A Long Day, A Funeral, and a Bad Haircut

Originally Posted Saturday, April 19, 2014

A long day and a bad haircut later, I am up.  I have been decimated by this thing that has possessed me.  It has weakened my body and broken the vessel.  I look and feel like shit.  Looking the way I feel is the worst part, and indeed, I look worse than I feel which is even more horrible.  I could take looking good and feeling badly with much more aplomb. 

The day started in a rush as I had to wash my sheets before the wrecking crew came to clean.  But, as reported earlier, I broke my washer (didn't evenly distribute the load, ignored the horrendous thump-thump-thumping of the oscillating drum) and now have to borrow someone else's. Scurry, scurry, pick up things that the maids shouldn't touch, make the floor a walking space again, go through the two weeks of accumulated mail, etc.  Shower, run, sneak by the bosses office and try to get in without being seen.  Urgent signatures, reply to important emails, call people back, design a new program for making widgets, etc.  Flowers ordered, I had a funeral to attend in the afternoon.  Using the ploy, I leave early, go to a printer I know close to the funeral home, sneak in and run some obscenely big prints.  It takes a long time, me sitting paranoid in the room while the printer cleaned and cleaned and cleaned itself, then the quarter hour or more of making a print, the first one ruined by random bits of ink, etc.  Phone call from beautician wanting to change the time of the beauty appointment I didn't know I had.  Sure, I say, as I will have time to get there after the funeral which I arrive at apparently late, a weird affair as I know only the fellow whose mother died, not the victim herself.  From the outside, all funerals are weird, I'm sure, but the proletariate kind have a wide and wild variety from soup to nuts (wardrobe to eulogy).  I stay as long as necessary and drive to the new beauty shop my little Russian Jewess has opened.  Pulling into the parking lot, I look for my gun.  I am certain she is not paying much rent. 

"Is my car safe out there?" 

It is a large space with people all about.  I am sure I should not act so familiarly here, but what the fuck, might as well make a splash.  Turns out she is not the owner, or not the only one.  It is owned by a Russian massage therapist and his Russian skin care expert wife.  They are offering specials today while I wait.  A mini-facial.  I only want the maximum, I tell them.  Everyone is speaking Russian.  I feel that I am already on the verge of being kicked out.  That would be something, I think, to get banned from a beauty salon.

"Are you keeping an eye on my car?" I query. 

"Why, you are worried?"

"I thought I saw three Puerto Rican kids dancing on it a bit ago."  I had forgotten that my Jewesses assistant was from Puerto Rico.  She shoots me a look. 

"I'm just sayin'." 

I am late, but the Jewess is later than late.  I hold my plastic cup out for another glass of wine, my third. Everyone is looking.  A Russian boy comes in wearing torn jeans and a t-shirt. 

"This is Vladimir," my beautician says.  "He is a very great d.j.  He's famous." 

"Ah," I say, "a famous d.j."  I ask him if he is local or international.  He wants to be international, he says.  Yes, very famous. 

"More wine," I yell.  "I'm talking to a D.J.!" 

I decide to mention my own famous friend, a d.j. of some repute, and I mention his friends, one of whom has just played here in my own home town Vladimir informs me with doe eyes.  He Googles my friend and finds a website with a collection of his tracks.  They are old and I am not into house music, so I have no idea what they will sound like to him. 

"Are you rolling right now?" I ask him with a wink.  "Maybe you should wait until nightfall to listen to those tracks.  I'm told by a very good source that it is important that you take the drug anally." 

The place is large and cheaply furnished.  It is sparse.  My beautician is just about finished applying color to the hair of a biggish woman my own age. 

"Are you two married?" asks the Russian skin care engineer. 

"Yes we are," I say.  Where in the hell does the wine keep going. 

"That's nice," she says. 

"Yes, we like to get our hair done together and then go shopping at the Dollar Store.  After that we're going to the Golden Corral." 

My beautician's eyes are popping and she says something quickly in Russian, then in English--"No, they are not married." 

"But we could be," I say. 

"Oh," says the skin care engineer, "I just thought. . . you look alike." 

"That's what happens over time they say." 

The horrible truth is that we do.  She is a nice enough woman.  I could have married her in high school.  Our kids would be grown.  Our grandchildren would be teens or more.  I look at my Russian Jewess.  She is laughing. 

"O.K.  Your turn." 

I walk over to the chair.  "I don't like the owner," I say.  I look in the mirror.  The lights are too bright.  Still, I recognize the face in the mirror.  It is hideous. 

"Oh, shut up," she says. 

She begins her work.  There is a lot to do.  The sun goes down.  Everyone is cleaning up, getting ready to go.  The wine has made me sleepy.  When she is finished, I look into the mirror.  Shit.  My hair looks stupid.  It happens from time to time, but I can't help blaming it on this place, these people, all these distractions.  I look like the painting of the little Dutch Boy who stuck his finger in the dike a hundred years hence. 

I realize it is a punishment.  It is Good Friday. 

I certainly do not want to cook.  Take out Thai once again.  I am in front of the television, old and tired.  It is nine.  I cannot eat much.  One whiskey and I pass out.  I wake at ten when the glass spills in my lap.  I must have had only a sip for the front of my pants are soaked. 

It is the weekend.  This is how we party.