Free Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno

forehead. Also, her shoulders were always covered in bright red freckles. Her hair was kind of brown and dirty and long and stringy. She would sit there in the yellow chair, purple sunglasses on, with a boom box playing Paula Abdul or Madonna or whoever, tapping her foot along, and to be honest, her sitting there scared the hell out of me. One time, she uncrossed her legs when I was looking, and I could see the soft folds of her privates held tight against the stretchy yellow fabric and just the faintest line of black stubble where she had shaved and it made me feel sick and excited all at once. This other time, I remember I had run over a stone or rock or something, and the mower had jerked forward suddenly, and Metallica was blaring in my headphones, and I looked up and Carrie Steeple was sitting there in that chair, leaning forward in her tiny yellow two-piece with her elbows on her knees, and she was staring right at me and I think she was mouthing some words at me and I said, out loud, “What?” switching off the mower, and she flipped her stringy hair over her shoulder and said, “Take off your glasses,” and I didn’t understand what she was saying, and then she said it again, “Go ahead, take off your glasses,” and I said, “I’ve got to get back to work,” and I started the lawn mower and finished the side of the Foster’s house, not looking her way again.
    About three days later, it hit me: I was in the middle of a chemistry test and, of course, I had signed my name at the top of the page as Dr. Fang , and right then I began to play that moment over and over, again and again, in my head—Carrie looking up and saying, “Take off your glasses”—and I’d be at school, or at home, or lying in bed, or at dinner when my mother would ask me to pass the mashed potatoes, or when I was being called on in class, or when I showered, or when I went to the bathroom, or when I walked down the street, I’d be thinking about Carrie—her flat chest, her stringy hair—saying, “Take off your glasses. Take off your glasses.” In that moment, anything could have happened. Anything could have happened, but I had chickened out. I had chickened out, and this might have been it, my big chance, and I had blown it. I had blown my chance to just get it over with and now nobody was going to ever have sex with me—not Carrie Steeple, certainly not Gretchen—and I’d get all worked up about it and swear to myself that no matter what, the next time, I’d do it, no matter what, and I’d decide to masturbate right then, sure that that was the closest I’d ever get to sex before some kind of nuclear war or Soviet radiation destroyed me.

seventeen
    Bad-ass possible songs for the Gretchen mix-tape:
    1. I Won’t Forget You by Poison
    2. Every Rose Has its Thorn again by Poison
    3. Home Sweet Home by Mötley Crüe
    4. Don’t Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult
    5. Feel Like Making Love, Bad Company
    6. Freebird by Lynrd Skynrd—all-time number one making out song
    7. Separate Ways by Journey
    8. Rocket Queen by GNR
    9. Patience by GNR
    10. Sweet Child o’ Mine by GNR

eighteen
    Out of nowhere, at school, I got a fucking egg busted on my head for no real reason. I was going to the bathroom in a stall in the washroom on the second floor, and it was just after third period began and I was feeling sick because I had milk with my cereal for breakfast, which I shouldn’t have because I was lactose-intolerant, but Tim was down at the table eating breakfast and the gallon of milk was sitting there and it looked really good on his Cap’n Crunch instead of plain fucking water, which is what I usually had, so I put some milk on my cereal—and not just a little, a lot—and by third period, I was all cramping and everything, and when I asked Bro. Hitler—a.k.a., Bro. Paluch—if I could go to the bathroom, he said yes, because he must have saw how bad and green and sweaty I looked, even though usually he never let anyone go to the