Part 4
People mill around like confused cattle as Miz Tanya screams again and again, frantically rushing around the large ballroom. Groups of pageant moms knot together and whisper, no one offers to help because Tanya isn’t exactly liked. The moms are a tight knit group, anything negative said by one gets back to all the rest.
Don’t believe me? Just take a gander at a million pageant message boards on the internet where this woman complains that her child should have won the Grand Lil Miss competition but that so-and-so bribed the judge and that one complains that the photographer doesn’t know what she’s doing because she expected better looking pictures for all that money. Oh, and the two Mr. Steves hawk their coaching, hair and makeup services. One of the Mr. Steves had to resort to flooding the boards after he was drunkenly heard to mutter that he could take a girl, any girl, even a butt ugly girl and make her look like a pageant winner with enough makeup. Then he went on to say most of the girls he worked on were ’pure butt ugly’. And they aired this on HBO. Oh my how the moms did gossip about that for months, no one wanting to think he might possibly have been talking about their little girl.
I’m sure some in the crowd are thinking that whatever moment of fright Tanya is experiencing is something she’s brought on herself. She’s fought with the others online and off line and her biggest faux pas was that she got mad enough with the pageant system that she set up her own pageant three years ago. The Seafarers Miss Mermaid pageant held in Waveland, Mississippi. Her pageant was an abysmal failure, disorganized, chaotic and committing the worst sin of all in pageant land, she was slow about handing out much in the way of cash prizes.
Many moms will tell you that they only do the pageant circuit so that they can have the child win enough money to put aside for college. Another lie and one that I cannot figure out how they self justify. To come and compete in the national pageant system runs between two and four thousand every weekend you do it. And that’s not taking into consideration the long term expenses of this hobby, coaches, custom made outfits, dance lessons, personal hair and makeup artists, this is just skimming the surface of costs. I’ve often secretly wondered how most of them raise the scratch to keep going, none of them seem the type to be married to millionaires. I’ve seen the rolling scrap iron cars they arrive at my shop in, I’ve seen the threadbare coats and worn shoes. I’ve also heard the rumors of second mortgages and maxed out credit cards. It’s an awkward situation when you’re handling a sale and your customers credit card is rejected, they smile tightly and proclaim they haven’t a clue why this is happening and you smile tightly not believing them but pretending that you do.
Mr. Steve of the “Butt Uglies” pushes through the unsympathetic crowd to reach Miz Tanya, who’s now trying to tear through the layers of glitter bedecked cardboard that separates the ball room from the backstage as she wails. He grabs her, wrestling her bulk to the side of the stage as little girls scatter. Tanya manages to break free from his grasp and rush towards me, pointing and wailing to yell, “You were the last one to see her...where did she go?” I can feel the blood draining away from my face as I realize that this unbalanced woman is about to do what she does best, pass the buck for any personal responsibility. I shake my head and say kindly, “You were the last one with her. I straightened her dress and you guided her towards backstage.. you’re mistaken Miz Tanya..”
Before either of us can possibly utter another word one of the other pageant moms, a tough cookie named Samantha steps forward and gripes loudly between exhalations of cigarette smoke, “So are we gonna keep on here or what? I don’t want to be here waiting for beauty to finish until 2 am.. chop, chop folks..” Many people stare open mouthed at Samantha Smith with shocked expressions. I don’t, I know Sam all too well. Sam was once a Marine and she doesn’t play, she’s all business, as tough, rude and straight to the point as a drill sergeant. In fact I pity Sam’s small daughter Rayvyn, I’ve seen Sam drill Rayvyn relentlessly on her pageantry skills, to the point where she stands in the back of the ballroom, her blue eyes burning an angry hole into her daughter’s small blonde skull as she mouths instructions or the words to whatever song Rayvyn is singing for talent. Sam is so butch, so extremely masculine, that I’m not really sure what exactly she’s getting from all of this, unless it’s some sort of validation of her femininity via her child. I notice as Sam gripes again that she has white powder rimming one of her nostrils again. The rumor is that Sam is also very hooked on blow, but this is the first real evidence I’ve seen of it. I figured it was more jealous sniping by the moms because Samantha Smith is the only one of them that could possibly be called svelte.
The gay in the tux starts his song again just as the hotel security men surround Miz Tanya and forcible haul her off. You can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from the crowd as things settle down into a semblance of normal, well, as normal as a glitter-bedecked mirror-balled room filled with children dressed like frosted Vietnamese midget hookers can get. I have an uneasy feeling about all of this even as I can tell everyone here is dismissing Miz Tanya’s outburst as just more of her usual craziness. I can hear two mothers nearby discussing it, one saying that this is obviously going to lead to Tanya claiming some weird extenuating circumstances as the reason Lil’ ‘Lanta didn’t win any of the top prizes. Usually I’m the most cynical of the bunch, it comes from years of dealing with the capricious weirdness of this all, but this time I’m sensing that something is seriously out of kilter more than the scheming of another mad mother.
Don’t believe me? Just take a gander at a million pageant message boards on the internet where this woman complains that her child should have won the Grand Lil Miss competition but that so-and-so bribed the judge and that one complains that the photographer doesn’t know what she’s doing because she expected better looking pictures for all that money. Oh, and the two Mr. Steves hawk their coaching, hair and makeup services. One of the Mr. Steves had to resort to flooding the boards after he was drunkenly heard to mutter that he could take a girl, any girl, even a butt ugly girl and make her look like a pageant winner with enough makeup. Then he went on to say most of the girls he worked on were ’pure butt ugly’. And they aired this on HBO. Oh my how the moms did gossip about that for months, no one wanting to think he might possibly have been talking about their little girl.
I’m sure some in the crowd are thinking that whatever moment of fright Tanya is experiencing is something she’s brought on herself. She’s fought with the others online and off line and her biggest faux pas was that she got mad enough with the pageant system that she set up her own pageant three years ago. The Seafarers Miss Mermaid pageant held in Waveland, Mississippi. Her pageant was an abysmal failure, disorganized, chaotic and committing the worst sin of all in pageant land, she was slow about handing out much in the way of cash prizes.
Many moms will tell you that they only do the pageant circuit so that they can have the child win enough money to put aside for college. Another lie and one that I cannot figure out how they self justify. To come and compete in the national pageant system runs between two and four thousand every weekend you do it. And that’s not taking into consideration the long term expenses of this hobby, coaches, custom made outfits, dance lessons, personal hair and makeup artists, this is just skimming the surface of costs. I’ve often secretly wondered how most of them raise the scratch to keep going, none of them seem the type to be married to millionaires. I’ve seen the rolling scrap iron cars they arrive at my shop in, I’ve seen the threadbare coats and worn shoes. I’ve also heard the rumors of second mortgages and maxed out credit cards. It’s an awkward situation when you’re handling a sale and your customers credit card is rejected, they smile tightly and proclaim they haven’t a clue why this is happening and you smile tightly not believing them but pretending that you do.
Mr. Steve of the “Butt Uglies” pushes through the unsympathetic crowd to reach Miz Tanya, who’s now trying to tear through the layers of glitter bedecked cardboard that separates the ball room from the backstage as she wails. He grabs her, wrestling her bulk to the side of the stage as little girls scatter. Tanya manages to break free from his grasp and rush towards me, pointing and wailing to yell, “You were the last one to see her...where did she go?” I can feel the blood draining away from my face as I realize that this unbalanced woman is about to do what she does best, pass the buck for any personal responsibility. I shake my head and say kindly, “You were the last one with her. I straightened her dress and you guided her towards backstage.. you’re mistaken Miz Tanya..”
Before either of us can possibly utter another word one of the other pageant moms, a tough cookie named Samantha steps forward and gripes loudly between exhalations of cigarette smoke, “So are we gonna keep on here or what? I don’t want to be here waiting for beauty to finish until 2 am.. chop, chop folks..” Many people stare open mouthed at Samantha Smith with shocked expressions. I don’t, I know Sam all too well. Sam was once a Marine and she doesn’t play, she’s all business, as tough, rude and straight to the point as a drill sergeant. In fact I pity Sam’s small daughter Rayvyn, I’ve seen Sam drill Rayvyn relentlessly on her pageantry skills, to the point where she stands in the back of the ballroom, her blue eyes burning an angry hole into her daughter’s small blonde skull as she mouths instructions or the words to whatever song Rayvyn is singing for talent. Sam is so butch, so extremely masculine, that I’m not really sure what exactly she’s getting from all of this, unless it’s some sort of validation of her femininity via her child. I notice as Sam gripes again that she has white powder rimming one of her nostrils again. The rumor is that Sam is also very hooked on blow, but this is the first real evidence I’ve seen of it. I figured it was more jealous sniping by the moms because Samantha Smith is the only one of them that could possibly be called svelte.
The gay in the tux starts his song again just as the hotel security men surround Miz Tanya and forcible haul her off. You can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from the crowd as things settle down into a semblance of normal, well, as normal as a glitter-bedecked mirror-balled room filled with children dressed like frosted Vietnamese midget hookers can get. I have an uneasy feeling about all of this even as I can tell everyone here is dismissing Miz Tanya’s outburst as just more of her usual craziness. I can hear two mothers nearby discussing it, one saying that this is obviously going to lead to Tanya claiming some weird extenuating circumstances as the reason Lil’ ‘Lanta didn’t win any of the top prizes. Usually I’m the most cynical of the bunch, it comes from years of dealing with the capricious weirdness of this all, but this time I’m sensing that something is seriously out of kilter more than the scheming of another mad mother.
posted by Blues In The Night | 8:50 AM
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