Just a note for future reviewers of this piece – I’m looking for in depth comments, not just if you liked it or not. This needs quite a bit of work and I want to find out which areas are the most problematic. I want to know what’s good and what ought to be fixed. Be specific, please. Spending credits for a 20 word review is kind of disheartening.
Non-fiction / Another Day with Mary Kay
Day 0:
When the four women initially got on the train I was too lost in my morning hatred stupor to notice them. I was soon jolted out of my reverie by their high pitched twangs, the kind of flat drawl that can only be found in Texas.
“Oh my goodness, this is just so nice!” the one in the pink blouse squealed. “I just love trains!”
“I do too, I just love ‘em,” the one in sherbert green stated. They were all in pastels actually, shades that white women should be dissuaded from wearing.
Yellow just loved the train too and she had to let everyone know. Peach smiled knowingly.
“Oh, this is like those trains in Europe,” she said. “I was on a lot of trains there.”
“My goodness,” breathed Pink. “You were in Europe?”
“Seven countries in fourteen days,” Peach boasted.
“Ooooh, she’s had experiences, “ gasped Green. “You have just had experiences.”
Peach interrupted, “Well this is just like my friend’s niece said about Chicago. There’s a train there too.”
“Isn’t there a subway there?” asked Yellow.
“Oh yes, it’s called the El,” said Peach. “It goes underground like in New York.”
“That’s what my friend’s niece said. She had to move back here though because her parents died in a car crash. Now she’s afraid to drive because of that, but like my friend said, ‘Honey, there’s no other way to get around Dallas.’”
“Wait, wait everyone. Which stop do we get off at?” Yellow asked. All the women replied simultaneously.
“Someone else called. I’m just along for the ride.”
“When I called, they said Akard.”
“The nice man on the phone told me Akard.”
“Is there an Akard stop on this train? Excuse me, is there an Akard stop on this train?”
They all leaned towards me eagerly, pink lips stretched taut over white teeth.
“I don’t really know. I don’t ride the train much,” I said, leaning away from them. And I don’t ride the train much in Dallas because I don’t live in Dallas, thank god. I was there as a favor to my friend Sally. She had offered me a short term job so I could pay my rent, which had become more important to me than attributes like dignity or self-respect.
“Well the DART man said it was Akard, so I believe him.”
“Oh girls, we just blew our cover! So much for pretending we know what we’re doing!”
The high pitched hilarity continued behind me and I realized there was only one explanation for these women.
“And then the DART man said after we see our movie, we should go get some jay-lot-toe. What’s jay-lot-toe?”
“Oh, it’s that Eye-talian ice cream.”
“I had gelato in Europe.”
“Well the DART man said we should get some.”
These had to be Mary Kay women, those pink clad makeup hustlers who run around making unfortunate people like me miserable – although that’s jumping a bit ahead of myself. Suffice to say I would be having quite a bit of personal contact with these women, because my short term, rent paying job was working a booth at the Mary Kay convention.
And if these weren’t Mary Kay women, if these were just ordinary Americans tourists sight seeing in Dallas, then god help us all because the country’s in a worse state than even I imagined.
Day 1: The Convention
Sally and I have been friends for over ten years. We played together as kids, hated each other in middle school, made up in high school, lived together in college, stole each other’s boyfriends, hated each other again, moved to Austin together, hated each other yet again and she moved back to Dallas. We have rebuilt a cautious friendship since then that lasts as long as we don’t spend too much time together. Thus her kind offer also made me a bit leery. I wasn’t sure if we would survive two weeks of working in close quarters together, in fact I seriously doubted it, but as I have already established, rent is more important than piddly little things like friendship.
Sally and Nick run a business together; he is a graphic designer who creates logos, web pages, etc., while she puts logos and designs on products for people. Do you need a thong with your company’s logo on it? Perhaps a clock, keepsake box, t-shirt, clock, magnet, key chain, coffee mug, luggage tag, coaster, beverage holder, or some risque lingerie? Call Sally. Or Nick. They’re always together anyway and they each have about a hundred businesses they’re working on all at the same time which seems quite confusing and troublesome to me, but I didn’t have a job at the time so I certainly couldn’t say anything. Well, anything nice.
So Nick and Sally had this client, a motivational speaker from Alabama who just had to have a booth at the Mary Kay show. Now, the Mary Kay show can be a big money maker for lots of people because near the Convention Center a market is set up where vendors from all over the country come to sell their goods to the Mary Kay consultants. Some of these women will spend big money to buy enough of these baubles to outfit their whole team, to motivate them, inspire them, help them live the makeup dream.
Nick and Sally’s client couldn’t be in Dallas for the entire convention because he had motivate people in other states for a few days, so Sally and Nick volunteered to man the booth for him, good customer service for a good customer. They would attempt to sell this motivational merchandise for a percentage of the sales, but lucky me got an hourly wage for helping out. I would work one day with Nick, one with Sally and on and on until the client came back.
The client’s name was Byrd Baggett. Not only was his name Byrd, but he was Byrd the Fourth because Byrd is the kind of name that needs to passed down that many generations. In family conversations they would often get the Bryds confused. Which one are you talking about, they would say, so they devised a clever solution. Byrd the Fourth was Little Byrd. His father, the Third, was Big Byrd. His grandfather, Byrd Jr., was Old Byrd and the original Byrd, now deceased, was called Dead Byrd.
“Do you remember when Byrd went-”
“Wait, wait. Dead Byrd or Old Byrd?”
“Dead Byrd.”
Little Byrd had ensured that his son would not be called Mini Byrd by naming him John.
Byrd Baggett’s message was simple: Dare To Soar. Like all other self help gurus, his tips were broad enough to be of no service to anyone except the mentally impaired. His books had titles like Satisfaction Guaranteed and The Pocket Power Book of Motivation. They all looked like real books; some had dust jackets and all had impressive summaries on the back, replete with flattering quotes from grateful readers. Upon closer inspection, however, I was startled to find that not a single one of these books had anything like a chapter, or even a complete paragraph. They were all books of quotes, some made up by Byrd himself, some attributed to others, and some just flat out stolen. Every single book by Byrd Baggett, and there are at least eight of them, are nothing but collections of quotes.
“Time spent ‘on the street’ teaches great wisdom.”
“Leaders are like eagles. They choose to soar in a sky of uncertainty.”
“Leadership is a Sprint. Special People Recognizing Individually the Need for Togetherness.”
And I was going to be his front man for the next two weeks.
Sally told me that the Mary Kay show used to be somewhat glamorous. Since the company itself is based in Dallas, the Dallas convention is the biggest, the ritziest, the pinkest of all the gatherings. Consultants come from all over the country to attend and spend. They come in groups from different regions and each gets four days in the big city before they hurry home to make way for the next group. Day 0 is the arrival date, Day 3 the departure. The top consultants, the big money women, those in the Diamond and Ruby groups, don’t come until the end of the convention. New groups are constantly shuttling in and out, giving the vendors a whole new crowd to sell to every three days. Sally told me that this convention could make or break a business.
At one time, the market was housed in the basement of a posh hotel in Dallas and some of the vendors were pretty upscale. Sally’s mom actually used to do some of her Christmas shopping there. Room service would deliver food and well dressed women traipsed from booth to booth spending obscene amounts of money.
Let me be the first to inform you that the golden age has passed.
Instead of a hotel, we were housed in a converted parking garage a block away from the Convention Center. How does one convert a parking garage? you might ask, and I would answer that it’s pretty impossible. The red carpet and minimal lighting cannot hide the concrete walls, the stale smell or the hundreds of confused pigeons roosting in the ceiling. Why are you here, they cooed to us? Why?
At least they had installed air conditioning, a giant unit housed in one corner that blew strong blasts of frigid air directly at our booth all day long. The Wind, as I came to think of it, blew flyers off of our table if we weren’t careful and made me increasingly miserable. After two days I started wearing long sleeve shirts and a jacket to work, which looked pretty silly considering it was July in Texas. When the shivering began, which it invariably did after about two hours, I would pace around the ten foot square of our booth rubbing my hands together and wonder if the items we sold made for good kindling.
I have to admit that I was wholly unprepared for this experience. Sally was my friend, a cautious one but a friend nonetheless, and I trusted her judgement to a certain degree. When Nick picked me up the first morning we joked about parking garage and Nick gave me some tips on what we would be doing. I ran it in my head over and over again. I will be selling motivational merchandise to Mary Kay women. I will be selling motivational merchandise to Mary Kay women. Actually it was more like, now I will be able to pay rent. Suck it up, girl. Now I will be able to pay rent. Just suck it up.
When I was finally there, when I actually saw what we would be hawking, I had no internal refrain; I was too appalled. The ten by ten space was filled with – well it was filled with crap. The absolute worst crap I have ever personally handled. Up until recently I had worked at a bookstore that sold American flag magnets and Nascar pens but at least there were books interspersed with those, real books with chapters and paragraphs but here there was only crap. Trailer hitch covers that said choose the passing lane of life and look at life through the windshield, not the rearview mirror, tiles that said worried about the past? Flush it and move on!, a cutting board that read if it can’t eat you, don’t worry about it! The scariest was the clock with the bottom half of a face on it, the hands coming out of the nose that just said SMILE! SMILE was an acronym for something disgustingly cheerful. Byrd loved acronyms. HOPE: Holding Onto Positive Expectations. LIFE: Live It Fully Everyday. (Which is actually incorrect. Everyday should be two words in this instance, not one. The jury is still out on the usage of onto.)
And eagles. Big scary eagles with sharp beaks and angry eyes. I hadn’t realized before how frightening eagles actually are. We have them as our country’s mascot, plaster them everywhere in stylized representations that promote their nobility, and this almost hides the fact that they are huge predator birds who swoop out of the sky to kill small mammals. Actually quite a fitting symbol for our country, come to think of it. Maybe if we had gone with Ben Franklin’s suggestion for the turkey history would have gone a little more smoothly. And I wouldn’t have been faced with these bloodthirsty birds plastered on prints with inane sayings scripted beside them. We must have the courage to dream…
How could Sally make this stuff? This kitsch? She was my friend, a girl I debated passionately with in college about art, politics, life. We were going to live great lives, full of promise and integrity and while I might not have quite lived up to those dreams either, at least I wasn’t manufacturing bad taste landfill waste that would survive us by hundreds of thousands of years. The empires of the future will display tacky, Dare to Soar key chains as an example of how we came to our demise.
Sally and Nick both took it so seriously. They marched around the booth setting everything up and showing me all of their products, predicting what would sell.
“I’ve got more of those keepsake boxes at the shop, so you should really sell as many of those as you can.”
“I think the luggage tags might do well. A lot of those women have suitcases coming out of their asses.”
“Should we put some of the boxes on the table?”
“Let me show you how to fill out a sales form.”
I trotted around behind them, smiled and laughed with them, but I was so embarrassed, more for them than myself. Maybe they weren’t really building their future on this. Perhaps they were going to turn to me with sly smiles to shout, “Sucker! You thought we would try to sell this shit? We really had you going!”
They continued with their thoughtful preparations, bustling around to get everything ready for the first wave of Mary Kay women.
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moorelaculous reviewed Version 1 -
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“Wait, wait everyone… All the women replied simultaneously.” This was a little confusing to me. I think it would be better if it was reworded “All the women talk at once” or something else along those lines. I know the story takes place in the past but in my experience its always better to use the present tense verbs where applicable. It makes the story read easier. For example “Yellow just loved the train too and she had to let everyone know.” Peach smiled knowingly.” I’d change it to Peach smiles knowingly
Other than that its very entertaining. Love the sarcastic voice. The dialogue is refreshing and the subject material is interesting, atleast it is to me. I used to work at Macy’s so this is somewhat familiar.
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mfrizz reviewed Version 1 -
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Well, the hellish experience was worth it, at least creativity, because this is fantastic. I can’t wait to read more. You do a wonderful job capturing the ridiculous humor in this experience: the women on the train, The Byrds, the acronyms, all just hilarious. This is my favorite thing I’ve read on this site.
Kalina_Malia reviewed Version 1 -
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Kristenloveskerouac reviewed Version 1 -
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haha this was funny – i liked how the mary kay women were depicted because i’m pretty sure that’s how they are, what with their “faith, family, then work” motto thing. Anyway i like all of it until the end – it seems like an easy out. but other than that i enjoyed reading it and thank you for sharing your work! k
neverifever reviewed Version 1 -
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Hm,interest story, good work on it. Does need some work but it was a good read. love your way with words.
tinaworldus reviewed Version 1 -
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The theme of this piece jumps about a bit. Is is a humor piece about Mary Kay? Is it about cautious friendships which allow you to pay your rent? Is is about the falldown of principles? It COULD be about all of these. However, it jumps around too much to do so. It really made me smile in parts, though. It was very clever to name the group of tourists the color of their outfits. I used to have a roommate who was a Mary Kay consultant and darned if you didn’t just nail it on the head. This piece could really be amped up with more voice, though. I’d like to really be poked in the chest and feel your lack of interest in being there, the cold at the convention, the Ralph steadman-esque feeling of these women.
JerricaRyan reviewed Version 1 -
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I really enjoyed the way you opened this story, and I’m sorry you had to listen to all these women! The language is easy to follow, and I love the way you describe them in the colors they are wearing (Yellow, so on). However, you lost me after the part with the women. I think it was a good story, but try to speak more in the active voice instead of the passive voice. (I have a problem with this too a lot, for some reason it just seems easy to say is staring instead of stared, for example). But I did like it overall. Good job.
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