Ashes of Love

“The dying fire of enthusiasm should leave ashes to provide disguising makeup for our faces.” Stanislaw J. Lec

I’m sitting in Studio 412, a hair emporium, or salon, waiting for Michelle to cut my hair. It’s strange, sitting in the midst of women who are yapping it up. In the old days, at least where I grew up, a salon was called a ‘beauty parlor.’ No man would have been caught dead inside of one.

But things have changed. Everything is unisex now. Old stigmas have disappeared. Men are women, women are men. Women have short hair, men have long. Everyone has tattoos. Who can tell anymore? So here I sit. The women eye me suspiciously. Or lustily...who knows what women think.

The subject du jour was ‘Falling in love.’ Being the lone male, I lay low and kept my mouth shut. It’s not wise to take on a bunch of women in such places. Especially those who are paying big money in hopes of finding, or continuing, love affairs with someone or something.

Soon Michelle starts snipping. My hair falls, sliding down the black silk robe to the floor. It mingles with other hair clippings. I recall a visit to the New York Stock Exchange. Slips of pink paper, like so much hair and confetti, lay strewn in profusion throughout the floor. Traders walked on it, oblivious to each slip’s past significance. Old news, old lovers, they said. Some love gone good, some bad. But all past. Ashes of love.

I listen to the women carry on about love, how to find it, how to keep it hot. I want to tell them fried blonde hair won’t do the job, but hey, I’m outnumbered. Old loves come into my mind. How many were there, I wondered. Too many to count.

My first recollection of falling in love was with my bicycle. Like all loves, it’s a means of escape. The affair lasted until I was 13. A motor scooter replaced it. Boys are fickle…no loyalty to old lovers. The bike rusted. I moved on. Ashes of love.

I fell in love with music. I had every Elvis 45 rpm made, not to mention Jerry Lee, Chuck, Little Richard and Bo Diddley. I lay awake at night, straining to hear snippets of WLAC, Nashville, Tennessee, or WCKY in Cincinnati. One can lose a lot of sleep when in love. Music is a great lover. It’s as capricious as the listener. Songs wear out and lose their fire. Ashes of love.

In 7th grade I think I fell in love with my second cousin ten times removed. At that genetic distance, I figured it was safe. Blue eyes, and some crossed eyes, ran prominently in our family. The entire town showed up at our family reunions. Who would notice, I thought.

Marriage crossed my mind. But in 8th grade she was hustled off to a ‘finishing’ school for girls. They took no chances. So that was that. All that remained were love letters. I learned an important lesson: women are unpredictable! I later burned the letters before my brother could expose my feminine side to the world. A man can’t take chances with ink. Even at age 13. Ashes of love are ageless.

I’ve fallen in love often…with dogs, boots, back packs, cars, guns, airplanes, to name a few. But they got old, like most lovers do. I ruthlessly discarded them without remorse, waiting for something new to show up. It usually did. Inanimate divorces are cheap. Ashes of love litter my past.

Some fall in love with sports, like golf. My idea of hell is being chained to a chair and forced to watch golf on TV 24/7. I once fell in love with running. A new hip ended that affair.

It’s dangerous to fall in love. Risk is involved. Like dreams, love often evaporates into illusions, then remorse when the novelty wears off. Relationships, human or inanimate, often have a short shelf life. We live for the next new thing.

Suddenly I’m jolted back into the present. “Mister, what’s your opinion of keeping love hot and burning?” the woman asks. I shake my head and shrug.

Somewhere in a back seat of my youth I hear Loretta Lynn singing, “Love is where you find it, when you find no love at home; and there’s nothing cold as ashes, after the fire is gone.”

I look at my haircut in the mirror. I smile, say aloud, “You handsome devil.” Some loves never die!

Bud Hearn
October 26, 2012

The Titans Tangle

It’s the event the world has been waiting for…the challenge match between two fierce titans. One, a pontificator of platitudinous innuendo and self-proclaimed, reigning Ruler of the Green Planet. And the other, The Sovereign, his stalking nemesis and best friend of billionaires.

The referee is the legendary Jimmy No Nonsense. He holds the PBS scepter and rule book. He has been tutored by fill-in NFL refs on how to give certitude to questionable calls.

The crowd is tense, warned that any show of emotion would incur the wrath of roving hall monitors brandishing black batons. The wall décor is a banner of the US Constitution. Tonight’s winner will be temporarily enshrouded in the banner and depart the ring to cheers, boos or hisses. The final matchup extravaganza is November 6th.

In the TV Land of Oz, fifty million political junkies surf for an entertainment fix. They’ll stumble on the spectacle. They’ll gape in stark horror and giddy amusement as the contestants rip, claw, gnash, thrash, pummel and flail one another with sharp barbs of statistical weapons and aspersions.

TV sets will hemorrhage blood as combatants bludgeon each other senseless with clubs fashioned with figments of The Truth. They will watch in amazement as the fighters repeatedly hurl insults and taunts like the clash of raging bulls in a Spanish bullpen.

The announcer breaks the tension and speaks. “In this corner, wearing a red tie, lurks the challenger, Morton Mittman, aka Mr. Plastic. His opponent, wearing a blue tie and a classic smirk, Blabber Barack.” The camera pans the ring. The crowd becomes restless. Two mahogany rostrums separate them. A coin is tossed. The Blabber wins and launches the first volley. With that, the match begins.

It’s a weak, glancing blow. Mostly hot air as it whizzed by the challenger’s pasted-on smile. Mr. Plastic does a head fake, dodges the blow. He counters quickly like a coiled cobra with a salvo of statistics. Blabber bounces from the ropes, comes back swinging like a teenage girl, beating the air with generic verbal assaults.

The ref calls time. The adversaries prepare for the next round. Mr. Plastic finds Blabber’s chink, pounds three quick body blows to the Master Manipulator. But he’s prepared this time, shoves some statistics of his own into the Mormon’s face. The ref marks down “Foul.” Seems the statistics were contrived fabrications.

The challenger is quick, pulls out five fingers and jabs them into the Harvard Hack’s ears in retaliation. Blabber stumbles, fends off the assaults with empty platitudes laced with ‘Uh’s” and rhetorical questions. A barrage of words without meanings spurt into thin air as he swings wildly, hitting nothing. And back and forth it goes.

Finally, the challenger senses his opponent’s weakness by the dismissive grins and condescending sneers. He seizes the moment and lands a punishing body blow that takes the final wind out of the dissembler. He then climbs on the podium, prepares for a full body slam to end this torturous punishment of the Union Lackey. He shouts as he lurches forward, “Keep your house, your plane…the facts are not yours to manipulate.” With that, he leaps, soars through the air, every hair in place. It’s an ugly conclusion.

Life demands closure. Tonight, facts overcome vacuous rhetoric, laying bare inane repetitious clichés. The Mormon is victorious over Muhammad. But it’s not over. There’s another winner-take-all contest coming up… for the big money.

Tonight reminds me of the Saturday night WWF wrestling matches of the 60's and 70’s. We’d sit in front of the TV and marvel at the brutal treatment meted out on a canvas mat. Andre the Giant, the Behemoth, rips Gorilla Monsoon apart. Killer Kowalski, the most feared wrestler ever, claws the stomach out of Haystacks Calhoun, a 600 pound block of granite. Stone Cold Steve Austin and tag-team partner Hulk Hogan brutalize Bruno Samartino and Gorgeous George. And on and on the list goes.

Little did we know then it was all choreographed, a Hollywood version of mayhem. A chimerical make-believe, a good way to down a few beers and pass a boring Saturday night. And even when we discovered the reality, like Santa Claus, we still believed!

There are a couple more debates, uh, matches, coming up. The next one will be a tag-team comedy event, featuring Bite The Tongue Biden versus Ryan, The Raging Accountant. Stock up on beer for the show.

I don’t know about anybody else, but a few punches would have improved the carnival. Perhaps duels are better ways to resolve issues. Just saying…..

Bud Hearn
October 4, 2012