Hairstyles of the Damned

by Joe Meno

  We took his car, the green 1985 Caprice, over to the cemetery at like midnight on this weeknight—because my dad was really gone now and my mom, well, she would begin talking to me and all I would hear was this silence, the kind of totally complete death-like silence that had been running between her and my dad already, and at home I felt like I was really invisible, maybe because I wanted it that way, so I had started doing whatever the fuck I pleased and I had decided I would stay out as late as I wanted, even during the week—so we parked in the forest preserve about a half-mile away and walked over and stood before the wide, iron cemetery gates that simply said RESURRECTION, and there along one of the gates was the spot where supposedly Mary’s hand had forced it open, because there was a kind of indentation like the shape of someone’s hand, though I wasn’t really convinced, and Nick and I started walking inside and I started hoping there were such things as ghosts because it would kind of give me hope, knowing some people got second chances or that the end wasn’t the end or that resurrection could really happen and you could go through the worst of it and come out something else—changed somehow, untouchable, invulnerable—because I was like a ghost now, or that’s how I had been feeling anyway, and it made me happy to believe there was somehow maybe some other chance for me.

  fifteen

  In the few minutes before fifth period, like two weeks before senior prom, Bobby B. got expelled for putting this other kid in the hospital because he hit the kid in the head with a baseball bat and the kid lost, like, vision in one of his eyes and it would be, like, permanently damaged for the rest of his life and everything. I felt let down for some reason. It was totally fucking unbelievable to me. One day Bobby B. was strutting down the hallway of Brother Rice, flipping off the Holy Brothers behind their backs, smoking in the bathroom, getting high after lunch, copying test answers off of the weaker kids around him, spitting in the water fountains, pissing in the bathroom sinks, taking the freshman class’ lunch money, ditching sixth period to go hang out in the school parking lot to rev up his van and crank “Dream On” by Aerosmith on its stereo, greasing his hair down to hide under the back of his collar, selling dope to the juniors, making obscene tongue gestures at Miss Lannon while she was writing a new Spanish word on the blackboard, shooting milk out his nose in the cafeteria, and giving me the devil sign in the hallway. I mean, like, one day he was my friend, and the next day I saw Coach Alberts, who used to play college football, a big, big man with a square chin and shiny silver whistle around his neck, shoving Bobby B. down the hallway by his neck. It was right before fifth period and classes were changing and Bobby B. tried to knock Coach Alberts’s hand off his neck, but the coach was just too big and he kept shoving Bobby B. down the hall toward the dean’s office, and I looked up and saw him and he rolled his eyes and kind of shook his head, as if to say, Dude, I have no clue why they’re hassling me now, but by then everybody pretty much knew what happened the night before—the upperclassmen anyways—and so a lot of people had just been waiting to see what the school administration would do and this was it. Expulsion. Like two weeks before his senior year was going to end. That was it.

  OK, what happened was this: The night before, a Thursday night, some dudes from Brother Rice, our school, and this other Catholic boy’s school, Mt. Carmel, were supposed to fight these other kids from the rich, preppy boy’s school, Marist. I didn’t even know why for sure, really, but it had something to do with some kid, Derek Duane, this baseball player–type jock from our school, getting the fuck beat out of him by two Marist kids the weekend before at some stupid prep party in the suburbs. I mean, it was all pretty sketchy why all these meatheads and stoners decided to fight each other, I guess. I mean, most of them were seniors and about to graduate like in two weeks. Who the fuck really cared? But Gretchen had heard about it from Kim and Bobby B. had told me himself during school, just saying, “There is going to be a serious ass-beating tonight at Oak Lawn Park. Bring a tire iron or something,” and I nodded, having no idea what the fuck he meant really, but I walked up there by myself and saw Gretchen, all alone, sitting on the hood of her car and I sucked in a breath, trying to, like, smile and not seem all awkward and nervous, and then I went up and stood beside her, not saying anything, just watching to see what would happen, I guess. She was wearing a blue jean jacket and her boots and a plaid skirt and she was looking really cute and I almost started off by saying that and I got flustered and walked up and waved instead.

  “What’s up?” I said, nodding in her direction like eight hundred times.

  “What’s up?” she asked back, her cheeks kind of going red.

  She wouldn’t look me in the eyes and I was feeling nervous and so I said, “Oh, you know, nothing.”

  “Cool,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yep,” I said. I kind of kicked the tire of her car and started to say, “Gretchen, about the other day—” when she cut me off.

  “Please, just fucking stop talking about it.”

  “But, I mean …”

  “Duh. It was stupid. Just don’t say another word about it or I’ll fucking lose my shit. Seriously.”

  “OK,” I said. “No problem. But if you do want to talk about it …”

  “No,” she said. “Not ever. Seriously.”

  “OK,” I said, and turned to look back at the park. Like everything, the park was kind of run-down, small, right in the middle of a residential area, street after street of nice little houses, brown brick bungalows mostly, some newer ranch-style houses, just a regular kind of neighborhood, except that Oak Lawn Park was where the kids from Marist, usually hung out. There were some redwood picnic tables and a swing set and metal slide and sandbox and then some paths to walk on and, at the corner of the park, a basketball court. Both of the basketball hoops had metallic chain nets. It was real warm that night and almost felt like summer, and Gretchen and I were just sitting on the hood of the Escort. There were like fifteen cars parked along the curb all around the park already, some kids waiting, leaning against their vehicles, some watching from their front seats. There were rough-looking dudes sitting on the swings, maybe eight or nine kids in red and white Marist nylon varsity jackets with big M’s on the right side of their chests, with different sports written on their backs—wrestling, football, baseball—and they were sitting there with their hands in their pockets, some standing and smoking. I guess they were the ones who were going to be doing the fighting if there was any. They didn’t look any different from the sport-os at our school, really. They had the same cro-mag build and bullish facial expressions, like maybe they were contemplating what they were going to say or do.

  Out of nowhere came Bobby B.’s purple wizard van. I could see it rolling down the street, the engine hissing and rumbling. It was blaring “White Room” by Cream, where the song is loud and the guitar is kind of distorted and full of wha-wha, and it kind of begins with this Spanish matador riff, with the drums pounding like a conquistador— bump舒badda-ba-bum舒badda-ba-bum舒badda-ba-bum-da-da-bum-da dad-bum—and the purple metallic flake of the van was glistening because it had rained earlier that day, and the wizard airbrushed on the side—his dark blue cloak rippled with wind, his mouth open as if casting a spell, his wooden staff outstretched, churning and exploding with pure purple and white lighting—seemed to look vaguely ominous instead of just weird and goofy, his dark hood covering his triangular face like the cowl of death. The purple wizard van pulled up right beside the swing set, the sliding side door opened, and about eight or nine kids jumped out, shouting, some of them with wood two-by-fours, some of them carrying baseball bats. They didn’t have varsity jackets on. They were not really jocks, I didn’t think. They were mostly the stoners, the burnouts, the hoods, in their jean jackets, a few older dudes like Tony Degan, who was wearing a beat-up black baseball hat, and, of course, Bobby B., who had left the wizard van running, the headlights still burning, casting shad
ows all along the jungle gym set. It had begun raining again, just white and silver flickers of it in the field of light, the radio still blaring Cream as Bobby B. hopped out of the driver’s side, carrying a narrow, whitish-yellow baseball bat, down low, almost touching the ground, then charging right up to the biggest Marist kid there, a bruiser with a square head in a puffy red and white wrestling varsity jacket. Bobby B. lifted the bat and swung in one quick fluid motion, catching the corner of the bigger kid’s face, knocking him flying completely off his feet. It made this sound, loud and cracking but kind of soft too. The big kid went down, slumping onto his side as Bobby swung again, hitting him over the shoulder. Nobody else fucking moved—none of the other kids. They just looked at the big kid on the ground who was knocked out—or worse—and I think I almost vomited. None of the kids did anything for a while, they kind of just stared at the big kid on the ground and then at Bobby B., who was still holding the bat, pointing it from kid to kid. “What the fuck,” someone whispered, and then some Marist dude charged Bobby and started hitting him. Tony Degan punched the kid in the back of the head just before some other Marist jock pounded Tony in the side of the ear. I had never seen anything like it before in my fucking life. It was fucking madness. They all began punching each other and fighting.

  From the hood of the superbad Escort, Gretchen and I just watched, not doing anything, just fucking staring. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” she said, hopping off and starting the car quick. I looked over my shoulder and kept on watching and Gretchen was starting to pull away and I got inside the Escort and I could see her face was wet with tears and all she kept saying was, “What the fuck? What the fuck was that?” over and over and over again.

  sixteen

  On the way to the mall to drop Kim off at work after school the next day, everyone was quiet as hell. I was riding in the backseat but feeling like Gretchen did not want me there, like she had been surprised to see me show up waiting at the car in the first place. It was very weird for everybody. Finally, Kim cleared her throat and turned to Gretchen and said, “Um, did you know your boyfriend got arrested last night?”

  “I know.”

  “What?” I asked.

  And then Kim said, “He got his stupid ass thrown in jail with Bobby.”

  “I know,” Gretchen muttered with a whisper.

  “What do you mean you know?”

  “I was there, with Brian. We saw it happen,” Gretchen said.

  “You were there too?” she asked me. “Why didn’t you guys tell me you were going?”

  “I dunno. I just went,” she said.

  “Well, what I heard was there were these like ten kids from Marist and like ten kids from Rice and the kids from Rice kicked their asses.”

  “Yeah. That’s pretty much what happened.”

  “So. Are you worried?” Kim asked.

  “Worried? About what?” Gretchen replied.

  “I dunno, that Tony was hurt or something?”

  “No, I dunno. I dunno. He didn’t look hurt when we took off.”

  “What do you mean? You didn’t stay?”

  “No, I fucking went home. I didn’t want to watch,” Gretchen said.

  “Well, are you supposed to see him later?” Kim asked.

  “Yeah, he was gonna stop by tonight. My dad is working late. I don’t know if I want to see him.”

  “Well, Bobby got his hand sprained,” Kim announced.

  “Yeah? He seemed like he was OK.”

  “I think he got expelled,” I said from the backseat, quietly.

  “What? What for?” Kim asked.

  “He, like, blinded some kid from Marist.”

  “That’s fucking bullshit,” she said. “They would have done the same thing to him, if they could have. Those kids from that school are fags.”

  “Dude,” I said. “He went up and hit this kid in the head with a fucking baseball bat.”

  “Was he the only one with a bat?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “So there,” she said.

  “But he was the only one who hit anyone,” I said.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Jesus, that fucking sucks.”

  “Uh, yeah,” I said. “For the blind kid.”

  We pulled up to the mall by the blue food court vinyl canopy. Kim got her bag together and began getting out. “Well, fuck, call me later, Gretchen, and tell me what fucking happened.” Kim hopped out of the car and straightened her skirt, looking back inside the car as I climbed into the front seat.

  “Sure,” Gretchen said, staring off into the distance. “See you later.”

  “Hey, Gretchen, you OK?” Kim asked, leaning in through the window.

  “Yeah, I’m OK,” she said, and we drove in silence, the two of us, for a very long time. She tried the tape player but it was not working and so it was just the two of us sitting in total silence for a very long time; Gretchen knocking me out with her American thighs, me kind of hoping.

  “So, um, are you still thinking about going to the prom?” she asked. “Or did they cancel them both finally?”

  “No, the junior one is still on. The administration made them pick two theme songs and like work them together. It’s going to be like, ‘Make this Wonderful Night Last Forever,’ which doesn’t even make sense, but that’s all right, I guess.”

  “What’s happening with the seniors?”

  “I dunno,” I said, and I didn’t because, well, I felt like it wasn’t any of my fucking business really, and also, even if I did think it was wrong, what the hell was I going to do about it anyway? “I guess I’m going. I mean, I want to go. I mean, I haven’t asked anyone. Mike Madden, I talked to him, and he said he could fix me up with this one girl, but I dunno. Like I said, I really don’t want to go with someone I don’t know.”

  “Yeah,” she said, not getting it but nodding. “Hey, what are you doing now?”

  “Going home, I guess. Why, are you meeting Tony?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “That’s cool. If you want to drop me off by my place …”

  “Do you want to watch a movie or something?”

  “Seriously?” I asked. “Like old times. That would be the best.”

  At Gretchen’s we were watching Night of the Living Dead, a favorite of ours—you know, the original black-and-white zombie movie—and we were sitting in her basement which was pitch dark, and she was lying on this dark brown leather sofa which was very sticky and ugly and I was sitting on the floor in front of her, leaning back against the front of the couch. The lights were all off, except the TV, which was black-and-white and everything, and I was thinking about turning around and trying to attack Gretchen and fantasizing about us getting it on, you know, on the leather sofa, just reaching up under her Catholic school-girl skirt and well, you know, but then I started really watching the movie, like paying attention, and I dunno, it was like taking on a whole different meaning to me, because of the separate proms and the brawl and Bobby B. getting arrested and expelled and that one kid getting sent to the hospital. There was this one scene where the hero, this young black dude, and the heroine, this kind of high-strung white girl, are like hiding out in this old farmhouse trying to avoid being strangled by the hundreds of zombies, right, and it turns out that in the cellar or basement of the farmhouse, well, there are all these other people, white people, and they were hiding down there and they knew what the fuck was going on upstairs but they didn’t help the black guy and white chick, and so the black guy starts yelling at this dude who is kind of middle-aged and blue collar, the leader of the white people who were all chicken-shit, and the white dude says something like, “We were in a safe place. Are you telling me we were supposed to leave our safe place just to help someone out?” and I couldn’t believe he was saying that, you know, because it was all like school and shit. Everyone—all the kids at school and the teachers and the administrators and their parents, everyone—knew there was trouble, that the bl
ack kids were being made to feel like they didn’t count, like they didn’t belong, and that they were fucking fed up with feeling like that, so they were going to do it themselves, have their own prom. But no one, none of the teachers or parents or other students, were doing anything to get involved. Why? Because who wanted to get involved in that shit when sticking your neck out might mean you were gonna get your ass kicked? Not me. But, so here’s the really fucked-up thing: At the end of the movie, all of them, all the people—I mean the survivors, not the zombies, even the black guy and white chick—all of them get killed by the military at the end, and that made me think too, you know? It was all about action. Action. That if you knew something was wrong and didn’t stand up for what was right, well, not only do the people who are being treated like shit suffer, but so do you somehow; no matter how hard you try, you can’t separate your life from other people’s lives, so you’ve got to act, do something. I thought about it throughout the whole movie, wondering maybe if there was something, anything I could do, and getting nowhere by only wondering.

  At the very end of the movie, they show these still photos of the zombies and of the survivors who had been shot, and there’s like a fake radio news reporter and everything. Well, I turned around and looked up at Gretchen and she was looking at me, and she kind of shook her head, no, no, and I turned back, facing the TV, and then she leaned forward on the couch, putting her hands over my eyes, and in a minute we were kissing all over again. She was on top of me, laughing and saying, “Shhhh,” and, “Please don’t talk,” and I nodded and pretended to zip my lip and she climbed off the couch, sitting in my lap, her legs wrapped around me, facing me, as she sighed and began kissing me, very slowly, very gently. “This doesn’t mean anything,” she said, and I nodded, reaching up the back of her shirt. I ran my hands up and down her sides and kissed her ear and neck, breathing hard there, and she pushed me back against the front of the sofa. We kind of dry-humped like that for a few minutes, and I reached up to pull off her panties but she said, “No,” and I tried again and she said, “No,” like I was a little boy, and we kept pushing ourselves together, rocking, until I came, digging my hands into her hair.