It Looked Different on the Model - Laurie Notaro [28]
“This is ridiculous,” I told the operator as soon as she answered the phone. “This band is so loud! Right now they’re playing Loverboy’s ‘Turn Me Loose’! Who wants to hear that? Who wants to play that?”
“Loverboy does, ma’am,” she told me. “They’re at the county fair. Noise ordinance goes into effect at ten-thirty. Is ten minutes too long for you to hang on? They’ll probably play ‘Working for the Weekend’ next.”
I said thank you and shut up; I know when to take my hits. Then I ran upstairs, where my husband was getting ready for bed, and shrieked, “Oh my God! Loverboy is at the fair! The police said they’re going to play ‘Working for the Weekend’ next! It’s Loverboy! It’s Loverboy!”
After the incident with the Eugene Police Department put me in my place, I tried to keep a low profile, even when I was putting groceries into my car at Safeway and a guy with a black goatee, long black hair in a tight ponytail, sharp widow’s peak, and black pigeon eyes who was parked across from me walked up to his car—a black shiny Mustang with a full-sized skull on the dashboard. He clicked his car alarm, it revved the engine with no one in it, and then I saw the license plate: DIABLO. I assumed that even Hell needs milk and spray pancakes.
I kept quiet when I was at Kinko’s and saw the Angel of Death walk in—who, by the way, is a three-hundred-pound teenager with face paint and tiny pigtails, wearing black feathered wings as wide as a Mini Cooper, and who pulled out a frilly parasol while waiting for the bus. And yes, she smoked. Just in case there was a question.
And when I saw a “free box” on a corner, I said, “Guess what, Eugene hippies? When you start a ‘free pile’ on the corner, you’re not recycling; you’re just throwing your old filthy shit on a corner. Because no one wants your punctured football, your camping chair missing an arm, the tube from your bong, or anything that touched your body. Really. Nobody,” but only to myself.
But then wonderful things started to happen that seemed rather indigenous. It was the first gorgeous day with sun after a very long, rainy winter. My husband and I went down and had garden burgers at a restaurant by the river, sat outside, and watched two people behind us drink several pitchers of beer, then totally break up, complete with lots of crying from both parties.
As soon as they left, the lady sitting behind me informed her dinner companions that “I can’t have a library card, because felons can’t have library cards. I’m learning a lot about this felon thing.” This was almost better than what I’d overheard a waitress say when someone asked her what she was doing over spring break and her response was, “I’m going to California to turn myself in.”
And one day, when the weather had turned back to rain, I was waiting to make a left-hand turn when a woman in a Rascal entered the crosswalk. In Eugene, you are not allowed to make any progress on your turn until the person in the crosswalk is safely on the sidewalk on the other side of the street, so I knew I was in for a wait. As I sat there, she rolled along slowly, an enormous Raisa Gorbachev fur hat resting atop her head and a full-length yellow rain poncho draped around her, making her look like a Dole banana float. She was wearing blue hospital socks, and I know what they are because I have a pair just like them. Then the wind kicked up turbulently, and her poncho fluttered at the edges and was picked up by a gust of wind that flipped it over her head, completely blinding her.
But she made no attempt at all to pull the poncho away as she veered off course and into the intersection and slowly, at two to three miles an hour, headed right