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Show Flashing 39 to look at you i f you don't have a big chest with lots of g l i t t e r on i t even though my father says that subtlety is better when I complain about mine. There's always some chorus girl in the newspaper in a bikini and a big smile pretending to dive off a diving board, her backside curved just so. Even at the Hell dorado parades (the best community event of the year), everyone is g l i t t e r y and big-breasted with bleached blonde curls stunned into shape by some beauty operator. Sometimes I feel that I could succeed in this town i f I were two big breasts and a vacant head decorated with black fringe over the eyes and dangling earrings on the lobes. Most people here remind me of flashing neon signs. They flash smiles, flash b i l l s , and drive flashy cars. My parents tell me to remember the Beatitudes, the salt of the earth and the pure in heart, but my mother flashes off and on too. She wishes for a better house, car, and income, and for my father to be more assertive like Angelo, the top agent at the insurance company where he works-a flash i f I ever saw one. He has curly black hair and a straight row of pearls. He wears a silver dollar tie clip and r i f f l e s coins in his pockets as he's flashing off and on, the light reflecting from his gold cuff links and the wetness of his teeth. When he walks into the office humming bits from Italian opera, the secretaries are eager to type for him. My father brings me in to type his work. "The office girls have so much to do," he says to the other agents who share his office space. "Besides, I'm teaching my daughter secretarial skills in case she gets |