The Butcher of Church Street Has My Number

I've mentioned before that my friend Kay has been urging me to visit her plastic surgeon. First of all, if you can get the words "my," "plastic," and "surgeon"into the same sentence, you have way too much time and money on your hands and need to find a better hobby than yourself. Nevertheless when I was visiting my dermatologist The Butcher of Church Street today, I looked in a hand mirror to check out what he and his comely assistant were doing to my neck, and I thought of Kay.

"Butcher, honey, can you do anything about these lines?" I asked, pointing to the parentheses on either side of my mouth. "Something non-invasive?" The Butcher sprang to life, and as if by magic whipped out a needle befitting a horse vet. His eyes popped out even more than usual, and he said "You would be perfect for a little filler," and he produced some brochures showing women looking like Droopy Dawg in one photo,  transformed  into cravasse-free starlets in the follow up picture.

" 'Filler' " sounds a little, well, like landscaping," I said. "Dirt. Backfill." The Butcher chuckled and pursed his lips.

"Not at all,'  he chuckled. "It lasts a couple of years, no lumping or clumping, and the bruising goes away in forty-eight hours. Seventy-two at the most."

"Seventy-two, hmmm?" I could feel myself pondering. That's just what the landscaper said, minus the part about the bruising, and in the first hard rain, half the terracing washed right down into the street. Would this filler run down into my chin, making me look like Jay Leno's sister?

"Come in for a consult," he said. "I know you would love it." Snip snip,  he continued to cut off the tiny moles and skin tags that gave my neck that lizard-like glow.

"I'll be gone for a couple of weeks," I said.  Just like buying a house.  They say when you think about where you would put your furniture, you've as good as bought the place.

"Do it when you come back from your trip, you'll look 15, even 20 years younger for your reunion."

Ba-zinggg! We had discussed upcoming reunions earlier, his 40th and my 50th, and now he was playing me like a violin. It was like using insider trading to rack 'em up on the big board.

"I'll think about it," I said, sounding unconvinced.

"No charge for consults," he countered.

"You shouldn't write about this stuff," Kay said later. "Now, everybody will know."

"First of all, 'everybody' does not accurately describe my blog readership, and what do I have to hide? I don't care if people know."

"Not about you, about me, Dummy," Kay huffed.

"I never used your last name in my blog," I said. "Anyway, even your husband didn't notice your lift."

"The dog did. She barked at me for a whole day. It's beginning to need a re-do. Been almost five years."

If I had a lift like Kay's that cost as much as my last car, I would want to shine it up and take it for a spin around the block so everyone could admire it. The best that we do is go to IHop once a month so she can get the "Two,Two,Two,"or rather the "Dos, Dos, Dos," since she prefers the IHop on Buford Highway. And a five year life-span? No. Absolutely not.  How many trips to Europe would that be?

But filler? I'll have to think about it.