Hairstyles of the Damned (22 page)

“My elf attacks the Evil Orc!” some red-haired doofus announced, rolling a handful of dice.

“My thief joins the fight!” some other wuss shouted, banging his hand on the wood kitchen table.
Good god,
I thought,
these kids are bigger pussies than I have ever been in my entire life.

Peter Tracy was at the head of the table wearing a kind of black cloak—yes, a black fucking cloak—covering the top of his head, acting as Dungeon Master: the king geek who orchestrated the fucking game.

“Ah, but it is a trap,” Peter said with a serpentine smile. “For this Orc is not an Orc at all, but a shape-shifting demon!”

All the geeks sucked in a breath, titillated and amazed, until one kid, who was chubby and sweaty, leaned in and said in a very dramatic, geek-type accent, “My conjurer casts a spell of detection! We will see how mighty a foe this shape-shifting demon is!”

“Ah, Gentlemen,” Peter said, looking up, nodding in our direction. “It seems we have guests.”

“Who are these dire strangers?” the fat kid asked, still with the full-on geek accent.

“Perhaps they are fellow travelers!” the red-haired kid shouted.

“Perhaps they are shape-shifting demons!” the fat kid replied.

“Right, whatever,” Mike said, getting uptight. “We brought you the stuff, OK?”

“Ah, yes. But perhaps you’d like to awaken your character, Gaston the Ranger, first? A few rounds of a proper Orc-thrashing?”

Peter asked Mike, pulling an empty seat up to the table.

“Yeah, I’m good,” he said. “We’ve got other places to go, actually.”

“So,” Peter asked, whispering, “do you have it? All of it?”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “But what do you need all this for?”

“Well, we all want to try it,” Peter said.

“Well, there was a debate about how much it usually takes.

Maybe you can answer that?” another kid, one with enormous glasses, asked, raising his hand.

“How much does it take? To get high? Huh,” Mike said, nodding, looking down into the brown lunch bag. “This should be enough for each of you.”

“Cool,” the geek with the big glasses said, lowering his hand.

“Who do I pay?” Peter asked, opening a large gold metal treasure-type chest set in the middle of the table.

“Um, me, I guess,” Mike said. Peter stood, counted out fifty dollars—ten dollars a kid—and placed it in Mike’s palm.

“That, I believe, concludes our business, dear Ranger,” Peter said, readjusting the cloak on his head. He slipped the brown bag full of a little weed and mostly oregano into the treasure chest and turned a lock, securing it with a very tiny golden key. “Now we must celebrate!” Peter announced, clapping his hands like a Medieval inn-keeper. “Mother!” he called into the other room. “Our chalices, please!”

In a moment, Mrs. Tracy returned, carrying a large silver tray full of collector
Star Wars
glasses, the kind I got when I was a kid, I think, from Burger King. I wasn’t sure. Each of the geeks had his own specific one, apparently, and each was filled with what looked to be a different drink—the fat kid, milk in a Darth Vader glass; the red-haired kid, orange juice behind Princess Leia’s face. Peter reached out and took the last glass, announcing, “And Chewbacca, old friend, I believe you are for me.”

“Excelsior!” the geeks shouted in unison, holding their glasses high and saluting, toasting with their drinks.

“I’m sorry, boys, I didn’t know you were coming over or I would have brought you something. Michael, I believe there’s an
Empire Strikes Back
glass upstairs with your name on it.”

“No, I’m good, Mrs. Tracy,” he said. “But is it cool to use the washroom?”

“Well, of course, Michael. You remember where it is, dear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said and got up and disappeared down the hallway.

I stood there, staring at the geeks at the table, and thought how close I had been to becoming like them: weird, unhappy, maladjusted, perpetual virgins. But then again, there was something kind of funny about them, kind of goofy, like they knew what they were doing was gay, but they didn’t care. I mean, Peter Tracy had a fucking druid’s robe on and he didn’t care. There was something kind of, I dunno, brave about it, just not fucking caring what the whole rest of the world thought of you. And they all had each other; they were like their own little group, with their own little rules and way of talking and everything. In that way, it was kind of cool. I took a seat where Mike had been sitting and the kid with enormous glasses leaned over and asked, “Do you play RPGs?”

“Um, I don’t know that means,” I said.

“You know, Role-Playing Games? Do you play?”

“Not really,” I said.

“That’s too bad,” he said, like he felt bad for me, his breath all hot and milky. “It’s a great way to meet people.”

“I bet,” I said.

“Bruce brought his girlfriend last week.” The kid with glasses pointed at a taller, quieter kid at the corner of the table, who smiled at me and nodded.

“You guys have girlfriends?” I asked.

“Well, just Bruce. But, well, that’s what the … magic ingredients are for.”

“The what?”

“The narcotics,” the kid said, nodding toward the chest in the center of the table. “Tonight, Mr. and Mrs. Tracy are going out all night for a wedding. We’re having a
party
here,” he said snidely, as if I had never heard of a fucking party before.

“Good luck with that,” I said.

“I’d invite you, but we don’t want to throw off the male-female ratio. It’s been coordinated perfectly.”

“I bet,” I said. I looked up and Mike came charging down the hall, waving at me.

“OK, let’s go,” he said, blinking at me furiously.

“OK, chill out,” I said.

“No, we got to split now. I have things to do tonight, you know?”

“Relax,” I said.

Mike grabbed me by the back of the shirt and shoved me down the hall toward the back door. “OK, relax, we’re going.” He grabbed his jacket, then my jacket and threw it at me, opened the door, waved to Mrs. Tracy who was busy scrubbing a pan or something, muttered, “See you, Mrs. Tracy,” and pushed me down the back porch steps.

“What? What the fuck?” I asked. “Those dudes weren’t so bad,” I said, but Mike kept pushing me, dragging me by my jacket collar until we were halfway down the block. He stopped, started laughing, caught his breath and then lifted up the front of his T-shirt. There, wedged between his underwear and the front of his pants, was a red vinyl pocketbook, like a lady’s kind of wallet.

“Dude, you lifted his mom’s pocketbook?” I asked.

He nodded, coughing a little, and then winked.

“It was just sitting by the back door. I saw it when I went to the bathroom.”

“How much is in there?” I asked. He flipped open the clasp and looked inside and his eyes went big and wide.

“It looks like about a hundred bucks or so. Plus the fifty.”

“We are totally rich,” I said.

“Well, I am,” he said.

“Fuck off.”

“Just kidding.”

“What do you want to do with it?” I asked. He looked at me, wiped his nose, and said:

“Let’s go to the mall. I got an idea.”

OK, so we had $150 and all Saturday afternoon and here’s what we came up with: Mike bought Erin McDougal one of those necklaces that is really two necklaces, like it is a silver heart that is split in two and the guy gets half and so does the girl, and he got it engraved and everything, so that was sixty fucking bucks right there. The engraving was an extra twenty-five, so that was actually eighty-five bucks spent just on one stupid gift, which, when it was all done, read, “Mike and Erin, So Sexy 1991,” which didn’t make a fucking bit of sense to me, but there was no hope of talking him out of it, so I just kept my mouth shut.

I went to the one store where they had crazy, goofy, crappy jewelry and scrunchies and sunglasses and other cheesy girl-gifts, The Canary and the Elephant, where I had once almost gotten my ear pierced back in junior high, but had chickened out.

“What are you going to get here? This place is all plastic jelly bracelets and shit.”

“This,” I said. “This is what I’m getting her.” In the corner of the store were all these stuffed animals—teddy bears, puppies, bunnies, kittens, and baby tigers—and, like, candy and bracelets and glitter and crap, which they could all put inside this super-durable balloon, you know, like this present: this stuffed animal with like candy and shit, but inside a balloon. To me, it was fucking genius.

“Dude, you are going to get her a balloon?” Mike asked.

“It’s like an animal inside a balloon.”

“For sixty bucks?” Mike asked.

“It lasts for like a month.”

“Dude, that is the dumbest idea ever.”

“No, dude,” I said. “Getting some girl you haven’t even been dating for like more than three weeks a silver fucking engraved necklace is the dumbest idea ever.”

“It’s fucking classy,” he said.

“No, it’s not, man. It’s gonna freak her out.”

“How is it gonna freak her out?” he asked.

“It’s like asking her to get married and shit. My thing, it’s fun, you know? It’s like goofy.”

“Man, it sure is,” he said.

“Um, clerk-girl,” I said to the fifteen-year-old blond girl with too much makeup on, looking bored behind the counter. “I want an animal in a balloon. Can you help me with that?”

She snapped her gum and nodded at me.

“What animal?” she asked.

“I dunno. What animal, Mike?” I asked.

“Don’t get a dog. Her dog got run over when we were kids and she took it bad.”

“OK, no dogs,” I said. “How about … how about a bear?” I said.

The girl behind the counter rolled her eyes. “That’s what everybody gets,” she said, grabbing a white teddy bear.

“All right then, all right, how about a tiger?”

“A tiger?” Mike asked.

“Yeah, I’m getting her a tiger. In a balloon. Just pay the girl her money,” I said to Mike. He nodded and dug into his pocket for the rest of our loot.

“Why a fucking tiger?” he asked.

“I dunno,” I said. “I just like tigers. It’s funny, right? It’s fun?” I asked the girl who was busy blowing up the gigantic red balloon. She looked over her shoulder and nodded, sad.

“I wouldn’t turn it down,” she said. “I wish to God someone would do something like this for me, for no reason. That’s how you know you’re dating a good guy. They do stuff like this for no reason,” she said, and I elbowed Mike in the side, grinning.

Believe it or not, the “Mike and Erin, So Sexy 1991” engraved necklace went over like a fucking charm. Erin McDougal fucking loved it, I mean
loved
it. She jumped into his lap and made him help her put it on, and then did the same for him, the two of them wrestling on Mike’s sofa, kissing, Erin McDougal giggling and saying, “It’s so pretty, it’s so pretty.”

Well, I was up next and dug into the white paper bag and told Dorie to close her eyes, which she did, but then she began peeking so I had to stop, and she sighed and turned around on the sofa, and I pulled the big red balloon out and winked at Mike, who was shaking his head, and Erin McDougal was looking at me like I was crazy, maybe wondering,
What the hell in the world is that thing?
but I didn’t care, because, well, I knew it was goofy. I knew it was kind of weird and dumb and I didn’t care because that was me, I guess, and I really liked this girl and wanted to, like, be myself with her. So finally, I placed the big red balloon beside her and said, “OK,” and she opened her eyes and looked at the balloon, then at me, then back at the balloon again.

“It’s a tiger,” I said. “In a balloon.”

Dorie stared at it again and smiled, and I couldn’t tell if she was faking it or not but then she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek and said, “I really like tigers.”

“You do?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, I don’t have a collection or anything but I really like them.”

“Me too,” I said and kissed her again. “It’s not dumb, is it?”

“No, I really like it. It’s funny,” she said. “It’s, like, you.”

“I figured, well, you don’t really wear jewelry, so, well,” I said. “I didn’t want to be all, ‘Let’s go steady,’ or anything.”

“I like it, I really like it,” she said, throwing her arms around my neck.

“Well, good,” I said. We leaned back on the couch, the tiger in the balloon sitting on Dorie’s lap.

“Hey,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got a secret.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Really.” She leaned in close to me and put her lips beside my ear and said the words, the words which would change my life, indelibly. “No one’s home at my house.”

“Really,” I said, sitting up, smiling.

“Really,” she repeated, winking back.

“So?”

“So no one’s home at my house,” she said again and we got up and ran off, us, hand in hand.

twelve

I had never been in Dorie’s room before, let alone the rest of her house or anything. I had stood on her front porch and that was about it. Dorie’s room was all white and the carpet was red and it was all very clean and there were posters on the wall of David Bowie in drag and she had a heart-shaped pillow on her narrow bed, which kind of surprised me.

“So?” she said, kind of nervous. “This is it. This is my room. What do you think?”

“It’s nice,” I said.

“Yep.”

“It is.”

“So?” she said, kind of clapping her hands together.

“So,” I said and we began making out again, this time falling together onto her bed. In a flash, Dorie had her brown shirt unbuttoned, had my sweater off, her shiny black boots kicked to the floor, my pants unbuckled, her jeans undone, her socks pulled off, her hair in my face, her mouth against my chin, her brown satin bra unclasped, my pants pulled down around my feet, her hands at the bottom of my T-shirt pulling it up over my head. The two of us dove quickly under her beige comforter as she waved her white cotton panties in the air, spinning them around and tossing them to the floor and laughing. I could feel her skin and it was so smooth and it smelled so good and she had goosebumps for some reason and I, kind of awkwardly, pulled off my underwear and kicked them off the side of the bed and then sat up, remembering, and dug into the back of my pants pocket for the rubber Mike had given me.