On waking, Jan feels wetness against her face and puts her hand flat on her pillow. Groggily, she realizes it is completely soaked with strawberry scented lubricant. Lying on the pillow is the wand of the headboard-mounted Easy-Flow Lube Applicator, another of her buys off the Home Shopping Channel.

It had been quite a night of lovemaking. Her lover had left at dawn and she’d fallen into an exhausted sleep. But now, looking at herself in the bathroom mirror, Jan is suddenly horrified. Her hair, which she’d recently had dyed blonde, was a shocking deep pink, exactly the colour of her favourite Crayola as a child – hot magenta, it was called. Her hair colour must have reacted with the chemicals in the lube. While the result in nightmarish, Jan resists the urge to cry. What good will tears do? She needs to take action.

With her heart pounding and her hands shaking, Jan calls her salon. “Something terrible has happened to my hair colour! I need to get in right away and have it fixed!” Dennis, her stylist, wants details but Jan refuses to go into it over the phone. It’s the week after Easter and Dennis tells her he just happens to have two hours open, but she needs to get down there as soon as possible.

Frazzled and with only a few hours’ sleep after all the exertion, and avoiding looking at herself in the mirror, Jan runs a brush through her hair and dashes out. Driving down the road she realizes she should have grabbed something to cover up her horrifying hair. Hurrying through the mall she sees a couple of what she calls “punks” standing around.

“Cool!” one of the punks admires as she approaches. Then he calls after her, “You look hot! Does the carpet match the drapes?”

“Great! I’ve been hit on by a punk,” Jan thinks to herself. “What else can happen to me today!``

When she gets to the salon, Dennis is telling one of his wild stories and waving an Easter egg around as he talks. His story and the Easter egg are immediately abandoned, once he sees the colour of Jan’s hair.

“Oh…my…God!” Dennis exclaims, in a nasal whine. “What has happened to your hair?”

As Jan begins her story, naturally, everyone in the salon is listening. She describes how the wand of the lube applicator ended up being left on her pillow, causing her pillow to become saturated with Strawberry and Mango Fusion lube, which then got into her hair while she slept.

“So, did you have a wonderful time at least?” Dennis says wickedly. Jan smiles from thinking about it. He continues: “Listen hun, what I’m going to do is, first of all remove that ultra pink. And I’m thinking that maybe blonde isn`t such a good idea this time. How do you feel about going back to your roots?”

“Back to my roots?” Jan says to Dennis in surprise. “You think I should go back to grey?”

“Not your own shade of grey – something more chic. What if we went with a classy steel grey?” he says.

She glances in the mirror at her garish hair. The idea of something darker, without being too dark, appeals to her. “Okay. Why not?” she says.

“Atta girl,” Dennis says and sets to work. Jan is no longer the focus of attention in the salon, but the atmosphere of an open conversation remains. Speaking loudly so that everyone can hear, one of the women picks up where Dennis left off describing his boyfriend with a description of hers.

“My boyfriend, Dirk, is so good-looking he could get sex anytime he wants,” she brags. “What am I saying?” she laughs. “He does get sex anytime he wants!”

Dennis laughs, but Jan tenses. Her husband recently divorced her, and his name is Dirk. Please, don’t let that be his girlfriend talking, she thinks. Using the mirror and leaning to see who the speaker was, she sees that it`s Cheryl! Shit! Cheryl has foils in her hair, which means she`s going to be there for a couple of hours. At some point she`s going to recognize Jan, meaning Dirk is going to hear the story of her lube fiasco. And won`t he just love that. Well, one good thing is going to come out of all of this, Jan thinks - Dirk is going to learn that she`s not spending her nights alone.

Jan’s retort to Cheryl comes out smoothly, and assertively: “I believe your Dirk would be my ex-husband. How do you like him? They say size doesn’t matter, but I don’t happen to agree.”

“Touché,” says Dennis. “But girls, let me tell you something, from my perspective size doesn’t matter a bit.”

NANAIMO BAR EASTER EGGS

To make yolks:

• ¼ cup unsalted butter (salted butter can also be used)
• 1 tbsp. heavy cream
• 1 tbsp. custard powder
• 1 cup icing sugar

Cream together butter, cream, custard powder and icing sugar. Roll into 12 balls or more balls, depending on size of Easter eggs desired. Place in freezer until firm.

Surrounding layer:

• ¼ cup butter
• 6 tbsp. icing sugar
• 6 tbsp. cocoa powder
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 1½ cups graham crumbs
• ½ cup shredded coconut
• ½ cup walnuts, ground or very finely chopped

Gently melt butter and add sugar and cocoa. Add beaten eggs and vanilla – cook 1 minute. Add crumbs,coconut and walnuts. With hands, mold around “yolks” into egg shapes. Chill well.

Outer layer:

• 350 grams dark or milk Callebaut chocolate (in bulk section at SuperStore)

Gently melt chocolate. Put a bamboo skewer vertically through egg and dip in chocolate, or roll in chocolate using a spoon. Chill well. If desired, dip strawberries in remaining chocolate, also using a skewer. Cut the chocolate eggs in half from top to bottom, for smaller portions and to show off the centers. Pressing the halves back together again, arrange with dipped chocolate covered strawberries, and decorate serving plate with sliced strawberries.  

Photo by: Matt Aze flickr photostream, Some Rights Reserved, article not endorsed