curtis smiled in relief, knowing he had been granted reprieve from certain execution. The makeup, after all, could be washed off. The eyebrows…well, eyebrow pencils had been invented for a reason, right? But hair was critical to good looks. You couldn’t be adorable if you had bad hair, and I now had great hair.
A short time later, I walked down the street, having parted with an ungodly sum to pay for my degradation, wondering how to grow my eyebrows back while avoiding unsightly stubble. Once in my car, I checked myself out in the rearview mirror. Eyebrows still bald. Skin still shockingly white, lips still blood-drenched. My previously wonderful hair had been ravished by the salty Provincetown wind. The carelessly sophisticated look was gone, never to be completely reproduced, soundly replaced with the fourth-grader-asleep-on-the-bus look.
There was no singing along with the radio on the way home.
CHAPTER FIVE
FEELING THE NEED TO SHIELD myself from the stares I knew my na**d eyebrows would evoke, I stayed home as much as possible for the next week, working diligently on sanding my deck. My sweet (though not very bright) dog followed me everywhere with energetic wags of his whip-like tail. He took to my house and yard immediately and had yet to stray, bounding immediately when called. His only flaw seemed to be a nervous stomach. He pooped at least five times a day, sometimes in the house. Luckily, I was well-armed with multiple cleaning products.
I enjoyed myself in my new home with kooky little Digger. Sure I did. The problem was, there was no one to admire my adorable, sparkling house, no one to ask “Do you like this chair here?” or “What do you feel like for dinner?” There was no one to care about how my day had been, no one to put me first. I wanted to be adored. I wanted to snuggle. I wanted to get laid.
I had dated a little, here and there. In college, dating wasn’t really dating. It was more like go to a party, flirt with someone, go back to his/your room and make out. There were no dinners in restaurants, no phone calls, no gifties. Maybe an e-mail. Maybe you’d walk back from the dining hall together. Catch the movie on Saturday night, him, you and ten or twelve other pals. I might have had a boyfriend in college, but it was hard to tell.
The time I’d felt most desirable was the semester I’d spent in Scotland, the latter half of my junior year. I went to a remote school in the Highlands, took four easy classes and developed muscular calves from the startling hills. For some reason, the Scots found my American-ness very hot, and I was loath to disappoint. They weren’t so hung up on skinny, perfect-toothed, androgynous Calvin Klein beauty, and I found myself making out in the back of pubs with Ians and Ewans and even an Angus, happily not understanding a rolling word out of their manly mouths, but who cared! I was popular! Of course, the lads all expected me to put out in the great American tradition of casual sex, and I had to send the majority of them back to the sheep meadow, their big burly hearts a wee bit broken. Once word spread that I wasn’t easy, it was almost time for me to go back to the States, anyway. My brief popularity in the Highlands had been pretty damn wonderful. I missed those brawny Scots.
Back at home, there was the romance of medical school. What romance of medical school, you ask? Excellent question. We were all so busy learning so much in so short a time that it was impossible to have a date. Once, in panicky desperation born of fatigue, terror and caffeine, I ended up in bed with a classmate, only to pretend the next day that it had never happened. And we were so stressed and tired, it practically didn’t happen.
On to the exotic sexiness of internship. If any resident I knew had time to burn flirting, kissing or shagging, he or she would have vastly preferred to spend it weeping in a closet somewhere or maniacally studying the question they’d botched during rounds. We hung in there grimly, learning, watching, assisting, guessing, chanting to ourselves, “Someday this will all be worth it.”
By my third year of residency, I had a little more time to date. I even had a six-week relationship with a very nice neurologist. But then he accepted a position with a Cleveland practice, and that was it. I didn’t really mind, to tell you the truth. We’d liked each other, and he was funny and cute enough, but it was nothing like what I felt for Joe.
But now I was ready to start life with the man who epitomized my every romantic dream. Thanks to my years of research, I was convinced that Joe would find what he’d wanted all of his life, too…the love of a good woman. Me. Joe’s looks could distract a person, to say the least. It would be like dating Brad Pitt. But thanks to my years of stalking, I knew the true, secret heart of Joe Carpenter.
I knew about the time Joe, quietly and anonymously, had fixed old Mrs. Garrison’s railing after she’d fallen and broken her hip. Thanks to an eavesdropped conversation at the post office a few years ago, I knew that he gave money to his sister on a regular basis to help make ends meet. I knew about his three-legged dog who hopped after him everywhere, adoration written all over his doggy face. How many times had I revisited The Time, replaying in slow motion that act of innate kindness on the school bus so many years ago? Of course I loved him!
And soon he would love me back.
As part of my Dalai Lama/Richard Gere relationship with Dr. Whitaker, I would be seeing his nursing-home patients once a week. The Outer Cape Senior Center, or OCSC, was located just a mile down the road from my house. Every Thursday, I was to visit Dr. Whitaker’s patients and treat them as necessary. And the joy was that, in addition to the obvious benefit of gaining medical experience, I would also see Joe Carpenter, who had been hired to put on a new wing.
I spent an entire sixty minutes showering, applying makeup and fixing my schizophrenic hair into a semblance of the style I’d paid a week’s wages for. Dressed in black gabardine pants, a loose-fitting pink sweater and pink flowery earrings, I bid Digger farewell, ignoring his imploring howls as I got into the Honda, hoping he wouldn’t soil the floor again.