Kelly Averill Savino on sun 23 jul 00
When i first met my husband i had a spider plant
growing like wild hair out of a pot with my
face on it (from a plaster cast.) He loved it, I
hated it; I offered to make a cast of his face
and plant something in HIS head. OK.
I found some goop and greased his full beard,
moustache, eyebrows and sideburns, then laid him
on the balcony of my apartment on a rug; put the
fat plastic straws up his nose, and proceeded
to mix up WAY too much plaster. I just kept
piling it on, thicker and thicker. Dropped some
of the leftover into his bellybutton just for
laughs. He waited, it hardened up. OK, sez I,
puff out your cheeks and it will pop right off.
I wait. Nothing. The glob of plaster shakes
"no". I help, give a little tug; hear a muffled
moan. I glance at the goop I used to grease him
up: oops. Water soluble.
So I completely panicked, but continued talking
calmly in my best happy voice (a skill that
would later serve me well as a mommy.) I
rummaged through a junk drawer and came up with
a serrated steak knife, some channel locks
(pliers) and a tiny pair of embroidery scissors
shaped like a bird.
I had to saw a groove in this ridiculously thick
plaster to make one inch squares which i then
snapped off with the channel locks. I chatted on
chirpily while imagining what would happen if he
got scared, or nauseous, or even got a stuffy
nose and couldnt breathe. I briefly wondered
whether ambulances might carry a plaster saw for
casts, but the truth was, the plaster had soaked
through his facial hair down to the surface of
his skin, and then shrunk, gripping each hair
like a vise. it wasn't coming off.
I got his eyes and most of his nose free, which
cost him most of both eyebrows and all his
lashes, one sideburn and a chunk of his hair in
front. Then I had to take the "beak" of the
little stork scissors and cut off his beard one
hair at a time by wedging them between his skin
and the plaster, and then sawing with the
serrated knife and snapping off bits with the
channel locks. It took about an hour and a half.
When i was done, he was (for the first time
since i'd know him) clean shaven, eyebrowless,
and without sideburns; caked with plaster,
scruffy and bleeding in a few spots. (That
little soul patch under his bottom lip was out
of the reach of scissors so he TWISTED that last
bit off, pulling it out by the roots. Yikes.)
The minute he was free I burst into tears of
relief and came entirely unglued. He pulled the
plaster out of his bellybutton, leaving a pink
naked circle there (which probably raised some
eyebrows went he went back to sea with a
boatload of cajun guys on a research vessel in
the Gulf.)
Not only didn't he leave me, but he proposed
marriage a week later; even let me do another
cast using vaseline on what remained of his
facial hair.
I have the molds now of both of our faces; when
the neighbors reported me to the township for
having laying hens ina residential area I made
our faces with tongues protruding out of
stoneware and hung them on the back fence facing
their yard. Jeff's is wearing a pair of old
sunglasses.
The moral of this story: use vaseline, thick.
Also: I once had a plaster mold shrink so much
it bruised the bridge of my nose, not sure why.
Anyway, thought I'd share.
Kelly in Ohio (who has discovered that a deer's
rib, sanded on the end, is a nice curved --well,
rib -- for the inside of a narrow necked pot.)
By the way: I have given up in my search for a big bertha and spent my birthday money at the Ann Arbor Art Fair.
---
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