EPISODE 30

Les started laughing.  Allan was still over in his corner with Kristine, but he looked up briefly to see what was so funny.  Bosco appeared at my left and smiled as Mrs. Inoue revealed a small tray that appeared to be covered with hundreds of very short individual hairs.

“Get the fuck out of here!” I heard myself mutter.

“Yes!”  Mrs. Inoue said to me.  “Would you like to try?”

Mr. Inoue took the melon and placed it on a small circular rack on the bar in front of him.  Mrs. Inoue moved a binocular microscope that had been sitting to one side on the table in front of the melon and then produced an instrument that featured an extremely fine pointed end.  Mr. Inoue lifted the tray of hairs off the table and held it out to me.

“They’re not real, Michael,” Bosco said.

“How they hell do you know?” I snapped.

“Synthetic!”  Mr. Inoue said with a grin, as he nodded at Bosco.  “Come on, try it!”

Bosco laughed as he took the needle out of Mrs. Inoue’s hand.  “This one is used to make the incision, Michael,” he explained as he approached the melon and peered through a magnifier that had been positioned just above it.  “You have to make a space in the scalp for the new follicle to grow, like planting a garden.”  With a smooth motion, Bosco pierced the skin of the melon.

“Ouch!” somebody said and several others laughed nervously.  Bosco was having a good time of it as he repeated the pricking motion in the melon several more times before handing the instrument back to Mrs. Inoue.  She took it and handed Bosco a pair of placing forceps, which he used to pluck a single synthetic follicle off the tray that Mr. Inoue held.  These forceps had very fine points at the nose, almost as sharp as the needle used to make the initial incisions.  Bosco’s hand hovered over the melon for a few seconds as he looked for one of the cut points he’d made.  When he’d located one, he carefully inserted the fake follicle into it.  There was a smattering of applause and Bosco obliged by repeating the procedure until each of the incisions he’d made held a tiny follicle.  When he’d finished, he returned the forceps to a beaming Mrs. Inoue and with a flourish, bowed deeply to the assemblage, who by then were all clapping and cheering their approval.

“Well, Bosco!” Keith boomed, “You have talents we never dreamed of!”

Bosco grinned and he and I stood to one side as Keith came over to try a little surgery of his own.  Mrs. Inoue handed him the needle and Keith began to merrily puncture the melon and slide the fibers in.  After Keith finished and had received the same wildly appreciative response Bosco had earned, several more people came forward to give it a try.  Mr. Inoue placed a second melon in another rack that he’d put on the bar and before long; both melons were surrounded by newly minted surgeons and appreciative galleries.  The booze flowed and the follicle count grew, as did the artificial hairlines on the melons.  After a couple of hours, they resembled the heads of a pair of young boys, shorn with the classic crew cut.  It was, to say the least, a bizarre sight.

I admit freely that I had a great time.  I was able to prove this assertion to myself the following morning when I awoke in my bed feeling like a wet bag of shit.  Tasting the inside of my mouth, I was able to accurately determine that I’d gotten pretty heavily into the Glenlivet…the beer…and god only knows what else.  Our guests had behaved with all the decorum of mob of high school students who have discovered that the parents of one of their classmates has left town for the weekend.  It was all fairly low key stuff though; a little weed, some extra marital sex in the bedroom that I hadn’t staked out as being my personal turf, and a valiant group effort to consume every drop of the liquor that had been provided before daybreak.  I was fairly certain though that I had avoided the aromatic herbs that emerged quite late in the evening, although the scent of it had always been very seductive to me.

Maybe 15 years before all of this, I had tried my hand in growing pot in the back yard at an old cabin I’d rented in the Green Mountain National Forest.  The growing season for almost everything is short in Vermont, but if you start things indoors, you can do almost anything.  Without boring you with all of the horticultural tricks of the trade, it’s sufficient to say that since this stuff is a weed, it grows like one.  Hence, my observation was that even the most seriously challenged home gardener could grow a good crop for personal use.  I grew what I smoked and smoked all that I grew.  It was a wonderfully balanced formula until I discovered that I stopped enjoying the high.  I didn’t get paranoid, like so many folks do.  In fact, I got so relaxed by the pleasant sensation that the smoke provided that I often drifted right off to sleep.  The other downside was that when I awoke after a smoke filled evening, I usually felt at least as badly as I did that morning at the MGM.  Still, I was sure I’d stayed away from smoking any weed though, as my tiny mind was able to consider just how much of a mess awaited me in the room where the fun and games had only recently concluded.

The alarm clock on the bedside table told me that it was 6AM.  I was awake and I dreaded the sight that I knew would meet me in the living room area.  I pulled myself out of bed, judged that I still was wearing my boxers and a t-shirt, and headed out of the protective zone of my room.  At first glance, I couldn’t believe it.  The place was spotless.  To compound my confusion, I smelled freshly brewed coffee.  I saw that the big screen TV was on, tuned to ESPN, and that a lovely woman stood behind the bar, smiling at me. 

END OF BOOK ONE OF THE NOVEL, SLIPNOT

Book Two will begin on Monday, March 31st.

If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE.