The Time the Salon Caught on Fire

The first time I met Jim was at his downtown salon in the Carew Tower. My sister, Beth, had made the appointment for me because I had serious hair issues. This was around 10 years ago, and I've never let anyone else do my hair since.

At the time, I was having a lot of surgery on my head. On the back right side of my head was a spot where doctors had tried around five times to remove a tumor. The problem with head surgery is that you only have so much scalp. Because of that, every time they operated on the right side, they would shift my scalp and put a skin graph from my leg on the left side. At the height of my illness, the back of my head was around 75% skin graphs. The thing about skin graphs is that they don't grow hair, which didn't seem to be a problem when the same skin was on my legs, but, OK, whatever.

So, Beth made this hair appointment at this fru-fru salon, to which she escorted me. I think she knew that I didn't realize how bad it looked. Actually, that whole day with her is a post all in itself. I love my sissy.

Jim is the most talented hair stylist I have ever met, not to mention smart, funny, and handsome. He taught me how to pin it up in the back, and that dark hair shows scars more than light hair. Most people never even knew what a mess I had going on back there. He saw my head at it's worst and never cringed, and let me come to his house to have my hair done when my head was so bad I was embarrassed to have it done at the salon.

One day, a few years ago, I was at the fru-fru salon having my highlights done. Jim was multi-tasking, working with me and another client. He finished putting the foils in the other clients hair, and had started putting the foils into mine. We were chatting away when I glanced up at Jim in the mirror. He was looking at something, with just the strangest look on his face. When I looked to see what it was, I saw black liquid running down the white wall from the ceiling.

After some investigation, we learned that the art shop directly above us was on fire and that we had to evacuate immediately. Unfortunately, Jim had just finished my foils and the other client still had her foils. After asking a nearby barbershop if we could use some water, and getting rejected, we hit the streets of downtown Cincinnati.

There we were, a couple of beauty refugees, walking the streets of downtown with foils in place and plastic capes a flying. Jim was our beauty ambassador and led us on our journey to relief.

We ended up at the salon in Saks Fifth Avenue. That kinda cracked me up, because usually when I go into high end stores they watch me to make sure I don't shoplift. Thank God they took us in. Jim got the chemicals out in time and our hair remained to shine another day.

Best part was that he didn't charge us. Don't worry, I tipped well. So there you have it.

Carlos aka New York Boy Part 2

As you may have noticed in my previous post, I used Carlos's first and last name. Normally, I'll use first names only, but used both for Carlos for the following reasons:
1) I have only nice things to say about him.
2) Carlos Garcia is Hispanic for Joe Smith, and there's a lot of those.

Now, back to our story. Last we spoke, Carlos rode back to Brooklyn with me, and we said goodnight. Just a few hours later, Laura and I were on a plane back to Cincinnati. We had been in NYC for a week, and I met Carlos on our last full day there. Welcome to my world, that's how it works.

Carlos and I talked on the phone everyday for three months, and that was before cell phones. Our phone bills were ginormous. Carlos also wrote letters, old school. I've been looking for them for two days, and know they're here somewhere. What I did find was a picture of Carlos and me. I will post the picture as well, I just need to scan it in.

After about three months of phone calls and letters, Carlos flew to Cincinnati. Carlos had never been out of NYC in his entire life. Odd as it may seem, I know of another New Yorker who also hasn't. When I picked him up from CVG, he had a teddy bear named Mr. Pennington, who wore black rimmed eye glasses and a white collar with tie. Mr. Pennington, now 20ish years old, sits to this very day on the mantle in my bedroom.

At the time, I was living in Clifton near the corner of Vine and McMillian. My apartment consisted of one large room, a small kitchen, and two bathrooms. Yes, two bathrooms. I always think of it as my Mary Tyler Moore apartment It had natural wood floors, a fireplace with Rookwood tiles, and the toilet in one room, and a huge lion claw bathtub in the other.

So, one day while I'm at work, Carlos decides to take a walk to check out the city and see if he would ever want to live here. He had never driven or owned a car, which is the case with a lot of native New Yorkers. When I came home, he informed me that it only took an hour before he ran out of city. He also didn't understand where all the Hispanics were, and why was 300 Chinese restaurants Cincinnati's idea of ethnic food. It was after that walk that Carlos knew he could never be happy living in Cincinnati.

After that visit, the ball was in my court. Carlos tried to get me to move to New York for a really long time. He promised to love me and take care of me, and I totally believe he meant it. Something I should mention about Carlos was that he was very macho. This could be incredibly sexy, like how he always called me "baby", but it could also be annoying, like for instance, how he refused to sit anywhere with his back to the door. I think I was afraid that I couldn't function the way he expected his woman to be. Putting my destiny into someone else's hands was too hard for me.

We visited back and forth but ultimately knew that neither one of us were going to relocate for the other. After a few years we lost touch. If I could find him today, I know we would still be the greatest of friends. He's out there, on that island, somewhere.

God and Satan

The story of Satan goes like this. Satan was an angel, and had the personality of a biligerent adolesence