Leathery and Lace

I enjoy when the eyes of my twelve year olds pop out of their heads. A little shock value when you least expect it is pleasing to the senses. Such was the case yesterday.


My family and I had just finished lunch at the Hard Rock Café in Station Square. I had a monster headache from the previous night. You know that commercial for Dos Equis beer where the actor says “I don’t often drink beer, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis”? Well, I went for, “I often drink beer, and when I do, I sometimes drink enough to give me a hangover from Dos Equis.” Therefore, I needed to scoot to the Sheraton next door to overpay for some Advil, or an awl to plunge into my head to relieve the pressure – either one.

As we were walking toward the entrance, my gaze drifted to the people standing out front, and my first thought was, “Wow, my kids are going to see their first transvestite!” Upon closer inspection, I realized she was not a transvestite, but a female body builder. As parents, when something like this is happening, your first instinct is to glance at your spouse. I tried that, but Bonnie was busy thinking, “Wow, my kids are going to see their first transvestite!”

Lucky us, we stumbled into the epicenter of a female body-building competition. Now, before I go any further, I want to say for the record that I applaud individuality and am devoutly a “live and let live” kind of guy. OK, now that the disclaimer is out of the way – what the hell kind of woman does this to their body? Upon closer inspection (or darting eyes out of fear one of them would fasten me to a lat pull-down machine) these women looked exactly like male body builders with two distinct exceptions – one of those would be breasts – the other I am making an assumption. Their skin wasn’t tan as much as it appeared a ten year old tried to stain grandmother’s end table by mixing orange latex paint with decade’s old brown stain – then applying a fine leather grain pattern. Their legs looked like gnarled telephone poles and their backs like cinder block walls with walnut sized bulges of muscle where the mortar should be.

As I am walking out of the sundry shop chewing my way through three layers of protection on the pill bottle (I was so desperate I almost ate the cotton) I saw the boys frozen against the wall like they had just seen the two headed man in a 1920’s carnival – but this was no parlor trick.

I asked my son what he thought of those female body builders. He said, “They were weird.” Literally.