Wednesday

I woke up this afternoon and took a long shower. I brushed my teeth. Then I spent ten minutes trying to fix my wet head so that the comb-lines didn't create some jarring pattern in the skull-cap of my hair. I had to slick it down completely or it clumped-up at the part, but that made the back into disco-era tentacles groping down my neck. Today’s post is about identification. When I left the house this afternoon I looked like a Bowery hobo done-up for a job interview. I walked straight to the barbershop. On the way, I was pestered by the cyclo drivers and coconut salesmen working the entrance to Reunification Palace. It was strange. These guys got used to us a year ago. Usually, these touts and salesmen just wave hello. Very few of them try to bother me anymore. I can imagine several reasons I was identified as a tourist today. Maybe I'd been forgotten over my lengthy holiday vacation. Or since: we've mostly been taking taxis lately because of the unmanageable sidewalk construction everywhere. Or maybe it's only that I looked like a man from another era, curling at the ends, a fish-out-of-water anywhere besides a seedy tractor-trailer cab. I'd been cultivating hair since November, so I had plenty for a grown-up haircut instead of the DIY buzz I usually get. It's the first time in a decade, I guess. The only problem was that corporate haircuts always look a little post-punker on me, whereas my mustache still looked a little leather-bar (or maybe Ned-Flanders). So I had to shave that off, too. This only solves one of today's problems, though. Now my own fiends, if they were selling coconuts at the gates of Reunification Palace, might not immediately recognize me on the street. [Cavin]