A Martian in a Venusian beauty shop
Saturday, November 03, 2007
I hesitated at the entrance, undecided. The signboard read Gauche Cosmetics and tag line said Ugly? Don't worry, we've got you covered. At the bottom of the board, the following text appeared : Established 1817, Proprietors : Mlle Ravissant and Daughters.
Why would I want to enter such a place, I asked myself. I got no answer. The curiosity still burned within me though. I was about to enter alien territory.
As I opened the door and stepped inside, the fumes hit me. I found it difficult to breathe. As I gasped for air I realised that the fumes had a smell. Or rather, smells. Different smells, smells that I could recognise from my travels to the unexplored lands, smells of the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen, smells of animals; Was it a deer, I wondered; smells of a human, smells of lavender, smel-
"A human?" I returned to that smell, resolving to continue with lavender and whatever came next at a later time. I was certain that I had smelled this particular odour on a human before. My memory isn't usually a champion even at the best of times, so to speak, and if I maybe be allowed to make a metaphor in this narrative, I would say it is akin to a steam engine that is running low on steam. However, my memory suddenly turned on full steam ahead, probably fueled by the strange smell, and formed pictures in my mind. I could see her now. She was in my life in my younger years, though only for a fleeting moment. In my long life that fleeting moment would have been a night, or maybe two. She had taken a fancy to me, but where she lived, where I had met her and who she was eluded me as my memory wouldn't linger too long over a picture for my mind to capture the details. This lady was exotic, was all I remembered. A strange, exotic lady who stayed with me that night and as I explored her I began inhaling a sweet scent that got stronger as she got closer to me. I did not understand the phenomenon and postulated the cause to be the presence of odour producing organs in the bodies of the people of this strange land. I had observed it before in a species of deer, thereby giving it a scientific basis. The females of this race of people might have been capable of producing an odour in moments of pleasured excitement, I theorized.
It turned out that I couldn't have been farther from the truth. This smell, that I was smelling now and had smelt on the lady earlier, was coming out a phial that was held in a lady's hand. My optical senses took over from the olfactory and I studied the interior of the cosmetician's parlour. I found myself to be the sole representative of the male gender in this crowd of the fair sex that milled about around me. Their eyes were on me. I wish I could describe the looks on their faces, but it would have been impossible because of the multitude of emotions that were displayed on them. Amusement, Surprise, Fear and Shock were what I could see as my eyes took in a panorama of the surroundings. In addition to this difficulty that posed itself leaving me unable to provide an accurate description of the looks on their faces, there was also a problem with their inherent looks itself. But, before I proceed to this new problem, I must now shed some light on why these ladies were staring at me.
A radical theory proposed by a scientist (later declared to be loony and thrown in a loony bin) suggested that the female gender was endowed with the ability of "intuition" which gave them an insight into the human mind and its workings and consequently the ability to sense things in a manner that couldn't be proved by current science. However, I agreed with this theory, mostly because the loony scientist was my uncle and I rather liked him as a kid. This uncle had gone as far as to say that women would be excellent detectives if they did not live in a patriarchal world.
Detectives with mind reading skills was what I was thinking and fearing as I looked at these women staring at me. They were inside my mind.
I am a woman. No, the narrator did not change sexes in an instant. I have taken his place as the narrator to paint an accurate picture of what was going in our minds when he entered the parlour. Oh, did I say I would paint an "accurate" picture? That was only a half-truth I'm afraid. You do not expect us women to tell you what really goes in our minds, do you? Even our secret diaries are not complete accounts of our lives, y'know. Remind me to tell you about the sailor next door, will you? It's scandalous and you absolutely must hear it, but first I must proceed on to what we were thinking as we looked upon the man who entered our realm.
Who was he? Why would he enter a cosmetician's parlour? The first thought that entered my mind was that he was a fop. We get many of those around here. As I looked closer though, I saw that he was no fop. He could not be an aristocrat, much less a fop who affects the mannerisms of an aristocrat.
What was he then? Was he queer? No, the way he leered at the women disproved that.
Was he here to buy some gifts for a mistress or wife? His roving eye discounted the possibility of a wife. A mistress was more likely. However, he did not seem to be wealthy enough to buy anything from here.
So, why was he here? What was his intent? Why do I feel strangely attracted to him?
And the following thoughts of the lady went in an amorous direction and necessitated the return of the man into the narrator's chair. So, here I am back again. I could sense that after a few minutes of observing me the ladies were still confused, judging by the looks on their faces. And this brings me back to their looks. These women had faces which looked very different from the ones I have seen back in my country. The women of my country had flaws of many kinds on their faces. Their complexion would not be uniform, they might have some scars, their noses might look too big and their lips might not be red enough. However, the women who were around me now did not seem to have these flaws. On closer look, they did have these flaws. But these flaws seemed to be masked. They had masks on. They were hiding their true faces. The thought enraged me. Blinded me. I grabbed one of the women and tried to take the mask off her face. It did not come off. My hands were covered with a strange powder. I rubbed it on my face.
The women looked at me with a strange expression. One of them stepped forward and took out a few tools that I have not set eyes on before. She applied the same powder over and over again on my face. After close to half an hour, she was done.
I looked in the mirror. I saw someone different. I felt joy.
posted by foogarky @ 1:35 PM,
,
The Author
foogarky
foogarky is the pseudonym of the fictional construct who battles for supremacy with other constructed personas in the mind of a crazed individual. He describes himself as a man living in a non descript house in Rio De Janiero, Brazil with two dogs and a parakeet.
About This Blog
The Loony Lampoonist serves to parody, spoof and satirize everything that needs to be parodied, spoofed and satirized. Due to the fictional nature of this electronic journal, any anecdotes appearing here ever so often that seem to be personal in nature, would suffer from the effects of conflicting personalities, the creation of fictional events and the inclusion of non existent characters who did not make it to the big league in the author's literary works. Thus, the Loony Lampoonist is also a purgatory for characters and ideas that have missed the limelight.
