Hairdresser on Fire. Daniel LeVesque

really move when she was pissed, and she looked like she was going to rip Marty in two.

      “He’s good at it. That’s why he practices, Marty, because he’s good at it… now move your feet outta here… do what you’re good at and go play your baseball, you little shit.”

       …all down her back back back

      Marty looked at my mom and ran away, schooled.

      “He’s a little shit,” she said. “You’re good at it. Keep going, hon…” My mother was free and happy outside of the cult, ready to pick battles and say “shit” outside the house.

      She started singing again and my hands regained their speed, challenging their own reflection. My mom was right. I was good at it and I would patty-cake, satisfied, until I could move on to public transit and bigger towns.

      Once I discovered RIPTA — the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority — my preteen life started to blossom. Able to go to the mall on my own schedule, I’d run from the entrance straight to the Waldenbooks across from the Deb shop.

      Deb, with its bubble mirror façade, reflecting everything in front of it thousands of times. With headache lighting and belt racks, I couldn’t stand going in there with my sisters. Deb smelled like thin leather and carpeting, and gave me an instant headache.

      Waldenbooks soothed that headache with its folksy name and wooden shelves. The staff was lax, there was access to any kind of material, and it smelled like books. It still smelled like carpet, too, but not like Deb. Waldenbooks seemed so cozy back then, like a real smart person’s book place. Mall regulars called it simply Walden’s. Nobody had any ideas on Thoreau, preservationism, resistance, things like that, but they knew Walden was something literary. “Like Whit Walden or what’s-his-name up Walden Woods, up in Mass… on Golden Pond or whatever,” my dad told me when I asked.

      The copy of The Joy of Gay Sex was hidden there at Waldens in the Politics and Finance section, where nobody ever went, not even the staff. I didn’t hide it myself but I found it and kept it hid. There were probably six of us, all complete strangers, feeding off the secret of our communal hiding place. Looking at the book, I couldn’t believe what I was in for. So lame. The drawings were so shitty they weren’t even dirty. The sketch labeled “oral passive” was particularly boring, its curvy lines making me feel as if I had already done it before.

      Deflated, I would go to Spencer Gifts and flip through the dirty poster display in the back, skipping past all the Cheryl Tiegs and the Cheryl Ladds and all the Cheryls, swip, swip, swip, the blacklight Boston poster, swip, swip, the acid-head poster, swip, the pot-leaf poster, swip, swip, swip, until I got to the hairy fireman one, where you could see the top of his bush poking above his yellow rubber pants with red suspenders.

      I would stand gawking, thinking more about the red suspenders than oral passive, until a gaggle of teenagers — a demographic that works my nerves to this day — would come back to check out the strobe lights, lava lamps, and posters of the Cheryls.

      Flipping to a Cheryl as soon as I heard their stupid cracky voices, I would hold it open, afraid they would know I was looking at suspender fireman. “’Ay, Sherrrrrr-alll,” they’d say as they passed the poster, like Damone in Fast Times with the Deborah Harry cut-out, all oh… Debbie… hi…

      It was a magical world, the back of Spencer Gifts, and my time there was always ruined by some zit-faced asshole who wanted some fake dog shit or punk sticks or a Cheryl. Eventually, RIPTA would take me past the mall all the way to Providence where I’d find the smaller bookstores, with not only great books I’d never heard of, but entire rows of filth way better than the suspender fireman shit at Spencer’s.

      My bus pass lasted another year before I got my license, the giant Volvo tires of the RIPTA bus kneeling to the yellow curb with a hydraulic pssssttt, dropping me off to find the sleazy alleys and parking lots where I would at last come to understand “oral passive” in a very physical way. I even made a little lunch money.

      I wasn’t one of those kids who’d need to be prodded to get a license at sixteen and move out at seventeen. Providence laid over a hump in RI Route 146, its small skyline flickering with two windows of my first apartment.

      My sublet was with some Goth kids from just over the Massachusetts border. They were real Goths, too. It was the late ’80s so there was no trending, no #Goth. These were the kids who would later end up on Jenny Jones or Sally Jessy Raphael or some other daytime talk show, talking about piercings or hairdos or nightlife. They weren’t talking in public about cutting yet, just the look. The Goth Look.

      I didn’t have the Goth look, or any look at all. Not that I didn’t try. When I moved out of my mom’s, my hair was past my shoulders and frizzy, beholding a brown that didn’t have warmth or ash, just ratfur brown. One week at the Goths had me deciding to tint it black. Jet Black was the color on the box. Instead of lending an edge to my look, Jet Black only washed me out, making me look even more like the hippie clown I already was. Better wigs could be found at the Salvation Army, outside the store, next to the big red box. Same with my clothes.

      To remake myself in my new Big City Life, I called a hair salon to do something about my look. My mother paid. She’d always told me, “You cut that hair, Francis, and I’ll pay. I don’t care if it’s fifty dollars.” I phoned in the favor.

      The salon was all brass and glass, called Glitz Iz Hair! It was the closest place to my house. When I walked in there was a dash for the back by all the available stylists. They poked their heads out one by one, each one assessing from afar whether I had bugs crawling in and out of the mass of black pill on my head.

      “No way,” they all said, until finally the owner had to come out. I wasn’t leaving.

      “Hi! Welcome to Glitz Iz Hair!”

      “Oh… hi.”

      “I’m Krissy, the owner.” She lifted her arms in a wide V and slowly lowered them in an Everything You See Here Is Mine sweep.

      “Cool…” I looked around. I hadn’t been in a whole lot of hair places and they all looked the same to me, only Glitz Iz Hair had more chairs than other places I’d been. All those empty chairs, someone would have to take me.

      “How can we Glitz you up today?” Krissy was being hopeful. I was the last person that belonged at Glitz or in any place of beauty. I felt as foreign as she thought I did, looking around at the style books and expensive products.

      “Well, I need a haircut…”

      “Mmm-hmmm!” she said.