My Hair Smells Like High School

I was at Penney's the other day, in the salon, buying hair product. Because that's how I roll. Anyway, I needed some hairspray and found some stuff that was on sale--two for one--and bought it, along with all the other glazes and mousses and goops and other stuff I use in order to be able to leave the house in the morning.

I opened the hairspray the other day and started spraying. I hadn't ever really looked at the label. The can was white and professed not to contain CFCs but, other than that, I didn't pay any attention to it. But when that sticky rain came out of the nozzle, I could smell it.

The smell of high school.

Sebastian Hair Shaper.

I used that stuff daily for years. The only times I would vary usage to another brand was if I needed really hard hold, for which I'd switch to Paul Mitchell's Freeze Spray. I had cans of Shaper in my locker, my gym locker, the car, my house, my purse. Clouds of it followed me around the school, like I was the Pig Pen of hair spray. The tall, white, pristine can marked me as a young woman of taste and discernment with money to burn and good looking hair.

I think I even used the stuff in college for a bit, before big hair and the hairspray that made it became passe. My mother would send me cans in care packages. My father, had he known how much we spent on that hair spray over the years, would have died a lot sooner than he did. We could have fed small African countries with the money I put into my hair back then. The perms, the color, the product--and for what?

Really, really big hair.

I smell the scent of that hair spray and I am standing in the senior locker bay, right in front of Mr. Covetta's chemistry class, waiting for Jason to walk by so we could walk to Stats together. I smell it and I'm driving around on a Friday night with Lori and Tina with the windows open and "Let's Talk About Sex" blaring on the radio. I smell it and I'm playing pool at Diane's house at midnight over Christmas break.

I smell that hair spray and I'm eighteen again.

Thank God I dress better now.

The Pull

I don't know if there is something wrong with me sometimes. I wonder if there's a swtich that hasn't been thrown. Or if there is something, deep down, that is defective. Or missing. Or that hasn't quite grown in or filled out. Because I keep thinking that...this thing? The thing I'm supposed to be doing? And I'm not? Should I be missing it? Because I don't think that I am. And I don't know if that means that there is something wrong.

That thing? A child.

People want one. They want one so badly they'll endure shots. And pills. And invasive procedures and special underwear and, according to an episode of Coach, cold water running around their testicles.

Is that right? Or am I wrong for thinking that's not right?

I know, emperically, that people should want children. We want to continue the species. We want to pass on our genetic markers. We want to create a living symbol of our love for another person. We want someone to do chores around the house and support us in our dotage. We want grandchildren to spoil. We want immortality.

And I completely envy and am amazed by those people who have children. Who endure the crying at 3 a.m. Either because the baby is hungry or because the teenaged girl just got dumped by her boyfriend. I'm amazed at folks like Dooce who have children and fight through the maze of post-partum depression and still want more. Who can separate the love for their child from the hell they went through to have them in their lives. Because some people can't. And those people? Are really bad parents.

I don't know if I'd be good at it. I think I'm too selfish. I know I'm too poor. I think of all the things in my life that I'd have to give up. All the things I really like. Red wine. The remote control. Uninterrupted sleep. The freedom to leave my house for the weekend at a moment's notice.



It would be easier if there was someone to share the pain with. If I was with someone, someone who was willing to go through all that with me, it would be easier. Doing it now? Is like looking into the maw of the sand creature in Return of the Jedi. There is no escape. And it isn't pretty.

But even if I was with someone? Would it be different? I honestly don't know. One guy told me he'd been snipped and, if that was a problem, there it was...out there. And...really? It wasn't. Then there was the other guy who said that a family and having kids really meant the world to him. And...that didn't necessarily bother me, either.

I just hate being so wishy-washy on a point that so many others feel so passionately about. But I don't want to have a child simply to have a child. So I can join in the conversations my friends have about breast feeding or epidurals or getting the kid to sleep. So I can say, "If I had a child, I'd never let him do [insert horrible thing]" with some semblence of authority. So, instead, I just avoid those conversations. Because I can't tell whether they are conversations I'll ever want to have. Or be able to have.

Gusty

I remember walking home from the bus stop in fifth or sixth grade. Walking up Wembley Ridge to the second house on the right. The big Tudor-style house on top of yet another hill I'd have to climb before I could get inside and watch Robotech or hurry up and grab my music before driving downtown to choir practice. I can remember looking out over the neighborhood from that vantage point. Seeing Erin Smullen's house four doors down the hill, my very best friend, who was inexplicably mean to me on a number of occasions. I often thought that her moving away was the best thing that ever happened to me, although it seemed horrific at the time. I can't imagine the psychological abuse we would have meted out to each other over the years had she stayed.

I can remember looking down at Tommy Lackey's house, the big one on the corner that hosted all neighborhood football games, basketball games, games of tags, fist fights and any other manner of warfare kids can come up with. His parents sold Amway and his older sister took him to see Van Halen on their 1984 tour. I can still see the t-shirt, with the little guy and the pointy hat.

I can remember clouds skittering by in the incredibly blue sky, blue that seems to be completely unimaginable these days. Leaves rolled past, down the hill in the gutters, sometimes tumbling into the sewers. We used to crawl around in those sewers until our parents caught us, talking up through the grating to our friends in, you guessed it, Tommy Lackey's yard.

I remember the big empty lot next to Andy Brown's house. Andy Brown who followed me home from the bus stop one day when I flipped him the bird, threatening to tell my mother, walking all the way up to the front door as I begged and pleaded for him to go home. He knew what a goody-goody I was. He knew I couldn't take the risk of exposure. He walked home, laughing. I was never very clear on what his family was like. Or if he even had one. He was the kid who just...was. He showed up for class trips, he had the obligatory Members Only jacket, he had the dirt bike and used it daily on the hills in the lot next to his house. But I never saw his parents.

If it was Friday, David Gallagher's dad would be out, mowing the grass for the last time of the season. He flew home every weekend from whereever he worked, letting David and his mom and...was there a sister? Anyway, they stayed there while he worked. Away. Then he'd come and mow the lawn in his black socks and Bermuda shorts. I had a huge, huge crush on David Gallagher. He used to host pre-set fights in his back yard, because his mom was never home. The spontaneous ones were always at Tommy's.

Scott Humphries's house was just past my street. Blue gingerbread. I'm sure he hated it. Simply because I loved it. It looked like a fairy tale. I remember being in there for some reason, although it couldn't have happened very often. Maybe they bought Camp Fire candy or something from me. He was the blondest of blonds, with freckles. Rarely spoke.

I remember dressing up as a deck of cards for Halloween. That was a great neighborhood for trick-or-treating. Full-sized candy bars at some houses. Avoid the guy that lives next to the folks that own that famous hunting dog--the candy always looks unwrapped. Jason Ewing's mom always had kids come in and bob for apples. She was Martha Stewart, ahead of her time. And don't go to the Korean family over there--they keed dead geese in the garage.

Almost home. The dead ants who baked in the road during the summer are long gone. The roly-polys we'd capture are all burrowed down into the ground for the winter. Pumpkins are on porches. No one smashed them here.

This is the house that I still dream of, still remember. The trellis over the back patio. The bedroom my father wallpapered himself, with the one patch under the window on upside down. The big, big kitchen and the den with wooden floors. The bonus room off my parent's bedroom with the back hallway to the laundry. The smell of new house when we moved in. Sitting and waiting for the movers with Carolyn Johnson when we moved out. We got cable for the first time in the house. And a VCR. We planted blueberry bushes and a river birch, but never got that magnolia the builder promised.

I remember walking home in the fall in Georgia.

Reflections

Sometimes I'll be watching television. Or listening to the radio. Watching someone walking down the street. And a feeling of recognition will hit me so hard, so forcefully, that I have to hold onto the arm of the chair I'm sitting in just so I don't bend over with the power of it. I have to stop walking, standing there in front of the Gap, convinced of my recognition. But I've been fooled, every single time.

Like I've written before, the smell of Obsession for Men makes me weak. I smell it and I'm immediately transported to a living room at 2 a.m. in northern Ohio, MTV playing on the television and the sound turned off. Lightening bugs flickering outside.

When I see Eddie Murphy skits run on Comedy Central, I think of him, too. I don't know if it is because he used to run those riffs during our marathon phone calls, imitating James Brown's Celebrity Hot Tub or Velvet Jones's "I Wanna Be a Ho" routines. Or if it is because there is this native, natural confidence in both of them, simmering just below the surface. When I see Eddie Murphy move, I see pieces of him in it--the swing of the hips, the roll of the shoulders, the look over the shoulder.

I was watching, God help me, CMT this weekend. There was some guy interviewing the band Sweetwater. And I looked at him. And I listened to him. And he set that thing off in me, the recognition meter. It was as though I was looking through a glaze at someone I knew, listening to his vocal patterns, watching the way he sat in a chair, held a microphone, wore his shoes. It was rather eerie, to tell the truth. And upsetting.

Maybe the fact is that there are only so many components in people to go around. Maybe we're just all unique combinations of a set number of qualities. Brown hair, smooth skin, a hint of an accent, a broad brow, a dimple, self-confidence, a slight limp, a verbal tic. Maybe, like a deck of cards, each person gets the same number of cards--and sometimes even the same numbers on the cards--but in different combinations. Perhaps that explains the theory that somewhere in the world, someone looks just like you.

Until then, I'll just keep looking for people that I recognize in people I don't know.

Po' Boy

I'm reading these books by James Lee Burke. He writes mysteries about southern Louisiana. And now I'm completely and uttterly obsessed with the thought of a po' boy sandwich. Obsessed, I tell you. To the point that I'm digging through old magazines for an "on the cheap" recipe for one of the doggone things.

Semper Fi

I do volunteer work around town. This weekend found me at the local Veteran's Home. It is a big, modern-looking complex. There used to be a huge old federal-style building on the site, overlooking the river, probably quite majestic. That building, like its residents, outlived its usefulness and was replaced by a brick and glass monstrosity with little character. While still filled with characters.

A friend of mine and I went with some animals. People go every couple of weekends, letting the vets touch the animals to get a little variety in their day. There's only so much Discovery Channel and PBS one can watch. Particularly someone who has probably seen Iwo Jima up close, rather than only on television.

This weekend we went to the Alzheimer's Unit. I'd never been in there before. I probably shouldn't have worn the miniskirt. Another lesson learned.

Most of the men, and they were almost all men, were very quiet. Some were catatonic. Some were just not responsive. But others were talkative. There was the black man who only looked about 65 but who had been a mechanic in WWII, working with the Army Air Corp. He had told the nurse that they were loading planes with enough food and supplies to keep people alive for a month. And enough bombs to kill everyone in the world. It was hard to decide whether the dementia was kicking in or if he was telling the truth--that the world could have ended in 1945 and none of us would be here.

There was a very angry man there. He was slight, not very tall, with whispy ghost trails of white hair. Crisp blue eyes that belied the confusion within. He was not happy to be there.

"Judas Priest," he'd mutter, slapping at his thighs. "Judas Priest, when are we getting out of here?" He kept looking at the guy next to him, who simply rolled his eyes.

He came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. "I need to get out of here. But I'm not sure how," he whispered to me. I didn't know what to say.

The nurse came to my rescue. "We're going to go outside soon, hon," she said, taking his hand.

"What am I? Some kind of criminal? Why can't I leave?! Where's my wife!"

I've never been around someone with Alzheimer's before. I mean, my grandmother would forget my name and my grandfather had some pretty severe dementia right before he died but they weren't walking around, looking normal, while swearing and asking where the cookies were. I honestly didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

But when the tall guy in the big Naugahyde chair ripped a fart, I admit it. I laughed.

The last room we went to was filled, again, with old men. Watching television. We went around to each of them, talking to them, letting them touch the animals. Some of them smiled. Some even asked questions that had to do with the animals. Most of them simply looked at us.

Before we left, the nurse went to the VCR to put in another video for them to watch, to fill those empty hours. One of the men, one who had been a little bit talkative, began to sing.

"From the Halls of Montezuma
To the shores of Tripoli..."

He trailed off. I was standing by the door. I took up the next line.

"We will fight our country's battles
In the air, on land and sea"

We sang the rest together. He was looking out the window and never looked at me. No one else sang with us. I was afraid we might start some kind of sing-off between the Marines and the Navy but everyone else was quiet. We finished and I turned to go.

"Where'd you learn that?" my friend asked.

"My dad made me watch a lot of John Wayne movies."

He's Moving to the Far East Now

Do you have those moments? The ones you look back on and think, "Yup. That was it. That was the second it all changed." The moment you wish you could live over again?

I've got a couple. Some old. Some new.

I regret the night that we came home from the bar in Tuzla. Four a.m. We have to be on a bus in three hours for a ten hour trip. Three of us in the elevator. I was on the third floor with a room to myself. He was on the fourth floor, with a room across from her. They were just friends. He and I...could have been something else. I got off the elevator. He started to follow me.

"Wait. This isn't your floor," she called to him as he walked down the hall after me. I could hear him stop, turn and walk back to the elevator. I so, so wish I'd simply taken him by the hand. Just like I wish that, the next night, I'd followed him out onto the street after leaving the horrible Star Rock Cafe in Split and kissed him. Just once.

I regret quitting swim team. I regret not running for student body president in college. I regret breaking up with the chef. The nice chef, not the one who sent me roses after breaking our date because he was shacking up with someone else. I regret calling the guy, the eventual Orca-fat guy, when I went home to visit my father in the hospital. I regret not breaking up with most of my boyfriends sooner. I regret not seeing my father more before he died. I regret ever putting peanut butter on a tortilla chip to see what it tasted like.

"Let's take a walk," he said.

"I can't. She's drunk. And I can't leave her," I replied.

"I just want to walk around out there with you." He looked at me and touched my face.

I regret not figuring out a way to take that walk. And I regret feeling bad about it now.

An Email to a Boy

So I met a boy. And he didn't call. And this is the email that I didn't send him about him not calling me:

So, since we don't live in the same town and I won't run into you sometime in six months with your new girlfriend at the new bar that opened downtown that everyone goes to the first week it is open and then share an incredibly awkward moment where you introduce us to each other and I give you the look that says, "Her? Really? Her?" as she twists her long blond hair around her finger and gazes into your eyes (God, isn't she awful? I think I hate her already), nor will I hear through the random grapevine that develops between people that kind of know each other from seeing each other once a year at some beer bash or chili cookoff that you decided to pull up stakes and move to Alaska to herd sheep, I thought I'd cut through the bullsh!t and ask why I hadn't heard from you. And I even thought of some answers:

a) I accidently called you someone else's name during our last phone conversation;

b) You met Ms. Right (or Ms. Right Now) at the Knot function on Thursday;

c) You dropped your cell phone in a toilet and lost all the numbers;

d) I appeared to be more into you than you were into me and the last time you got into that situation, someone ended up at the courthouse getting a restraining order, that someone being you;

e) You got sick from sushi from Wild Oats and are currently hospitalized;

f) You figured that I might be dating the guy with whom I went to the hockey game and, really, is it worth the headache of dealing with this chick who's in another state when she might be seeing someone anyway? (When, in reality, the guy is incredibly married and has three little boys and is currently reversing his vasectomy so his wife can finally have that girl she's always wanted.);

g) "Oh my God, her emails are just TOO LONG";

h) You really just aren't that into me, just like that book says; or

i) You honestly are stuck in a ditch, like that guy who got stuck for 8 days and couldn't reach his cell.

And I'm writing this to be funny, but also because I really do want to know and it sucks that this opportunity is passing by and I don't want to sit back and let it. Because the chance to randomly meet someone who could end up being a really cool person and a great friend? Isn't something that happens very often. And I've let some of those chances pass by. I really didn't want that to happen here.

So I'll quit pestering you. But I still think you're awesome. And, even if I haven't heard from you in two weeks, two months, two years (well, maybe not two years), I still wanna hang out with you. Even if it is only on the phone.

I thought about just sending him the link to this, but I think I'll just let sleeping dogs lie.

Continuity

It is always nice when you put on clothes in the fall that you haven't worn since last winter or spring and they still, you know, kinda fit.

Kinda, anyway. If you wear Spanx.

Like Sand Through the Hourglass

So the one call came. But the one after that didn't. And so, yet again, I'm stuck with a bunch of daydreams that I can't even have anymore because they remind me of how dumb I was to think that, maybe, this time, it could work. Like the really good apartment that someone else gets to just before you. Or your dream job that the bitchy girl you went to grad school with gets, just because she once slept with the human resources assistant and she might put out again, sometime in the future.

I have a lot of those daydreams that I can't have anymore. Because they've outlived their usefulness. Because my reality has intruded so far that the daydreams are beyond fantasy...they're more of an impossibility. Because they hurt too much.

I'm getting afraid. Afraid that I'm walling off pieces of myself that I'm never going to get back. I don't have dreams anymore. Or aspirations. Or goals. Other than having enough money by the end of my paycheck that I can both pick up my drycleaning and pay for a new passport. Not that I'm going anywhere.

I want to live big. To dream big. But reality has a way of crushing your soul, you know? It makes you small. It makes you hard. It makes you bitter. I'm becoming that kind of person. The kind of person who doesn't see possibilities. The kind of person who only sees obstacles. I don't want to be that kind of person.

The nicest boyfriend I ever had, the only one I feel bad about breaking up with? He's married now and expecting triplets. I don't know whether to be happy or sad.