Bad Day at the Beauty Salon

Hola mi gente,
I came across the following poem by novelist, poet/ spoken word performer, MaggieEstep. Unfortunately, Maggie left us too early at the young age of 50. While the poem is on the surface a sad (and hilarious) tale of beauty salon trip gone awry, underneath it’s exterior, there are themes that run the gamut from identity, economic oppression, stripping and sisterhood, and well… just read it.

Bad Day at the Beauty Salon

I was a 20 year old unemployed receptionist with

dyed orange dreadlocks sprouting out of my skull.

I needed a job, but first,

 I needed a haircut.

So I head for this beauty salon on Avenue B.

I'm gonna get a hairdo.

I'm gonna look just like those hot Spanish haircut models, become brown
and bodacious, grow some 7 inch fingernails painted bitch red and rake
them down the chalkboard of the job market's soul.

So I go in the beauty salon.
This beautiful Puerto Rican girl in tight white spandex and a push-up bra
sits me down and starts chopping my hair:
“Girlfriend,” she says, “what the hell you got growing outta
your head there, what is that, hair implants? Yuck, you want me to touch
that shit, whadya got in there, sandwiches?”

I just go: “I'm sorry.”

She starts snipping my carefully cultivated Johnny Lydon post-Pistols hairdo.

My foul little dreadlocks are flying around all over the place but I'm
not looking in the mirror cause I just don't want to know.

“So what's your name anyway?” My stylist demands then.

“Uh, Maggie.”

“Maggie? Well, that's an okay name, but my name is Suzy.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Yeah so it ain't just Suzy S.
U.
Z.
Y, I spell it S.
U.
Z.
E.
E, the extra
“e” is for extra Suzee.”

I nod emphatically.

Suzee tells me when she's not busy chopping hair, she works as an exotic
dancer at night to support her boyfriend named Rocco.
Suzee loves Rocco,
she loves him so much she's got her eyes closed as she describes him:
“6 foot 2, 193 pounds and, girlfriend, his arms so big and long they
wrap around me twice like I'm a little Suzee sandwich.”

Little Suzee Sandwich is rapt, she blindly snips and clips at my poor punk
head.

She snips and clips and snips and clips, she pauses, I look in the
mirror: “Holy shit, I'm bald.”

“Holy shit, baby, you're bald.”
Suzee says, finally opening her
eyes and then gasping.

All I've got left is little post-nuke clumps of orange fuzz.
And I'll never
get a receptionist job now.

But Suzy waves her manicured finger in my face: “Don't you worry,
baby, I'm gonna get you a job at the dancing club.”

“What?”

“Baby, let me tell you, the boys are gonna like a bald go go dancer.”

That said, she whips out some clippers, shaves my head smooth and insists
I'm gonna love getting naked for a living.

None of this sounds like my idea of a good time, but I'm broke and I'm
bald so I go home and get my best panties.
Suzee lends me some 6 inch pumps,
paints my lips bright red, and gives me 7 shots of Jack Daniels to relax
me.

8pm that night I take the stage.

I'm bald,
I'm drunk,
and by god,
I'm naked.

HOLY SHIT I'M NAKED IN A ROOM FULL OF STRANGERS THIS IS NOT ONE OF THOSE
RECURRING NIGHTMARES WE ALL HAVE ABOUT BEING BUTT NAKED IN PUBLIC, I AM
NAKED, I DON'T KNOW THESE PEOPLE, THIS REALLY SUCKS.

A few guys feel sorry for me and risk getting their hands bitten off by
sticking dollars in my garter belt.
My disheveled pubic hairs stand at
full attention, ready to poke the guys' eyes out if they get too close.

Then I notice this bald guy in the audience, I've got a new empathy for
bald people, I figure maybe it works both ways, maybe this guy will stick
10 bucks in my garter.

I saunter over.

I'm teetering around unrhythmically, I'm the surliest, unsexiest dancer
that ever go-go across this hemisphere.
The bald guy looks down into his
beer, he'd much rather look at that than at my pubic mound which has now
formed into one vicious spike so it looks like I've got a unicorn in my
crotch.

I stand there weaving through the air.

The strobe light is illuminating my pubic unicorn.
 Madonna's song Borderline
is pumping through the club's speaker system for the 5th time tonight:

“BORDERLINE BORDERLINE BORDERLINE/LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE.”

And suddenly, I start to wonder: What does that mean anyway?

“LOVE ME TIL I JUST CAN'T SEE”

What?

Screw me so much my eyes pop out, I go blind, end up walking down 2nd Avenue
crazy, horny, naked and blind? What?

There's a glitch in the tape and it starts to skip.

“Borderl.

ooop.

Borderl.

ooop.

Borderlin.

ooop”

I stumble and twist my ankle.
 My g-string rides between my buttcheeks making
me twitch with pain.
 My head starts spinning, my knees wobble, I go down
on all fours and puke all over the bald guy's lap.

So there I am.
 Butt naked on all fours.
 But before I have time to regain
my composure, the strip club manager comes over, points his smarmy strip
club manager finger at me and goes:
“You're bald, you're drunk, you can't dance and you're fired.”

I stand up.

“Oh yeah, well you stink like a sneaker, pal.”
 I peel off one
of my pumps and throw it in the direction of his fat head then I get the
hell out of there.

A few days later I run into Suzee on Avenue A.
 Turns out she got fired
for getting me a job there in the first place.
 But she was completely undaunted,
she dragged me up to this wig store on 14th Street, bought me a mouse brown
shag wig, then got us both telemarketing jobs on Wall Street.

And I never went to a beauty salon again.

 -- Maggie Estep (1963 - 2015)

* * *

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

Seekin' the Cause

Hola mi gente,
¡Revolucion!

For those who don’t know, Miguel Piñero was one of the great Nuyorican poets. I perceive the Nuyorican Movement as part of an identity movement by NY Puerto Ricans that spanned all the arts and political activism. Nuyorican Poets and Musicians would change the art of the spoken word and music and influence many artists. For the most part Nuyorican poets were based in the neighborhood I was raised in, the Lower East Side of NYC’s Manhattan. The Lower East Side (or Loisaida, as we call it), was a neighborhood (since gentrified) that saw countless waves of marginalized groups claim it. When I was growing up there it was mostly a Puerto Rican neighborhood. It wasn’t unusual to see some of these poets on the street corners plying their trade. My father was part of and knew most of the early founders of the Nuyorican Poets.

If you’re ever in NYC, go to the Nuyorican Poets Café. The following is a clip from the film, Piñero, with Ecuadorian actor, Benjamin Bratt, playing the title role.

Seekin' the Cause

he was Dead
he never Lived
died
died
he died seekin' a Cause
seekin' the Cause
because
he said
he never saw the cause
but he heard
the cause
heard the cryin' of hungry ghetto children
heard the warnin' from Malcolm
heard the tractors pave new routes to new prisons
died seekin' the Cause
seekin' a Cause
he was dead on arrival
he never really Lived
uptown . . . downtown . . . crosstown
body was round all over town
seekin' the Cause
thinkin' the Cause was 75 dollars & gator shoes
thinkin' the Cause was sellin' the white lady to black
children
thinkin' the cause is to be found in gypsy rose or j. b.
or dealin' wacky weed
and singin' du-wops in the park after some chi-chiba
he died seekin' the Cause
died seekin' a Cause
and the Cause was dyin' seekin' him
and the Cause was dyin' seekin' him
and the Cause was dyin' seekin' him
he wanted a color t. v.
wanted a silk on silk suit
he wanted the Cause to come up like the mets & take the
world series
he wanted . . . he wanted . . . he wanted . . . he wanted
to want more wants
but
he never gave
he never gave

he never gave his love to children
he never gave his heart to old people
&
never did he ever give his soul to his people
he never gave his soul to his people
because he was busy seekin' a cause
busy
busy perfectin' his voice to harmonize the national anthem
with spiro t agnew
busy perfectin' his jive talk so that his flunkiness
wouldn't show
busy perfectin' his viva-la-policia speech
downtown . . . uptown . . . midtown . . . crosstown
his body was found all over town
seekin' a Cause
seekin' the Cause
found
in the potter fields of an o. d.
found
in the bowery with the d. d. t.'s
his legs were left in viet-nam
his arms were found in sing-sing
his scalp was on Nixon's belt
his blood painted the streets of the ghetto
his eyes were still lookin' for jesus to come down
on some cloud & make everything ok
when jesus died in attica
his brains plastered all around the frames of the pentagon
his voice still yellin' stars & stripes 4 ever
riddled with the police bullets his taxes bought
he died seekin' a Cause
seekin' the Cause
while the Cause was dyin' seekin' him
he died yesterday
he's dyin' today
he's dead tomorrow
died seekin' a Cause
died seekin' the Cause
& the Cause was in front of him
& the Cause was in his skin
& the Cause was in his speech
& the Cause was in his blood
but
he died seekin' the Cause
he died seekin' a Cause
he died
deaf
dumb
&
blind
he died
& never found his Cause
because
you see he never never
knew that he was the
Cause.

 -- Miguel Piñero

You can watch Benjamin Bratt performing the piece in the film, Piñero, here. He does a bang up job.

* * *

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it, please consider helping me out by sharing it, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even throwing me some money on GoFundMe HERE or via PayPal HERE so I can keep calling it like I see it.

A Lower East Side Poem

Hola mi gente,
I’ve been itching to release a potentially controversial piece, but it might (actually it will) jeopardize my job prospects.

In the meantime, you can listen to me this morning at 11AM on WBAI, 99.5 on you FM dial, here in New York City, or tune in via the internet by clicking here.

A Lower East Side Poem

Just once before I die
I want to climb up on a
tenement sky
to dream my lungs out till
I cry
then scatter my ashes thru
the Lower East Side.

So let me sing my song tonight
let me feel out of sight
and let all eyes be dry
when they scatter my ashes thru
the Lower East Side.

From Houston to 14th Street
from Second Avenue to the mighty D
here the hustlers & suckers meet
the faggots & freaks will all get
high
on the ashes that have been scattered
thru the Lower East Side.

There's no other place for me to be
there's no other place that I can see
there's no other town around that
brings you up or keeps you down
no food little heat sweeps by
fancy cars & pimps' bars & juke saloons
& greasy spoons make my spirits fly
with my ashes scattered thru
the Lower East Side...

A thief, a junkie I've been
committed every known sin
Jews and Gentiles... Bums and Men
of style... run away child
police shooting wild...
mother's futile wails... pushers
making sales ... dope wheelers
& cocaine dealers ...smoking pot
streets are hot & feed off those who bleed to death…

all that's true
all that's true
all that is true but this ain't no lie
when I ask that my ashes be scattered thru the
Lower East Side.

So here I am, look at me
I stand proud as you can see
pleased to be from the Lower East
a street fighting man
a problem of this land
I am the Philosopher of the Criminal Mind
a dweller of prison time
a cancer of Rockefeller's ghettocide
this concrete tomb is my home
to belong to survive you gotta be strong
you can't be shy less without request
someone will scatter your ashes thru
the Lower East Side.

I don't wanna be buried in Puerto Rico
I don't wanna rest in long island cemetery
I wanna be near the stabbing shooting
gambling fighting & unnatural dying
& new birth crying
so please when I die...
don't take me far away
keep me near by
take my ashes and scatter them thru out
the Lower East Side...

-- Miguel Piñero

* * *

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…