Fish Tacos and a Side of Lettuce Head

        Bought some CDs today to get the car road trip ready. Some of the classics of course: Ike and Tina Turner, some Willie N and Johnny C and a couple metal gems that will remain my anonymous guity pleasure. I realize in this age of digital wonder I could simply pinch them all out of thin air and start feeding a pod but I’ve seen too many sci-fi movies to start feeding pods. Besides my iPod was never the same after I left it on the deck before a thunderstorm and a trip to the Rasputin’s in a nice excuse to drive to San Jose and binge on fast food tacos. Don’t try and tell me life isn’t sweet.

Aside from a few scattered unwashed and the usual sociopaths trolling the porn dvds there wasnt much life at old Rasputin records. The place had a deserted feeling, like vultures picking at rubble after a small apocalyse. A little sad and the end of an era I guess. When the record stores are gone, along with the bookstores I’m not sure all my socially oppressed bretheren will gather. We’ll probably all be working at Cinnabon and huffing vats of icing and bitching about our lack of motivation. Actualy that doesnt sound sound half bad.

            My girlfriend and her sister (who may wish to remain anonymous ) were along for the adventure.  After a small incident involving fish tacos we picked up some groceries and ended up at the record store. They both left after ten minutes for the greener pastures of the Honda sitting the parking lot and told me to take my time. Guess some people can only stand only so much excitement.

            After a good thirty minutes I was in a deep browsing trance. My pulse was jumpy but that had more to do with the old guy from the nearby retirement vila who was serenading smooth sax to a group of two suburbanites and a couple of nice looking ladies I had a feeling I had seen at the Hankook Korean supermarket an hour before. I had no idea who the sax machine was but his subdued version of Nora Jones’s Come Away With Me semed to have the crowd in a frenzy. I think I might have even heard one of them breathing. 

            While Orville Redenbacker did his In-Store I popped through the country and picked out some of the Johnny Cash that headed yonder when my computer paid me back for my rebellious stance against upgrades and commited suicide. So tempermental. After Johnny there was some Patsy and some Willie and soon I had a nice stack going and it was time to move on.  By the end I had multiple stacks and had to keep going back to get rid of the “next times.” (Sorry Dio) .

            I have no real clue why I’m writing a blog about my trip to the music store when they’re are far more facinating topics. I still havent told you about the chicken suit, Ukulele Dick and the dry martinis but I have to save something for the memoirs. Band stuff is steady though we’ve lost some rehearsals due to bouts with nasty airborne viruses that feed off the rock pulsing through our viens. Get better Slade.

            Jesus it must sound like I’m in a metal band. I’ve never even been in a metal band. Everybody is going to get the wrong idea about my musical compass and they wont want to steal my music. What should I say? Such is the quandry of an international superstar.

        What I really want to talk about is the jar of Baconaisse I purchased that recently changed my life. Before finding this smoky mayo alternative I didn’t see a need for everything to taste like bacon. I could probably do without the gelationous appearence and the caloric orgy in every bite but thats where the beer really helps to forget these trivial details. Anyway I’m ranting here and perhaps I unconsiously am hoping for an endorsement deal from the baconaisse people but then that would only mean I have a death wish.

        Record stores....condiments....Ronnie James Dio. I think that should cover everything for this illustrious week.  Oh yeah and one more thing...Slow Gherkin is back in town. But of course you knew that.

Heres an old story that my give you insight into the frayed edges of my current reality....

                  LETTUCE HEAD

            By Shiloh Hellman, Eng 12E

           

           

            I was standing in front of a smeared gas station mirror watching the coarse watery sludge that plastered my blonde hair leak out of a translucent shower cap.  As I stood there, my head covered with dye from a shoplifted box of herbal color, I could hear my Uncle Charlie’s sandals slap against the concrete outside the locked door.  “Are you almost finished in there?” he said.  I didn’t answer, wondering instead just how the tepid muddy paste streaming down my cheeks in tracks of seaweed-green could ever resemble the autumn chestnut swatch on the front of the package.  I was seventeen and we were on our way to a wedding.

                  “What in God’s name are you doing?” said my uncle again, the palm of his hand beating against the metal door of the Petro-Canada bathroom.  “I’m almost there,” I told him.  My shower cap sprung a couple leaks but my moustache is almost dry. I think I may have overdone it on the eyebrows though.”

“You’re moustache? You know you’re not supposed to use that stuff near your eyes or mouth right?  I’ve heard that you could go permanently blind if you don’t know precisely what you’re doing.” 

“Is it supposed to be this lumpy?” I asked, wiping my forehead with a rough paper towel to catch the streams of dye still escaping beneath the worn elastic of the shower cap. “I mean it’s really really lumpy and it’s starting to harden.  I probably didn’t add enough water.”

“And may I remind you,” he went on,  “that we’re going to get stuck in traffic if you don’t hurry the hell up.  You know you could’ve done this at home before we left. Or say last week when you had more than a couple of hours and weren’t going to a wedding.” I opened the door with a whoosh, blowing a stack of paper towels off the sink. “I know but like I said before–I changed my mind on the color at the last minute.  Seriously though–do you think I should have stayed with midnight black?”

                  My thirty two year-old uncle stood framed by the splintered doorway, his thin cheeks pulsating as if battling an overwhelming urge to explode in bursts of howling laughter. Within moments he surrendered to this urge completely, gripping both of his kidneys as he began moaning with pained hilarity.  I watched in my soiled cap, sopping facial hair and dye-streaked eyebrows and walked towards the car while his laughter continued to erupt in a series of dry heaves.  After a good five minutes he grabbed his keys and we were in the car.

                  We were driving to the wedding of my stepfather Daryl’s best friend Luigi and his live-in girlfriend, Pam. Pam was a self-confessed Love Boat fanatic and had insisted to Luigi that they get married on a cruise ship.  My mother  and Daryl were already on board and they had informed us that they would going to set sail with or without us. I had no doubt that everything would go smoothly.

                  “So tell me,” said Charlie, still snickering as we drove towards Vancouver harbor. “Is this little stunt all about Melanie?”  Melanie was the bride’s sixteen year-old daughter, the girl I had been pen-pals with when I was living with my father during my sophomore year of high school, a thousand miles away in a sleepy northern California town called Santa Cruz.  “What do you mean little stunt?” I said.   “We were writing letters to each other for awhile but that was it.  If you’re saying that she has anything to do with my current make-over you are sadly mistaken.”

“Oh really?” he said. “I remember that time we all went bowling and she said me she only dated tanned dark-haired muscular guys.  I looked over at you and I thought you were going to kill yourself right there with that little eight pound bowling ball.”

“That’s the stupidest thing ­ I’ve ever heard.  I was just very focused on my game that’s all.”

“Sure,” he said.  “And that’s why you scored  twenty that night. But please– feel free to delude yourself if it makes you happy.” I shook my head and wiped another stream of dye off my cheek with the back of my hand.

                  We pulled off the highway, the sun broiling the windshield. It was late August and people were strolling through the city in shorts and tank tops, basking in the unexpected return of sweltering summer weather.  The car braked and rested beneath the eye of a red stoplight as Charlie swiveled his neck towards me again, this time looking befuddled. “Can I ask you a somewhat personal question?”

“Is there any other kind with you?”

“Not really.  Did you do something different to your skin?”

“Please. Now you’re just hallucinating.”

“I guess it’s just the light then. For a minute I thought you may have gone and smeared on a tube of sunless tanner for her on or something. “

“I’m not that crazy,” I said.  “I think I’ve got enough chemicals on my head for now anyway.”

                  He was right though. I had applied a wad of Hawaiian Tropic sunless tanning cream before we left my mothers apartment.  I had smeared it on a little haphazardly, but so thin I really didn’t think it would make a difference.  Still the color seemed to be more akin to orange cheese powder from a bag of Cheetos than an actual tan.  I wasn’t worried though. If anything it was just in an in-between stage.

                  We pulled in near Stanley park and I got out of the car, held my shower cap in place and ran into a wooden cabin that housed the men’s room.  I knew the dye had set in for only a couple of hours but time was running out.  I pressed the metal faucet tap and stuck my head beneath the spout, my nose nuzzling against the white bowl of the sink.  The water limped out of the faucet and I lathered a sopping mass of blue liquid soap through my stiff hair in an attempt to loosen the cement-like mixture.  My uncle stepped through the doorway, a beige towel in hand. I could hear him snorting through the splash of tap water.  “I’m almost there,” I told him.  “I can really feel it start to come off now. Hate this smell though.  Are you smelling this?” He didn’t answer but I could sense that his laughter was even more pronounced than before, as it was bordering on cries of sheer torture.  “You’ve gotta–“ he said, about five times, each time unable to find the breath to finish the sentence amid his constant wheezing.  “You’ve gotta take a look. It’s priceless. Absolutely priceless.”

“Is autumn chestnut not my color or something?” I said.  “What exactly are you trying to tell me?” I kept scrubbing my head, watching piles of herbal sediment collect in the sink and spiral the drain.  By now Charlie was waving the towel, as if pleading with me to surrender my quest for brunette perfection.  I lifted my head slowly as the faucet shut off and squinted into yet another soiled bathroom mirror.  At first I thought it might have been just the lighting.  Then I opened my eyes wider and saw that whatever had made its way to the top of my head wasn’t anything close to autumn chestnut.  It wasn’t even winter almond.  It was far worse.

                  “Holy shit” I said.  “What the fuck happened?  It looks almost green.”  I frantically rubbed the towel against my scalp, trying desperately to wipe away the nauseating hue that had suddenly latched onto my follicles. . “It’s not really green is it Charles? Come on tell me. Jesus Christ.” My uncle was aching.  “It’s not just green,” he screamed.  “It’s bright green. Then again it could just be the lighting.”

“Very funny. Very fucking funny.”

                   It was true. My hair had now turned the kind of unnatural shade of green I had seen flickering on neon signs in seedy liquor store windows and in Superman movies when the Man of Steel was faced with a glowing rod of Kryptonite.  And it was all on top of my head, though my facial hair and eyebrows seemed to have been miraculously spared, ending up the color of thick chimney dust.  “What in the hell went wrong?”  I blurted, my voice raised to a shaky octave. “What the holy freaking fuck?” My uncle Charlie had staggered out of the men’s room and I could hear him gasping desperately for oxygen amid the cooing of pigeons and the rapid strides of park joggers, no doubt wondering why there was a strange man currently locked in a fetal position outside the men’s room.  I stood there speechless, flashing back to my first memory of Melanie in a cherry-blossom summer dress, with eyes like sparkling brown jewels and lashes pirouetting towards an endless blue sky I had hoped would last forever. I watched her image fade into nothingness as my eyes once again focused on the awe-struck teenager staring back at me stricken with a near-fatal case of lettuce head.

            “Maybe you just grabbed the wrong box” I heard Charlie say, trying his best to regain his composure as he stumbled back through the open door of the bathroom. “But it said autumn chestnut,” I implored. It clearly said autumn chestnut. What else could it possibly be other than autumn chestnut?”

“Maybe it was a misprint or something,” said Charlie. “Like they didn’t exactly mean chestnut but some other nut entirely. Maybe autumn pistachio. God I really have no idea.”

“I’m screwed. She’ll never want me.”

“Oh come on. Just say you did it intentionally. As a way to connect with your Irish roots. Then you can lead them to a pot of gold somewhere.”

“Okay you’ve made your point. We’re not going to this wedding”

“Oh yes we are.”

“No way Charlie.”

“You mother will blame me if we’re not there. We are going.”

             I scraped the excess dye off my head and changed into the dress shirt and a pinstriped blue sport coat I had bought for ten-fifty at Value Village. I also had a pair of black slacks that my mother bought new, one of my grandfathers silk blue ties and an old pair of brown loafers which I had successfully revived with a coat of shoe polish.  When I was done changing in one of the three available stalls I stared at my reflection. While my hair still resembled an electric cabbage my skin was taking an unexpected turn for the worst. The zits that spotted my cheeks now looked like bubbling red meteorites that had collided with the surface of a barren orange planet and my nose felt greasy, as if it had been tossed into a deep fryer. I thought I looked like a well-dressed jack-o-lantern.

                  Charlie appeared after a quick change of his own, adorned in a western style vanilla dress shirt and a dark sequined vest complete with a beaded star over each shoulder.  I thought about making some sarcastic comment about his flamboyant wedding attire but my mind had turned into a static abyss of white noise.

                  We walked to the harbor where a small crowd gathered at the base of a looming white ship.  Charlie’s hand was pushing me forward across a stone walkway that lead to the harbor, as I tried to remember to put n a smile.  Daryl, my twenty-seven year old stepfather stood directing the wedding traffic with some of the groomsmen and upon noticing the sight of the two us coming towards him, did what had to be the double take of his short life. “Hey there Daryl,” smiled Charlie as we approached the tuxedo-clad best man. “Hey…uh… guys,” he responded.  “I uh…was wondering what happened to you.  But now I’m not quite so sure I really want to know that much.  Where did you get your hair done?”

“It started at a gas station and ended in a Stanley Park restroom,” Charlie said, patting the back of my shoulder. “Aren’t the mint highlights just fabulous?”

“I wanted to…uh…. make a statement,” I whispered.  Daryl stood there chuckling.

“You’re just always full of surprises aren’t you?” he said, waving me towards the main deck where I heard Melanie’s voice coming from. I grabbed the back of Charlie’s studded vest, pulling him back from a small stairwell.  “I can’t go up there,” I told him.

“You have no choice,” he said.

“Yes I do.”

“No you don’t.”

“But I…”

“Trust me.  For once in your life just go with it.  In a few hours it won’t even matter anyway.”

                  We walked up the set of white steps that led to the main deck, my eyes hidden behind Charlie’s shoulders.  I could hear voices raised in celebration as I tried to convince myself that I was blowing everything out of proportion. After all this day wasn’t about me and even if it was a wedding Luigi and Pam were laid back people. Luigi was a musician, like most of my parent’s friends, and thrived on finding his own rhythm. Be strong. Be brave I thought.   As I got to the final step and could hear the last words of my uncle echoing in my head: for once in your life just go with it.  I knew he was right.

“Check out the dew on that dude,” a voice yelled. I turned around and saw a guy roughly my age standing next to Melanie with jet-black hair and a pressed grey suit. His coat, unlike my partially moth-eaten Value Village special, seemed to actually match his pants. 

“That’s trippy man, “ he said.  “Does it glow in the dark too?””

“I’m not really sure,” I said.  “Guess I wouldn’t be surprised though.” I could see Melanie, even though I was doing everything in my power to avert all eye contact with her.  Even when I wasn’t cursed with hair the color of a neon highlighter I could never look directly at her.  It was as if one look at her button nose and hazel eyes melted me instantly, draining me of every last shred of intelligence.  Still I could see her violet dress and the tiny white flowers woven into the braids of her hair.  I could see her soft hands with glittered fingernails, clutching a bouquet of fresh orchids.  And I could feel my brain melt into a pool of watery grey Jell-O.  She spoke and began bursting with laughter. “You look hilarious,” she said. “You look like you spent more time on your hair than I did.”

“Well,” I said.  “You know how it is.”  I stopped myself in mid-sentence, temporarily forgetting most of the English language.  “It was sort of a mistake but not really,” I finally said. I felt Charlie pat me on the back as I turned and headed for the bathroom, trying my best to smile while I felt the first pangs of seasickness wash over me.

                  Once in the sanctuary of the restroom, a place I had began to feel strangely at home during the course of the day, I heard the ship’s motor churn. My uncle was once again on the other side of the door as I stood gazing at my mortified reflection. “Just think of it this way,” he said.  “How many times in your life do you get to visit such a diverse array of  bathrooms all in a single day?  Land…sea…if we can get to an airport we just might be able to set some kind of  public  men’s room record. “

“Yeah right. Have you seen my mom? “

“She tried calling your name just as you were desperately fleeing the scene.  Just between you and me I think the hair is a hit.”

“Not exactly the one I was looking for.”

“It never is. By the way the ceremony is starting soon. They want to get it done while the lights still good.  Will you be making an appearance anytime soon?”

“That depends,” I said.  “Will you be drinking this evening?”

“By the end of the night,” he said.  “I’ll be as wasted as a liberal arts degree.”

“Well then,” I said.  “I guess that’ll make two of us.”