Hairstyles of the Damned

by Joe Meno

  I came in the next day early to work my shift and found out I had been fired. Tom had gone home and called Caffey, the boss’ son, and told him he had caught me stealing, and also mentioned he knew about Jessica and Caffey fooling around, and that was it for me. The dreams of my staying the hell away from my house, the dreams of the van with the spider on it, the dreams of impressing Dorie, all gone, just like that.

  I swore if I ever found out where that kid Tom lived, I’d put a hurt on him for lying and getting me fired, I swore to fucking God, sincerely.

  nine

  In the 7-Eleven parking lot, I kissed Dorie again. We were waiting for Mike to try and buy cigarettes and Dorie was standing by the dumpster which was littered with graffiti like EAT PUSSY and ME, 1988, and there was the big red-and-green 7-Eleven sign burning in the night and some mother was in the passenger seat of a long brown station wagon screaming at her kids and some guy in a white Air Conditioning/ Heating van had left it running with the radio on and Buddy Holly’s “Every Day” was playing with its corny toy piano and Dorie was leaning against the red bricks of the 7-Eleven and she had her lightblue jean jacket on and blue jeans and a T-shirt that said Spay and Neuter Your Pets, and her brownish-red hair was looking very straight—her bangs just above her tiny eyebrows—and she was carving her name into the brick with a white stone, which wasn’t really working, and she had been eating an orange popsicle and was singing along to Buddy Holly, and so when I finally kissed her for a second time, well, it tasted just like Orange Dream.

  ten

  At this time, I decided it would be cool to have lines shaved into my hair—you know, like Brian “The Boz” Bosworth from the Oklahoma Sooners—like where you have long hair in the back and the sides are short and there are lines like shaved into the side of your head in a cool pattern. I thought that might, you know, make it for me; might, you know, be my “thing,” you know, who I could be: the guy with the shaved lines in his hair. I had seen Bosworth on TV months before, when my older brother Tim was watching some homo-erotic football game, and the dude’s hair looked very cool. So I asked Mike to try it and he wouldn’t do it. I mean, I even went to Osco Drug and bought a hair-trimmer kit for twenty bucks and there I was and no one would do it; I even asked Mrs. Madden and she said she’d do it for fifty bucks. It was like everything else: You get a good idea and people go out of their way to make it hard on you.

  Like Mike’s basement: It sounded like a great idea, but now his life was shit. He had to work at the lousy pizza place all the time, had to buy his own food, couldn’t make telephone calls, hadn’t seen his sister Molly in a month, and because of all that, he had started fucking up bad at school. He would just not study. He would not turn in his homework or do any assignments and he went from being a low-B/ high-C student to being a hardcore flunker, just like that. There was nothing I could do, nothing I could say to cheer him up. He was smoking a lot of dope—before school and after and even sometimes in between classes—and he had bombed our last history test very, very bad, and the hot Ms. Aiken had asked to see him after class and she wanted to know what was going on with him and he just shook his head and got up and left. So, shit.

  We were down in Mike’s basement and he was pouting like usual, going through his depression thing, which I think all his dope-smoking didn’t help at all, and Dorie finally came over because I had been calling her all day, and, well, I thought maybe she could get Mike out of bed. She came by with a book she had gotten from her school library about the Boston Strangler and one about American serial killers and I thought, What an excellent girl, and she was planning on helping us with the Final Project. But Mike, he was in such a fucking mood, he just kept playing “Changes” by Black Sabbath—which was a very weak song where there was like a piano, a piano on a fucking Black Sabbath song, and Ozzy kind of mumbled about going through changes—and all Mike did was lie on his bed, and it was the first time I really had looked at his room in a long time, with the bowls and onehitters and dirty girlie magazines lying out in the open, and Dorie just shook her head and said, “Mike, your home life is definitely fucked,” and he lifted his head up from the bed and said, “I totally know.”

  “Listen, man, we need to do this project,” I said.

  “Who gives a fuck about it?” he asked, moaning. “Everything else is fucked up.”

  “What about Erin McDougal?” I asked. “That’s going good, right?”

  “Fuck,” he sighed. “It’s only a matter of time before I fuck that up too.”

  “You need to snap out of it, man,” I said. “Come on, let’s go to the mall or something.”

  “Just leave me alone!” he shouted, burying his head under his pillows. I pulled on his bare foot, but he wasn’t moving.

  “Forget it,” Dorie said, sad, “if he wants to be miserable, let him be miserable. I got to get to work anyway.”

  I followed her up the stairs and out into the backyard and asked her, “Dorie, would you still like me if I got my hair cut like Brian Bosworth?”

  “Who?” she asked, lighting a cigarette.

  “The guy from football with like lines cut into his hair? Like a design.”

  “I think it’s going to look stupid,” she said, shaking her head. “I like your hair the way it is. It’s nice,” and she patted it.

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said. “It was just kind of a dumb idea I had.”

  “Give me a kiss, I’ve gotta go,” she said, checking her watch. She snapped open a tube of whitish lipstick and quickly redid her lips.

  “You really gotta go?” I asked.

  “Yeah, my ride’s coming to pick me up.”

  “OK.” I reached up and kissed her as hard as I could, sliding my tongue in and out of her mouth, holding her hands in my hands as she giggled and then growled, planting a big white lipstick kiss on my cheek. I walked her to the front of Mike’s house and a super-fine black Firebird pulled up beside us, idling at the curb. The dude behind the wheel—some dick with mirrored sunglasses, a black headband, and a furry black mustache—honked twice, turning down Winger or some other bad-hair rock on his arena-rock-sized speakers. I stood beside Dorie, my mouth dropping open.

  “Call me later,” Dorie said, disappearing into the car. I watched them burn rubber as they pulled away and immediately, in my brain, I began to do some very poor mathematical calculations:

  •I did not have cool hair, contrary to Dorie’s comments. I did not have my own look at all.

  •I did not have a job anymore, which meant no money coming in.

  •At this rate, I could afford to take Dorie to a matinee, enjoy one cheap appetizer at Bennigan’s, and take the bus back to an enchanted evening of romance and bliss watching Mike blaze up and then complain.

  Like this, I was never going to get to do it with her if I couldn’t get some money together, and, well, things did not look very good for me.

  Until

  Until

  Until the events that transpired one afternoon at a fucking Dungeons and Dragons game changed everything.

  eleven

  OK, on Saturday afternoon these geeks that Mike knew, these nerdy Dungeons and Dragons kids, called him up out of the blue and asked if they could buy some dope off of him. It was a golden opportunity, because there were like five or six of them and each wanted to buy some. Why? I dunno, to prove they were all cool or something, maybe. The main geek was this kid Peter Tracy, who I knew from our high school. Mike had gone to public grammar school with him and had played D&D with him a couple of times, I guess, back in junior high, but they hadn’t talked in years. So when the kid asked, “Can you bring it by tonight? It’s important,” Mike said, “We will be there,” and hung up the phone quick.

  The idea was to give them just a little pot, just enough to get them slightly stoned, and pack the rest with oregano, an old stoner trick. That way Mike was only selling a little of his stash and getting paid for like five times as much. It was simple and brilliant and easy. We hopped on a bus and
ended up in Oak Lawn, off of 111th Street, down a row of apartment houses to a dead-end street. We walked around back as the head geek had instructed and knocked on the back door twice. The kid’s mom, a very June Cleaver type, with the short brown bob and blue dress, white apron, and dishpan hands, answered the door, smiling. “Oh, hello there, boys,” she beamed. “Come in, come in.”

  “Thanks,” Mike said, patting down his hair.

  “We haven’t seen you in a long time, Michael. How are your parents?”

  “Swell,” he said. We walked in through the back kitchen door, smiling and nodding at Mrs. Tracy as she asked us to wipe our feet. You could tell she was one of those ladies right away. Like I said, she had perfectly bobbed brown hair, a blue and white frilly apron on, and a soapy mop in her hand. Mike and I apologized and wiped our feet on the mat, and she said, “The boys are in the front room in the middle of a game right now.”

  “Great,” Mike said, rolling his eyes.

  “Would you like to hang up your coats?” Mrs. Tracy asked.

  “No, we’re just stopping by quick,” Mike said.

  “Oh, but I insist,” she said and made us take off our coats. I looked around the kitchen for a minute and saw how clean the countertops were, how spotless and perfect every surface was, how all of the geeks’ jackets were hung by the back door, Mrs. Tracy’s blue linen jacket, her red purse, all perfectly arranged on descending hooks, how everything in this house seemed to be singing; and I thought of Mike’s kitchen, which was a fucking mess and had this diseased head of lettuce sitting in the sink for weeks, and my kitchen at home, which was never used for anything because no one wanted to be at home to eat. We walked down the hallway, past the goofy photos of Peter Tracy as a baby—dozens of them, because he was an only child—and you could almost tell he was going to grow up to be geeky:His head was huge, like eight times larger than the rest of his body, and he had a moody, arrogant kind of look as he regarded the camera coldly. We walked through the hall, then out into the front room where five or six ultra-nerds were doing their fucking role-playing, shouting and tossing their twelve-sided dice and what seemed to me like kind of mentally jerking each other off, maybe.

  “My elf attacks the Evil Orc!” some red-haired doofus announced, rolling a handful of dice.

  “My thief joins the fight!” some other wuss shouted, banging his hand on the wood kitchen table. Good god, I thought, these kids are bigger pussies than I have ever been in my entire life.

  Peter Tracy was at the head of the table wearing a kind of black cloak—yes, a black fucking cloak—covering the top of his head, acting as Dungeon Master: the king geek who orchestrated the fucking game.

  “Ah, but it is a trap,” Peter said with a serpentine smile. “For this Orc is not an Orc at all, but a shape-shifting demon!”

  All the geeks sucked in a breath, titillated and amazed, until one kid, who was chubby and sweaty, leaned in and said in a very dramatic, geek-type accent, “My conjurer casts a spell of detection! We will see how mighty a foe this shape-shifting demon is!”

  “Ah, Gentlemen,” Peter said, looking up, nodding in our direction. “It seems we have guests.”

  “Who are these dire strangers?” the fat kid asked, still with the full-on geek accent.

  “Perhaps they are fellow travelers!” the red-haired kid shouted.

  “Perhaps they are shape-shifting demons!” the fat kid replied.

  “Right, whatever,” Mike said, getting uptight. “We brought you the stuff, OK?”

  “Ah, yes. But perhaps you’d like to awaken your character, Gaston the Ranger, first? A few rounds of a proper Orc-thrashing?”

  Peter asked Mike, pulling an empty seat up to the table.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” he said. “We’ve got other places to go, actually.”

  “So,” Peter asked, whispering, “do you have it? All of it?”

  “Yeah,” Mike said. “But what do you need all this for?”

  “Well, we all want to try it,” Peter said.

  “Well, there was a debate about how much it usually takes.

  Maybe you can answer that?” another kid, one with enormous glasses, asked, raising his hand.

  “How much does it take? To get high? Huh,” Mike said, nodding, looking down into the brown lunch bag. “This should be enough for each of you.”

  “Cool,” the geek with the big glasses said, lowering his hand.

  “Who do I pay?” Peter asked, opening a large gold metal treasure-type chest set in the middle of the table.

  “Um, me, I guess,” Mike said. Peter stood, counted out fifty dollars—ten dollars a kid—and placed it in Mike’s palm.

  “That, I believe, concludes our business, dear Ranger,” Peter said, readjusting the cloak on his head. He slipped the brown bag full of a little weed and mostly oregano into the treasure chest and turned a lock, securing it with a very tiny golden key. “Now we must celebrate!” Peter announced, clapping his hands like a Medieval inn-keeper. “Mother!” he called into the other room. “Our chalices, please!”

  In a moment, Mrs. Tracy returned, carrying a large silver tray full of collector Star Wars glasses, the kind I got when I was a kid, I think, from Burger King. I wasn’t sure. Each of the geeks had his own specific one, apparently, and each was filled with what looked to be a different drink—the fat kid, milk in a Darth Vader glass; the red-haired kid, orange juice behind Princess Leia’s face. Peter reached out and took the last glass, announcing, “And Chewbacca, old friend, I believe you are for me.”

  “Excelsior!” the geeks shouted in unison, holding their glasses high and saluting, toasting with their drinks.

  “I’m sorry, boys, I didn’t know you were coming over or I would have brought you something. Michael, I believe there’s an Empire Strikes Back glass upstairs with your name on it.”

  “No, I’m good, Mrs. Tracy,” he said. “But is it cool to use the washroom?”

  “Well, of course, Michael. You remember where it is, dear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said and got up and disappeared down the hallway.

  I stood there, staring at the geeks at the table, and thought how close I had been to becoming like them: weird, unhappy, maladjusted, perpetual virgins. But then again, there was something kind of funny about them, kind of goofy, like they knew what they were doing was gay, but they didn’t care. I mean, Peter Tracy had a fucking druid’s robe on and he didn’t care. There was something kind of, I dunno, brave about it, just not fucking caring what the whole rest of the world thought of you. And they all had each other; they were like their own little group, with their own little rules and way of talking and everything. In that way, it was kind of cool. I took a seat where Mike had been sitting and the kid with enormous glasses leaned over and asked, “Do you play RPGs?”

  “Um, I don’t know that means,” I said.

  “You know, Role-Playing Games? Do you play?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “That’s too bad,” he said, like he felt bad for me, his breath all hot and milky. “It’s a great way to meet people.”

  “I bet,” I said.

  “Bruce brought his girlfriend last week.” The kid with glasses pointed at a taller, quieter kid at the corner of the table, who smiled at me and nodded.

  “You guys have girlfriends?” I asked.

  “Well, just Bruce. But, well, that’s what the … magic ingredients are for.”

  “The what?”

  “The narcotics,” the kid said, nodding toward the chest in the center of the table. “Tonight, Mr. and Mrs. Tracy are going out all night for a wedding. We’re having a party here,” he said snidely, as if I had never heard of a fucking party before.

  “Good luck with that,” I said.

  “I’d invite you, but we don’t want to throw off the male-female ratio. It’s been coordinated perfectly.”

  “I bet,” I said. I looked up and Mike came charging down the hall, waving at me.

  “OK, let’s go,” he sa
id, blinking at me furiously.

  “OK, chill out,” I said.

  “No, we got to split now. I have things to do tonight, you know?”

  “Relax,” I said.

  Mike grabbed me by the back of the shirt and shoved me down the hall toward the back door. “OK, relax, we’re going.” He grabbed his jacket, then my jacket and threw it at me, opened the door, waved to Mrs. Tracy who was busy scrubbing a pan or something, muttered, “See you, Mrs. Tracy,” and pushed me down the back porch steps.

  “What? What the fuck?” I asked. “Those dudes weren’t so bad,” I said, but Mike kept pushing me, dragging me by my jacket collar until we were halfway down the block. He stopped, started laughing, caught his breath and then lifted up the front of his T-shirt. There, wedged between his underwear and the front of his pants, was a red vinyl pocketbook, like a lady’s kind of wallet.

  “Dude, you lifted his mom’s pocketbook?” I asked.

  He nodded, coughing a little, and then winked.

  “It was just sitting by the back door. I saw it when I went to the bathroom.”

  “How much is in there?” I asked. He flipped open the clasp and looked inside and his eyes went big and wide.

  “It looks like about a hundred bucks or so. Plus the fifty.”

  “We are totally rich,” I said.

  “Well, I am,” he said.

  “Fuck off.”

  “Just kidding.”

  “What do you want to do with it?” I asked. He looked at me, wiped his nose, and said:

  “Let’s go to the mall. I got an idea.”

  OK, so we had $150 and all Saturday afternoon and here’s what we came up with: Mike bought Erin McDougal one of those necklaces that is really two necklaces, like it is a silver heart that is split in two and the guy gets half and so does the girl, and he got it engraved and everything, so that was sixty fucking bucks right there. The engraving was an extra twenty-five, so that was actually eighty-five bucks spent just on one stupid gift, which, when it was all done, read, “Mike and Erin, So Sexy 1991,” which didn’t make a fucking bit of sense to me, but there was no hope of talking him out of it, so I just kept my mouth shut.