Hello everybody,
My friend, Nadia, runs a costume business in the garment district. Halloween is just around the bend, and "wig season", as industry insiders call it, has kicked off with a blast of after-burn from a witch's broom. Nadia hired me to help her move the wigs to all the little goblins, Cindy-Lou's, trolls, Tina Turner's, Kate Middleton's, Mr. T's, Mitt Romney's (which is really a 1950's greaser model, we just tape his name over the label), and fat and skinny Elvi out there in Americaland. In my involuntary effort to splatter my work resume with as many clashing professions as possible, in my involuntary effort to make the Hiring Kind laugh at me, I accepted the job.
I begin my workday with a visit to the wig warehouse to pick the day's wigs to be shipped. Marco, the wig expert of the warehouse, and senior employee, usually has the wigs ready for me. Marco is very friendly and usually has something funny to say, or an outright joke. Marco is also deaf, and although I can't understand a word he says, I have found, by his syllabic intonation and hand gestures, the appropriate moment to laugh. We'll then share a smile and I go on my way to pack the wigs with Nadia, a block away.
Sometimes, I have a few extra orders that I give to Marco upon arrival. He generously agrees to go into the caverns of the warehouse to find the wigs. While he does, I can't help but gaze over the expanse of the musty warehouse. Thousands of boxes of wigs, containing trillions of strands of real, human, honest to goodness hair! Roaming through the warehouse is like taking a stroll through a New England cemetery, on a full moon night. The hair speaks to you, and all the little creeks and pops and other ambient sounds an old New York warehouse become howls and moans of the dead. They tell their stories and get closer to me. Marco is nowhere to be found. I can't yell for him to come to my rescue, because, you know...
Just about the time the dead are about to take me to the Other Side, Marco arrives, and hands me a Phyllis Diller, Electric Pink Model, mumbles his joke, and goes on his way. The voices are gone, and the recycled DNA lay dormant in the mountains of boxes. I look at the Phyllis Diller Pink Model. It's baffling to me that at one time, those strands of hair belonged to a head that housed a brain fighting the epic battle of Every Day. So many brains, so many days. The same battle. Over and over.
It's funny how Halloween is such a fun holiday. People love to get the shit scared out of them. Maybe, in our fear based world, we seek solace in knowing we all get creeped out, and the best way to do it is to get creeped out together. The same battle.
My epic battle's raging on. But life is good, I got a job to get me through. My main concern right now is to go with the Willie Nelson Full Red Model, or the Willie Nelson Red with Gray, for Halloween. Judging buy the burgeoning population of grays hairs on my unshaven chin, I may have to go with the latter.
BOO!
