Underdogs (20 page)

Faggot. Poofter. Wanker.

These are common words in my neighborhood when someone wants to
give you some
, tell you off, or just plain humiliate you. They’ll also call you one of those things if you show some sign that you’re in some way different from the regular, run-of-the-mill sort of guy who lives in this part of the city. You might also get it if you’ve annoyed someone in some inadvertent way and the person has nothing better to say. For all I know it’s the same everywhere, but I can’t really speak for anywhere else. The only place I know is this.

This city.

These streets.

Soon you’ll know why I’ve mentioned it….

On Thursday that week I decided I should go and get a haircut, which is always a pretty dangerous decisi
on, especially when your hair sticks up as stubborn and chronic as mine. You just have to pray that it won’t end in tragedy. You hope beyond all hope that the barber won’t ignore all instructions and butcher your head to pieces. But it’s a risk you have to take.

“Har-low, mate,” the barber said when I entered the shop, deeper into the city. “Have a seat, I won’t be long.”

In the scungy waiting area there was quite a good range of magazines, though you could tell each one had been sitting there for the last few years, judging by the dates of issue. There was
Time, Rolling Stone
, some fishing thing,
Who Weekly
, some computer thing,
Black and White, Surfing Life
, and always a favorite,
Inside Sport
. Of course, the best thing about the
Inside Sport
magazine is not the sport, but the scantily clad woman who is planted on the cover. She is always firm and has desire in her eyes. Her swimsuit is nice and open, her legs long and tanned and elegant. She has breasts you can only imagine your hands touching and massaging. (Sorry, but it’s true.) She has hips of extreme grace, a golden, flat stomach, and a neck you can only imagine yourself sucking on. Her lips are always full and hungry. The eyes say, “Take me.”

You remind yourself that there are some pretty good articles in
Inside Sport
, but you know you’re lying. Of course there
are
some good articles in the magazine, but that sure as hell isn’t what makes you pick it up. It’s always the woman. Always. Trust me on this one.

So, typically, I surveyed the area and made sure no one was looking when I picked up the
Inside Sport
magazine, opened it quickly, and pretended to scan the contents page for any good articles. I was (predictably) seeing which page the woman was on.

Seventy-six.

“Okay mate,” the barber said. “Me?”

“There’s no one else waiting, is there?”
Yeah, but
, I thought helplessly,
I haven’t got to page seventy-six yet
! It was futile.

The barber was ready, and if there’s one man you don’t keep waiting it’s the guy about to cut your hair. He’s all-powerful. In fact, he might as well be God.
That’s
the kind of power he has. A few months at barber school and a man becomes the most important person in your life for ten or fifteen minutes. The golden rule: Don’t give him a hard time or there’ll be hell to pay.

Immediately, I threw the magazine back to the table, facedown so the barber wouldn’t know right away what a pervert I am. He’d have to wait until later when he tidied the magazines.

Sitting in the chair (it sounds about as dangerous as the electric chair), I considered the whole woman on the cover situation.

“Short?” the barber asked me.

“Nah, not too short please, mate. I’m just tryin’ to have it so it doesn’t always stick up.”

“Easier said than done, ay?”

“Yeah.”

We exchanged a look of mutual friendliness and I felt much more at ease in the firing line of the scissors, the chair, and the barber.

He started cutting and like I said a minute ago, I reviewed the woman on the cover situation. My theory on this subject was and still is that I obviously desire
the physicality of a woman. Yet, I honestly believe that
that
part of my desire for a girl is somewhere on the surface of my soul, whereas further and much deeper inside is the fiercer desire to please her, treat her right, and be immersed by the spirit of her.

I honestly believe that.

Honestly.

Still, I had to stop thinking about it and talk to the barber. That’s another rule of the barbershop. If you talk to the man and get him to like you, maybe he won’t screw it up. That’s what you hope for anyway. It doesn’t mean you’ll have instant success, but it might help, so you try it. There are no guarantees in the world of barbershops. It’s a gamble no matter which way you look at it. I had to start talking, and fast.

“So how’s business?” I asked, as the barber cut his way through the thickness of my hair.

“Aah, you know, mate.” He stopped, and smiled at me in the mirror. “Here ‘n’ there. Keepin’ my head above water. That’s the main thing.”

We talked for quite a while after that, and the barber told me how long he’d been working in the city and how much people have changed. I agreed with everything he said, with a dangerous nod of my head or a quiet “Yeah, that sounds about right.” He was a pretty nice guy, to tell you the truth. Very big. Quite hairy. A husky voice.

I asked if he lived upstairs from the shop and he said, “Yep, for the last twenty-five years.” That was when I pitied him a little, because I imagined him never going
anywhere or doing anything. Just cutting hair. Eating a dinner alone. Maybe microwave dinners (though his dinners couldn’t be much worse than the ones Mrs. Wolfe cooked, God bless her).

“Do you mind me askin’ if you ever got married?” I asked him.

“Of course I don’t mind,” he answered. “I had a wife but she died a few years ago. I go down the cemetery every weekend, but I don’t put flowers down. I don’t talk.” He sighed a bit and he was very sincere. Truly. “I like to think I did enough of that when she was alive, you know?”

I nodded.

“It’s no good once a person’s dead. You gotta do it when you’re together, still living.”

He’d stopped cutting for a few moments now, so I could continue nodding without risk. I asked, “So what do you do when you’re standin’ there, at the grave?”

He smiled. “I just remember, that’s all.”

That’s nice
, I thought, but I didn’t say it. I only smiled at the man behind me in the mirror. I had a vision of the large hairy man standing there at the cemetery, knowing that he gave everything he could. I also imagined myself there with him, on a dark gray day. Him in his white barber’s coat. Me in the usual. Jeans. Flanno. Spray jacket.

“Okay?” he turned and said to me in the vision.

“Okay?” he said in the shop.

I woke back into reality and said, “Yeah, thanks a lot, it’s good,” even though I knew it would be standing
up within forty-eight hours. I was happy, though, but not only for the haircut. The conversation too.

With my hair congregating around my feet, I paid twelve dollars and said, “Thanks a lot. It was nice talking to you.”

“Same here,” and the large hairy barber smiled and I felt guilty about the magazine. I could only hope he would understand the different layers of my soul. After all, he was a barber. Barbers are supposed to have the answers to running the country, along with taxi drivers and obnoxious radio commentators. I thanked him again and said good-bye.

Once outside, it was still mid-afternoon, so
Why not
? I thought.
I might as well head over to Glebe
.

Needless to say, I got there and stood outside the girl’s house.

Stephanie.

It was as good a place as any to watch the sun collapse behind the city, and after a while I sat down against a wall and thought again about the barber.

The importance of it was that he and I were really doing similar things, only in reverse order. He was remembering. I was anticipating. (Hopeful, almost ludicrous anticipation, I admit.)

Once it was dark, I decided I’d better get home for dinner. It was leftover steak, I think, with vegetables boiled into oblivion.

I got up.

I slipped my hands into my pockets.

Then I looked, hoped, and walked, in that order. Pathetic, I know, but it was my life, I guess. No point denying it.

It turned out to be later than I thought when I finally left, and I decided to get the bus back to my own neighborhood.

At the bus stop there was a handful of people waiting. There was a man with a briefcase, a chain-smoking woman, a guy who looked like a laborer or carpenter, and a couple who leaned on each other and kissed a while as they waited.

I couldn’t help it.

I watched.

Not obviously, of course. Just a quick look here and there. Damn. I got caught.

“What are
you
lookin’ at?” The guy spat his words at me. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” Nothing.

That was my reply. Absolutely nothing.

“Well?”

Then the girl got stuck into me as well.

“Why don’t y’ go and stare at someone else, y’ weirdo.” She had blond hair, green eyes shrunken in under the streetlight, and a voice like a blunt knife. She beat me with it. “Y’ wanker.”

Typical.

You get called that name so many times around here, but this time it hurt. I guess it hurt because it was a girl. I don’t know. In a way, it was kind of depressing that this was what we’d come to. We can’t even wait for a bus in peace.

I know, I know. I should have barked back at them, nice and hard, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Some Wolfe, ay. Some wild dog I turned out to be. All I did was steal one last look, to see if they were about to level some final fragments of abuse at me.

The guy was also blond. Not tall or short. He wore dark pants, boots, a black jacket, and a sneer.

Meanwhile, the briefcase man checked his watch. The chain smoker lit up another. The laborer shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

Nothing more was said, but when the bus came, everyone pushed on and I was last.

“Sorry.”

When I got on and tried to pay, the driver told me that fares had just gone up and I didn’t have enough money for a ticket.

I got off, smiled ruefully, and stood there.

The bus was pretty empty — the final insult.

As I started walking, I watched it pull away and shove itself along the street. Many thoughts staggered through me, including:

How late I’d be for dinner.

Whether or not anyone would ask where I’d been.

Whether Dad wanted Rube and me to work with him on Saturday.

If the girl named Stephanie would ever come out and see me (if she knew I was there at all).