Beauty Shop Talk: Finding a Good Man
It's hard to find a godly man, even among the Promise KeepersYou would think a guy you picked up at a Promise Keepers rally would know how to treat a lady. Especially a lady who traveled all the way from Axel, Texas, to hand out moist towelettes to crying, sweaty men. I don't know why I let Brandi talk me into going. She said it was the chance of a lifetime to meet a godly man. We've been friends since fifth grade and when Brandi looks at me with those sad hound dog eyes, I usually give in.I had planned to spend the weekend at home doing laundry. Then my husband Sonny called to say the Promise Keeper bus from Goat Head Baptist had broken down outside the Isle of Capri casino in Bossier City. They decided to stay."We feel like it's the Lord's will," he said. "Why should husbands have all the fun?" Brandi said, and she ought to know. She caught her ex-husband Lance in bed with two lab techs and a physical therapist."You win," I said. "Let's go."The rally was a miracle of modern marketing. Organizers called it Stand in the Gap and held it at a mall. It was a mecca for singles. Eager spinsters and divorcees mobbed men the street. "Your wives may hate you but we love you," they cried.Penitents by the hundreds hollered at Brandi and me. Was it our "We HEART Submission!" poster or Brandi's metal-studded bra? We found out women could get in if we volunteered to hand out personal hygiene supplies. Our first glimpse of that magnificent throng of manhood was the participants all bent over, groveling in the dirt -- which is the way Brandi and I like our men. We figured there would be easy pickings for empathetic gals like us. When Brandi met Stan, a divorced father of two from Atlanta, she thought she had found Mr. Wonderful. "I'd like to gird his loins," she said. Stan tearfully described his former wife as a mean femi-Nazi. "But I'm sure somehow it was all my fault," he blubbered. Brandi's always been a sucker for male hysterics. Before I could stop them, she and Stan went through a whole box of complimentary facial tissues. That night my friend and I struggled to cover ourselves with discarded tissues as we lay in a drain pipe near the mall. "I wonder what Stan looks like when he hasn't been crying five hours straight," Brandi said. "He's so chivalrous -- he said he'd lay down his life for me." "Sonny would lay down his life for his Troy Aikman autograph." "Well, at least that's something," said Brandi. The next morning I went home early so I could scrub the grass stains out of Sonny's cut-offs. Brandi stayed behind with her new love. They shared a corny dog and went out for coffee, and after the rally Stan asked her to spank him in his room at the Motel 6. "I admire a man who can appreciate a good cry," she said. "But, frankly, Stan's kind of a dud."We haven't given up. Brandi and I just got back from another man-hunting expedition -- this time to the Bare as You Dare 5K at the Bluebonnet Naturist Resort. I'll take an earthy hedonist any day over a pious whipping boy.It was another weekend of sweaty guys in the dirt, some of them even crying. But at least these guys were naked.
