A Barber's Chair Told in Four Acts

1.

        Everything about it was grown-up. Catching a lift with my dad in the big car, his, fumigated with Pall Malls, the radio tuned to his hokey 50,000 watt farm station that played Beatle songs without words before telling you the price of corn and wheat. Going to my dad’s work was on the other side of the universe. We crossed two bridges. My dad never talked to me outside of the house. It was left unsaid that pretty much we go our own ways once out the doors. He taught me that he had other things to do than the unwatched walk from his curb of his business to the barber shop millions of miles away across the street. A kid never has to worry about him holding the sweaty hand of an eight year-old loner and big boy who’s barely afraid.

       Trucks pulling open trailers putters by smelling of diesel and cattle idling in low gears shake with the turns dropping hockey pucks of poop, waiting for their turn to get out of here. Police cars and brown square government sedans suspiciously patrol probably looking for greasers or other delinquents who skipped school before going back to their spaces under the oak trees that surround the court house and fire department. I think about putting a foot down off the curb onto the feverish moving street. More cars and trucks on both sides go by. Suddenly there’s a parade. In the heat the trucks and cars bend as they waiver through the small town under piercing sun. The milk man, a blur in white pants, shirts and truck, sloshes as he moves down the road. Cattle trucks heavy with the stench of moos and belly aches, jingles along the roadside with chains that bang the trailer frames in disapproval, on the way to the stockyards. A red flag tacked to the top waves lazily good-bye from the back of a long flatbed flush with over-sized lumber wrapped tight with fraying dirty brown rope bracelets. Shorn and stack high, the wood sways in the stuffy air while the truck sputters slowly playing tag with a trailer less Semi moving like a lady in a golf cart. Braking, then starting and stopping with tiny hops almost touching the open back of the squat bulldog of a truck while plumes of smoke from the tall silver exhaust stacks on each side passing pops of grey fumes into morning soup.

2.

A man in a suit with a string tie who might know my dad stops his Chevy pick-up and signals with his outside hand for me to cross. I look behind to see if anyone’s watching. I can hear the voices now yelling at me if I was to be hit by a car on my own. I’d be in big trouble if my Dad has to leave his office.

There’s something coming. Cars and trucks appear around bends and out of the sunken valleys of the busy country road, sizzling and dazzling in the hot waves of the summer’s light. I can’t wait until I can have real sunglasses like the surfer guys in California wear. Mine look like flower decals or are stupid and big like the kind you’d give to a clown’s kid. The air hangs thick dampened with cattle sweat. The oppressive gravity belies its confidence in me. Honk goes the pick-up. The guy grips the wheel twisting the bumpy, round circle waiting for me to do something. He hates me now. Somebody I don’t even know has given me an even break. Made room for a spoiled kid in the parade of things and all I can do is stare. Honk goes the guy. His left arm moves like Plastic Man almost cupping me to the other side. His hand punishes me in quick angry motions encouraging me to cross the street now while vehicles on both sides are frozen in space. Rattling and growing impatient, the trucks and the cars growls running in place as drops of liquid drools and vanishes on the baking pavement while the world waits for an eight year old to cross the street. His face’s says there weren’t going to be any more third chances if my butt doesn’t do something soon.  Putting a foot down, I dig in. Lifting one foot after another, I take my chance. Pulsating, rising thighs moving in concert like pistons in a barracuda of locomotion. I shed skin crossing the street. A truck spits at me, two dry cylinders coughs and leaves. The driver never speaks to me again.

3.

The door chimes close with a girl’s bike bell. I sit next to the free standing ash-tray, still smoldering from one of the inattentive guys reading newspapers or magazines. A cylinder of blue water that holds three bobbing combs that gently rise and then sink to the bottom like seahorses stands next to its imaginary double reflected in the chipped mirror that covers the walls behind his prize chair.  I push a button on top of the ash tray, spinning open a lid full of stories told by bragging men who don’t know how to put out a cigarettes. A forest fire of smoke creeps out of the furniture and John the Barber tells me not to touch that. I wipe my hands on my cut-offs while John The Butcher says my mother called. I know it’s all over for me. Any dreams of hair more than a quarter of an inch sticking out of my melon are gone. Though she promised, I mean promised—promised in the sense this time would be different, that I could have a boy’s hair-cut from that stupid chart on the wall instead of that stupid crew-cut I always get. She promised that I could pick out my own hair-cut. I’d be in charge! One phone call changed all that. I’d seen it before with my older brother when she’d call from home. I was there when she screamed into the phone; I don’t care what those boys say. Cut it short.

He knows he has to put the bench down for me. He still asks every time. The bench so temporary, not anchored, slides and gives and sways like a duck boat in choppy waters. I yank myself up into what should have been the driver’s seat. A narrow band of paper surprises my neck as it collars my jugular shut. A shedding cape of off-white  plastic with strands of grey hair on it pulls my arms down to the sticky arms of the red plastic barber’s chair. My knees buckle as my legs are compacted to the cushion of the chair. The phone rings as I wait looking at the older guys reading and drinking coffee wondering if they like my Dad. They must know him. My nose itches with someone else’s hair and I can’t move to relieve my discomfort like a man. The Butcher slams the lever of the chair down, raising the chair closer to the beast. The Butcher wears thick after-shave, Brylcreem, cologne imported from Canada, mouth-wash, and other close public protectors that are meant to last the whole day. In the morning, his facade stings your eyes. He runs the cold side of the scissors across the shiny ridge of my ear. My legs want to run but the boy in the iron chair won’t let me. A plug finds its way into the wall. A motor purrs. A firm hand led by a prong of four pointed fingers tilts my head forward and then rests a hand on my left shoulder like a pardoned criminal getting ready to watch TV. He cuts my hair the way my neighbor does his crops. Indiscriminate and indifferent.

He plows whistling to a far away tune trying to beat the sun and the end of the day. I can’t see the mirror but I know its all fleshy head back there. I know he doesn’t care about the truth. Doesn’t care what happens inside my house. Doesn’t care what I want. What I was promised!

I know no matter what I’m told, it’s never the truth. Unless it’s bad for me. Nobody has a problem telling me bad stuff about myself.

 She promised!

A fat guy folds a Field and Stream on his lap and laughs at something The Butcher has said. He doesn’t care I’m not getting the haircut I was supposed to get.

4.

Ten years later the cape is lifted and slides down in an angle towards the floor but never touching.  The Butcher gives it one slight shake before laying the blood stain mantle on the second chair that he never uses. The shearing instrument have been returned to the hook that no longer flaps empty as he pushes the drawer that slides open on its own shut with his hip. His dirty yellow comb goes back to the jar that swims with the two other wide-gap smiling combs in the bluish water that’s slowly turning pond-green. He rips the paper away like a matador freeing an innocent child’s neck. Breathing is once again unrestricted. On the leap down I almost catch the brass foot plate of the monstrous, iron-works of the bottom half of the enormous chair. He looks at me for the last time in exhaustion and disgust knowing he’s gonna have to cross the street himself if he wants to get paid. My head goes down trying to find the way out without knocking over anything. The girl’s bike bell squeals as the door yawns open sucking me out to the harsh daylight as another victim enters. I disappear into the burning sunlight rubbing the back of my head wondering when I’ll be older.

Turning Fears into Hope

This past weekend 500 reasonably sensible kids gathered at Fort Mason to participate in ‘Students for Sensible Drug Policy.” This is the 11^th conference of this kind that they’ve put on. Alongside with tours of Oaksterdam University and other dispensaries and patients group throughout the Bay Area, they had breakout discussion groups concerning all things Weed. These kids are the future. For the war on drugs, there’s nothing like articulate, sane, level-headed pro-Weedheads at the wheel. I’m going to be able to roll better tonight knowing the flame is being passed from one joint to another.

From Babes to the Woods...

As the air clears while we try to navigate the new rivers of Legalization and the new responsibilities of having our wonder crop finally at our reach without incrimination, we must take control of our issues before the Man does.

Weed has mostly had the guise as goofy, little potheads giggling and laughing at Air, or their stoned hands. We are seen as harmless and almost too stoned to get off the couch. If you’ve been in the business for the last forty years or so, you know that is not always true.

I started dealing at sixteen. Even then I saw a few handguns and maybe a shotgun or two, but never on display or for protection. Just for safety reasons, if you will. As the product got bulkier and we were now dealing pounds instead of ounces, I knew guys who were strapped but it was never a gansta thang. I know there has been violence associated with Weed since Day One, but that is the nature of a black market.

Here’s my point...

We in NorCal have known for years what is happening in our National Parks. Mexican gangs come in with machine guns, a kilo of beans and rice, and enough tubing and seeds for a plantation of illegal Weed. In the old days, rangers and hippies could walk through the Mendo woods worried mostly about human traps and the occasional warning shot. Now the gangs have bazookas and anti-aircraft armament. The rangers are flying overhead in gunships with fifty cals. This is not the hippie dream.

In the past ten days in Washington state, the violence surrounding Weed has been off the charts. A man in Tacoma died after trying to defend his Medical Marijuana plot on his property from people trying to steal his crop. In Seattle another man was shot trying to enter a suburban home, again, trying to heist someone’s legally grown MM crop. There are more accounts of violence in the Emerald State that can be found in the article below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/us/17marijuana.html?ref=us

There’s new crop of kids trying to do the right thing. Bring the issue of Weed to the mainstream in the most positive light. The general public’s support of either decimalization or flat out legalization is gaining ground every day. It behooves us to work with law enforcement individuals. That’s right, the cops, The Man, if that is what is needed.

We’re all on the same side in one way. The cops want to go home safe at the end of their shift and the Pot Smoker wants to smoke their Weed safely and free from being busted. The more we can do to bring those to realities together, the better we all will be.

We shouldn’t narc on the bad guys, but not close our eyes to them. Let us be as a nation like North Carolina is to tobacco. Let’s make it our business to get this legalize and into a business model we can all live with and still keep the world safe. No one should ever die over Weed.   

More Later...



National Weed Dealer's Day

It is thirty-six days until the unofficial day of blazing and Waking and Baking, that awesome date of April 20^th, Stoner’s Day. I am reminded of the significance of the number thirty-six for followers of the Kabbalah. All products of the number 18, (18, 36, 54, 72, 90, etc...) represent the character for Life. In the Jewish culture, donations are given in multiplies of eighteen, for good luck the way Asians believe the color red brings success and prosperity. Superstitions are superstitions but why walk under an open ladder if you don’t have to?

In earlier columns, I’ve asked my fellow stoners that we should have an International Weed Dealer’s Day on April 18^th. On this day we celebrate the American Pot Dealer. I mean, have you ever tipped your pot dealer? Let them know how much you appreciate the job they are doing. In the old days, it was unimaginable to buy a lid of grass and not roll up a doobie to smoke with your dealer to seal the transaction. I know those days are long gone but we have to remember that before there was a store that sold pot to anyone who can get a card, you used to have to find a person, usually a guy, who either sold a little to get by and have their own stash, or a dedicated individual whose life was about scoring the best bud they could.

In my almost forty years banging the gong, I’ve seen my share of clichés and archetypes ranging from Comic-book Guy who mouthed the joint like sucking down a chicken bone before lighting to that anomaly of anomalies, the chick dealer who usually worked in the record business too, who dealt good bud in baggies with colorful threads wrapped around them for decoration. Dealers run the gamut like most any other job, but unlike most other jobs, dealing is still illegal.

When you’re going to your Man (or Woman) to stock up for the 4/20 celebration, how about bringing your Weed Merchant a present or if nothing else, a nice monetary tip? I’ll say it again, if your dealer was busted, would you come forward with cash for their defense fund? The week before 4/20 is a good time to say thanks for the person who brings you bud for the rest of the year.

More Later...



I Know My Own Dog

 Not to beat a deadbeat with a keystroke, but the Haight Street issue continues. One of the many ideas created to do something about the vagrancy problem on our San Franciscan streets, focusing heavily on the hippiest, most free-spirited of the Bohemian boulevards where long-haired children of the street walk aimlessly with Pit Bulls, Labs, and tiny dogs that look already malnourished, is to enact leash laws. This is not only about dogs having leashes but the length of the leash is under scrutiny. Vagabonds will only be allow two-feet of rope, Ethernet cable or whatever they will be using as a leash, supposedly enabling sidewalk walkers enough room to get around them otherwise it’s a ticket.   

Here’s my deal...

I’ve never been sure about pets. That’s right. I think there is something wrong about the way we can feel about animals but not about another human being. I get it. Animals are cute and don’t talk back. They are just there to love and love you back, even if it is on their level only. With that being said, there is something about owning pets I find spooky.

I was watching Tim Burton’s series killer, “Planet of the Apes,” couple of weeks ago to remind myself how bad it was. There is a scene where one of the kid-apes keeps a small girl-human as a pet in an iron cage. That stupid scene only begins to express my doubts about pets and their place in our lives.

The other part of pets is how we talk to them. How we have no shame when we baby-talk right in front of our friends when speaking to Fido or Fluffy. How we show more than our indoor voice. We channel our inner Paul Lynde and don’t have a care in the world how gay we come off. Besides, “Who got the cutest pet? Who does? I do, that’s who. Yes, I do...” That all that counts, that Fluffy understands me. Hey it’s my world right? I can do what I want in it? Right?

Not really...There are rules...

Long time ago I went out with this woman whose father was afraid of dogs. I grew up with Holocaust survivors whose fear of German Sheppard’s and other snarling, growling dogs sailed over with them from the old country. If Uncle Max heard the neighbor’s dog at sundown bark for its dinner, he’d jump off the plastic-line sofa. But I never noticed how many dogs are allowed to roam free at concerts, parks or at other social interaction destinations until I hung with this chick and her dad. Of all of a sudden places where humanity intersects meant dealing with unleashed animals and stepping between said animal and a frighten man.

After a trip to New York in the Mid-zero’s, around ’05, I noticed couples were having dogs instead of kids. And don’t get me started on the bigger and gayer the bear of a fellow is the smaller and more hyper-active their tiny dog will be. Frissy is now the same way. Most of the public parks feel like dog parks the way Yeller and Lassie are running around catching balls in their slobbering mouths and dodging in and out of circles of people  sitting on blankets with kids and Sunday papers in the sun.

I’m not trying to come off like Andy Rooney on Metamucil-fueled rant but it’s getting a little crazy out there. And here’s my point...

Isn’t it amazing we don’t crash into each other more than we do on our highways and streets? Think of all of the unlicensed drivers and drunks and the crazies texting and keeping their phones low while they drive fooling no one. Wouldn’t you expect there to be more pile-ups than there are?

Same thing can be said with the animals running rampant on our public lands. Nothing makes me feel better than to see a bandana-wearing dog sniffing the ground for either food, dead bodies, water, drugs or some kernel of interest that makes the animal tear apart the earth with its paws and rip away roots with its wet teeth. Then right behind Rabid Possible Doggie struts a dude in a Hawaiian shirt missing most of its buttons, revealing a huge gut and a trail of beer sloshes down the side of his mouth as he reassures you that Bandit is cool. He’s just having fun.

Yeah, I feel better now. Thanks dude.

So without getting into the deeper ethical issue like: If your pet was in a burning building and another human stranger was also in the same burning building and you could only save one. What would you do?

I’ll come back to that later...Much...

Here’s the deal. We live everyday with other fellow humans with the silent understanding: We all know what we’re doing. If you ask the average person, they’re going to say, “I think I know what’s going on.” Otherwise how can you be for or against something if you don’t know how you feel about stuff?

It’s only when you get them alone with the Vino Veritas that you might get a truthful line like, “I’m a complete fraud. If people found out who I really was, I wouldn’t last in my (job, relationship, condo association, you fill in the blank) for a minute.” As humans, I think we display the elitism of behavior. Nowadays, this is especially true with all those bloggers...

But I digress...

But what I really think is we are selfish people. We don’t think about the person who is scared of our dog because...because, we think we know our own dogs. The same way we think we know ourselves. We really don’t know how we will act like when we perceive that we are being threatened any more than can we explain why our pooch all of a sudden bit your daughter. Maybe she was teasing it? Poochie never did that before.

I wonder when a guy snaps and shoots up a building or a school or maybe blows up a plane, was there much evidence before hand that this guy was the blowing up kind of guy?

I’m just saying how well do you know your own dog? Do you lavish praise on it because it does what you want it to? Or do you have special bound that tethers you to the beast stronger than any leather could? That’s there’s a special understanding with your animal that no one else would understand, or could have? Like your dog gets you when others don’t?

Isn’t that what trust is based on?

And you know what the problem is with the homeless?

I don’t trust them.

More later...



Wake Up and Smell The Gunpowder

One of the things that cracks me up about the so-called Tea-Baggers, besides for the name, is how closely it aligns itself to the values of the Sixties revolutionaries. I never paled around with Bill Ayres but I knew which the way the wind was blowing if you know what I mean. During my tenure as an activist, I rub shoulders with anarchist and subversives that not only really believed in the Revolutionary, they stockpiled and waited like other disciplines waited for Messiahs, the Rapture, and the start of the new NFL season. Betting the farm on the promise of hope and the feeling of rebirth that something gonna change.

The Tea-Baggers’ rallies are full of revolutionary vigor and the swagger that only comes from feeling that you’re ready to attack the Summer Palace, the Dean’s office and create a New World Order. The Baggers float with the giddiness of self-righteous anger not felt since the Crying Women’s Demonstrations’ of the Nineties when all women campuses were being forced for monetary reasons to allow the XY chromosome to register for classes. The Baggers’ desperate cries of Death Panels and forced Obama-care carry is very reminiscent of the passion that demonstrators I’ve marched with had too. After marching and demonstrating for or against various causes in my life, it’s interesting to note what got these lard-asses off their Cheetos-eating couches in the first place. But I digress...

Here’s my point today.

At the end of the Sixties and the very beginning of the Seventies, I was very political. I ran with Communist and those who lived under the radar. My main inspiration was theses Red-diaper babies that lived up the street from me. Their dad along with William Kunstler, help defend the Chicago 7. I saw firsthand people who were ready to die for change. There was talk about placing bombs at government installations and over-throwing Nixon and his ilk. But the talk soon gave way to some cheap jug wine, then we took Wayner’s bug over to the guy’s house in Minneapolis, cause he was ‘holding.’ Soon all the talk of revolution went up into the air. For me, that’s as far as it went. A few nights where it seemed anything might happen but the truth, we were all scared of getting caught. Hurting someone. It got the juices going knowing or pretending to know that everything was on the line. We wanted ten days that could shook a world. It felt like it was within our grasp. It was exciting and the advent of change meant anything was possible...

I don’t blame the Baggers. They are feeling that anti-government sentiment just like the Lefties I ran with long ago. They’re marching in the streets when a lot of us proclaimed, “We ain’t marchin’ no mo’.” But they are. Don’t get me wrong. In the last ten years, I’ve still marched against our involvement in...What is it? Two Wars? Three?? I’ve lost count...

What’s funny about the Baggers is they don’t know who they’re marching for if you ask me. They don’t want health-care? Really? They don’t want government spending? Really? They want wars and U.S. over-kill of fire-power to be the World’s Super Power. I mean seriously, what are they marching for? Freedom?

But this is really my point now...

I want to get a gun. I’ve thought about it for years now. For a while there with my mental condition being a little twitchy, the timing hasn’t been so right. Now as my mind gets right, I think I can handle me some home protection. I’m thinking about a Thirty-eight. Perfect for a hallway skirmish or a provocation at the front door that needs adjusting. A little something-something for the house if you know what I mean...

But this is really my point, no fooling...

In the last couple of weeks, an American flew his plane into an Austin Federal building and another man attacked the Pentagon. I don’t know if Glen Beck smiles at this kind of sad acts of desperation or if he feels any sense of responsibility. Before I get to my main point, I don’t blame Glen Beck for anything. He’s an entertainer, that’s all. He does like to build his audience into a revolutionary froth though, if for no reason than to see his people dance before him without the use of strings. But to my point, freaking finally, I know.

Both of these guys were coming from different ideological places. The Austin guy, showing no signs of right-wing anger previously apparently, still when you kamikaze into a federal building, it does squeak Ruby Ridge and Ok-la-homa, where the bombs scatter the prairie...But the Pentagon fellow was supposedly one of the 9-11 freaks, who shall we say listened to the left of the dial.

Two dudes who gave up their lives for their country, for different reasons, but for the same effect. Wake-up calls.

Neither one of them had an exit strategy. It was a one-way trip. I know there had to be some flight of mental reality that had to take place. Okay, NOT had to, but who is ready to die unless they believe in their own cause so strong. How do you wrap your head around being a suicide bomber or gun-toter that your death is going to be the catalyst for change?

I know the answer to that question. I saw it in the eyes of those who were ready to make others die for their cause, not themselves. I see it on TV when bugged-eyed Patriots are shaking their collective fists against government spending and their world as they knew it, changing right before their eyes. Starting with a black president.

The feelings of disenfranchisement are the beginnings of New Revolution. Welcome to the New Normal. And now it has affected Whitey. Anger has a cross-over hit in the new rallying song of “Hey, What about Me?”

After forty years of my people marching for one cause or another, we are being joined by these newbies who come packing and are rough and ready. But for what?

Maybe as Americans we should come up with a plan. The one, who has the most subversive one, wins.

More Later...