I am in between moods tonight, clinging to the last shreds of self or sanity/unsanity that I've built over these years.
I am sopping wet, scrubbed from foot to blonding roots, not because Amway says I should exfoliate regularly to stay young, but because I can still catch threads of 500 septic perfumes clawing at me with their "professional" demeanors.
My suddenly-proud mom made me take notes, so I wrote... five long pages of observations that wouldn't stop ringing until I wrote them down.
Thankfully I slept through part of this afternoon...
Let it be known that I have not become lost entirely, just for tonight.
But there are no tears, save the rivulets streaming past my ears from the dregs of my hair, just quiet cries of "I know something was wrong with today" but I don't know what.
I don't know. There's something about make-up and style that is alluring, appealing, but nothing like today's "always dress up even at home" idioms and ideals.
Something's wrong and I can still smell it but not put it into words.
But here's today's childish garbles, and thank you Maria, and even Corey, for interrupting them so rudely on my cell. Today, I loved that cell phone and it's momentary glimpses of sanity.
Notes:
6:30 am and the cult idiom is springing to mind, first rule - don't let them sleep enough to think straight.
So I sit through the interminable car ride beside a down-to-earth (or so I thought at the time, stupid me) blind lady named Francine, and some psycho mom from the Toronto suburbs named Fay, drowning out her incessent gibbering about the dog, the doctor husband, and moneymoneymoney. They didn't launch into the Amway pitch until afternoon.
We're in Laval, Idiom #2 about isolation - bus pass in hand I couldn't get out of here, and 80$ in my pocket but not a single cab has gone by since we got here.
We're in a puce and institutional-green conference hall, where each room is named after a street in Paris. They're singing the national anthem (until now I always thought it was kinda pretty) and all 500 dumpy women and their ugly-but-looking-for-a-miracle daughters are silently singing along. Of course, only SHerry Bryan, the Diamond seller, gets to sing.
I'm not going to talk about the prayers. They were about money. *shudder*
And then straight into the sales-pitch, don't forget to have your order forms on the tables in front of you, filled out by 11:45.
People took notes about that.
Am I alien again, or is it alright this time to believe that it really is everyone else?
* * *
Right. So far we've seen umpteen billion slides of faces with nothing beautiful in them but the airbrushed-on-make-up applied by a craven artist's hand. She's explaining to these burned-out housewives that any of them can do it. Oh. I'm sorry, am I being too harsh?
Well, they couldn't. I can see them trying... It's the dying of the clowns but in more expensive colours.
Oh, oh... Wait... Hey girls, did you know that marriage should be your ultimate goal in life? Why? Because weddings are glamourous. (they don't bother to explain that anyone spending their time here has nothing else they'll possibly be able to aim for...)
It's barely a quarter to ten and my mom can't hear me anymore, she's gone glazed and I still don't understand why she's jotting down "things to carry on your wedding day, an extra tube of lipstick..."
I ought to be writing an article for Glam magazine. Or somesuch.
If I had as much "potential" as these girls, I'd be beautiful starting tommorrow.
But you can't reverse x years of geek-slough in a weekend. Or can you? "Body-body" is after lunch. They've got creams for even my "condition".
Dontcha know, I didn't... (know that I have a condition)
In the meantime, my nametag fell off much to my shame and embarassment for not complying to the norm, and they've made-up the black chick to look like a white chick. She's more beautiful that way, dontcha know.
*really bitter stuff about beauty coming from within snivelling hearts and all your girlfriends being made entirely of wash-off plastic snipped*
* * *
It's the lunchtime singalong. I'm sneaking out for a smoke. BRB.
* * *
They raffle like no one human. They're punishing women for not shrieking at having won some random Amway-brand shampoo bottle. They have to get up on stage and shriek like they've found god. Maybe they have. Maybe I'm missing something important.
Then I make myself look again at these cardboard cut-out women, shrieking in ecstasy of the most glorious moment of their lives...
* * *
We've been misled. There is indeed testosterone in the building, they were in the next room learning the manly business stuff that women shouldn't trouble themselves with.
You could smell it when they hit the dining hall, you could feel their deranged uber-testosteronated eyes following the curves of your blouse.
They all shake hands the same.
*more bitter stuff snipped about my mom*
* * *
They sure do have their spiel down pat.
No wonder, it's the precise same thing every time, a different person practicing their presentation. It's the identical well-masked legal disclaimers, the same tired old explanations about why you should buy the most expensive beauty package.
They have these conferences ten times a year, just in case someone's worrying that they might forget a morsel of it. *Everyone* makes it *every* time.
I know what the problem is, I'm not brainwashed enough yet, maybe I ought to come back tommorrow, screw dim-sum and Mount-Royal with Maria. Maybe then I'll end up as rich as the chick in the red suit at the top of the pyramid, even though I'm starting at the bottom...
hate to break it to y'all, chickies...
Holy shit, my aunt is buying this. My mum's sister-in-law... She's... She's gone blank like the rest of them.
Oh damn.
I can smell the suffocating tonnes of make-up in here, and they lied when they said that their perfumes don't induce migraines...
I hope the Tammy Faye Bakerettes don't go ballistic and paint me if I pass out for a bit.
* * *
Alright. So it was a mite bitter. It's definitely very far one-sided and a lot of the gripes I can already see my mum's perspective about...
But I wanted to get some of it out, and I did. Normal programming resumes tommorrow.