Free Hairstyles of the Damned by Joe Meno Page B

thrown—and then another sensation, like I was bleeding, but it was not blood but egg yolk running down my face and neck, down the crook of the collar of my shirt, and there were pieces of egg in my hair and I didn’t even stand up or say anything. I picked some of the shell out of my hair and waited for them to leave. I heard the squeak again of their feet and the heavy door finally slam and I opened the stall door and went to the mirror and it made me think: Did they know who it was, or could it have been just anybody and I mean, who brings a fucking egg to school? What kind of people do those kinds of things? The answer: John fucking McDunnah. I knew it was him for sure, at least he had been part of it. But why? Why did they even bother? What do those kinds of fucking people grow up to be? It seemed like shit Gretchen would bitch about. Seriously.

nineteen
    Going to the mall with Gretchen was a lot of fun because sometimes she would steal. Mostly we just walked around, giving the uptight suburban home–type mothers and grandmothers our dirty looks, but every so often, when she was complaining about how oppressive corporate America was to the rest of the poor undeveloped world—which usually coincided with her listening to a lot of Minor Threat or the Dead Kennedys—Gretchen would grab me by the hand and pull me into Kohl’s, this big middle-class cheeseball department store, with the intention that both her and I would score something for free, in the name of revolution and international equality.
    “You’re just a loyal, thoughtless consumer, aren’t you?” she whispered one day as we made our way through the clothing racks of bright pink and green Ocean Pacific swimsuits in the preteen section.
    “I’m not a consumer,” I said, “I don’t buy anything.”
    “You don’t buy anything?” she replied, shoving me.
    “I don’t have any money.”
    “What about movies? Don’t you rent movies?” she shouted, shoving me into a rack of preteen nylon slacks.
    “So?” I said. “That’s renting, not buying.”
    “Well, what about your clothes? You buy clothes, don’t you?”
    “No,” I said. “My mom buys that shit.”
    “Well, what about music? You buy records and cassettes, right?”
    “Duh,” I said.
    “Well, those people are trying to control you!” she shouted, grabbing my wrist again. She tugged me through the young miss section, which was all stone-washed jeans and color-changing T-shirts flying past, bright color after bright color. “They want you to buy stuff so you don’t think about anything.”
    “That’s cool,” I said, “the less I have to think about shit, the better.”
    “But that means you are under their fucking control. THEY tell you what movies to rent. THEY tell you what records to buy. THEY tell you what clothes to wear. And, like a dumbshit, you spend all your money on buying stupid things that don’t even make you happy. Like this”—she grabbed a white, lacy, see-through-type bodysuit—“do you think girls even want to wear this shit?” she asked, shoving it in my face.
    “I dunno. Hot girls, maybe,” I said, and she grabbed my hand again.
    “Don’t you know about classes and shit like that? Don’t you ever think about that stuff?” she asked.
    “I’ve got to go to classes eight times a day. That is where I do all my thinking.”
    “You’re working class, and they’re trying to control you so you don’t overthrow them,” Gretchen whispered, as if THEY were somehow listening in an empty corner of the store, directly behind a sale rack of reduced puffy red ski jackets.
    “I can’t even worry about that shit,” I said. “I’m just trying to get through fucking school without going fucking crazy.”
    “That’s how they get you, though,” she said. “First you don’t have time to worry about it because of school, then you’ve got a job, and a wife, and kids, and a family, and so you just keep going on buying and buying and you never ask why