Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath (16 page)

I sit quietly while Carrie and M.C. explain to Alex that I need to have my hair cut in a standard nerdy fashion,
because otherwise I'll freak (like I'm not freaking already), but if she could make it more cool nerdy rather than geek nerdy, it might get me going in the right direction.

Alex nods as if she understands. She then takes out a giant clipper and shaves off a huge swath of my hair.

I don't remember my first haircut, but I know I cried a lot. We have a picture. I don't look happy in it. It is all I can do not to repeat that performance now. I look at M.C., who is smiling, almost proudly, like I'm some kind of science project that she expects to win first prize with at the next fair.

Carrie is thumbing through fashion magazines and talking about layering. Alex is busily removing more hair. It falls in giant clumps on the cloth in front of me. I don't look up to see myself in the mirror; I'm not ready to know what I look like bald.

We have waited for close to two hours, but the actual haircut takes less than ten minutes. Alex rubs some sort of gel in my now very short hair. Or at least parts of it are short. Some of the hair on top has been left longer. I'm assuming it's intentional, but it looks like Alex forgot to cut random tufts of hair, which now stick up at odd angles on top of my head. Alex, M.C., and Carrie seem quite pleased. I am horrified.

“How do you like it? Isn't it great?” gushes M.C.

“Much better. Who knew you could look good?” Carrie adds.

“You should come back in about three weeks,” Alex tells me. “Otherwise it will grow out funny. I'll have Julie schedule you an appointment.”

Julie also seems to take the money. I almost choke when she charges me forty-five dollars. Carrie reminds me that I need to go tip both Alex and Anna, and reassures me that it would be more expensive if I were a girl.

“They always let guys off easy at these places,” she explains as we leave.

On the way out I steal another glance at one of the mirrors lining the walls, hoping maybe I had missed something the first time.

“It looks really good,” M.C. tells me, and it sounds like a genuine compliment.

The theological implications of barbering, part three: purgatory and egg rolls

Still, they must feel a little guilty, because we stop for Chinese takeout on the way home and Carrie uses her cell phone to call David. She doesn't ask me first, which is probably good since I would have told her not to. But it's probably better if David comes over, because that's what he would have done if this haircut had been inflicted upon me last week instead of this week. David is trying hard to be pre-letter normal, so when we get home, I try to look happy to see him. He is waiting on the porch. David always waits outside.

“What the hell happened to you?” he asks as I get out of the car. I stop pretending to be happy to see him.

“He looks great,” Carrie tells David, as if this were a fact and he was just a little slow to figure it out.

“Did you pay money for that?” Dad asks, meeting us at the door. He looks rumpled, as if he just woke up.

“He looks great,” Carrie explains again, with an audible sigh. Everyone is so dense.

“Chinese food?” Dad asks, sniffing the air and then noticing the telltale white boxes we're carrying. “Mom should be home soon. Let's set the table.”

As I walk by, Dad tries to give my hair a friendly ruffle, but the gel has made it stiff and a little sticky, so it doesn't really move. “Looks great, Mitchell,” he tells me, without much conviction. “A whole new you.”

David and I choose to eat our dinner on the front stoop, and since I am in haircut recovery, no one objects. David is telling me something about global warming. I'm not listening. I keep touching the back of my head, feeling for the missing hair. He seems impatient with me.

“Your hair's fine. Stop playing with it.”

“It's not fine. It's not me, and I'm not happy with it.”

He shrugs. “It grows back. It's not like you lost a limb.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“What's your problem?”

“I am not having a good day, okay? And you aren't helping much.”

“What do you want me to do? I can't glue your hair back on.”

“You don't have to fix it. I just want to be allowed to be pissed off. I'm depressed. I'm actually depressed by this haircut. Seriously, authentically, honestly, and completely desolated.”

“We could always shave your head.”

I throw an egg roll at David in actual anger. He looks at me and laughs. It's the first laugh I've heard out of him in a long time. I find myself smiling too. There is something inherently funny about throwing egg rolls.

David feels guilty.
Pickup at 8:00 sharp.
We party tonight
.

I must have made David feel guilty, or maybe he's just trying hard to show that nothing is different between us, because he e-mails me on Saturday afternoon. E-mail turns out to be the best way to contact me, because Carrie is permanently attached to our phone. David's e-mails read exactly the way David talks. Monotone, slightly annoyed, suitable for telegrams, as if he paid by the word.

Recovered from haircut? Josh house party tonight. Pickup @ 8:00?

Not gushing, but I can hear the overtones of a guilty conscience in it. He even rounded off the pickup time. A non-apologetic David would have offered to get me at 8:04. I reply in the same style.

Hair OK. Party OK. 8:00 OK
.

Almost poetry.

A stifling, noisy
box of poorly packed people;
there is no order
.

Josh's house is a stifling, noisy box of poorly packed people. There is no order to the arrangement of bodies and no flow to their movements. David and I stand in our usual spot, but tonight we have company because most of the baseball team is here. David is conversant in at least three different sports, one for each season, but baseball is the only one he really knows. I nod a lot and sip the same can of lukewarm beer I have held all evening. Without explanation, David is back to drinking Diet Coke and is on his third. I decide not to mention it. I look around for Mariel, because I am so sick of talking about baseball, but she doesn't seem to be here. I ask David about it during a sports pause and he shrugs.

“She has a boyfriend. Chapel Hill. She's been down there a lot.”

“Since when?”

“A couple of weeks.” He shrugs again. Not sure what the second shrug is supposed to mean. It's not surprising that Mariel has a boyfriend, or that she's dating someone in college. I guess it also makes sense that she would have told David and not me. I do wonder whether it felt awkward for either of them. Now there's a guy that's not David in her life. Are the two guys in separate categories, or are they on a continuum and the guy she's dating is more
something
than David? Boy, friend, boyfriend. Girl, friend, girlfriend. Maybe it is all about sex.

Louis comes stumbling toward us. His chubbiness seems bulkier, more imposing when he's drunk.

“Baseball is a fag sport,” he announces to the assembled infield. From anyone else, this might be an invitation to physical violence, but Louis seems to have been granted a permanent exemption from the rules.

He looks up as if he isn't sure he recognizes me, then smiles so broadly he almost loses his chin. “Mitchell, the old party man. Damn glad you made it.” He grabs my non-outstretched hand and pumps it vigorously, then turns back to the baseball players.

“In baseball, you see … Christ, what happened to your hair?” He turns back to me and shakes his head sadly. “Damn chemotherapy. Such a tragedy. Anyway, what where we … oh, yeah. Fag sports. See, in baseball, all you do is wave around these large shlong substitutes and half the time you strike out anyway. And if you do connect, you're trying to shoot it right out of the park. Pure masturbation. Now soccer, there's a man's sport.” He stops to take a long gurgling slurp of his Bud. Louis is the backup goalie and has never, to my knowledge, seen action on the field. He is more like the team mascot.

“You see,” he continues, focusing somewhere between David and Glenn, “in soccer it's all about plunking the sperm into the snatch.”

Louis smiles at this analogy. There is a moment of silence. He obviously expected some form of response. David shrugs and sips his Diet Coke at the same time, an impressive feat in an odd sort of way. He looks at Louis without smiling.

“And so you're like the second-string diaphragm?” he asks in his usual flat monotone.

Louis breaks into another oversized grin. “Davie boy, that's very, very good—but I prefer to think of myself more as a chastity belt,” he answers, holding himself a little more erect before returning to his swaying. “It is my sworn duty to protect the virgin goal from violation by the opposing pricks. And now, I need to find the pisser.” And he lumbers off.

I look up at David, who almost smiles. He takes a sip of his Diet Coke. I take a sip of my beer. We seem to be us again.

She touches my arm.
Danielle's materialized.
Hi, hi, how's your head?

Someone touches my arm. I turn around, a little too quickly. Out of nowhere, Danielle has materialized.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“How's your head?”

At first I think she's asking about my haircut, but then
I remember our magical migraine moment last week, which I think is the last time I spoke to her. “I'm okay. I mostly just get them during calculus.”

“Bexter will do that to you.”

We smile at each other. I'm sure mine looks pasted on. I can feel myself sweating.

“So, how's it going?” she asks.

“Okay.”

“Are you having fun?”

Should I be? I shrug.

“Me either.”

My mind is racing to come up with something to say. I have no idea why she's suddenly talking to me, but she is. This is intentional, not just a hi, how's it going as she passes by.

“Are you smashed?”

I look at the beer in my hand. “I've been pacing myself,” I say, implying that this isn't the only beer I've had this evening.

“Me too, but I don't mind being buzzed, do I? Did you drive?”

“No, I came with—I mean I caught a ride with David.”

“Can you drive a stick?”

“No” would be the appropriate answer as both of my family's cars are automatic, but I have driven David's once or twice, not very successfully. Nevertheless, I nod.

“I came with Nicole and she's totally trashed and can I
drive a stick? No way. My car's at her house, and I could give you a ride back to yours.”

Okay, so I'm being used for my apparent sobriety, but I don't much care. I wonder if she has any idea what just talking to her does to me.

“Now?”

“Whenever you're ready. I need to scrape Nicole up from wherever she's passed out, but I'm more than ready to call this one done.” She sounds tired and frustrated. I remember the look she had coming out of the bathroom, and I wonder what's going on. I miss so much.

“Let me tell David and we'll go.”

“You're a sweetheart,” she tells me as she begins to work her way back through the room.

David's in the midst of a heated discussion about some umpire. I wait for a pause and tell him a little too loudly that I'm going to drive Danielle and Nicole home, as if this were a regular occurrence. He raises his eyebrows suggestively, an affectation I've never seen from him before.

“Nicole's trashed and Danielle can't drive stick,” I explain with a sigh, like this is a real annoyance.

“Catch you later, then,” David grunts in his jock voice. He takes a huge swig from his soda. If he's upset, he doesn't show it. I nod and head to the door, where Danielle is waving at me.

I seem to do a lot of nodding.

Nicole drives a Porsche.
I can no longer feel my
fingers: nice car, huh?

Nicole drives a Porsche.

Not that I would have been comfortable wrecking a cheaper vehicle, but the possibility of having an accident in a car that costs as much as a small house terrifies me. I am in an advanced stage of panic. I no longer hear voices. I can no longer feel my fingers.

“Nice car, huh?” Danielle says as she unfolds the tiny backseat and deposits a giggling Nicole into it.

“Great.”

Danielle hands me the keys. It takes me an extraordinarily long time to find the right levers to move the seat back, but Danielle and Nicole don't seem to notice. They are discussing the party. Danielle is obviously upset about something or someone. Her quiet angry tone is punctuated by sympathetic bursts of obscenities from Nicole.

“Can you believe he said that to me? Suddenly I'm the slut.”

“Asshole!”