Wednesday's Three Word Wednesday

The words over at Three Word Wednesday are demure, offend, volatile.

There She Is…
Miss Wisconsin 1979 lives in a cramped converted basement apartment that has a ½ in the address, like an afterthought.


A technician in a drug store photo department, she slips in-and-out of people’s lives one print at a time, wearing white cotton gloves as to not leave fingerprint evidence of her interloping.

The crown she earned so many years ago is part of an elaborate bunny ear construct, wire hangers, tin foil and tiara that allows her to get channels 3, 5, 6, 9 and sometimes 12 (but it’s fuzzy) on a tired 24-inch color television.

At home, she watches only the national newscast - the one with the older gentleman, since she feels like she can trust him - and knits stacks of dish towels she tosses casually in a wicker basket. After each nightly broadcast, she shuts off the television and eats her main meal of the day.


One protein, never bigger than a deck of cards, one green vegetable steamed, one starch (she’s been experimenting with new potatoes, as well as Yukon golds, with an ethnic shaker spice mix that has no salt) and one mixed-green salad, light on the dressing. Sometimes for a starch she’ll cook rice in a little steamer she found online, but she never eats corn – her mother told her once that ladies do not eat corn, on the cob or off.


When the sun leaves the sky, she meanders toward bed, yet allows herself a small snifter of brandy by candlelight as a way to unwind.

Dressing demure, like her mother taught her, she's partial to simple skirts to the knees in a neutral color (blacks and grays, mostly), pressed cotton shirt, sensible, functional shoes.

But under the skirt, she rebels. A trick she learned from Miss Kentucky those many years ago, her pageant roommate who taught her to wear French silk just so. Miss Kentucky, that dark-haired beauty with a thick country accent (she was voted Miss Congeniality by her peers in 1979) with whom Miss Wisconsin shared several brief, soft kisses late one night while trying on exotic finery.

Thigh-high stockings held snugly to her hips by a garter belt (how she loves the feel) and silk thongs also in neutral colors (she’s no slut). She likens the silken feel to wearing a warm breeze.


Swinging a canvas bag she’s decorated with rhinestones, she walks to work each morning with purpose, six blocks. The bag holds her starched lab coat, a sensible brown-bag lunch and a book she’s checked out from the library.

Flipping through stacks of prints, she’s appalled at how the photo memories of people have slowly morphed. From vacation shots at the lake, warm, wet skin and hair plastered to skulls and smiles and peace signs to fuzzy, underlit bedroom shots of sex and sweaty body parts, the women with their eyelids heavy, their eye makeup smudged. She makes mental notes how the men manage to keep their faces hidden and thinks it’s a double standard. The thought never fails to raise a flush rosy color to her cheeks.

There's a vulgarity to the photographs and shudders at the crudeness, yet runs her manicured fingers across her silk-clad calf, raising gooseflesh as she goes.


Lately at lunch, she’s taken to spying on the younger women who chatter at the corner table, the one littered with energy drink cans and fast-food wrappers. These are the volatile women who pick at their split, bloody cuticles, are covered with tattoos and piercings and curse like sailors through mouths painted in dark, forbidden tones.


They seem so dangerous. So exotic.


How would they react, she wonders, if she asks to join them. She clicks a manicured nail against her bleached-white teeth.

And instead, takes a small bite of sandwich, a simple filling on sensible whole wheat with the crusts sawn off, and drifts back to her book, not wanting to offend.