Hair-Touching Lady

The Hair-Touching Lady rides the southbound Red Line in the mornings. She is about 45 years old, has a helmet of ratty, graying brown hair, wears giant round glasses in front of dazed blue eyes, has a faint moustache, her lips protrude forward, and her back is hunched. Her eyes wander, seemingly without registering any of her surroundings, and her hands are always playing with each other -- sometimes softly and slowly, sometimes like two wrestling kittens. But she is completely silent, seemingly incapable of speech. She chews on her fingernails and scabs, sometimes swallowing what she has harvested, and sometimes spitting it into her lap. She wears the sort of old novelty t-shirts and terrycloth shorts that can only be found at the Salvation Army; the first time I saw her, her t-shirt said "My other boyfriend is cuter."

On that first encounter, I sat across from her as a tall woman with long, frosty blonde hair sat next to her. The Hair-Touching Lady's eyes fixed on the pale yellow mane, and widened like it was the first familiar sight she had seen in days. In a trance, her hand glided towards the hair. She uttered a single word in an unsteady voice -- "Pretty" -- and stroked the woman's hair. The blonde reacted immediately; in a calm but firm voice she said "No" as she grabbed the Hair-Touching Lady's hand and forceably returned it to her lap. The Hair-Touching Lady hung her head with a sense of shame, and began furiously wringing her hands.

Another day I saw the Hair-Touching Lady, she was jolted into consciousness upon the sight of dredlocks. These thick black braids hung down to their owner's waist, and gently swayed with the rattling of the train. This time the Hair-Touching Lady stood up, taking shaky steps, and again whispered "Pretty" in her unpracticed voice. She ran one hand down the length of the braids. The woman shrieked "Get off me!" and threw out an arm to swat her away. The Hair-Touching Lady guiltily reatreated to her seat, and again her hands scolded each other in a flurry.

I've seen the Hair-Touching Lady maybe 4 or 5 times, and each time she has made contact with another woman's locks. Once I realized too late I was sitting near her, and my hair was still glistening wet from the shower. I was sure my shininess would make me the next target, but then another woman sat down in front of me, so she became the catch of the day. What I've always found fascinating is that though her Pavlovian reaction to long hair seems to be the only fragment remaining from a shattered mind, she manages to get off at the same stop every time. As soon as the train pulls out of Addison, she stands up and waits in the doorway, and gets off at Belmont without fail.

This morning was the first time I saw the Hair-Touching Lady in months. I sat on the other end of the train car, but kept my eye on her. I looked around for someone with long and/or unusual hair, and bingo, saw a woman with a head full of skinny braids down to her butt, clearly extensions with blonde woven into brown, and finished with wooden beads. No sooner did I spot her than she stood up, and though she was seated equidistant from both exits, she chose the doors directly across from the Hair-Touching Lady. Her eyes lit up when they fixed on those braids, her lips parted, and one hand floated up and lingered in mid-air. But she didn't stand up, and the beaded braids stepped off at Wilson unmolested. For the first time, the Hair-Touching Lady got off at Belmont without her fingers touching a single strand of hair.

I WROTE A HIT PLAY! (I mean, poem)

Yeah, Rushmore, baby!

The open mic was a smashing success: I got lots of laughs and applause, just the sort of evening I needed to get back into the swing of performing. Scott liked my first piece better, but since that one was about me getting drunk and stoned and kissed by some European guy at a party, that was to be expected. My second piece [only did two] was about my psychiatric evaluation in 2nd grade -- they thought I had Tourrettes Syndrome, when I was actually just lonely, unchallenged by my schoolwork, and bored out of my mind. There's a passage in my piece about the one class project I loved:

Okay, last week, we made picture books, and I went ALL OUT on that shit, man! I mean, my story, about the museum that came to life, blew all the rest of those well-adjusted bumfucks RIGHT out of the water. And the drawings? My god, the drawings! The girl who sits next to me, the one who gets along well with her peers, did the whole thing with one pink crayon -- you call that EFFORT? The tender, loving care I put into sweeping strokes of rubber cement, in the binding with stitches of yarn -- I made ART last week, motherfuckers! You gave me an "external demand" and I delivered the goods!

and then it ends with:

Look, I am 7 years old, and I have never heard of the Bender Visual Motor Gestalt test, and I don't know what your ink blots have to do with...ANYTHING. No, I don't find my joy in "Alabama, Alaska, Arizona..." and the three phases of matter, but I wish, Mr. Gemmell, that you would read my story about the magical museum, because I know if you did, you would ask me to write another.

Afterwards this one guy said the sweetest thing to me: he caught my attention as I was leaving and asked, "Can I read your story about the museum?" Aw! I told him it's probably long gone; I don't have it, and though it may be in the darkest recesses of one of my parents' closets, I'm pretty sure they already gave me the box filled with every single story I wrote and picture I drew from my first 8 or so years of life. I have a vague memory of the stitches coming undone and the rubber cement de-adhesifying [Is that a word? It is now], and the whole thing becoming unsalvageable. But maybe I'm thinking of something else.

So I would say the evening was worth all the sleep I lost from staying up way past my bedtime. (Falling asleep at the reception desk; today the "face of the company" has droopy eyelids and yawns a lot.)

For My Next Poem, I'll Need a Volunteer

Tonight I am going to my first open mic in well over a year. I don't have any new material, so I'm going to bust out my three biggest hits. Actually, I have four greatest hits, but it seems like a lot to do four, so here is the fourth poem. For the full effect, read this while lounging on a couch, preferably across someone's lap, fucked up on your substance of choice.

***

I was asked to make a good impression.
You know,
Because I don't have any female friends
And I need to learn
To get along
With members of my species

So Sarah, they tell me
Is really sweet.
I mean, really sweet
Just the sweetest girl
You'll ever meet.
And I don't like her already
But I go anyway
For self-improvement, I guess
And who knows
Maybe they're just giving her
A bad name.
But no.
Sarah is
The sweetest
Nicest girl
I'll ever meet
And it's just a nightmare

For instance:
I like the word "douchebag."
It's fun to say.
And in my experience
Using the word "douchebag"
Regardless of the context
Gets a good laugh.
Well, Sarah doesn't like the word
"Douchebag"
And she really
Really doesn't like the word
Motherfucker.
And that's fine, that's not everybody's bag
But I just can't figure out
What kind of mothers
Raise their daughters
To never have
Any fun.
I mean
Sarah is worried
About her hair and complexion
And the glossiness of her lips
Every 15 minutes
And I want to know
Who told her she's ugly
And can't just kick back
And have a fucking--
Excuse me
And have a conversation.

For five minutes
I want
More than anything in the world
To be Sarah's friend
And tell her she can have messy hair
And a shiny nose
And still be okay
And still be a nice, sweet girl
Without pretending she's stupid
Because I know she's not
And she can speak up for herself
And not be a bitch.
But I want to be somebody's friend
Not somebody's teacher
And I don't think she'd pay half a mind
To a mouthy, blowsy
Utterly tactless nut
Like me
Anyway

Sort By Column E, Descending, Then By Column F, Ascending

I love a good spreadsheet. I'm an artsy-fartsy girl at heart, but there is a sizeable chunk of my brain that hums with delight when data sets are sorted alphabetically and/or numerically. Any project that can combine my love of the storytelling arts AND sort-able factoids will keep me amused for hours.

Possibly my dorkiest project ever is a massive Excel spreadsheet, transcribed from the Internet Movie Database, charting biographical data of every single Oscar-nominated actor of all time -- and to date there are 817 of them. They range alphabetically from F. Murray Abraham to Catherine Zeta-Jones, and chronologically from May Robson (born 1858) to Keisha Castle-Hughes (born 1990.) And..."data"...."sort"...

Actors in my age range:

1976: Reese Witherspoon
1977: Samantha Morton
1979: Kate Hudson, Heath Ledger
1980: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Williams
1981: Natalie Portman, Catalina Sandino Moreno
1982: Anna Paquin
1985: Keira Knightley

Actors born in Connecticut:

Bridgeport: Robert Mitchum
Darien: Chloe Sevigny
Hamden: Ernest Borgnine
Hartford: Ed Begley, Katharine Hepburn
New Haven: Paul Giamatti
Redding: Hope Lange
Waterbury: Rosalind Russell

Actors of Italian origin:

Danny Aiello, Alan Alda, Don Ameche, Anne Bancroft, Roberto Benigni, Ernest Borgnine, Lorraine Bracco, Victor Buono, Nicolas Cage, Diane Cilento, Valentina Cortese, Vittorio de Sica, Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio, Anthony Franciosa, Vincent Gardenia, Michael V. Gazzo, Paul Giamatti, Giancarlo Giannini, Robert Loggia, Sophia Loren, Anna Magnani, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Marcello Mastroianni, Sal Mineo, Liza Minnelli, Al Pacino, Chazz Palminteri, Marisa Pavan, Joe Pesci, Talia Shire, Frank Sinatra, Mira Sorvino, Sylvester Stallone, Marisa Tomei, John Travolta, Massimo Troisi

[Did I miss anybody?]

I mentioned Paul Giamatti twice in one post, so I think I command some sort of prize. But then again, I also mentioned Ernest Borgnine twice, so I'd probably have to give it back.

Happy Annimaversary to Me

Two years ago today, Bill and I woke up in our hotel bed in Danbury. Bill said, as he had been saying for the past few months, "Marry me!" I said, "I'm gonna!"

We rounded up the stuff we would need for the day and loaded them into the rental car. He dropped me off at the hair salon and drove to the theatre. It isn't like me to "get my hair done," but I can't secure an up-do for shit, and I did not want to be scraping my hair out of my face all day. The very nice, Long Island-y lady who opened the salon early just to do my hair asked what I would like, and she tried to do that -- upswept with cascading curls -- but my hair wasn't long enough. She then started combing my hair backwards, which she said would split the hairs down the middle to give me more volume, and I watched in terror as my hair got bigger and bigger. But 100 bobby pins and half a can of hairspray later, it was all sleek and tamed, very similar to this.

My sister picked me up and drove me to my parents' house, where Mom had just arrived with my gawwwgeous bouquet: a vivid purple ball of irises, bigger than my hair. (I wasn't crazy about the idea of having a bouquet, but Mom really wanted me to, so I agreed on the condition that it be blindingly purple. "How about some baby's breath?" she asked. Nope -- solid irises.)



Then we drove to the theatre. This was the theatre where Bill and I first met, exactly 7 years and 1 day earlier. We knew we wanted to get married on that stage from whenever it was that we decided to get married. (Neither of us can remember when that was. There was no proposal, no ring, just an eventual mutual understanding that this was the best thing in the world and we should, to paraphrase Mr. Show, marry the SHIT out of each other.) We got into our "costumes" in the dressing room, and, just like we had done 7 years earlier, peeked through the slats of the door to see the "audience" gathering in the lobby.

From the dressing room, Bill went up the actors' stairway and appeared onstage. When everyone was seated, Dad led me through the audience entrance and down the aisle, to Patsy Cline's lush, reverent recording of Cole Porter's "True Love." It was very weird to see our families (one world) all seated in this theatre (a completely separate world), looking around at each other and reading the joke-filled programs (I'm sure they thought "A wedding in three acts" was cute, but I imagine they scratched their heads at "Specially chosen speakers talk about the couple, both prolonging the ceremony and creating the illusion of formality.") Mostly, I was struck that as I walked down the aisle, my family was looking at me like I was an adult rather than that weird little kid.

My 82-year-old grandfather (a Justice of the Peace) stood at a podium on the stage, and Bill and I sat in two chairs to his right. We wrote Papa some great jokes for his opening monologue: "By the way, if you're here for the show, it doesn't start for another three weeks." (Delivered in his slow, gravelly, Brooklyn-ese voice with bone-dry humor, it was awesome.) Our friends Dennis, Tom, Jaime, and Danny -- who were hired under the pretense of being "roast-masters" -- gave very funny (but also sweet) speeches about us. I think the biggest laugh came, though, when Bill and I exchanged our vows: For some reason, what I wrote down on the card a few weeks earlier looked completely foreign to me, and in mid-vow I asked Bill, "Did you change this?" We cracked up laughing a bunch of times, put the rings on each other's fingers, and Papa joined us -- to quote the program -- in secular matrimony. We walked down the aisle to Dean Martin's swingin', martini-sippin' recording of Cole Porter's "True Love."

We got a little lost driving from the theatre in New Milford to the reception in Danbury, because we tried following Mom and Dad's car through the back roads and made a wrong turn. My parents noticed we were no longer following them shortly after they passed a sign for a HUGE MULTI-FAMILY TAG SALE. They were convinced we had stopped there, and that rumor had spread to all the guests by the time we showed up at Anthony's Lake Club. (No, we didn't stop at the tag sale, but once I got that picture in my head -- perusing a dusty box of old paperbacks on somebody's front lawn in a flowing white wedding gown -- I kind of wished I had.)

The reception was a bummer because we didn't have enough crazy young people in attendance. The many elderly relatives were not dancing. My relatives were mostly fussing over my cousin's 4-month-old twins. We were especially disappointed because of how much effort we put into choosing the songs that we burned to CD (and played in lieu of a DJ. In the wisdom of Albert Brooks, DJ's are the second worst people on earth -- after incurable lepers, but before curable lepers.) Our first dance was to Alison Krauss's "When You Say Nothing At All," a song which has special significance; it was the only song on a mix tape Bill gave me on our first date that I didn't totally hate. The only detail of the wedding my father insisted on -- an ultimatum that was first given to me when I was probably 8 years old -- was that I dance with him to Al Martino's "Daddy's Little Girl." It is possibly the sappiest song ever recorded, so as a chaser (and also as a shout-out to Freaks and Geeks, the greatest TV show of all time) we followed it with Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation." We had a special dance for my grandparents because they had celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary that year, and cranked up some more Cole Porter with Artie Shaw's cut of "Begin the Beguine" (from their first date.) The last song -- Ray Charles crooning "Come Rain or Come Shine" -- came and went without anyone noticing.

Bill and I crashed at our hotel room that night, amazed that the whole thing actually happened. "Marry me!" he exclaimed. I said, "I already DID!"

I Love the Paint Program

It's Friday, I'm at work, and I have sapped my long-form creativity for the week. So please enjoy the silliest items in my "My Pictures" folder.

1. My grandfather, who is awesome, has taken up digital photography in his 80's, and though he is a self-professed non-artist, he does have a good eye for composition. He was taken by the pattern of fallen leaves in his backyard, and emailed this picture to all his children and grandchildren, asking would this not make a lovely pattern for a dress? Here is my crude approximation -- I think my mother hand-sewed this dress for herself in the 70's:



2. On a particularly boring day at work, I did some google image searches for coloring book pages, and I stumbled upon an online Bible coloring book. I have no idea who these people are or what this story is about, but the caption came to me as if God Himself were wisecracking in my ear:



3. Finally, an oldie but goodie. If you can time-warp back to, what, October 2005? Something like that. Anyway, I didn't embellish the black eyeliner in any way, I swear.


Happy Weekend!

DENIED

I worked in the admissions office of my college for three years. I was a work-aid student employee, or whatever the official title is, but because I was sharper than the other kids stuffing envelopes in a storage room, I was promoted to the file room. For three years, every single application sent to the college passed through my hands. I placed every application in a manila folder, with delightfully colored alphabetic labels for the first two letters of the last name. We also had stickers for the semester and year of intended enrollment, but most curiously, we had several rolls of stickers that said DENIED. At any other college this would not seem odd, but our esteemed institution of higher learning employed an open admissions policy. I don't know who ordered them, and what the hell they were thinking, but we never touched those DENIED stickers. Almost.

I decided fun must be had with these DENIED stickers, because that is how my brain works. If I was flipping through an Entertainment Weekly, and there was a full page ad touting a reality TV show as "must-see", I slapped a DENIED sticker under this claim. If I was wearing a band-aid, I might snazz up the look with an outer layer of DENIED. (In fact, I think there were days when I couldn't get ahold of a band-aid, and used the DENIED stickers on my numerous paper cuts.) If I was feeling especially silly, I might slap one on someone's shirt, and declare them to be DENIED as a human being. When I was no longer eligible to be a work-aid student employee (I was part-time in my last two semesters), and I came to that Last Day moment of truth when you have to decide if you like the place enough to not steal an armload of office supplies, all I took with me was a couple rolls of DENIED stickers. Farewell, dear admissions office; we have served each other well.

I always think of my DENIED stickers when I see a particularly vexing advertisement. (And by the way, I much prefer to pronounce it "ad-VERT-iss-ment." I also prefer "LI-bree" to "LI-brare-y" [and, god help you, "LI-berry"]. I wish I was watching Mary Poppins right now.) There are buses around the Loop with ads for that Rice-a-Roni crap that claim "Chicago to Mexico in 90 seconds," for the bland-tastic Ugly American who considers a powdered "siesta blend" in a box to be not just ethnic food, but a trip to a whole other country. Who needs to see the Aztec ruins when you can eat reconstituted turds of a bell pepper? I need to keep a length of stickers in my purse, so I can deface such ad-VERT-iss-ments: Rice-a-Roni, your sentiment is so totally DENIED.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Come to think of it, I never had to write that essay in all my years of schooling.

So I had a bitch of a time with the "favorite movies" portion of my profile. Not nearly enough space. I tried spilling them over into the "favorite music" field, and still not enough room. So I decided to go for a specific subset, and if you can guess the common thread, we can totally be friends. If not, I'm not going to say we can't be friends. As a film school graduate, I have come to truly despise the sort of person who would say "You don't like Kubrick? Get out of my apartment!" Actually, that exact sentence was spoken to me by one of my dearest friends, but he's just a douchebag and of course I did not leave his apartment. Sucker.

An old nemesis of mine has returned. From 2001 to 2004 I lived in a Chicago neighborhood that was sometimes considered Ravenswood, sometimes Lincoln Square. Every morning I would walk south on Damen to pick up the Brown Line at the Damen stop, and I would pass this two-bit dollar store that I came to hate so much it made my eyes hurt. As far as commercial enterprises go, dollar stores are second only to thrift stores and tag sales for my favorite means of purchasing items. So I was very excited when this dollar store opened; I immediately purchased tiny faux-birthstone earrings (not just August, but February, July, and September) and a bouquet of artificial blue roses. (And if you make a connection between the latter purchase and the title of my blog, we can totally be friends.) My delight was soured, however, when the fat, sweaty, gold chain wearing, creepily moustachioed, miscellaneously foreign guy at the counter rang up my purchase, and tried to get my phone number and email address for their mailing list. (Really? A mailing list for a dollar store? What could the updates possibly be: all irregular Prungles Potato Krisps are still a dollar?) But wait, there's more! He told me a "true story", about a friend of his who was walking along the beach, and noticed there were two sets of footprints behind him, but noticed that during the most difficult times in his life, there was only one ... blah, blah, blah, you've heard this joke right? The punchline is, "It was then that I carried you"? So I say to the guy, ever so slyly, "Yeah, my Grandma has that story on a plaque in her kitchen," and the guy gives me a funny look, as in how could his friend's story possibly be told on a plaque in my Grandma's kitchen.

Anyway, the nemesis part comes in because every morning, this shady (but still sweaty) fella would stand outside his dollar store, and insist on saying hello to every single person who walked by. And by "hello" I mean he would step forward to sort of get in your way, so you were forced into acknowledging his presence, and he would weasel in a conversation. And by "conversation" I mean he would hold out his wares and ask "Newspaper? Coffee? Pop?" (By the way, I was raised in Connecticut by New Yorkers, and just about the only thing I hate about Chicago is this "pop" business. It's soda. You cannot tell me otherwise.) Soon he was on the sidewalk with half his merchandise -- in the swelter of summer he would keep gallon jugs of milk out there with him ... you know, for the busy 9 to 5 type who needs to drink a [spoiled] gallon of milk on the go! After a few weeks of having to dodge this guy EVERY DAY, I decided to walk on the opposite side of the street; I crossed at the start of the block, which was immediatly before him, and then crossed back at the end of the block to get to the train station. He had to have picked up on it, because he gave me dirty looks all the time, and the what's-he-thinking, what-does-he-think-I'm-thinking drove me crazy. When the building was vacant one morning, it was the first and only time in my life that I rejoiced upon the failure of a little guy/small business man/Mom and Pop store. I felt a little evil, but not enough to make me go to Starbucks.

Now I live in Edgewater/Andersonville and work in the Loop. The dank underground newspaper stand in my subway station has opened for the first time in the year that I've been working down here, and lo and behold, the proprietor is another fat, sweaty, gold chain wearing, creepily moustachioed, miscellaneously foreign guy. He stands outside his store, which I cannot avoid walking past, and hollers, rhythmically and emotionlessly, "GOOD morning GOOD morning GOOD morning GOOD morning." I've been accused of being unfriendly -- and generally, this is true -- but I refuse to believe the advances of either of these guys, past and present, qualifies as being "friendly" when the motivation is purely mercenary. In fact, I say it cheapens the genuine greetings and smiles between people who actually give a shit about each other, when you're robotically replicating the appearance of friendliness to fool people into a false sense of community, just so they'll buy a Red Eye or a hot gallon of milk.