Box Girl (15 page)

No matter how many times this happened, Ted was as flabbergasted as if it were the first. After thirty years behind a bar, he had the memory of a goldfish; every trip around the bowl was a brand-new adventure. But even in his cantankerous way, there was a certain level of charm to Ted. I liked the guy.
It wasn't just the cocktail waitresses I formed intense bonds with, but the entire staff. Mark the manager used to call me the sister he never had. Except he had a sister. During those years, I spent more time with those people than anyone else in my life. We leaned on each other to distract ourselves from the endless hours on our feet.

At the restaurant, we were not allowed to use our phones. We'd be written up if we got caught. We were supposed to leave them in our cars or in our lockers, but no one did. I didn't even know where my locker was. Everyone kept them in their aprons, or in the drawers where they kept their credit card slips. We'd all steal glances at various moments throughout the night, but not very often. I honestly think this is why our friendships were so strong. No one was ever tapping buttons or touch-screens while they talked. No one was compulsively checking texts mid-conversation. We were looking each other in the eyes, talking. Sure, we'd run off every now and again to check on a table, but we always came right back and finished our conversations.

For eight hours a night, four nights a week, we waited in the well while our drinks were made, stood shoulder-to-shoulder folding stacks of starchy napkins, shared meals on sore feet while standing in the back. These people knew every detail of my life, and I knew everything about theirs. “How's your grandfather doing?” they'd ask, when the rest of my friends didn't even know he was sick. These were the people who wondered where I was if they hadn't seen me for a few days. Who would call to make sure I was okay. They were the people I drove to the vet when their dog was sick, the ones who picked me up when my tire was flat. These were airport-ride people. We knew each other's moods immediately. We finished each other's sentences. We laughed so hard we cried. We cried so hard we laughed.

For my last shift at the restaurant, the classic rock station was playing all night—Lynyrd Skynard, The Band, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd. Everyone was complaining, but I was thrilled. At the end of most shifts, the cocktail servers would share a dessert. That night, I got to pick my favorite: chocolate croissant bread pudding. When it came out, it was covered in candles and, written in chocolate, it said,
Good Luck Lilibet, We Love You!

“Imagine” came on the stereo, and I started to cry. I loved them too. As much as it pains me to use the term in this context, these people—every one of them—were my family. I used to think that if “The Big One” hit, I'd want it to happen while I was in there, with all of them.

Anatomy of a Haircut

I'd sometimes take pictures of myself in the box, using the
Photobooth application on my laptop. This was before the advent of the “selfie,” back when taking pictures of yourself was still something to be embarrassed about. I'd have to position my laptop so the pinhole camera was centered on me just right, and then I'd pretend I was looking at something else when I snapped the picture. Or, I'd pretend I was looking at an interesting website, or sometimes I'd pretend like I was
smiling
at an interesting website, as if that wasn't obvious. I don't know why I went to any lengths to pretend I wasn't taking a picture of myself, because as soon as my computer's camera flashed, the box was illuminated, and the gig was up.

In one of these pictures, I appeared to be sitting in a forest. That month, the box was painted like a very elementary Bob Ross creation: bushy evergreens, wispy white clouds, royal blue sky, emerald green grass. The photo is cropped just below my collarbone, and I looked naked. There were no straps, no sleeves, just skin. That night I had taken a real Box Girl fashion risk. No, I was not actually naked; I was wearing a strapless
white body suit from American Apparel, which is basically a tube top with a crotch. I cannot remember what compelled me to wear a strapless white body suit that night, but I can remember that this was a time in my life when most everything I wore was from American Apparel.

In the photo, my lip gloss was a shade of “dusty rose,” if something glossy could be described as dusty. It was obviously applied while sitting in the box, without a mirror, because it was askew, not fully covering my lower lip, but just the middle of it, like a geisha. This created the illusion that my mouth wasn't quite aligned. My eyes were lined in brown, and my eyebrows looked like two miniature ferrets crawling across my face.

Actually, I could only see one of my eyebrows because the other one was covered by a thick swoosh of asymmetrical bangs. Which brings me to The Haircut. My hair was feathered into an asymmetrical mullet and flipped out at the end like a '70s Florence Henderson, before she morphed into a bizarro Hillary Clinton. The haircut originated with a part that was
way
left, like comb-over left, then cascaded over the crest of my head, tapering out just below eye level, before snaking down the right side of my face in a loose S-shape, hugging the curves of my cheekbone. At lip level, it flipped out like Florence's, and the whole affair came to a halt just above my shoulders. This haircut was quantifiably ugly. It really was. But was it so ugly it was hot? I'm afraid, at the time, I was under that impression.

Gertrude Stein said, “Those traits of ours which most embarrass us when we are young, we later come to see as our charms.” In my case, this thing I once believed so charming now embarrasses me.

The most amusing thing about this haircut was that I got paid to do it. One night at the restaurant, I was waiting on a stylist for a hair care company, and she needed some models
for a hair show that Saturday. I had never heard of a hair show. She said it was a big convention at The Staples Center, where all the hair manufacturers showcase their products. She wanted my coworker Victoria to do it, too. We told her we'd think about it and let her know the following day. I had never cut my hair more than two inches at a time—I had always wanted to, I'd just always been too scared. Throughout the night, Victoria and I weighed the decision, discussing the pros and cons. We held our hair up behind our heads in the bathroom mirror to see what it would look like. And maybe we were exhausted, maybe we were “tasting” wines that night, but by the end of our shift, we had convinced ourselves that having our hair cut by a stranger for a hair show was a genuinely good idea.

Two days later, we went to the woman's “hair studio” in Marina del Rey. It was her house. She positioned us against a wall in her kitchen and took “before” pictures. That is when I started to get nervous. She offered us glasses of white wine, which we thought was weird but we eagerly accepted. Before I knew it, my hair was hitting the ground in eight-inch strands. I told Victoria to get the bottle of wine; I needed a refill. When she finished, my hair was so short in the back, I actually had a ducktail. The front was asymmetrical, not only in its extreme side part, but because one side was longer than the other. This was “a look,” the stylist assured me. While looking at myself in the mirror I kept dipping my head to the side to make the sides of my haircut even.

The next day, we had to be at the Staples Center by 7:00
AM
in black tops and black pants. I hadn't slept the night before because I was on a magazine deadline. I finished the piece around five in the morning and lay on my floor, facedown by the electric heater, too tired to sleep. I eventually peeled myself up, and when I walked into the bathroom to take a shower, my reflection startled me. There is something very unsettling
about not sleeping and then suddenly remembering that the day before (or is it still the same day if you haven't slept?) you had all of your hair chopped off. There is something even more unsettling about not sleeping, realizing you let a stranger cut off all your hair, and then having to shake hands and smile next to a Jumbotron of your “before” picture. (Which, by the way, she told us not to smile for.)

Looking at the photo of me in the Bob Ross box installation, I can tell it was taken a couple of months after the hair show because the ducktail had grown into a sort of shaggy neck covering. In the picture, both of my eyes are darting skeptically, silently asking, “Why am I in woods with no clothes on?” I was trying to be ironic. Because everything was ironic back then; I was
filled
with snark. This was during my “hipster” phase, if we must use that word.

An NPR comedian once described hipster girls as taking someone who is probably smoking hot, then putting her in a floral dress from the Salvation Army that smells like moth balls, lacing her up in some beat-up barn boots that make her look like she should be trying out for
Newsies
, maybe adding a man's hat, and removing all of her makeup except for some ironically dark lipstick.

Who wanted long, beautiful, well-conditioned hair anyway? That was just too obvious. Way too mainstream. Instead, I'd cut my hair like a little Dutch boy and flip it just so as I swayed back and forth at The Echo, my arms crossed and my back hunched over, while sipping a Pabst Blue Ribbon and listening to a band you've never heard of.

This haircut said “I'm hip.” This haircut said, “I get it.” This haircut said, “Yeah, I know that band.” This haircut said, “Obviously I am going to Coachella.”

This haircut attracted a particular type of guy. They normally had mustaches, which they, too, thought were so ugly they were hot. Most of them lived east of Vermont Avenue, in Los Feliz or Silverlake or Echo Park, and it was during this time that I used to say I was moving over there. I would complain that the Westside was so Westside-y, with its Nordstrom and Starbucks and moms always in workout clothes. I wanted the thrift stores, the farmer's markets, the fair trade coffee shops.

Like the haircut, this phase didn't last. They never do. Now I can't imagine living all the way in Silverlake, so far from Venice and the rest of my life. Some days I don't even see the ocean, but I like to know it's there.

Entourage