Botox Party
A short story about lips.
Friday is Old Tape Warehouse Day at The Fiesta 13. On Friday, we send Cat Mate 002 (Bootsey) into The Old Tape Warehouse to rat out old content, lick off the gunk & present the slobbery content at our feet. We did make a new graphic.
Botox Party is the first shorty-short story we performed live for a drunk audience.
Our Story After This Message from The Food Penguin…
She was finally perfect. 53 and perfect. No more liposuction. No more extreme boot camp. No more tossing lunch into the toilet. Spitting distance of her high school cheerleading weight, you could bounce a quarter off that shit. Well, four tries, the right angle, and plenty of force and you could bounce a quarter off that shit. So, Damn. Before the quarter even hit the pillow, she had the perfect idea.
Botox Party. I deserve it. I fucking deserve it, she thought. And then said it out loud, I fucking deserve it, agreeing with herself.
Calm down, do the meditations, do the mantra, repeat the loop.
The living loop in her head for two long years. Once again repeat that loop.
Repeat and calm.
Ommmm…..
Dead to Me
Dead to Me
He’s Dead to Me Ommmm
Dead to Me
Dead to Me
He Lied to Me Ommmm
Dead to Me
Dead to Me
He Stole from Me Ommmm
Dead to Me
Dead to Me
That Fucker Cheated on Me Ommmmmmmmmmmm
Dead to Me
Dead to Me
I should’ve said something, Anything Ommmmmmm
Dead to Me
Dead to Me
Dead to Me
Dead To…
Fuck You Sheila, you skank-whore, burn in hell forever. bitch.
Fuck that loop.
Botox Party.
Gotta Get Away…Gotta. Get. Away…
Do Something for herself and her dish-water dull hausfrau friends. Jill, Joan, Jane and Sue. The Real Housewives of Loser Lane. The Cul-de-sac of Cul-de-Sad-sacs. Tied-down and dreams deferred. Each one her lesser.
And as the self-appointed leader, her new freedom, her new agency meant their freedom, meant their agency, if only temporarily. She could save them. Poisons needed to be injected directly into the troubled areas. She needed to take charge. Her systematic, long-term plan was to reclaim her fallen-in friends and mold them into her image. This begins with a simple botox party.
Jill with pity in her voice: “Oh, six months now, how ya holding up, hun?” Better than ever, she thought.
Joan, concerned: “So sudden, the heart attack, really, how are you holding up?” He dropped dead before I had a chance to kill him.
Jane, furrowed brow: “Holding up okay, hun? How’s the business doing now that he’s gone, it’s so sad” Making money hand over fist since that glorious day that chiseler dropped dead.
Sue, already drunk: “Where’s the wine and face poison?” My favorite.
The day went, to reuse a word, perfect. The insurance money made her all house porn dreams come true. All of him expunged, replaced with the ideal representation of the confident, successful businesswoman. A phoenix on the rise. With style and restraint.
So, a short list for the perfect party:
Vegan meat trays. A wine bar. Deep-tissue masseuse with leather table. Massage chairs. A ‘New Face, New You’ banner across the hearth. Wheat Thins with an antioxidant dip. Dark chocolate fountain on display. Cake pops. Cosmetic sample bags. Face Masking station. Eye gels. Cool sculpting. Hot towel treatments. A DJ. And in the center of the living room, Botox injections in a red velvet chair by a licensed nurse.
She could’ve gotten a licensed stripper to inject the treatments, but decided against any male energy. Style and restraint.
At the end of the day, flushed and fully cleansed, she was packing away some unused wrapping paper when she ran across a photo in a bottom drawer. A glossy boudoir photo, taken for their 10th anniversary. Him in that damn elephant trunk speedo, laughing. Laughing! That laughing bastard.
Then, she caught her reflection in the dresser mirror, her lower lip, still numb, now the size of a small Southeastern Asian plantain.
