Our eyeballs. No matter what else happens, we can all agree that without our eyes, we're fucked.
I like that.
Okay, so I'm currently in a motel room that looks like it would be shared by two long-distance bus drivers having an affair, but let's go back a few days and pretend this is still fresh in my head.
Started (but not finished) Sunday, August 2nd:
I'm on the Lollapalooza grounds, better known as Grant Park. I have taken my shirt off. If you close your eyes at your desk, you could almost swear you were here with me, couldn't you?
You're not, though, so let me tell you what you're missing. I just finished watching Death From Above 1979, a band I was cheated out of seeing in 2006 because I was too busy watching some guy I'd never met try to open a bottle of wine, minus a corkscrew, by smashing it on a curb.
There was a blimp, but I don't know where it went. A plane keeps flying overhead, trailing a banner that's telling me to use Trojan condoms when I have sex with people I shouldn't be having sex with (the true use of condoms). It'll take more than an aircraft to convince me of that, though--like having sex while wearing a bread bag. Remember: the official condom of Tragic Hero is Durex Sheik. When things get out of hand with a stripper, it's Durex.
Lollapalooza, at ground level, is a crop circle of 20-somethings enjoying music, Ecstasy, sexual promiscuity, or a combination of all three (speaking of condoms...). I'm enjoying music because I can't score drugs in a foreign country and I'm not allowed to have sex with other people.
This is just as well because even if I could tryst away with one of these supple young things (they're all around me, by the way. There are beautiful young women dressed in hardly anything in absolutely every direction I look at all times during the entire festival. If only I had a pigeon's cone of vision), I couldn't because I keep forgetting that I have a retarded haircut.
The reason for this is because I know that Kirk Bussey (soon-to-be best man) sees the humor in a barber's college. That's the only reason. Well, that and I needed a haircut.
See, Peter, Grant and I were walking along some street, and since we were walking at Grant's pace, I had time to notice this shopfront:
Walk-ins welcome!
All haircuts $8 and performed by students.
Now, some of you know that I cinch up the wallet strap on the ol' trouser belt sometimes, whatever that means, but this wasn't a cost-effectiveness thing. I got a haircut here the following day for the two reasons I just mentioned, and those reasons alone. I needed a haircut. I knew that Bussey would find it funny if I got my hair cut at a barber's college.
That's reason enough."That's okay, but you really shouldn't be getting your haircut by students right before your wedding." This was Andie after I had showed her my new do, and that hadn't even crossed my mind before then. Hadn't even dawned on me.
Anyway, clang the bell over the door.
I walked in and some lady sent me over to sit with the other fellows, who were all black gentlemen dressed as though they'd just finished a pick-up game of basketball at the Y. (That isn't race bullshit; that's really how they were dressed.)
It had that barbershop energy that you see on TV, y'know? Hairdressers concentrating on their conversation with the other dressers more than on what they're cutting, pausing every now and then to throw back their head and cackle at a joke someone made, lolling their shears about as they did so. I had a good feeling about it.
I'll be honest, I felt like I was in good hands. Students or no students, this was Chicago. These people would have seen far more afros than Bernice working over at First Choice Haircutters in the mall. This was my presumption going in, and that is some race bullshit.
However, they paired me with Tommy, who looked very Irish, white and if I might say so, nervous. He said that he'd seen lots of hair like mine, though, and so I figured this would be okay.
He started snipping sporadically while I learned from him that he was from Wisconsin, his cousin owned a barbershop around the corner, and that he would start working there so long as he didn't puncture anything of mine today. Then I learned that he checked out Eminem last year at Lollapalooza, that there isn't much to do in Wisconsin, and that they drink a lot there. Then I learned that you can smoke pot there and the cops don't really bother you and that's good because it's Wisconsin. Then I learned that he liked football and hockey kinda, and he caught a ball game every now and then. Then I learned that everyone at the school was real nice and the instructors were supportive. By this point I was beginning to realize that I didn't really need to learn anything more about Tommy, no offense to him.
Though it was blurry because I receive haircuts without my glasses, it seemed as though Tommy's progress up to this point had been...cautious. There still appeared to be lots of rogue hair left on my head relative to the amount of forced conversation we had already had. To make matters worse, Tommy would stop cutting during conversation to gesture, which was time he was spending not cutting my hair.
He called over an instructor to help him set a 'guide' on the sides of my hair after beginning one with the bangs, which were finally done (too short). He later called over the instructor again to check his work on the right side of my head, at which time he was encouraged to do the left side. All-in-all he asked for assistance approximately five times, sometimes stepping to the side to allow the instructor to "take over for a second." By the end of the process I was legitimately learning methodologies for performing a haircut. I now have a general idea how to do it, and I intend to offer cuts to anyone who wants them for a fee of $8.
I didn't mind that it took an hour and a half. I shit on him a little here, but Tommy was a nice guy and whatever. Besides, some people like to make sure they're doing well as they go along. I'm like that myself. The fly in the Barbicide didn't come until the end of the process, when a different instructor was called over to see the finished product. That guy wetted me down and insisted on having a pick brought to him. "You gotta pick that out. If you've got it, you may as well use it, right?" Where was this guy during my time in high school I wondered as Tommy feebly told him that he didn't have a pick in his bag. Tommy was missing a couple of combs when asked to produce them, which was more uncomfortable than it should've been. When he'd meekly offer, "Oh, I left my flat comb home," I had this fucked up sensation like I was disappointing the teacher as well. Like, if Tommy didn't bring his, I should have at least had one on me.
The experienced guy began picking my hair out, suggesting I do this all of the time, and do I use product? There was a palmade at the counter I should look at, and I thought to myself, "Y'know what? I will buy the pomade. Fuck it." Otherwise, I responded where I was supposed to, thinking the whole time that I hated the way it looked as he teased it, and that I couldn't wait to leave there and tousle my hair around, like a 6-year old just out of church. I do this after every haircut, by the way, immediately after leaving a salon.
Anyway, as he was doing this, I noticed that the entire back of my hair dome was still...there. Come to think of it, I couldn't recall Tommy working on the back at all, and wasn't that the exact same length that the back had been when I came in? Wasn't that supposed to be included? Had I been fucking up afros since university, and in actuality they were supposed to look like two separate haircuts on the same head? Shouldn't the instructor be picking up on the fact that this haircut was only half done? Who was it that was lacking a sense of style here, exactly? In the end, it looked as though the front of my hair had been done by a professional landscaper on the Friday afternoon before a long weekend, the sides had been mowed by a neighborhood kid with a strong work ethic, and the back had been done by another neighborhood kid who was only mowing the lawn in the first place because he needed enough money to take a girl to the matinee where he hoped to get a handjob, and it was close to showtime.
Afterward, I found myself looking in shopfront windows and elevator mirrors, asking, "Wouldn't the instructor have said something? I mean, is this a totally shit haircut, or not?"
According to most of the people I've asked, it is.
Luckily, I have a pomade that will hold it in place no matter how windy it gets.
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