Is Fat Bob Dead Yet? by Dobyns Stephen
Author:Dobyns, Stephen [Dobyns, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780399171451
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2015-09-01T04:00:00+00:00
SIXTEEN
Let’s get back to those folks who say there are no accidents and everything happens for a reason. Vasco calls them suckers; Didi calls them his constituency. In these folks’ analysis of the world, Fate and the extended power digit, or middle-finger salute, of various faith-supported superfigures do a lot of heavy lifting. So they might think the prospect of an overlap between Free Beagles from Nicotine Addiction, Inc. and Prom Queens Anonymous, Inc. isn’t a coincidence but “means something.” It was destined to happen.
But Didi will say what it means is statistics: that given two hundred prom queens and one thousand beagles within a population of a hundred thousand women, there’s an X percent possibility that Y number of prom queens will own a beagle. In fact, a few former prom queens will find spiritual sustenance only in the embrace of a beagle. Beagles don’t care if you’re no longer beautiful. They don’t care if the great expectations you had as an eighteen-year-old knockout have become spilled jam pots on the dusty roads of life. That’s why we like beagles and other canines: love and loyalty are more important to them than truth. You tell your dog you can walk on water and it will lick your hand. Its only fear is of being left behind, locked up, shut in the doghouse when you go to a fancy-dress ball or simply go shopping. Otherwise you’re gravy.
Didi’s target prom queens are women between forty-five and sixty-five—women dismayed by the creeping decrepitations to be found on necks, cheeks, foreheads, etc. Didi is the enemy of face-lifts. He doesn’t want these ladies to be beautiful again.
He wants shattered glass to remain shattered glass. As girls they had great hopes. They were told that golden futures lay ahead. They saw themselves as celebrities in training, as proto–trophy wives. Maybe many also wanted to become doctors, lawyers, and airline pilots, and maybe some were successful. In fact, among family members, friends, and fellow workers, they might be superstars. But they’re no longer beautiful. That’s not to say they are ugly—they are faded.
Didi, of course, understands that some have made profitable transitions to middle age. For them their brief fame as prom queens is no more than a mildly diverting anecdote about the days when they posed in shining crowns and held bouquets of flowers. And some perhaps never liked their beauty. It was the child they constantly had to care for. They hated being ogled. They celebrated each new wrinkle.
But others may live in states of perpetual grief. Nothing has worked out as promised. Despite fortunes spent on makeup, their faces are little more than prettified accusations. Of course this isn’t true, but it’s how they feel. Instead of casting aside the delusion of ugliness, they embrace it. And perhaps they see it as the cause of all their failures: they lost their looks.
These are the customers of Prom Queens Anonymous: groups of older women sitting in church basements over sour cups of coffee
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Satire |
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