Hairstyles of the Damned

by Joe Meno

  As I got closer to the lot, I saw Bobby B.’s purple wizard van and he and Tony Degan were standing in front of it, leaning against the hood, laughing. Bobby B. was a kid from my street, a senior, a year older than me, with long black hair, gold sunglasses, and acid-washed jeans. He would sit out in his garage all night, smoking and drinking and trying to get the goddamn starter on his van to fire. The van, a ’77 Dodge, looked good—it was bright purple and had this magnificent wizard airbrushed on one side of it—but it ran like shit. But it was still a van, his van, a good-looking wizard van. Sitting in the glove compartment, Bobby B. always had about five pairs of girls’ underwear, from girls he had made it with. He called it his “trophy case.” I would open the glove box and the panties would all seem to sing a hymn to me—Hallelujah!—glowing with golden light. Also, with much gratitude, I must mention Bobby B. was the one who had turned me on to AC/DC when he loaned me High Voltage in eighth grade. For that, I would be eternally grateful.

  Beside Bobby B. was Tony Degan, who, on the other hand was, like I said, maybe twenty-five, twenty-six, tall but lanky, wearing a yellow T-shirt that said, “My grandparents went to the Bahamas and all I got was this stupid T-shirt.” He was smoking and nodding and shaking his head. That was what he did: nodded to himself and smiled, like there was a joke about you that you weren’t really getting. He looked high most of the time—maybe he was, I dunno. He had blond hair, which was longer in back, combed-up with grease of some kind, and two black wristbands just above his hands, though he wasn’t a jock or in a band, but he had that look, like 1-2-3, he could kick your ass.

  As soon as I made it around the corner, I heard the scream again and saw Gretchen holding some girl I didn’t know in a headlock. Like always, Gretchen was winning. The other girl’s eyes were big and bugged-out with panic. She was very skinny and very slutty-looking. She had on spiderweb nylons, which were torn, and a black jean jacket with a huge Megadeth patch. She was on her knees and having a hard time breathing. Drool was pouring over Gretchen’s forearm and onto the cement. It was not very cool.

  “Dude, what’s the malfunction here?” I asked.

  “Brian Oswald, what’s up with you, dude?” Bobby B. asked with a nod. He had a nice mustache coming in: thin, but it extended around his narrow lips all the way down to his chin, biker-style. I had been trying for months to grow a mustache but there was nothing; not anything: no stubble, no shadow, not anything. I was a junior in high school who still looked like a junior-high kid. “So what’s fucking going on?” Bobby B. asked again, slapping my hand.

  “You know, nothing,” I said.

  “You break that high score on Phantom Racer yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Fuck. They must have some fucking expert come in and reset it every week.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “So what’s the deal here?”

  With an amazing thud, Gretchen slammed the girl’s head off the side of a parked LeBaron. “Ohhhhhh,” everyone moaned.

  “Fucking chicks,” Bobby B. said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Chicks.” I turned to Gretchen and shouted, “Dude, Gretchen, fucking relax.”

  Like always, she just ignored me.

  “Aw, let her go already,” Tony mumbled, still grinning. He ran his hand through his dirty blond hair, which was thick with grease, and rubbed his own neck. “She didn’t do nothing.”

  Gretchen’s chubby face was pink, turning red, and she gave in finally, shoving the girl against the hood of somebody’s station wagon. She held her finger up to the girl’s face and said, “The next time … The next time, your ass is grass.”

  Everybody standing around said, “Ewwwwww,” and clapped, and Gretchen picked up her hoodie and wiped her nose, which was running. The other girl limped away, her mouth bleeding, while Tony Degan kept on laughing and nodding.

  “You’re fucking dead,” the girl shouted from across the safety of the parking lot. “I’m gonna get my friends and we’re gonna kick your ass.”

  Gretchen just turned to me and said, “Let’s fucking go already,” and I nodded, without a word, which was my way at the time, because I chose to live my life like fucking Zatoichi the blind samurai, you know, the samurai dude from the ’60s movies? I was going through that phase, watching nothing but samurai movies and horror flicks. That was some serious metal, you know, the blind swordsman with his flashing sword. If you don’t know, you need to check those movies out. Anyway, I was deadly fucking silent—deadly fucking silent—most of the time. I was a shy kid and I was afraid what I said sounded stupid, so I hardly ever said anything. I was the third wheel. Fifth wheel? I was the fucking wheel you didn’t really need, but I still hung around. I thought maybe my silence would one day impress somebody. As of yet, it hadn’t done much for me. Most people, when they thought of Brian Oswald, probably said, “Who?” Then someone might say, “That dude, the quiet one that is always hanging around.” Then the other person would probably say, “Who?” again. I was invisible to most people, I guess. For example, when Gretchen and I hopped back in the Ford Escort, the radio was working—a one-in-a-million chance—and we motored away to the tune of “Dirty Deeds” by the great AC/DC, before Gretchen switched the radio station on me without asking.

  four

  American History

  10/3/90

  I. Causes of the Revolutionary war were many

  A. results of the French and Indian War, 1755 to 1763

  1. American colonies think they helped British defeat French

  2. King George III thinks colonies owe the British for protection

  B. taxation without representation

  1. No elected representatives in Parliament

  2. Boston Tea Party, 1773

  C. the Intolerable Acts and the Quebec Act

  D. also many funny fucking stupid white powdery wigs were

  fought over

  E. 1775: minutemen vs. the redcoats

  F. Bad-ass names for a metal band, if I ever have the

  chance to be in one

  1. The Unwieldy Hammer of Thor

  2. Your Rotting Fucking Oracle

  3. The Corpse Kings! Must Unite!

  4. Fear the Thunder and Lightning of the Master Druid

  5. The Most Deadly Spells

  6. Hail Skeletor, like the skull dude from He-Man

  7. The Lansdale Barbarians

  8. Operation: Headwound

  9. Dr. Killbot

  10. All of Maggotkind

  G. the Bad-ass covers set list

  1. opening song? has to be Iron Man by Ozzy

  2. Back in Black by AC/DC

  3. Search and Destroy by Metallica

  4. Communication Breakdown by Led Zeppelin

  5. Paranoid by Ozzy

  6. if you had a fucking amazing guitarist, then Sweet Child of Mine by GNR

  7. Highway to Hell by AC/DC

  8. Too Fast for Love by Mötley Crüe

  9. again, if you had an amazing guitarist, Hot for Teacher by Van Halen

  10. end the set with Cum on Feel the Noise by Quiet Riot

  five

  At her high school, Gretchen was punk rock and had a reputation for beating other girls up. We all got into trouble back then, but Gretchen was known as the girl who liked to fight. It was why I liked her so much, maybe. Being punk back then for most kids meant the way you dressed mostly, not what records you played—maybe that’s the way it still is in some places, I dunno. All the kids who had been geeks or fags or nerds or wastoids in junior high started dressing fucked-up when they hit high school, with the torn clothes and safety pins and makeup and dirty hair, and not one of them had ever heard of the MC5 or New York Dolls, but what it gave some of them was a group identity and also some courage, maybe. Kids in junior high who had once gotten the crap kicked out of them on a daily basis, well, now they would get pointed at and laughed at, but no one would fuck with them and so they didn’t have to take anyone’s shit ever again. Being punk meant having somethin
g to fight against. That’s what happened with Gretchen. By her junior year at Mother McCauley Catholic Academy for Young Women, she had been involved in at least five full-on fistfights and suspended three times already. She routinely received detentions for her failure to adhere to the uniform; she had been sent home several times to change her hair and makeup and clothes. She was still serving demerits for having her hair dyed pink, and had to spend time in detention every Tuesday. It was what made me like hanging out with her, I guess. She did the things I wished I could do but didn’t have the guts to, maybe. Like with everything.

  OK, so the fourth in-school suspension Gretchen got—the one she always talked about—was for fucking up Stacy Bensen. Stacy Bensen, the girl who had run for president of student council under the motto Stacy Bensen—why? Because you’re too lazy to do it, and had won. Stacy had made the bad mistake of calling Gretchen “a fat dyke.” After it happened, Gretchen told the fucking story so many times—at the counter of Snackville Junction, in a booth at Wojos, in the crappy Escort, at parties, to her sister, to my brother, to my little sister, to her dad, in the parking lot of Haunted Trails, to people we didn’t even know—that I could tell exactly what happened, probably better than she could tell it, maybe. Also, when she told it she usually left out the most important part, which I will not do, I promise you. OK, so it went down like this:

  One day after remedial English class, a period in which all Gretchen did was write her favorite band names in black ink on her arms and legs—ramones, the descendents, the clash—Gretchen decided that she’d had it, she did not like school. None of us liked school—well, I did, but I would have never admitted it to anybody—but for Gretchen it was worse. Why? Because of the way she looked. That’s what she said anyway. Other girls hated her, even just the sight of her, not just because she was punk, but because she was punk and got away dressing that way a lot because her mom had died two years before so all the teachers and school people kind of left her alone.

  In Catholic high school, that was crucial, the way you looked. As Gretchen was stomping down the hall—her fucking black combat boots clomping along the tile, her boot chains rattling, the sounds of her plastic and leather bracelets making noise like ringing bells, sweeping up and down her arm like a lot of loose change—one superprim girl in a Catholic school uniform after the other stopped at their lockers to stare and shoot back dirty fucking looks. What they saw when they saw Gretchen was this: an overweight, baby-faced junior, seventeen years old, with long blond and pinkish-red bangs and the sides and back of her head nearly shaved, heavy black eye makeup and safety pins and patches for The Exploited and DRI, bands she didn’t even listen to, but the patches looked cool, so anyway, patches and combat boots and a black leather jacket with the Misfits skull logo which had been hand-painted on with a bottle of Wite-Out stolen from her dad’s desk, and hands, hands full of silver, spiked rings, clenched at both sides, anticipating a fight, like always.

  After class, Gretchen always met Kim, our friend, at her locker. Kim was also punk rock: a short girl with long bony arms and a sharp narrow face, always with at least five or six hundred hickies on her neck and along the top of her chest, blood red hair, and a dozen piercings in her ear, and now in addition to all that, an adorable red sore at the corner of her lip which she proudly called her “herpe.” I liked Kim a lot, but she scared the hell out of me. She was very attractive but a little fucking crazy. OK, so Kim turned to Gretchen, putting on her jean jacket, and asked, “What’s your malfunction, douche-bag?” which was what she always said when you met her someplace.

  “I fucking hate school,” Gretchen said, and they headed down the hallway. Gretchen always walked with her head down; Kim always kind of skipped and whistled and knocked books out of other girls’ hands when she had the chance. Gretchen curled her lip and glared at two beauty-queen freshmen, their perfect fucking blue kneesocks pulled up high, their green sweaters tied about their waists, and their young, soap-opera-star faces already glowing. The two freshmen were reapplying lipstick in their compact mirrors and laughing and pointing behind their reflections at Kim and Gretchen. Gretchen did the balk to make them jump, taking one step in their direction. The girls turned away quick, hiding behind their locker doors. The shorter one, with darker hair and these recently plucked eyebrows, made a mousy squeak. Kim flicked them off and Gretchen let out a laugh—Ha!—and turned, glad she had done it. It was in that moment—that second—that she took a left down D hall and accidentally bumped into Stacy Bensen.

  Stacy Bensen.

  Stacy Bensen, a senior; a student council snob, blond hair, dyed a shade blonder, always in a bouncy bob; thick red lipstick with black lip liner that accentuated supple lips that every dude couldn’t help but notice, which made you feel kind of sad for her, the way you feel sad for strippers and girls who do porno flicks because they’re so pretty that no one will ever see them as anything more and it begins to destroy them maybe; blue eye shadow with matching blue sparkle nail polish that was always flawless and hinted at the fact that Stacy Bensen had never worked a part-time job, or any job, a day in her life; a green cardigan sweater, tied neatly about her neck or waist; and the most fucking darling brown penny loafers, perfectly accessorized with two bright copper pennies, which sparkled just less than Stacy’s glowing, makeup-ad, all-around-American-girl, picture-perfect face. Also, leg warmers of various patterns and colors. Also, as I was often told, her remarks in ethics class about how girls who got abortions should be prosecuted as child-murders. Also, as overheard, her tendency to address other girls in school as “girls,” as in the sentence,“Girls, we need a couple of more volunteers for the blood drive.” Also, and altogether her worst feature: her buttons. We had gone to grammar school together and even then she wore a different homemade button almost every week: Proud to be a Princess. Go with God. Sensible and Celibate. Here was a girl who, in her fucking overemphatic, rehearsed tone of voice, seemed to say, Everyone around me is a fucking subhuman. Here was a girl who, in small, measured, perfect movements—a blink of her glittering fucking blue eyes, this smiling wistful sneer, her giggle sweet as someone ringing a tea bell—seemed to whisper, I am better than you in every way. And maybe she was right because her looks and smarts and charms always dared you to argue, but you never did because what did you have to argue with when you looked the way you did?

  That day, Stacy Bensen was wearing a button that said, Beam me up, Scotty, there’s no intelligent life down here. So in the hall there, at the end of the day, between the noise of last classes—Are you going to play practice? and Pick me up at seven, and He gave us so much homework again—the smell of hair spray and fucking perfume thickening with repeated after-school maintenance, Gretchen turned and bumped into Stacy Bensen and Stacy Bensen stopped and looked at Gretchen and said, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, you fat dyke?”

  OK, cut.

  OK, if you knew Gretchen and could like read her mind, here’s what you would know already:

  Cut to:

  Five years old, Gretchen, a ballerina in this tumbling class. OK, Gretchen, five years old, tumbling. She couldn’t do a somersault because of her weight, you know, and all the other little girls would laugh, and there was this mean-faced little brunette doll in her class in particular, who one time pointed at Gretchen and said, “She’s fat,” and when it was time for the ending recital, Gretchen was told to just run across the stage while the other girls did their handsprings and windmills and front flips and shit like that. Instead, backstage, Gretchen bit the other little girl and was sent home crying.

  And:

  Eight years old this time, Gretchen shopping for a Halloween costume in the aisle of Osco Drugs, the rows and rows of plastic masks attached to plastic one-piece suits—Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman and a Fairy Princess and Frankenstein and Dracula and all the rest—and her mother suggesting that perhaps Gretchen would prefer a Frankenstein to a Princess costume because the Frankenstein had just a little more room.<
br />
  Then:

  In junior high, someone spray-painting FAT-ASS on the side of her garage and Gretchen watching her dad, Mr. D., trying to hide his embarrassment by quickly painting over it with a shade of brown a little too light, and Gretchen and me and everybody seeing the spot every day as she came home until the day she moved, everyone knowing the spot was there, still there, and why.

  So:

  So when Stacy Bensen said, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, you fat dyke?” Gretchen turned around and grabbed for a part of Stacy’s head, getting ahold of her fucking golden-yellow ponytail, and pulled hard until some of it came out, some of the hair tearing loose from the soft white scalp like the magical golden thread used to stitch together some lucky princess’ enchanted fucking wish, and then Gretchen, holding the girl by the front of her blouse, began pummeling Stacy Bensen’s face, breaking the fancy aquiline nose in one pronounced crack, followed by a dollop of bright red blood, over which Gretchen yelled, as loud as she could, “Why don’t you suck my fucking dick, Barbie?”

  In a moment, the lezbo gym teacher in her blue jogging suit, Mrs. Crone, tackled Gretchen around the waist and then the elderly school nurse hurried to Stacy Bensen’s side and all the girls stood around shocked, their tender and holy virginal hearts beating hard, all of them open-mouthed and struck dumb. Here, here was the part Gretchen almost always left out: For all the fights she had been in before with tough stoner chicks, heavy mascara streaked down angular faces, in random basement parties, or in the back of deserted parking lots while their boyfriends hooted or clapped or looked on frightened, maybe; or with the preppy girls, strangleholds around long, elegant necks and noses that would later have to be retouched by expensive plastic surgery; or with that one tall, gooney girl from the volleyball team who had tons and tons of brown hair all along her forearms and who was so overly fierce and manly; for all that scratching and swearing and hair-pulling, for all that punching and hissing and biting, this was the first time—the very first time—Gretchen had ever felt bad about what she did, the first time she felt worse after it all had happened, and still, she didn’t know the reason. But to me, looking back on it now, it’s easy: Like Gretchen being born fat, it wasn’t Stacy Bensen’s fault she had been born pretty.