Soon after I began living with Face, and soon after my run-in with Goth Girl, I cut off all my hair and an almost perfect thing happened—if perfect means surprising, and surprising means you cough your guts up over it.
I was standing dead drunk in front of our building one night, fumbling like a monkey for my keys, dropping them, getting down on my hands and knees, feeling around, getting up, falling...
So I lay there for a minute on the sidewalk.
Just a minute, that was the plan.
And the Honey Bucket Hooker marched by, bursting from her spandex, and said, "Oh shit, Samson, you cut off all your hair! You still ain't figured it out yet? You lost all your superpowers!"
Samson.
I laughed like a lunatic, at that. I got up and had to squint to see our names on the mailbox. I kept reaching, trying to press the intercom button on the gate.
It took a long time.
The Honey Bucket Hooker kept laughing.
It made a sound up there, where my girl was, then another sound, down where I was.
Kurt Eisenlohr is the author of the novel Meat Won't Pay My Light Bill (Future Tense Press). He has work forthcoming at Thieves Jargon and Horror Sleaze Trash. He lives in Portland, Oregon.