Blonde on Blonde

Chris wanted his hair to be blonder. He grew up swimming, and at his most devout the chlorine and seawater gave him a perennial glow atop his head, not to mention the favors it did for his physique. Now he had a dirty blonde shag and a beer gut. He had a Void shirt that looked like shit on him, with holes in it not in a Richard Hell way, but rather in a fell into a bush way. He was often caught on Snapchat in bouts with inanimate objects, often compelling enough to make the filmer save the video, betraying Snapchat’s trademark evanescence.

Chris wanted it back, though, the hair. And he didn’t really want to swim for it. He even entertained the idea of cheetah spots, but he didn’t want to shave his head. He wanted there to be delineation between his naturally bleached hair in the past. He wanted his roots to peek through, like Daniel Day Lewis in My Beautiful Laundrette, so people knew he had chosen it. Unlike his mother who dyed her hair, he liked the artificiality of it. It had to look like the guitarist on the cover of a Gang Green album cover he saw one time. The photo was black and white, but he interpreted the young man to have a blonde lining to his hairdo. He grimaced in the mirror and imagined it. He stuck his tongue out, even though the guy in the photo didn’t do that.

When Rick went with him to the Rite-Aid for the dye, they waited in line behind a woman buying the same thing, but she was buying two cartridges. The two of them went back to Rick’s place and he administered the dye with the disposable gloves that came in the box and massaged it into Chris’ greasy hair. They watched YouTube speed boat fails for 15 minutes and washed out the dye. Chris looked in the mirror. He was not exactly toe-headed. Rather, it was more in the orange-reddish family, involuntarily resulting in a very similar color to his mother’s. He felt like a cut-rate Johnny Rotten, with none of the boney swagger. It was worse than how it started, but he was apathetic in the moment to want to get back in the car. Plus it was cold. Plus Trainspotting was playing on HBO. HBO was doing this thing live through Amazon Prime where they played movies like cable, so you could watch a movie in medias res just like it was on TV, taking the pressure of decision making and commitment off the viewer. The access everyone suddenly had in the age of streaming had deprived us of the privilege of being driftwood without say. Now we were speedboats, failing, flipping and flinging ourselves willy-nilly out of boredom. Chris looked at the TV and watched Sick Boy talk about James Bond as he buttoned his debonair suit, a clean young tramp, with a hair color that belied his fair complexion, and his attire. Yellow mop to sell the fact that the suit did not make him square. This was the balance to strike. Yet the next morning, Chris continued in his jeans and Void t-shirt. It was a big change to wear a suit casually, one he would have to really stick to, so he put it off for another day.

But he went back to Rite Aid, at least, and who did he see but the woman from the day before. Her hair looked exactly the same though. Chris had a penchant for talking to strangers. Gas station loiterers, grocery store clerks, people who were 10 feet behind him when he arrived at a door, and so on, but he had a hard time with this woman because internally he knew that desultory conversation would not satisfy. Ideally, he didn’t want to remain strangers with her. She looked like Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven, maybe because she had sunglasses on, like in the famous still of the movie. But they were now on her forehead. And she was wearing sweatpants now as opposed to last night’s real pants. He approached her casually, while she perused shampoo for blonde hair, and exhaled the vague traces of two words. If replayed in super slow-motion speed with advanced audio treatment, you could maybe make out the words: it’s funny. “It’s funny I think we’re here for the same reason” he was going to say. But all he could muster was the harmless introduction, and even that was turned into hot air. He had to keep moving, so he kept walking. No, he should play it off like a remark to himself about a product. He put his hand on his forehead like he was baffled by the shelf, like a Jack Nicholson impression. She wasn’t looking. He crouched down like he was looking for something really specific. He committed to something less presumptuous, “Were you here last night buying hair dye?” and, unstubborn and cordial, she said that yes that was her, how funny. Chris willed a conversation to be by replying that he was doing the same thing and continued sharing his outcomes and his frustration with the current situation above his eyebrows now, etc. Her name was Carole, Chris found out. Carole’s input felt rather perfunctory until Chris mentioned, half jokingly, he felt like he was getting obsessed with getting the perfect bleached blonde look. She suddenly seemed engaged. “Exactly, I know I’m in the same space.” she said, a little flustered with wanting to respond for the first time in the entire conversation. Chris addressed the elephant in the room, that she was not blonde. That she was not even close really. What she did next was really good for Chris, she told him to hold on. She said they ought to check out then keep talking. So this was happening. They went out to her car, though Chris wishes they could have gone out to his. He had a red 1990 Mazda Miata, which he likened to Benjamin Braddock’s Alfa Romeo Spider in The Graduate. It was, afterall, a graduation gift. Carole drove a Honda CR-V though, altogether unremarkable in a neutral way, with little to glean from the few sundry pieces of trash lying around. Finally, they resumed their conversation where Chris had left off, with his question about her striking non-blondeness. “Well…” she said, lifting her hands to her hairline. She started to grab at it. It was a wig. Ok, it was a wig, but what was underneath it? Chris waited with baited breath as the person he was just smitten with elaborately undid her hairpiece. Though this was a good sign, it wasn’t a dollar store wig for a Working Girl costume, she was essentially going through the trouble of taking off all her makeup for him, meaning she felt he was worth effort. Plus a surprising sense of assurance from her about the whole thing that worked in her favor. Chris’ hypotheticals stopped shuffling as the wig came fully off. She had hair just a little shorter than his own, though it stood up like she had been electrocuted. It was fried platinum. Chris thought if he reached out and twisted a loop in it, it would bend and hold like pipe cleaner. It looked… kind of cool? No, it looked mostly unhealthy. But Chris didn’t let anything on. “I need to treat it better,” she said, letting out a small laugh then holding up the disposable Rite Aid bag with the shampoo in her lap, before then placing it in the backseat. “It’s not ready either, that’s why I have the wig” she continued. Chris suddenly felt two poles within him. One, embarrassment for showing his subpar shade in public with this true blonde devotee, and two, fear for what she had to be “ready” for. “Ready for what?” he decided to ask. “To show my co-worker Eileen” Chris always loved the name Eileen. “She’s a bitch,” Carole went on. She worked at an Aldi, the grocery store. Perhaps in another life Chris could have told her he sure did find everything alright, but instead he was in her car now, with wig strands grazing the top of his hand. “So, it’s not like a Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby thing or anything?” Chris said. “What?” Carole said. Chris shrugged, he was baffled. He understood wanting reactions or greater consideration of his hair from the public, but something as localized as a workplace nemesis felt so trivial to him. Plus she looked like the mom from Zack and Cody. As Carole complained that no hair-stylist would take her now because they said further treatment would be too damaging to her hair, Chris confirmed the door was unlocked. Maybe he should go to Aldi sometime and find this Eileen. She looked like Michelle Williams in his head, and she probably wasn’t a bitch. Next, he spoke calmly, excusing himself from the situation, commiserating, telling her to keep at it. He stuttered as he reached for his hair dye, unsure of if he should leave it or give it to her as a good faith donation, but he decided he could not enable her further. Plus, he still looked stupid. He was outside the car now. Yeah, he looked stupid, still, and he didn’t want to be called Carrot Top. One more round, he decided, that would be fine, he had a ways to go before ending up like Caroline. I mean Carole, he corrected. It’s funny, I don’t remember the second half of Trainspotting being such a downer, he crouched into his Miata.