Tuesday, September 30, 2014

You two bruddas!


James and I walked diagonally across an open parking lot toward a cluster of low unattractive and uninteresting buildings cast in the shade of palm trees. James said he needed a haircut. 

"You two brudduhs. Right? You two brudduhs." 

"Yes, we are brothers."

"Ha ha ha! I knew it. Ha Ha Ha. I see you two already. I say, 'you two bruddahs.' Ha ha ha I knew it! You two bruddas. I knew da whole time, you two bruddas. See? I can tell. Ha ha ha, you two look like twins dressed different.  You two bruddas."

This person is a little too well chuffed at guessing about us before we decided to enter. This seemed more of a lady place anyway, not what he is looking for. James is amused.  All women inside. 

"You older, you younger. Right?

That just flat pisses off James. 

We had been getting that the whole previous week in San Francisco. James is outgoing and he is easy to engage. For some reason people want to. If you met him, you'd want to talk to him. It occurred a few times that people James met took an interest in him and me secondarily and insisted on knowing but then not accepting when told, no, we are not boyfriends, we are not twins either, and he is younger than I by seven years. That was made more difficult as our jackets said otherwise. I was returning and James was wearing a windbreaker jacket I stole from him that had 'Colorado Buffalos' embroidered on it. Now he lives in San Francisco. It is a perfect Jacket. He left it at my house in Denver and I loved wearing it all over the place. I did not want to give it back and said so. Then he felt guilty for demanding it back and his Christian heart felt required to ransom it with a gift jacket exactly like it, but the new jacket is embroidered 'San Francisco' and I am wearing that one. Our jackets said we were lying about who is who and from where because explaining the details that say otherwise is too complex. James mentioned being bugged by that repeated age-guessing thing people do on us and continuously guessing him older not younger. It's making him review things. And now he doesn't like the subject. And for that, neither do I. But he is not having my advice to men whose hair is thinning, that is, counterintuitively, do not emphasize the thick portion that remains, on the contrary, de-emphasize the remaining hair or else you'll look like Mao Tse Tung.

Maybe I should have made sure James is old enough to know who that is and what Mao Tse Tung looks like. 

The place will do. James is being set up.

I am left to my amusement. The shop we are in emphasizes a nail polish display. 

It is the exact same thing as a display of tiny paint bottles for model airplanes.  The names of the colors are all ordinary attractive-sounding enamel colors for ladies. James has already given his instructions that will lead to him looking like Mao Tse Tung. It is a quiet moment in the shop, I pick up bottles and read a pretend nail-color  to my brother, by way of fake-out interest, and put them back, one by one, 
* post apocalyptic burns
* radioactive waste grime 
* oil rainbow swirl on acid rain puddle
Something like that. The women listening in take a few moments to realize they're being put on James well used to my nonsense always up for a game begins formulating his own unhappy color described miserably as possible, "Oh, look and see if they have 
*speckled hagfish pale slime ell transparency." 
"Okay. I'll keep an eye out for it. But right now I'm looking at  
* biohazard mixed sludge"
* nuclear fallout harsh geiger 
* abandoned Mars explorer rust 
The joke was for my brother but that is not how things are in hairdressing shops that small, and the ladies wanting more names and wanting the previous names repeated so they could start their own line showed me again and surprised me again, how easily given over to laughter Hawaiian people are. The joke was not that funny. They were not offended we were making fun of their nail colors. They wanted more. They were having a great time imagining colors described miserably. They seem ever open to humor and there had already been a few phrases tossed to my brother intercepted by a nearby Hawaiian who burst out laughing at something incredibly stupid to the point they just seem to me open or willing or eager for humor. "More fun than a barrel full of monkeys" in reference to a wire basket filled with carved coconut monkeys is not that funny but it left a guy laughing over his steering wheel as he drove away from a convenience store, while my brother is all, "how droll." Are these people humor starved? Irony starved, wry observation starved? cynicism starved? I wondered.

The hairdresser did a great job on him given what she had to work with, shined him right up, but James emerged from the hut-like shop onto the brightly sunlit parking lot mad as h-e-double pu'ili sticks. In explaining why the hairdresser failed his direct instructions that would have made him look like Mao there was no consoling him. She did the right thing. 

8 comments:

The Dude said...

Aw man, now I want a Mao haircut. I am too bald to go with the Kim Ill Young Un gang nam style, but Mao - that one would totally work.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

(1) "More fun than a barrel full of monkeys" in reference to a wire basket filled with carved coconut monkeys is not that funny . . .

Afraid I'm going to have to disagree with you on that one, Mr. Ahoy.

(2) Regarding the not getting the haircut requested, I'm reminded of "What Men Live By" at VI.

Turns out the guy didn't want a pair of boots, after all.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

(3) There was a Kliban cartoon, maybe with a Chinese-looking cat in it wearing a Mao jacket.

Mousie dung.

KCFleming said...

Hilarious about the nail polish colors.

I have this shock of hair on the back corner of my head that grows straight out. Barbers try all sortsa tricks. Nothing works.

I'll soon be bald except for that unruly patch. I'll look like a horse's ass, literally.

Unknown said...

Mao looked as if he had his hairline shaved back to make his head look bigger. Communists like all that "look at me, I am smarter than you, I will free you with my big smart forehead." garbage. Of course Marx was just a big hairy beast. He meant well, but the suckage of his failed ideology lives on, like a metaphorical rat's nest.

Who makes that nail polish? I was thinking Urban Decay, but no -that's not it.

The Dude said...

Testors PLA.

ricpic said...

You'd have to have a big round face to get a Mao cut and end up looking like Mao. Futile if your face is not full or even slightly angular. Hey, I feel like being a realist today.

Trooper York said...

It is much worse for the retarded people who all seem to get the Pete Rose haircut.

Sometimes you just can't win.