Has Anyone Seen Travis?

I recently did something quite out of character. I took a fight that I had successfully won, and I essentially nullified my victory. Please explain? Okay.

At the beginning of the mock trial season, I had a little argument with the coach. You see, for the past couple of years, I've worn a pants suit. And occasionally, we have the misfortune of encountering fogey old judges who think that all women should be wearing skirts in the courtroom. Regardless of this opinion, the judges still scored me well, so I never paid much attention. And our coach never said much about it.

Then, at the beginning of this season, he decided to bring it up. He sent an email to the female counsel of the team, and told us that we should probably consider wearing skirts--meaning we should wear skirts. Both of us owned pants suits. I won the argument. She lost.

So, for the season thus far, we have had one female counsel member in a skirt suit and one in pants. I, luckily, was the one wearing pants. But then, for no good reason other than the fact that I like wearing suits, I decided to buy a new suit over winter break (the joy of Christmas money). Ideally, my plan was to get a three-piece suit that had both pants and a skirt, but that wasn't really happening. So I found a skirt suit that I liked.

And I bought it.

After fighting valiantly to win an argument so that I didn't have to wear a skirt, I went and bought one anyway. Very weird. But don't worry. I haven't lost my competitive edge. I'm still the same old stubborn Allison you all think you know so well. (I would say "know and love," as the saying goes, but it really doesn't seem applicable when half of the people I encounter will openly admit that they're scared of me.)

Anyway, I bought this suit, and I was all excited about it until I got home and remembered one very legitimate argument I had presented when trying to avoid wearing a skirt: I have tattoos on my feet and they're not exactly easy to cover up.

It was a lightbulb "Oh shit" moment when I remembered this fact. Because there I was, with my new suit, and I actually wanted to wear it; but I couldn't wear it for competition unless I found a way to make the tattoos disappear. And let's face it, laser removal is just out of my price range at this point. For that, I need to wait until I've finished law school and officially sold my soul to the corporate devil.

So I was talking to my roommate about my dilemma, and she did what I should have done before having a dilemma: Googled it. Go figure; the information superhighway was ready to deliver a solution, and I just didn't look, because it's so much more fun to have a problem than to solve it.

Turns out there's a product called Dermablend that advertises itself as being able to cover anything. Scars, tattoos, birthmarks, deformities--they can handle it. But I was skeptical. I've tried makeup before. And this shit was expensive. So I found a retailer--the very store where I had bought the suit the day before.

The following day, I returned to said fine retailer near me. I was aimlessly wandering the cosmetics section, trying to avoid sneezing due to the overwhelming aura of perfumes and colognes while simultaneously searching for the overpriced Dermablend. A nice young woman wearing far too much red lipstick soon approached me and asked if she could help. I told her I was looking for Dermablend and she led me to the correct counter.

"Now, I've never worked with this before; but the girl who normally works this counter tells me that the stuff in the little pots gets the best coverage." (A ringing endorsement for her qualifications.) She looked at my face. She looked puzzled. "What are you trying to cover?"

I lifted my pants slightly. "Tattoos."

She looked down. She looked puzzled again. "Are you going to be in a wedding?"

"No." Then, I had to figure out how to explain an absolutely ridiculous competition in which everyone dresses up like attorneys--possibly the most hated group of professionals in America--and acts out a fictitious trial in such a way that this woman, who was clearly easily confused, would understand. So, rather than going for clarity, I just went with noun-dropping. "I do mock trials; so I have to dress up like an attorney. I bought a skirt suit, and now I need to cover these."

She grabbed two pots of Dermablend and started applying, which led me to only one conclusion: the before-and-after shots on the Dermablend website were obviously photoshopped. Realizing she wasn't accomplishing anything, she announced, "Do you know who we need? We need Travis. He's our resident drag queen, and if he can cover a beard, he can cover anything. Has anyone seen Travis? Where's Travis?"

Within seconds, a fabulously stylish man approached. He had a model's saunter, unrivaled since Kevbo's strut in the courtroom, and was wearing a full face of foundation, black eyeliner, teal eyeshadow, mauve lipstick, and had pencilled in his eyebrows. And I do believe it was the first time that I thought a man had done his makeup well and tastefully.

I ran through the explanation of my dilemma with Travis; he found the shade of Dermablend that matched my foot; and then told me to follow him to his "station" (said with a lisp in full Dane Cook style).

At his station, I propped my foot on an extra stool and watched in amused confusion as he pulled out white eyeliner. Now, tell me, why would one need white eyeliner to cover tattoos on one's feet? And he explained. "Think of this as painting walls in your house. If there's something there, you need a basecoat to cover it before you can start with a new color. So we need to cover up the tattoo before we can use the foundation."

Now, this was a very patient drag queen. One of the tattoos is a tribal, and he traced it precisely with the white eyeliner. Then he traced the butterfly and carefully filled in the color on the wings. He was just having a great time coloring as every single employee in the cosmetics section stopped over to see what the hell was going on. Apparently it's not often that they apply makeup to someone's foot--and apparently it's even less often that they actually have something to do.

Then, he applied the foundation and the powder. And voila! The tattoo was gone. I was impressed. Truly.

Then, just as an experiment, Travis used my other foot to test the same method of application with a different product. But it didn't work. Dermablend does have some claim to fame, but beware of their website, because they're not nearly as fantastical as they advertise. (Liars.)

"Now, you have white eyeliner, don't you?" I said I did, just because I had no intention of paying twenty dollars for their white eyeliner. "Good. Because white eyeliner is white eyeliner. There's no reason to buy ours." I started laughing. I had guessed he was working on commission, but apparently not. "And just find any translucent powder. There's nothing special about ours."

With that, I paid for my overpriced Dermablend foundation and left the store to go buy cheap white eyeliner and powder. Thanks to Travis, my feet will be fantabulastically tattoo-free for competition.

Moral of the story: If you ever need help covering something with makeup, find a drag queen. (Conversely, if you ever need help creating something with makeup, I suppose you should find a drag king. Seems logical, no?)