He said, “Caboose!” and hung up the phone and clapped and said, “Artist’s Statement.” He poked his tongue out to wet a finger and opened a drawer to peel out a piece of paper. He handed me a pen and sat on his desk with his fingers on his temple veins.
“Why,” he said. “We’re going to need to know why you cut all that hair, why you then cataloged them on the hairboard, why you got pleasure from seeing them up there. We’re going to need to know what. What does cutting hair do for you, do for the victim. How. How does it relate to life and how does it communicate with society as a whole.”
I don’t remember a lot of what we wrote, but it was in a writing style totally unlike mine and had comparisons to humanity that I completely disagreed with.
I said, “There’s only one reason why I did it. It was the only thing that made me feel.”
He wet his eyes in appreciation. He said, “Good. You can tell them that, but tell them this too,” tapping the paper.
He took my picture to have in the corner of the Artist’s Statement, which would be printed and handed out at the opening. Later, when I saw the pic, I saw I looked like my thighs were glued together and my whole body was completely held up by my feet pointing out like I think I’m a ballet dancer. My palms were pointing backwards and my eyes were like, “What are you looking at?” And next to my pic was a close-up of the hairlock from Male, F-train, March 12, 1998, 12:45 a.m.
I got another one of those white cards from Charlie Quick:
You and a guest are cordially invited
to the Thank You Gallery’s unveiling of
The Haircutter’s The Hairboard.
Carol made herself an arty purse to carry for the night—a jack-o-lantern. She slapped its guts onto a long wooden table with a smile on her face. She unstitched the lace duster from her dress and used half of it as the purse handle. The other half she sewed to the neckline of her dress, and her little cleavage heaved against it when she breathed, making the lace turn up and down. I had my suit washed with the last of our wolf job money.
The room was packed with the same sort of people and the same slush floor all over again. Everyone clapped when we walked in. Carol said, “It sounds like rain!” I took her silk hanky from her pumpkin and used it to sop up my sweat. Someone said, “Don’t be nervous, brother! You’re awesome!” Carol’s baby hairs looked drawn on her face—that was her only jewelry besides her sternum pearl. She held a hand over her womb and waved with the other. The jack-o-lantern swung, watching the scene. I fed the hanky back in through one of his eyes and my fat hand burst through it.
“Sorry, Carol!”
“Shut up! Smile, dang it! Everyone’s watchin’!”
I smiled, my nostrils flaring as hard as I could make them flare.
The room was a bouquet of glasses clinking, of the sexes laughing, of the muddled melody of a song beating, of the cutting perfumes on all the ladies. I started shaking hands, having no idea how long I’d be at it. “NICE PIECE!” “I LOVE THE PIECE!” Their words beat toddler-hard on my eardrums. A flashbulb went off in the direction of “the piece”—it was somehow mounted on a wall. It matched the fur coats socially dancing crisscross through the room. I went to stand before it. There were spotlights shining on it. Someone stepped up next to me and I automatically held out my hand—he shook it without having to look down to find it. He had two rows of dictionary-definition teeth and a cigarette pinched between them. He talked and smiled without having to take the cig out of his mouth or squint, “Nice piece. I’m with Christmas too.”
I said, “Oh! You’re an artist too?”
He said, “I just had a show here three months ago. The one with the wolf? You didn’t see it?”
He wore shiny black shoes with matching hair; he wore a soft red sweater fit for a wolf. His shave was blinding. And his eyes were two spheres halved by lids. The lids looked like dick skin, but purple. His irises hung half moons to do the law’s minimum.
He said, “I’m Scott Harp, you didn’t see my wolf piece?”
I said, “No. Sounds like cruelty to animals,” and went straight to the john.
There was a line to use it so I got on the end and was standing there for a beat before someone at the front said, “Cut the line! Please, by all means!” and the special treatment started.
There was a scented candle on the sink. I stood in the mirror. Saw fat, clear-headed H.C. got scared by a wolf man and ran to hide with a scented candle. I saw that I was bothered by this man—why? Call it ego or call it lego—they both can build a house (in which a nighty dress hangs on an Arctic Tundra Grey who pads around on hind legs salivating). I slapped my cheek and saw it ripple. I decided I needed that hairboard to be sold at a price so high opera singers would fall flat trying to reach it.
I left the bathroom and started ferociously shaking hands with whoever I saw, confusing some people, delighting others. I went up to Christmas and slapped his back and yelled, “Come on! Take our picture! Over here, over here!” Christmas hooted hard and I smiled “proudly,” feeling the foreign pull on my face, wondering Is this how? I even forgot about Carol. Forgot about Carol. At one point I turned around and saw her jut out her hand at a passing girl and state, “Hi. I’m Carol.” The girl laid her hand in Carol’s as if giving her a dead rat, then changed her mind and took it back (“Actually, that’s my dead rat—I just had its nails polished.”).
The camera flashes popped. People pointed saying, “That’s the guy!” or “Hi, Haircutter!” Women held their hearts with hands jeweling brightly. Charlie Quick came and said something in Christmas’s ear, something that made Christmas burst out laughing, which made a passing woman flinch so hard her wine slipped out of her glass. People were already asking to buy my next piece.
“It was one of them whirlwind-type dills,” I heard Carol say and say.
Carol and The Haircutter talked to the press and to potential buyers and to anyone else who approached them with their hand out like a bayonet. The Hairboard sat quietly exposed on the wall, absorbing smoke. The next day, it was on the cover of the paper under the heading: CUT IT OUT! New York artist cuts hair of 3,017 oblivious pedestrians!
That night in bed, I saw flashbulbs in the center of Carol’s O mouth and flashbulbs flashing at flashbulbs when I came into her. My hairboard sold for $XXX,XXX.XX—to the elderly couple covered in so many jewels they couldn’t even lift their arms to shake my hand. Carol jumped screaming around the apartment while I dug a hole in my mind and filled it with $XXX,XXX.XX and tried to get it to make me feel. I even sat down on a table and said to myself, “Be happy about it like people do.” I’ve just never been one for money, or for numbers for that matter. I never even knew my own phone number since I always had to look it up, so I never had to memorize it.
Christmas “sent a car” to take us to a celebratory dinner. It was in a restaurant covered in splattered paint—walls, tables, and chairs. Candles dripped their honeyed glow on the clapping hands of supporters as we entered. We walked a long table saying, “Hi, how are ya, okay that’s nice there, alright thanks so much, well isn’t that something I wasn’t even an artist just one month ago.” I spotted the wolf man Scott Harp, and I puffed my chest out. Christmas pointed at me and Carol and rang a gold bell with a bow on it. Charlie Quick appeared and stood on a chair to hold a mistletoe over us. “Kiss!” they shouted. I flicked my tongue at Carol like a snake and she flicked too. Everyone laughed. Carol laughed so hard, her head fell back and I licked the length of her accordionic neck. I looked at Scott Harp—he was clapping, liking our act. I lifted a leg and farted hard. Carol said, “Let’s sit down! I need a drink after all this!”
We ate like a king and a queen. We didn’t even know what we were eating. All’s I know is it tasted good, while Carol sat next to me, saying, “John, all these people are here cause’a you. I can’t wait to make L next. You look so handsome sittin’ up like that in your suit. You’re makin’ my pussy twitch.” She masturbated me with her words. While down the table
Scott Harp used a pocket knife to clean paint out from under his fingernails. He then produced an orange and used the same knife to peel it with. The citrus spurts intersected the chit-chat sung like bird warbles from the Adam’s appley necks of the most perfumed and jeweled up ladies I’d ever so closely seen. More dinners and more events followed. A train of decadency crossed our lives and we hopped on.
Fame. Fame in New York. Fat vibrating to the beat of the song. You see women so tall and so beautiful it makes you believe in extraterrestrials. Restaurant owners whisper with voices as hot as hell, “She’ll go home with you for free. She’s Brazilian. Really fun. No? How about some more bread?” He shouts, “Carol, you are stunning tonight!” while your ear drips his breath off in droplets that could no doubt poison children.
Carol and The Haircutter fought like black-and-white camera crews were hidden in potted plants around the city. It was “glam” to fight. Carol’s curls bouncing in slow-mo when she slaps me. Mascara smeared cinematically when we arrive at a party—Carol sometimes spending it on the host’s bed. Women went to the bedroom to “see if Carol’s okay” and they all hung out in there. “Someone go get a bottle of champagne. Someone get Carol chocolates.” Carol complained about how The Haircutter loves her the way she is and always goes with the flow like a girl. “Carol, you use a handkerchief?” And she’d say, “It’s my hanky. I wave to John with it when he leaves. I always keep it between my breasts.” And an ugly-faced lady sips her champagne thinking, “What breasts?” I can’t remember a single reason why Carol and I fought, but I remember teardrops caught in her curls, and me going, “Hey cool, look at how your tears are just sitting on your hair,” and she was like, “Pretty, they’re like pearls!”
We panthered around the city in a shiny black car, bottles of champagne foaming. We went to openings, to restaurants, to lounges, to parties, and to events. Carol poked me constantly to whisper, “Manners.” I’d “snap” at anyone who came to our table. (“What, you like the hairboard? Good. That’s fine. Thanks. No, I’m quite happy with Mr. Christmas, thanks. No I don’t have any inspirations, no. Alright, see this here’s a steak and alls I’m trying to do is get it down my neck, so if you’ll have some manners and scram the hell outta here …”) Carol cried in bathrooms, tipping towel-givers all her cash, telling them her crow caw story about the big mean man she’s stuck with cause he fucks her just so.
Then show us at home! With each hump, Carol says, “I’m gonna cry, I’m gonna cry, I’m gonna cry!” And with her orgasm comes a blubber of tears, “I’m livin’ in a dream! I love you!” I roll over to get her hanky from the nightstand and see a cockroach on the floor—it had been watching us the whole time. I know if I get out of bed to kill it, it’ll run out of the room. So let it watch.
The island couldn’t contain the breadth of our love—it made tea of the rivers and all the birds drank it, getting fucked up. It could “only be so.” (You know.) It was impossible that, if even for a moment so slight it could masturbate on the tip of a candlewick, our love wasn’t the most important thing going on in the world.
I bought a pole and a paintbrush and taped the paintbrush to the end of the pole and wrote with pink paint I LOVE YOU CAROL on the brick building ten feet across from our bedroom window. With her hair resting on one shoulder in a solid curl and with the snow polka-dotting between the message and the window, Carol said, “Take a pitcher of me in front of it.” She stroked her curl like it was a mink stole and smiled with her eyes closed for the pic. A bird flew into the window, absolutely wasted.
Carol’s mouth around my rod—like a fish on a hook.
Carol’s boobies bouncing so hard they’re blurry—ha ha, you’re hilarious, keep going. The Haircutter needs a relief to the weight and almost melancholic state of being so in love. And from feeling such suffocating contentment. If I passed a mirror I’d stop to see what expressions Carol might like. You know how it goes. A long and lasting pull on the prettiest cello string. We slept with smiles on our faces. Ring in the new year with a bell on a cat for all we cared. We were busy tossing spaghetti at the wall—if it stuck, she’d go, “Supper’s ready!” Then we’d “fuck” and it’d go cold. Stuff like that—that like stuff. Every act was mirrored as: Everything! Everything! Everything!
One day Christmas called me into the gallery and had me spend an hour in a closet painting. He had little canvases and he said, “Whatever you do, don’t try to make a scene. Don’t paint a mountain and a tree or whatever. And no house. Just pick a color and paint a shape on the canvas.” He held my fat hand and showed me how we could lay down a stripe of green and then put a blob of yellow near it and call it done.
I said, “Really?”
He was like, “Yeah, that’s fine. We just need these to go with the body of work. A few Haircutter paintings.”
He left me alone for an hour and when he came back I had twenty-five paintings filled with who wrote novels in first-person present tense and when they wrote them. He grabbed the yellow blob painting and burst his head through it, well pleased.
Once they were dry, he called me back into the gallery and told me to bring Carol. (“She’s your gimmick.”) We stood beside a woman who smelled clean and who furrowed her brows at my paintings, which Christmas had hung on a wall. She splayed red fingernails on her throat and dangled a hand of them over a hipbone. How powdered was her hairy skin, how insectile were her lashes. How puckered were her lips—enough to resemble a butthole. Carol was narcotized. She complimented the woman on her colorless clothes. “I like your plain tan skirt,” she said slowly, sincerely admiring it.
“I have to catch a plane,” the woman said (in an accent). And with the sky star-spangled above the Thank You Gallery as if Charlie Quick had washed it for her visit, she told Christmas, “He’s absolutely fabulous.”
“Haircutter paintings!” everyone said, or whispered if we were around. Carol wore glittery green all the way up to her brows. She styled and sewed her lace duster dress in all different ways. She smiled with her shoulders raised when she finished a conversation, and uncoiled like a snake when starting one. She listened while slithering between the words that she heard with her eyes slitted. She allowed people to talk to her for minutes upon minutes straight and she’d say, “Interesting! Huh, isn’t that interesting? Now THAT’S interesting,” nodding her head so hard her hairstyle slumped. She’d roll her compliments in sugar before serving them. (“See, and I don’t mean this just cause I’m sayin’ it, but I love that.”) A napkin doodle would get a standing ovation from Carol. “YOU ARE … the real thing.” She made people blush so hard their faces caught fire. She liked the whole thing. Appreciating. Liking the laughter, participating, saying, “Sure!” when someone offered more champagne. She got out a little notebook when she met someone to record their first and last names. And H.C.? I wanted to start all conversations with: “You’ve got the wrong guy.” If someone asked about art, I’d tell them about Old Auntie’s portrait above my sink or I’d just list colors I like, and say, “Is that what you mean?” I was a coin someone had tossed into a fountain after kissing it with their uppermost wish. Underwater, unmagical, and idiot-still. But they didn’t care. If a dog laid a purple crap and you asked him how it happened, you wouldn’t think the crap was any less purple if he couldn’t answer you, right? Still—at lounges I’d eat the provided snacks and chew to the beat of songs like, Will this do? I’d drop my jeans and wiggle my butt as my signature dance move. You know. Going through a beaded curtain and not knowing if you should hold them spread for the next person. Stuff that makes you go, Hey this ain’t me so I don’t know. And in your head a blimp as fat as you goes by with a banner: They Can’t Polish No Turd. I finally had Christmas give me a sheet with the answers to the questions on it. When reporters called, I just read from the sheet while Carol sat on a table smiling like that dog probably looked when he was laying the purple crap, or else for sure how he looked when he turned around and saw it was purple.
They loved and love
d while becoming more and more famous. The paintings sold and sold. Christmas dove and dove from a high board into a room full of gold coins. Collectors heard and heard The Haircutter’s name. Articles were written and written about him. I Got My Hair Cut By The Haircutter and Now I Have PTSD: How Far is Too Far to Go in the Name of Art? By Jamie Talentless Civilian.
My paintings sold and sold. Then they resold and resold, making my worth increase. Carol and I spent the money on dinners and “drinks on us” moments where the bill was more than we made in a week at the carwash. We bought so much food at the grocery store we had to have it delivered. We ate and ate, getting fatter and fatter.
I said, “Don’t you wanna buy a new dress?”
And Carol panicked, “You don’t like my dress?!”
I told her the truth, “That’s the sexiest damned dress I ever seen. And I love how you change up what you do with that lace duster thing. It’s creative and fun.”
She thought I’d chosen the right words—she came and kissed me, “I love your suit and jean jacket, too. Let’s always just wear the same stuff.”
As for our apartment—same thing. We just weren’t ones for shopping. We didn’t feel right being in stores and picking out stuff. Carol bought a red silk robe the one and only time we went shopping, and it hung like a bloody loogie in our empty closet for months till she wore it. So our apartment remained the same, while our bodies bulged against our same old clothes as if to hug them.
Carol and The Haircutter were everyone’s favorite. Carol and The Haircutter were the model of love. People drew their cartoons. Carol started smoking to “handle the pressure,” and soon, her cartoon always had her with a cig. Soon, when we’d pose for pics she’d say, “Don’t crush my cigarette, Puss.”
The Haircutter Page 10