Parallel Lives

‘I want it like this’, handing over a faded and crumpled picture of a blonde pop star from the late 70s. The hairdresser suppressed a giggle by remembering the tip and set about dressing the mutton as lamb. She kept a close watch on the scissors that buzzed around her vanity. It was the looks that always attracted the attention. She couldn't afford to take her eyes off what she knew would make sure all eyes were on her. Though even from her self obsessed fog she had to admit this was for less time than they used to be. Or until the lights were too harsh. When it became more laughter lines than parallel lines, though she'd long forgotten the jokes. Possibly around the same time she became it.

Convinced she looked like Debbie Harry, behind her back they all called her Dirty Harry. A reputation she lived up to at any opportunity and had to enhance whenever she thought someone else was being looked at more than her. Which got harder every year, despite the gym, always being hungry and buying make up in bulk. The youngsters just saw her as a joke now, not even a rite of passage, or any other dark corner, just a sad shadow always on offer. Permanently in the sales. The end of the night discount. When all else fails.

They'd christened her Dirty Harry when she progressed from the older woman necking too much booze and getting overexcited about Mistletoe at the Xmas party, to coping a feel of the newest office junior in the passageway near the toilets. During work hours.Too many clean-shaven young men in ill fitting suits had cowered as a hand covered and squeezed their balls as a voice whispered "I could teach you a thing or two" while the other hand tried to drag them through the door to a cubicle, where she intended to ladder the knees of her tights proving it. Or choke trying. It was the Friday lunch in the pub joke, even when she was in earshot and pretending, helped blushing wise by the make up, the wine and soda, or ‘spritzer’ as she still called it, made her selectively deaf as well as numb.

She had other options. Or so she believed every time she started that pursuit on her chunky and ageing mobile phone. Numbers found through Facebook or Linkedin, if the prey had been successful. Lighthearted texts and flattering, surprised hellos. Nothing too much given away. Slowly working the illusion, sending pictures that were now older and older versions, careful to crop the clothes from an earlier era. Or not even bothering to send ones where she was wearing any. That usually worked. Or at least speeded up the rush to pursue an unlikely ray of light in whichever dried up marriage she'd sent a mirage into.

It took a lot of attempts to get a response. But for every few blocked calls, she ended up with a room number at a discreet hotel, almost always an economy room, and an uptight bloke who at some point uttered, after drinking too much of the wine he'd hid in his bag to avoid paying room service prices, "Sorry, it's never happened before". They meant this literally as well as physically, trapped now in a room with someone they realised was not who they seemed all those years ago. Seeing now the swinger had mood swings. When she'd said they made her feel like a teenager, it wasn't tantrums and sulking they'd expected. When she said they'd be riding all night, it wasn't in a car round the outskirts of town with the windows open, preying they wouldn't be spotted and she'd sober up and stop sobbing soon so they could drop her at a taxi rank. That they could find an excuse for turning up home before dawn after making excuses that they'd be away until morning. Too elaborate and they'd be bang to rights, instead of skipping home, as they’d hoped, after being banged all night.

To her it didn't matter, whenever she returned, another argument with her weak and despised husband, who'd been left with the now teenage kids once more, too dignified to admit he knew what was going to happen, his own personal Groundhog Day. The kids too embarrassed to listen again as her demands for wanting more out of life is delivered through streaked eyes before she staggers to bed. Her own this time. Everyone waiting for the first few bars of Hanging on the Telephone to blast out from behind the slammed door. Knowing they can turn it off after the third track, by which time she’ll be asleep and dreaming. Till the next time she decides she wants more.