Husband is attending a Seminar on Organic Agriculture this week. He is all of a sudden interested in “The Lead in Lipsticks.”
“Did you know there is lead in lipsticks?” he looks up from the newspaper article he is currently reading.
“Yeah, I knew that a long time ago.” sort of “ho-hum” type of answer.
“It says here that gloss has less lead than the pigmented opaque lipsticks.”
“Oh, Lord, I can’t bear this anymore,” I tell myself. Loudly, I say,
“Gloss is just made up of jelly substances, like petroleum jelly. Why should that have lead?”
“I hope that petroleum jelly does not have lead. That is what I use for my lips,” his eyes sparkle.
“Yes, I should write an article of all the unconventional organic beauty products that you use,” I taunt him. I will ask my cousin Tweetums to put them in her column. That will make interesting reading. Then I enumerate all of them.
Husband says, “If you write about me using Organic beauty products, they will say I am a “bading”(effeminate).”
“No,” I counter, “for a very long time now, men have started to use more beauty products than our parents have done before during their lives. You don’t have to be a bading to use beauty products.”
Husband is not a vain person. But he likes to look good. I remember that when I told my girlfriend that I was marrying Husband, she looked at me and asked, “The guy with the nice Italian shoes?”
“What?” I almost shouted, “You mean to say that you actually look at the shoes a Guy is wearing when you talk to him?”
That was my first hint about his tastes. Husband likes a few but expensive things. I didn’t even notice that he wore nice shoes. What I remember filing in my head about him was that he had a mouth full of perfect natural teeth. They were not movie-star even, but they looked like good, sturdy teeth. The kind one would look for when one was buying a horse.
After I married Husband, I saw that he had his name embroidered inside his coat pockets. We lived in Japan at that time, and he had a suitcase full of nicely tailored suits. And in each of them, the inside of the coat pockets bore his name.
When I was pointed this out to my new maid, who used to work for the Elizaldes, owner of the softdrink company in Manila, she told me, “Yeah, Sir (Husband) has nice suits. But, M’am, they are already old style.”
When she noticed that I seemed upset with this new revelation, she tried to make me feel better by saying, “But, M’am, don’t worry. His style is coming back in fashion. Some of the new suits in the magazines are similar to his style.”
I don’t know if this made me feel better: His clothes are so old, they are now almost back in fashion again. Well!
Okay, what are the things Husband uses that other Men could learn from him? Well, first, Husband’s hair has been thinning for the last twenty years. His only brother has had a bald pate for the last ten years. His younger brother, at that! How does Husband hold on to the last few threads of hair? He uses Gugo (bark of the tree) shampoo every night. Then he splashes and massages Dr. Vinzons Pineda’s Regroe Lotion onto his head. He read somewhere that, one of the side effects of the anti-prostate cancer medicine, Proscar, is to grow hair. So he pops a pill of Proscar into his mouth.
I found out that Husband’s secret to keeping his good teeth was to spend one minute brushing each tooth. Well, actually the gum dentist from South Africa said one should put the edge of the toothbrush bristles inside the pocket of the gum holding the tooth. Then one should brush outwards to take out the plaque that is hiding there. Husband does exactly that. Woe to you if you need to use the bathroom, and he is doing his one-minute-a-tooth exercise. Grrr!
I am 6 years younger than Husband, but if you look at him, he has no eye bags. His secret? He puts a streak of toothpaste on his eye bags. He sleeps with this toothpaste-on-the-eye bag make up. In the middle of the night, this brushed toothpaste almost gleams in the dark. If you were not expecting the white glow, you will think a special ghost is sharing your room with you. I don’t know the brand of toothpaste that he uses, but it is an imported brand. Husband says it kinda stings when you put the toothpaste on your sensitive skin. But you get used to it. I works, too! And it is cheaper and less painful than having surgical removal of the eye bags.
Well, I just have to write this article. When I don’t put them down, other articles come to my mind, and the unwritten articles remain unwritten and in time, forgotten.
Happy Organic week to you all!
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