This is my story of some fabulous women. They lived in a small town in the 1970's. Not suffocatingly small, a population about 55,000. Ok, somewhat suffocating. These women are best friends, they are all either separated or divorced as was the custom in that town in the 70's. Anyone who was caught dead having a happy marriage was a drag and were to be avoided.
If I were to pick a movie that would best describe these women's lives, I'd have to say Steel Magnolias. If the Magnolias were inebriated half the time, together all the time and only took a break from smoking when they slept. No, I wouldn't call them Steel Magnolias, I would have to call them, let's say, Titanium Birds of Paradise. Exotic. They'd love that.
First, let me introduce you to Dorothy. Dorothy was a very beautiful and sexy woman, about 5 foot 5 and very curvaceous . She perpetually teetered on high heels, day and night, from season in to season out. Shoulder-length brunette hair which waved naturally, of course. No one could quite carry herself quite like Dorothy and to this day I don't know how Dorothy carried Dorothy as she was almost always pissed to the gills. I can just see her now, prancing up our front walk wearing nothing but a little bikini, big straw floppy hat , high heels and carrying what she always carried in her right hand: a 16 ounce Styrofoam cup filled half with ice and straight Smirnov vodka. If you never saw her visibly drunk, your eyes are better than mine. Just tipsy and giddy and hilarious Never drunk, she was too much of a lady for that.
Dorothy was married to Andy who had family money. In a small town family money meant they can pay all their bills and then still can afford to eat. In this town at that time there wern't big grocery chains. There were small mom and pop stores all over town. And's parents owned two of them and had passed the responsibility and the income from them on to him. Andy was a short, stocky man with slightly balding blonde hair. You could almost say he was attractive. Almost.
None of us had any idea Andy was abusive until one day, one summer he decided beating Dorothy with a loaf of bread while he and she were naked sounded like a good idea. I don't know how she did it, but somehow she managed to grab her keys and run for her brown "woodie" station wagon. She gunned the engine heart beating wildly while the station wagon's back tires spewed loose gravel into Andy's red as a beat face. She made it to my mom's house as fast as was possible. Still naked as the day she was born. There were no clothes in the car so she did the best she could do under the circumstances. She took the elongated double floor mat out of the back floor board and wrapped that around her. If anyone could pull off wearing a floor mat she flat did. She trotted up the walk holding the mat in position to hide her private parts. We pissed ourselves. To this day, Hollywood still cannot possibly conjure up a sight as funny as this.
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