mohawkmature

He had a big, silly, floppy Mohawk. It made me smile, but not in an appreciative way. I just can’t take a person with a full twelve inches of hair gelled up with product seriously. Luckily, I don’t think he took it seriously either. He told me he was experimenting with how much he could make himself resemble a delinquent. To Erica, on the other hand, his hair was a masterpiece. She was a wild punker girl, one of those chicks who jumped into the mosh pit even though she knew her ass was going to get stomped. She pictured herself standing next to that leaning tower of hair, holding its hand, and she found her goal.

Sometimes, when you mix a room full of near-strangers with a pumping bass beat and flashing lights and dilute the concoction with a bit of alcohol, you get a topless dance party. Such was the case one fateful night. Erica grooved with the rest of us, hiking up her bra so that her tattoo poked out just a little bit, thinking he would dig her coarse image. Turns out he did. Next morning, she had a smile on her face. And six deep purple hickeys at least four inches in diameter on her neck. The concealer she used that day would have satisfied the needs of an army of acne-ridden teenage girls.

I saw him in the elevator in the evening, long after Erica had already given me a highly detailed account of their entire night. His hair didn’t give him the flamboyant appearance of a cockerel on this occasion. A stripe of long soft hair ran down the middle of his scalp, framed by bristly dark hair on the sides. The hair that wasn’t shaved flopped carelessly over his eyes and hung by his ears. We acknowledged each other awkwardly, and the door sprung open to my hallway. Turning, I hugged him the only way you can hug a guy who just banged your best friend: eyes to the ceiling, nose and mouth away from his cheek, ass out.