Hip, Slick, and Cool

[Robert Crisman]

Back in the 60s, being at the pool hall meant staying on image patrol; the pool hall was downtown, and looking sharp at every last cost was the price that you paid to hang with the fellas and wait to get stuck in a lineup.

First up was the hair and it had to be right, which is to say, pomped right down to the bone; hell, even the white boys wore do-rags down here, and how hip, slick, and cool was all that?

The point was to get your hair looking like glass, and this worked out different for us than it did for the brothers: they had to straighten their hair after all, and this involved liquids shipped in straight from hell, and some of that shit caused four-alarm fires, especially when guys got all jacked up on dope; white hair meanwhile was already straight, but most of the time it didn't have body for pomp like we wanted, so we had our own hell to go through:

First, we'd wash it and lard in some Dixie Peach hair grease--fuck all that sissy-ass brylcreem and stuff--then break out a towel and rub it all in till it kinked up three feet and the shit started smoking; next was to hair-brush it out until you got the approximate pomp shape you wanted, all of which hurt like a bastard, of course, and then hairspray it down with some shit that would hold like a rock, and then next, comb it out--slowly, my man, or your comb teeth would break and be lost forever inside your do--which would take another day-and-a-half, and your hair's going snap-crackle-pop like Rice Krispies, but hey, nothing for it, and then, repeat, and repeat again, till your last fucking hair was in place...

And now what you had was a fiberglass head, slick as a Stingray, that you could use as a weapon if that's what it came to, and it would last you three days, maybe four if you took some care, and this is where do-rags came in:

See, sooner or later you had to sleep, and sleep fucks your shit up, and without a do-rag, you'd get out of bed, your hair's like an old, bombed-out building, with planks sticking up every which fucking way, but a rag kept it pressed, more or less, and if, after three or four nights, your do was kind of crushed in and squiggly and shit, it still beat the sheer, sawtoothed hell of going from ground up again; those building permits alone cost a fortune...

[Jamie Hogan]

Vintage Crisman. The best street poet on the web.

[Joey Delgado]

'See, sooner or later you had to sleep, and sleep fucks your shit up...'

Love the narrarator in this six. A great character talking about a great subject. I can picture him smoking a cigarette, eyes glazed, on a good one, talking a blue streak and everyone around him holding their breath so they don't miss a word.

[Stephen Torelli]

Yes, and I remember when Mosconi visited our local for an exhibition running over 100 balls and the hustlers on the sideline making their bets. 

[Paul de Denus]

a great write Robert- from "rub it all in till it kinked up three feet and the shit started smoking;" to "your hair's like an old, bombed-out building, with planks sticking up every which fucking way"- funny stuff

[Judy Thompson]

laughed all the way through this,  especially because guys used to twit us about how much we fussed over our hair,  when most of the time our only pain was sleeping on brush rollers that left permanent dents in our scalp like little potato furrows.  But this, oh my lord, this is so right, so  goofy,  so adolescently vain...and by now probably most of those do-rag guys are doing combovers and if they made it into money, hair transplants.  

Perfect, just perfect.  And yeah, that voice is wonderful. 

[Ron. Lavalette]

Brilliant, Crisman. Voice solid & consistent throughout & the subject very clearly and cleverly disclosed. Great use of vernacular.  Faved.

 I never did much of a hair thing except just to let it grow.

[Jadie Jones]

I *LOVE* the voice of this narrator. Very well done. I have curly, crazy white-girl fro hair (it's flat-ironed in my picture) and my best friend in highschool was black. She always said I had some black in me some kinda way on account of my hair.

[Angela]

This is stuffed with great phrases, and they paint a vivid picture of one of the icons of an era.  Now, how about the bee-hive?

And what clothes did you wear with this hair?

Made me laugh out loud.