Everything but Water is a bathing suit shop which I never ever visit in the Fashion Square Mall, or at least I hadn't until after this show. Looking at the pictures, this may strike you as odd, but I had the misfortune of just needing a new suit about one week before they went on Fall Clearance in all the stores I frequent. Surely even a bathing suit shop couldn't stay afloat selling only to patrons shaped like models, was my thought, so I took the plunge. Minutes later, firm in the opinion that nothing I paid more than two hundred dollars for should ever get wet (eg, this website), I fled.
Still, I just needed a suit and was feeling liberal about how much skin it had to cover. So I got me to the fleshpots of Target and after trying on several one and two piece combinations settled for a three piece ensemble. I could go to church in my new swim suit. I certainly wouldn't have raised any eyebrows at the Funk+Fashion Everything but Water show.
The event was held on a hot Friday night in August at the height of the Survivor craze. It is to that last factor I attribute what a bevy of stylists called The Tunnel did to my brother's hair. As I understood the Concept, a bunch of guys who have been on a desert island for so long that their shirts no longer button happen upon a band of skinny women in expensive bathing suits whose presence makes the guys so delirious with joy they couldn't wipe the grins from their faces for a million bucks. The guys who weren't Pat all had spiky crew cuts that looked as if they could very well have sand and sea salts encrusted within them, but Pat hasn't had a crew cut since he was a small child and resisted it mightily even then, so the people of The Tunnel went with a Bo Derek in "10" strategy and fashioned his pate into a crop of little pony tails that had a backward slant-for keeping his bangs out of his eyes whilst he hunted and fished, don't you see. Anyway, this rational persuaded me that he looked virile and can-do until after my second drink when I began to like it.
I don't remember much about the show. I was near the doorway and the air conditioning was way down, so the entire time I was subjected to artificially induced chills and fever. But after it was over, Lesbie Jo turned up with a fellow named Gregory trailing after her. He told us (Pat, our cousin Laurelyn, Lesbie Jo, and myself) that he was a pharmacist, then laughed a tired insincere laugh when we started sniffing around for free samples. I don't recall how, but Lesbie Jo shook him loose and the rest of us agreed to meet at Dennys'.
Dennys' is a fun place when you're with the right people, and that night we even had an personable if edgey waiter named Wayne. Wayne looked like somebody famous we decided, but couldn't decide who so we asked.
"Geddy Lee," said Wayne. Everything Wayne said was italicized, not hostile exactly, but with an edge. We ordered a variety of fried goods and a salad for Lesbie Jo--who immediately dumped a pile of salt on it, victim of that prank where the top of the salt shaker is undone and falls off as soon as it is tipped. She sheepishly waved Wayne over and asked for another, offering to pay him for his trouble.
Oh my gosh, it's
Wayne! (No, only Geddy Lee of Rush.)"No trouble," said Wayne, "It's fine." He waved away the notion as he stalked over to another of his tables. He stood next to it, sort of but not really glaring at the patrons, probably telling them the name they were looking for was Geddy Lee.
Then we went back to our place
for a sit in the Jacuzzi. Hey--I'll bet that's when I started hating my suit!
Written by Sharon C. McGovern
