Pubic Hair, 25 Cents!
June 19, 2005
Virgo and I conquered my cell phone handicap and met for a drink at Passerby — a bar around the corner from her sister Cynthis’s loft. Cynthia was having a party, so we figured we’d meet ahead of time. However, I’d forgotten how far west the bar is, and I was late.
"Where are you?" Virgo called to ask.
"Down the street. I'll be there in five minutes."
"Okay. I'm gonna run to an ATM, so I might not be here, but I'll be back."
I sat at the bar and ordered a Jameson's on the rocks.
"Eight dollars," said the bartender, placing a glass of mostly ice on the napkin in front of me.
No wonder Virgo ran out to the cash machine.
I was halfway through the drink when Virgo walked in, soaked with sweat. "It's so hot outside. And I'm wearing all these clothes," she said, plucking at her shirt and pulling it away from her sticky skin.
“Why are you wearing all those clothes?” I asked.
"I'm practicing my Muslim wear," she explained. She and her fiancé are going to Morocco for their honeymoon this summer, and she's trying to get a head start on covering her skin in sweltering weather.
While the drink prices alone would've been enough to make either of us sweat, it was a call from Virgo’s fiancé that kept us from ordering a second drink. "Where are you guys?" he asked. "I'm holding a rabbit."
"A rabbit?" Virgo's eyes lit up, she gave her straw a final slurp, and we were out the door.
A performer was setting up when we arrived, who looked like an Eastern European Tom Hanks. He had a table full of bells and whistles--literally. Harmonicas and bullhorns, too. He moaned, yelped, and chirped into the microphone, which was wired through an assortment of effect pedals and made him sound like a horror movie soundtrack. The harmonica through a harmonizer sounded exactly like a church organ. Okay, make that a drunken church organ. It was loud, and I had to put my fingers in my ears half the time. Meanwhile, an older man with Albert Einstein hair, seated in front of me, kept his fingers in his ears the entire time.
When the music was over and the crowd thinned out, Virgo took me on a tour of her sister's art: assorted, fucked up, rewired, and customized arcade games installed around the loft. The piece that gave the show its name--Cynth-O-Matic--is a vending machine that dispenses little plastic containers filled with pubic hair, menstrual blood, fingernails, and eyelashes.
Only 25 cents!
