La Plume de Ma Tante

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OMG he´s back again...riding an unusual high, inexplicable and maybe just getting over the travails of the past few days...and knowing where I am, I think!..its Arrial DÁjuba..maybe..does it matter?...
On email - I´d sent one off to someone and hoping they hadn´t just hit the ´delete´button automatically, assuming it was another useless rant or offer of something unnecessary, unwanted or unobtainable...I love opening my email after a spell and seeing lots of entries, then despair seeing all the usual offers to either make my dick bigger or my mortgage smaller...is it the same operation?..the same doctors?...do chicas get the same junkmails?..is the internet gender sensitive?..if so what messages to gays get?...Its one of several disturbing features of email...another is the amazingly intimate degree of personal closeness one gets so quickly with maybe complete strangers...and then, at the moment of hitting the ´send´button....all the confidence, the bravado, basking in the eloquence, the profundity of thought, the pathos...then the button is hit...its gone into the ether...then the tidal wave of remorse, fear, anguish for what I´ve done!...how to claw it back?..disconnect the computer, pull out the cable connection, run outside and cut the wires...all in vain..its gone...and who by and when will it be read?..the other dilema of email is TIME...when?...you write a letter and you have time to re-read and think about it, email is sent and you don´t know if its read instantly or in a week, or month, or never!...and when read will it be out of date?..out of context?..irrelevant?..was it ever relevant...has spelling ever been such a problem?

I needed a haircut. I´d missed a couple of opportunities...the last in Porto Galinhas (and I think I forgot to tell you about the ´Chicken Port´ but later)..I was in a greasy spoon having some fish soup and right opposite was a barber shop...the barber was sitting outside having a beer and as I ate my soup and built up the nerve to go across he drank a few more and I bailed on the idea. My last haircut was, I think, in Centro Commerciale Jumbo in Isla de Margarita.

I approached the pousada mama....language again!...I have slightly better than schoolboy español by now, altho´I couldn´t say La Plume de Ma Tante in it yet...but my portuguesa is less than that, kindergarten maybe..even Day Care level, before any consciousness of pens or aunts...anyway, back to sign language...I made snipping movements with index and middle finger around my head...after turning down an offer of scissors, she twigged and gave me directions that I interpreted as somewhere on Hollywood and Vine, near the church...I wandered off and somehow found Hollywood boulevard...down the end a church..and near the church a little dark doorway, inside ..yes, a barber!.....(outside a tourista was desperately trying to surrepticiously stuff some notes into his girlfriends bag...outside the ATM...paranoid and so fcuking obviously...I had to smile..)
There´s something universal about barbers....and he´s obviously as frustrated as me in the lack of conversation...like a taxi driver when you try and ignore them...there was a gay barber I used to frequent near Prahran market who once gave me a long discourse on how barbering was one of the last professions where people actually touched...sounded reasonable at the time but then, recognizing his orientation I wasn´t sure where it was leading..massage and prostitution came to mind and I tensed up..but what the...did this guy used to fondle his greengrocer, touch the butcher?...where was this going?..anyway, its sort of true and the intimacy of the touch makes a haircut something different as an experience in the commercial, sterile world.....and what control!...the lightest touch of 2 fingers and we turn or tilt, swung around in the chair, glancing at the mirror, what a fantastic looking person I am....by sign language again I indicate No.3 on the sides, No.4 on top..he grins and gets stuck in..and I mean stuck in...he´s digging in the tynes like he´s a farmer ploughing the lower 40 with a turbo charged Massey Ferguson at 5 minutes to knock-off on Friday arvo.....
Then the fine work...scissors around the interface of Nos. 3 and 4, and the ear and nose hairs...now he´s getting tricky, then out with the cut-throat for the edges...not wasting soap here its just a little water and a very steady hand...in fact, one of the best hairies for some time!
Back out on the street I head straight for a outdoor table and a beer and smoke, trying to make some notes about it...but now my hand writing is becoming indecipherable, I can barely make legible notes and ponder this sometime affliction...sometimes I can write quite clearly, hell, I was a draughtsperson for many years...then at other times its such a scrawl as to be totally meaningless...a drunken ant, dipped in ink would leave a clearer trail...is it nerves?..the rush to get it down?..the onset of Parko´s?..I have a sudden flashback to the Brasilian embassy in Caracas on one of the visa applo attempts...they wanted me to fill in yet another form and I could barely write my name...good old keyboard, you won´t let me down!

Out in the square a dozen or so tour busses have arrived...where from?..people crowding around, several ´leaders´explaining something but theres bugger-all here...a whole lot more beautiful women...as this is the biggest cosmetic surgery industry country in the world, or after Venezuela maybe, I´m now suspect of all breasts and bums..theres mothers with 2 or 3 kids looking like 17 year old schoolgirls..this place is obsessed with ´the body beautiful´...I can´t complain, its fabulous to watch.......but theres always the lingering sadness at such transient and superficial ideals of ´beauty´...OK...now thats all off my chest I´ll let you all get back to work or whatever...somethings happened, I´ve tapped into some well and have been writing and plotting all day.....I hope you can get something out of it all...are you with me??

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