Corina and the Cougars

Ahhhhhhh the 80s.  A decade that for some was the highlight of their lives......for me was filled with a sense of complete and total confusion.  The fashion.......ummm I am not covering my body with a million crosses, a la Madonna.  The music.....give me some real bass and a genuine organ please!!

However in the 80's I became a mother and got married.  Yes.  In that order.  I attempted to keep the house in a pristine condition.  I tried to care about my husband's shirts being perfect.  I was a stranger in a strange land.  I remember it well.

When the ten year anniversary of being together with my daughter's father was coming up, I remember a deep dread...an urging... a restlessness that was going off.  I had to DO something.  I had to leave.  There was no more talking about it, no more hiding from it, no more waiting for it to all turn out better.  When I realized that I couldn't stand to hear my husband breathing next to me in bed at night, it was time to GO.

I moved back to my roots, San Jose, California.  I moved in with my then best friend Patty.  I was sick to my stomach most of the time.  I was free, I was separated, I was scared.  I focused on my then very young daughter.  Together we would figure it out.  Looking back it was more like the blind leading the blind....but that didn't stop me.

I had my cosmetologist's license and decided I hated doing women's hair.  I don't want a picture of someone who has 1. perfect hair and 2. professional stylists to make their hair look like that in the picture.  So I did nails and I loved it.  I could talk and make women's nails look amazing.  To say I had a knack for those two things was putting it mildly. 

My ex hadn't given me the only thing I asked for when leaving.......our '68 Chevy Suburban, affectionately called THE BEAST.  So I looked for a salon that was reasonably close to where I lived.  I soon found a job in an upscale nail salon at Bernal and Santa Teresa Blvd.  My life was moving forward.

The owner was a woman named Corina.  She was in her very early 40s.  She was hispanic, curvy, beautiful and insecure as the day is full of light.  She didn't have any training in cosmetology or in people but she talked her very rich husband into investing in this shop so she could indulge her little fantasy of a mini boutique in the front and nail stations within the salon itself.  She had amazing taste in the decor.  No really!  Green emerald marble graced the entrance.  The walls a soft pink.  The chairs deep and luxurious.  It was a lovely salon.  A few problems though. 

Whenever Corina arrived she pulled a lot of focus.  She expected to be fawned over by other women.  She expected to put on her little show of designer name dropping and shallow banter.  She expected other women to be as driven by material possessions as herself.

This job allowed me for the first time to understand that all women are connected in ways that we're not with men.  Up until this time a lot of my friends were men and before that boys.  I liked how the male species acted, how they were good company, how I could make friends and not worry about how to precede with anything as messy and emotional entanglement.  As long as my male friends were treated like my brothers, I got to enjoy friendships that were wonderous and plentiful.  This all changed when my livelihood was estrogen driven. 

What would I talk to women about?  I was touching strangers.....I wouldn't sit in silence for 45 minutes.  So I did what I always resort to.  I was myself.  I broke the ice right away.  What I learned was that I attracted a very special, ecclectic, group of women to me.  The not only became my loyal customers....but my sisters.  Childbirth, heartbreak, tough luck, Yeah I understood these beings.  It forever has changed how I deal with women.

I remember it was my birthday.  I was turning 29 and my boss, Corina insisted on taking me out to celebrate.  She had a girlfriend who we would now call a Cougar.  She was an established artist and connesiuer of younger men.  She came along for the 'fun'.  These women were way further along the female story than I was.  Both had been marred and re-married.  They had both made sure they married UP the second time.  Only to find themselves hornier and more medicated than in their youth. 

They took me to a singles club after dinner.  The music was mostly from the pop 60's and early 70's.  And the men?  Well they all looked like someone's ex-husband who stopped caring and stopped living.  To me these people all smelled of desperation and really bad cocaine.  I wanted out of their in the worse way.  I wasn't even 30 yet and I was really popular.  Hungry doesn't even begin to describe the actions of the men that came over to hit on me.  I finally begged Corina and her friend to drop me off at my familiar haunt to play pool and flirt with someone within my own species.

I remember Corina telling me a story about her youth growing up in the Barrio.  When she met her current husband, Len, she told him she didn't know how to cook and refused to clean.  So he got a housekeeper and a cook.  She was bored while he was out taking care of business.  She had a membership to the gym but instead of going, she would complain about her rapidly thickening thighs.  She dressed well and expected everyone to take notice of her and her red mercedes.  Remember my truck, The Beast?  She asked me not to park in front of the shop, it didn't look good for business. 

While I had close, meaningful interactions with my clients......I would hear Corina and her very affluent friends complain about their lives.  While I was scraping my way into my new life, I would hear them talk about the trips, the jewels, the medications that did NOTHING to appease their appetites or their souls.  One by one, these women lost their husbands to women that would make a home, that would cook a meal, that would bare their not perfect breasts and that actually needed that man in their life.  Corina's husband fell in love with a woman named Guadelupe who cooked and cleaned.  Cornina lost everything, the house, the business, and yes, the red mercedes.

I don't think it had to do with anything other than these women, even when handed everything on a platinum platter knew when to be satisfied, when to be happy, when to be content with what was right before them.  It was a lesson that I internalized.  What I was seeing wasn't about men that wanted a woman to know her place.  They wanted and craved women who knew who they were and could contribute something more than just a credit card bill at the end of the month.  Some of those women had every whim and desire handed to them :  Nose too big? Breasts too small?  Never traveled?  Never had expensive clothing touch your skin?  All of it and more was taken care of and yet, still a deep, aching hole existed within these women.

I am now the age that Corina and her Cougar friend were then.  I haven't met a man that would indulge me like that.  In fact I haven't met anyone at all.  I haven't forgotten the lessons of Corina and her gaggle of sycophantic friends.  I haven't forgotten that when a person in a relationship is actually prosperous that he or she needs to be nurtured too.  That when a gift comes into your life don't be so empty that you can't enjoy it, thrive in it, and build more happiness.  Thank you to those pre-Cougars.