A Botox Party

This is the beginning of a story I started about a woman going to a botox party in Dubai. I'm still working on it, but I thought I'd post what I have so far. Feedback and suggestions for improvement (or encouragement to finish this thing!) are welcome and

 

     She had never seen a women with little sweaters tied around their shoulders anywhere, but on tv, but somewhere, sometime they must have worn them that way-- the quintessential sign of the upper middle class wife and mother, the uniform. If ever there had been women who had worn the little sweaters in pale pastel colors tied loosely over their chests and draped across their shoulders it would have been these women. Why had she agreed to come? To make friends? What friend would she find here? Not one she had anything in common with beyond her white skin, expatriation, and Western origin. That sounded like a lot now. Why here did it sound like it should be enough to kindle a friendship?

     At home only the expatriation would have drawn her in. You could never really talk to people who had never lived abroad when you got back. They didn't get it. These women didn't get it either, though. They were expats, they were colonials creating a little Britain in Dubai. She sighed. She hadn't come here for this, but it was easy to be bitter when the woman who invited you had taken on the job you were making a living at so she could "have something to do during the day."

     That was the problem with being an English language teacher in Dubai. You were always competing with the women on their husband's visas who needed a little something to keep them busy during the day while the kids were at school and the housemaids did the cooking and cleaning. After all, teaching was fun, wasn't it? You could take in the local culture by interacting with the students and provide a valued service to the community. Plus you could earn a little extra spending money for evenings like this. Your husband would shake is head and grin, but in the end he would let you go because the housemaid watched the children and it was his night to play football anyway. Had she only come to sneer at these women? She'd come because Debbie had made the gesture of asking her and making friends wasn't always the easiest thing in the world for her. And you wonder why? she asked herself. Cynicism and snide class-related observations She ran the straightener through her hair once last time and then pulled the skin around her eyes back towards her hairline. The botox was supposed to do something like this. Lift and firm, relax wrinkles. She didn't have much in the way of wrinkles, just the line forming in the center of her forehead . That was what she got for not wearing her glasses.

     On the street she hailed a cab. The party was at a clinic in Um Suqeim. It seemed safer that way, but how could you have a party at the doctor's office? It was already dark. She could never get used to the early darkness. Summer or winter it always got dark around 6 and winter didn't feel like winter, so the early evening darkness never felt right. The city sped past, a blur of red and neon blue. She was afraid. She liked needles, but she wasn't sure she liked them in her face. On the back of her right shoulder were three lines of Darwish in Arabic, translated: "We will meet again, In a year, in two years. In a generation." Because she never really knew when they would meet and because Arabic had somehow become their language, as if there could have beeen anything truly prviate about it in the Middle East. But surrounded by expats it retained its mystery. The words flowed more easily when she knew no one understood her but him.

     Would he laugh at her for doing this? Would she tell him? He would think she was vain. He had asked her, almost a year ago, what it was she was looking for in a man. He hadn't known then that she thought she was looking for him, so he didn't understand why she laughed and finally confessed to him, red-faced the list of five qualities he'd asked for. To oblige her he'd responded with his five, despite the fact that he was with someone. Were they the qualites he'd looked for before meeting her or the qualities he realized he wanted after they met? She didn't want to know and hadn't asked. But the one thing he didn't want was a woman obsessed with her looks. "Not that she doesn't care about her appearance," he'd added. She wondered what he would have thought if he'd realized how carefully she dressed every time she thought she'd see him.