My ears don’t match.
I just noticed it.
I was at my friend Awlette’s beauty shop, staring into the mirror — because I can’t turn my head while she trims the back. And there it is. My left earlobe is clearly longer than my right one. Not a lot — but still.
I asked Awlette if she ever noticed my ears don’t match.
Still trimming away, she says, “Oh, yeah. They don’t.”
I say, “I guess a lot of your customers are like that?” She says, “Nope. You’re the only one.”
So I’m a freak.
Now that I know about it, I wonder why nobody told me before. I guess when they talk to you, they don’t look at your ears. They look at your eyes. Or your boobs, if they’re men.
Or, has everybody been knowing this but me? Maybe they been pointing at me, “You’re looking for Modine? She’s the lady right over there — the one whose ears don’t match.”
So, instead of dangly earrings, I start wearing the kind that completely cover your earlobes — I got big pumpkins on my ears right now. Later it will be turkeys.
Right after I first noticed this, I had to go to this important evening party with my gentleman friend, Lust, who owns the Sloth Lounge. A lot of the bigwigs in the booze business are there — and also my sister-in-law Gloriosa, because she married into a fat cat family of liquor distributors. Even her father-in-law and mother-in-law, old Mr. Proteus and Ms. Scargophaga, will be there.
It’s the kind of party that calls for dangling diamond-looking earrings. And I got the perfect ones —much better than giant pumpkins on my earlobes. But of course, one fake diamond will hang lower than the other.
Gloriosa says I shouldn’t be worried about it, hardly anybody looks at both sides of your head at once. But then she comes up with two dangling hair curlicues that pretty much match my hair. One is a little longer than the other. I can pin one on each side of my face, and this will create the illusion, she says, that my ears are even. So I can wear my fake diamond earrings.
Perfect.
Fast-forward to this party, and there I am on the dance floor with Lust, who is actually dancing. I got on a new dress and Gloriosa’s dangly curls pinned over my ears.
Then one of these bigwigs comes up and says, “May I cut in?” and sweeps me off to another part of the dance floor. And I can tell he has had a few shots of something that ain’t been watered down. He is feeling his oatmeal.
I am trying to act gracious and sexy, but not too sexy, when I feel a tug on one of my dangling curls. And I realize it has attached itself with my hair pins to just behind this bigwig’s ear.
I quick try to pull it off with my teeth, but he interprets that completely wrong and bends me backward and gives me a sloppy kiss. Blech.
And then, thank God, Gloriosa swoops over. SHE cuts in and grabs him. They dance about two seconds, and she shrieks, “Omigawd! A spider!” and reaches up and claws my curl off his head.
Now she got this curl and a bunch of hair pins in her hand, so she sticks it down her cleavage. (Her cleavage is big enough to conceal a entire bouffant wig.)
I quick step in and say to Gloriosa, “I need you to come with me to the ladies’ room,” — no man ever argues with that — and hustle her off.
When we come back, with my curl out of Gloriosa’s cleavage and pinned back over my ear (she is squirming a little, so there are probably some hair pins left down in there) we see Mr. Bigwig is dancing in the clutches of Gloriosa’s mother-in-law, Ms. Sarcophaga.
We watch them a while from the other side of the dance floor. He ain’t having fun. Even drunk, he won’t try nothing with her because her husband is even a bigger wig than him.
I will add that to my stuff to be thankful for.
