Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

1022 Let's Get Rocked

Let's Get Rocked

Yeah, I felt good and artsy wearing my homemade obscenity shirt. With my leather jacket over it, you couldn't read the front unless I stretched out my arms, but that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was that I knew the message was there.

I had decided to leave Ziggy's as soon as the shirt was done and give myself some time to walk around the city and think. I used to like doing that, I remembered. It felt like something I used to do a long time ago, even though I was sure I'd done it fairly recently. The weather wasn't bad. A nice spring day. Maybe a touch cool in the shade but as long as I kept moving it was all right.

I made my way to Washington Square Park. A guy was trying to busk with a sitar there, but you really couldn't hear him very well over the general noise of the city and kids horsing around and so on. He had the look of an old hippie in his weatherworn skin and denim and he didn't seem to be paying much attention to the people around him, whether they dropped a coin in his hat or not.

That will not be me in twenty years, I thought emphatically to myself. Then I felt bad. Who was to say the guy was hard on his luck? Maybe he was out there because he really just liked playing in the park. I hoped twenty years in the future I'd have the freedom to decide whether I was going to play in the park or not.

I wandered some side streets after that. You never know what you're going to find in New York City if you go down a block you haven't been on before. Greenwich Village has a lot of little side streets. I amused myself looking in the windows of places that sold everything from architectural-looking lamps and light fixtures to imported spices and oils. My mind kept turning over my various problems as if cancer, capitalism, or corporate greed could be solved by a well meaning 24-year-old.

I realized after a while that I was standing in front of a beauty salon, staring through the window. My mind had been a million miles away–or at least several thousand, given that I was thinking about Japan–and I wasn't really taking in what my eyes were fixated on. Then I realized it: Bernard was inside. He was just finishing up a cute twink's hair and was showing the guy himself in the mirror with all angles. The twink seemed quite pleased. He got up to pay.

My own hair was in a pretty sorry state. I had basically no red extensions left in it, and while in Tennessee I'd been using the crappy motel shampoo and not conditioning it. I knew it was in bad shape when sometimes I had trouble getting a comb through it when it was wet.

I decided to go in and see if Bernard had an appointment this week. Of course I didn't know what my schedule was for the rest of the week but, I don't know, maybe I was tired of everyone else scheduling me and I wanted to do something myself.

The twink gave me a skeptical up-and-down look as he slipped his wallet back into his pocket on the way out. I stepped up to the front counter. Bernard himself had done the guy's checkout and his face lit up when he saw me! "Daron Moondog, I do declare!"

It's funny isn't it, how some people call me that? I almost never introduce myself that way. But there it was. I didn't object, really, either. "Hi, Bernard. I, uh, I'm in town for a week and just realized I probably need a trim."

"Probably," he said, his sarcasm so heavy it dragged his eyelids halfway down. "You want new extensions, too?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. If I can. Do you have an appointment?"

"Well, I can see if there's an evening to come over."

"Oh, that's not necessary. I don't mind coming here."

He gave me a skeptical eyebrow. "Oh, really? I suppose you're not as worried as Himself is about teeny boppers mobbing you."

"Or paparazzi," I said.