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That evening Lemon had plans to take Alva, Fish and Chips, and Brenda and Brent out to dinner. The word had gotten out around town about the incident in the titty bar the night before. People were talking about the strange goings-on at the barbershop and how the dancer was going to get AIDS ‘cause the woman who bit her hung out with that Rooster Crowd from the barbershop.
Rooster had become a pariah around town after people had found out about his HIV status. Fish accepted everybody as they were, except for complete idiots or troublemakers, as long as they either got their hair cut or nails done on occasion and maybe smoked a cigar. There was something intelligent and earthy in the way the barbershop looked and was run. This drew people from under many a rock, after the cruel grunts of narrow-minded everyday day life had driven them into seclusion. This was, after all, North Carolina, the home of Jesse Helms.
Rooster’s was such a case. He was a wild-child in his fifties, the same as Fish. He’d been there, done that. He had a skull and crossbones painted on the middle fingernail of his right hand. After he found out that he was HIV positive, he did the honorable thing and told the ones he had been with, many on that same little island where the shop was located. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with him anymore. Even his old barber would no longer cut his hair. Fish knew that with proper hygienic procedures and a few basic precautions and a wee bit of intelligence, there should be no problems. It was that simple.
Anyway, the bite in the ass and the sex over the air waves was giving cause for many of the locals to already begin circulating petitions and phoning in anonymous complaints to the mayor’s office. The mayor was a friend, but there was only so much he could do to keep things mellow and still remain in office. I tagged along that night with Rooster the biker and the huge, cigar-smoking, always smiling Gastro. We had a few beers in a few local watering holes. Gastro reminded everyone that Rooster was a Vietnam vet just like himself. Gastro watched out for Fish and made certain that everyone knew that there were no strange goings-on goin’ on, “Just a little good clean fun, heh, heh, heh.”

The next morning when I walked across the street to the truck to feed and visit Toots, I noticed that Rooster’s Harley was still parked out front. While I was outside, Lemon left the apartment with his carpetbag and let himself into the barbershop. This wasn’t unusual; the same key fit both doors. Since the bathroom in the apartment was small and communal, If someone had to take a really bad shit they would saunter over to the shop to use one of the restrooms available there as long as the shop was closed.
Toots was beginning to get tired of the truck. It had been parked in the same spot for several weeks, and people were commenting on the cat on the dashboard. It wasn’t unsafe—the cab was always well ventilated, and the street was just too busy and strange to let her venture out at her advanced age. I was in the process of negotiating a cash deal with the buyer up North, hoping for Toots and I to move into our own place, and pursue the film project with a little more independence and dignity. I was leaning toward Wilmington. The town had a certain attraction about it, and besides I was afraid of getting that island mentality if I stayed in Carolina Beach. You never leave; your entire outlook becomes absorbed by a little patch of land surrounded by water on all sides, and everything can wait till Manana. Now that’s fine, but not when you’re trying to raise money to produce a feature length documentary with national implications. And that’s what we were trying to do.
I went through the tai-chi form a couple of times in the vacant lot across from the shop, then ventured over to the apartment and brewed a pot of coffee. About forty-five minutes later, Lemon came back in, carrying his carpetbag and wearing a big shit eatin’ grin. I had never seen him smile before. He saw me and immediately turned sour.
“What did Fish put in that mead?” he asked, holding his stomach.
“Brent makes the mead,” I smiled.
“Oh,” he said, and glumly walked into the bedroom.
I had coffee and then walked over to the shop to tend the garden and clean up the back yard to prepare the space for Gastro and the Saturday Feast. It was Preakness Day. Grilled or fried batter-dipped shark, hush-puppies and coleslaw were on the menu. Everyone arrived at noon: Fish, Alva and Gastro. I walked over to the beach and went for a swim. The salt water had been doing wonders for my infected wrist.
On returning to the apartment I noticed that Rooster’s Harley was still parked out front of the shop. It was late afternoon, nearly lunchtime, so I cleared out quickly and went for the shark. No one had seen Rooster since the previous night. It was an especially busy day, shark was always popular. The troops were out in full force, even Maxwell Beauregard Rules had shown up. He was in the chair getting a trim as four o’clock approached. Maxwell knew the Saturday routine, and waited for his food in the prime seat. Right on time, Chips appeared at the window, Fish took off and Brent took over. Lemon watched the drama unfold as he glumly sat in a bent metal chair sipping potato vodka through a straw from a Styrofoam cup. He had gone and bought his own. Fish and Chips always took an entire hour and everyone speculated what exactly they were doing. That young girl would kill that old man after a straight hour, everyone thought.
A few minutes went by and Lemon stood up from his seat and glumly walked over to the counter, pulled open a bottom door and flipped a switch. Rooster walked in the door just in time. The first thing that everyone heard all through the shop and out on the patio was the sound of Fish’s voice.
“Your ass, your ass, give me your ass!”
Lemon had wired the bedroom for sound and placed wireless speakers inside and out. For the next hour no one spoke, no one ate, no food was cooked, no one moved. Everyone sat gaping in amazement at the radio broadcast of the sexual exploits of Fish and Chips at the Beach. The occasional strangers who ventured in simply turned around and walked out since nobody would speak to them.
When they were finished, Lemon walked over and flipped the switch off. When they came back in the shop they got a standing ovation, inside and out. And they were none the wiser. All the older men formed a procession to shake Fish’s hand and thank him for the food. He didn’t understand all the sudden gratitude. It was almost time for the Preakness. Rollo collected five dollars each from willing participants and they drew the number of a horse out of a hat. When he got to Fish, Fish asked him what he had planned for Lemon.
“Let bygones be bygones,” Rollo said. Rollo knew that he was no match for the master trickster Lemonhead.
There was no TV in the shop and Rollo popped out to see who had won the race. When he came back he gave all the money to Lemon. It turned out that Lemon didn’t have the winning horse. He kept the money anyway. Rollo paid the winner too.

I rinsed out the coffee urn and Fish refilled it with a batch of mead from a five gallon glass water bottle Brent had dropped off in the storage room. He was chuckling when I came in to see if he needed any help, and I saw him stash something in the corner. I carried the urn back to the front counter where Lemon had joined Chips and Rooster and Brad. Lemon was no longer wearing his cap. There was a tuft of dark hair from one side of his skull combed across the top. He looked like the picture on the lemonhead candy box: tiny beady eyes and bristly dark eyebrows. The room was sullen. I excused myself to take that shower and read a bit more about blood. When I was leaving Brenda pulled up to the front of the barbershop in her car.
Fish was to spend the weekend at Chips’ hideaway up the beach. Over at the apartment Lemon had taken over Fish’s room, so I kept my couch in the hall. The small bathroom had two doors, one to the bedroom and one to the hall. I went in the hall door for my shower, and the bedroom door was open. Spread upon the bed I could see several electronic devices: microphones and transmitters and tiny speakers—next to neatly stacked clothing and the open carpet bag. I closed both doors and took a cool refreshing shower, scrubbing until I removed what seemed to be grit all over my body. I thought it was from riding in the convertible. Clean and regenerated, after the shower, I opened both doors. The electronic devices and the carpet bag were nowhere in sight, though the clothes were still stacked neatly on the bed. I read and napped until the sun went down.
When I came back to the shop everyone was drinking and smoking cigars, and seemed to be having a good old time. Rooster sat calmly in the barber chair, as good natured insults were exchanged throughout the room. Fish had finished cutting hair for the night. Brent was simply finished, bleary-eyed and burdened. Gastro, Rollo and Evita had joined the gang. Alva was decorating Lemon’s thumbs with lemons as Brenda watched. The room was sour like lemonade, watered down and sweetened with meaningless jokes creating some sense of fellowship, spiked with libations and flavored with cigar smoke.
“The cleanup man’s here,” Fish announced, “It’s time to move the party onward.”
The party soon danced on out the door on their way to the boardwalk. Brenda was latched onto Lemon’s arm and Brent followed along like a zombie. After the dust had cleared, I checked in the back to see what Fish had stashed when I walked in on him earlier. It was an empty bottle of grain alcohol. I returned to the front, had a couple cups of mead, then went next door and went to sleep.
I was awakened by the rumbling of the front door and rowdy laughter. The party had returned, it was time to get up.
“She shouldna stuck it in my face,” Brenda shouted defensively.
I lay still with my eyes wide open, still dressed in expectation of the returning hordes. There was only Brenda and Brent, Fish and Chips and Lemon and Rollo. Rollo was the loudest as they stumbled through the door.
“On the ass! She bit her on the ass!” Rollo shouted, busting his gut with laughter. “We were almost killed,” he laughed.
One after another they filed through my hallway bedroom into the kitchen toward the beer and the booze. First Rollo then Brenda and Lemon and Chips came through. I stayed on my back, still and smiling. Fish followed and paused after catching himself laughing out loud.
“Jesus, you guys going to wake up my building,” said landlord Fish.
I smiled at him. “Sounds to me like the mead was a little grainy,” I said.
Fish smiled like a pixy. “Got me,” he said, then went into the living room to turn on the stereo. He put on a stack of vinyl, all Moody Blues.
Brent dragged his leg in, following behind, grinning from ear to ear proud as a peacock. “Brenda bit a dancer on the ass.”
I got up and got a drink and listened to the stories while the party mellowed out, Fish’s fine selection of music controlling the mood. It seems when the party hit the boardwalk they went right to the infamous “titty bar,” where topless dancers collected money in their thongs. One of the women got a little close to Brenda’s face, so she bit her. After a bit of an altercation, which Gastro and Rooster broke up, they were all asked to leave.
Brenda sat by Lemon, and she was all over him just as Fish had predicted. She got into the butcher’s lap. She certainly couldn’t sit on Brent’s lap with his burnt out knee. Lemon was Fish’s age, about 25 years older than Brent and about 15 years older than Brenda. I know age is relative, and there are other factors like experience and physical conditioning and money, but I still felt better for Brent’s sake when Brenda tweaked Lemon’s nose and called him Santa. I went to the kitchen for a glass of water and Fish joined me there to freshen his mug with Captain Morgan and coke, and probably to make sure I wasn’t drinking any more of his liquor. “Do you see what’s going on in there with Brenda and Lemon?” Fish whispered, half crocked.
“She called him Santa,” I said.
“In the same room with Brent,” Fish said tilting his head for emphasis. “You can have another drink,” he added. “Lemon paid for this stuff.”
Without hesitating I poured myself a double shot of Captain Morgan and belted it down. Rollo joined us in the kitchen.
“Do you see what’s going on in there?” he said.
I walked back into the living room and Chips was on Lemon’s other knee, rubbing Lemon’s belly and calling him Santa. Then the women kissed each other while sitting on Lemon’s lap as Fish entered the room. It was out of control and disjointed, as most gatherings become when everybody has had a little too much to drink, but that was the group minus a few early dropouts.
“Chicklettes forever!” Brenda proclaimed.
Brent sat comfortably in his chair and began to sing, “I saw mommy kissing Santa Claus, underneath the mistletoe last night.”
They were having fun.
“Blood,” I reminded myself, “blood,” and I couldn’t join in. Enjoying the party would have meant certain death to my focus. I saw problems ahead for the project. The party ended and I went back to sleep.

We arrived at the barbershop half an hour later. Chips’ truck was parked in front of the shop beside Rooster’s Harley. Her short visits had become extended weekends as Spring progressed. Lemonhead, clutching his bag to his chest, with his cap pulled tightly down on his head, managed to pull himself out of the back of Brent’s car. I had the urge to immediately take a shower, but I had to see how Fish and Lemon would greet each other. After all, Lemon had been Fish’s most frequent visitor from up North; he seemed to be his best friend.
Brad and I walked into the shop. Brent went for the mead. I sat down in a bent metal chair. Rooster was in a barber chair, drinking beer from a Styrofoam cup, quite at home. Fish was in the midst of shaping Chips’ perfect duck’s ass, and in walked Lemon.
“Oh, shit!” Fish blurted out. “I cut it off.”
Lemon said, “I’d like to take a shower.”
“The key is in the usual place,” Fish said.
Chips glared at Fish. “You didn’t.”
“I’ll give you a square back.”
Lemon turned and walked out the door.
Brad took a big gulp of mead and nearly choked. “This tastes like vinegar!”
“It is vinegar. I’m cleaning it.” Fish said.
Chips screamed, “What did you do to my hair?”
Fish’s eyes got real big and he looked as innocent as ET. “It’s not my fault.” He pointed at the closing door.
Rooster hesitatingly took a sip of beer and found it was still okay. Fish had finally gotten Chips to change her hair style, and she was none the wiser. He lovingly cut it very short and sculpted her head to bring out his favorite features, as only a master barber can do.

Lemon was another friend of Fish’s. They had also been roommates in Baltimore and Lemon never left. Fish had to sell the house to get him to move out. Anyway, Lemon was due for a visit on the weekend of the Preakness. Fish thought I knew Lemon from the past, but I didn’t remember. That’s all anyone spoke of the week before his arrival. “Here comes Lemonhead!”
Over the course of Fish’s ten years in Carolina Beach, Lemon had visited and worked around the shop. He had built the roof over the yard and was a good all around handyman. I didn’t know why they called him “Lemonhead.” I didn’t find out till later it was Lemon; he hated being called “Lemonhead.”
“When he walks into a room everything turns sour,” Fish told me.
Everyone devised practical jokes to play on the man, as paybacks for jokes he had played on them. I had no idea what Fish meant by everything turning sour. Everyone was having a ball with the expectation of Lemon’s appearance on the island, especially Rollo the surfer, a former alligator wrestler. Rollo had a special payback in mind for something Lemon had done to him on his last visit. The anticipation was almost exciting. I thought maybe even the name “Lemon” was a joke of sorts.
Rollo had been banned from the barbershop a few times but Fish always let him back in.
“He’s from old money, which he lends me when I’m in a jam,” Fish said, “little bit eccentric. I’ve gotta put him in his place once in awhile.” t was Fish’s barbershop and his apartment, and both were unique from years of gathering from yard-sales and flea markets and bartering in the barbershop for booze and services. He was proud of his collection of original art from artists he had known and sheared. He worked hard. The last time Lemon was in town Rollo had fallen asleep in one of the barber chairs expecting Fish to give him a duck’s ass and Lemon shaved his head clean. Fish thought it was as funny as everyone else did. Lemon must have had some heavy duty blackmail leverage on Fish
Anyway, on Friday I talked Brent into driving to the airport and giving Lemon a ride back to the Beach. He didn’t seem very excited about the idea. In fact, he didn’t seem very excited about Lemon coming to town at all. Since we were in Wilmington anyway it seemed logical to do a friend a favor and save him a twenty-five dollar cab fare. Reluctantly Brent agreed. I called Fish to see if any other arrangements had been made and told him the plan.
“Brent is going to pick up Lemonhead?” he said. “Brenda hits on him every time he comes to town. She can’t keep her hands off of him.”
“Oh shit,” I said. “Who is this guy?” Maybe Fish was exaggerating—he had also told me that Brenda got a little crazy when she had a few drinks too many, and I hadn’t seen that side of her. The last thing I wanted to do was cause an uncomfortable situation for Brent. We had a ton of work ahead and it was a job keeping him focused, even when he was enthusiastic and happy. I felt fortunate to be free of personal ties. My relationship was with my work, and part of that work was keeping Brent working. At that point, without him there would be no project.
I had seen a group photograph in one of Fish’s old barbershop posters but Lemon had been wearing a flight helmet. I didn’t think he would recognize me and I certainly wouldn’t recognize him. I wrote up a sign that said “Lemonhead.” Brent’s usual quick wit seemed to have dried up, but the prospect of announcing to a group of people that they’d just flown with someone called “Lemonhead” seemed like fun.
We arrived at the airport. After about the time it took to drink a beer, watching through the airport bar window, we saw the plane pull up to the gate.
Brent sat off to the side where he couldn’t be seen and I held the sign in the air. Passengers began filing out of the plane and into the airport, looking like the sourest bunch of people in the universe even though many were being greeted by others happy to see them. Suddenly it seemed as though the oxygen had been sucked out of the entire airport. A few seconds later a short dumpy guy in an Orioles baseball cap strolled right past with a carpetbag. He looked like an assistant in a butcher’s shop. I felt enthusiasm sucked from my body and knew that must have been him.
Brent limped over to me. “Did you feel that?” he asked.
I was speechless. We followed Lemon out of the airport and he walked directly to the taxi stand. He had either missed the sign or simply ignored it.
“Lemon!” I called out from behind. He turned. “We came to pick you up,” I said.
“Why?” he said.

I discovered a foundation dedicated to independent film. They acted as a non-profit fiscal sponsor. This would enable contributors to the project a charitable tax deduction. The foundation also opened the door to grants that required recipients to be non-profit organizations, and also offered support services for independent films. A non-profit fiscal sponsor like that seemed essential for non-commercial films or documentaries. While Brent channeled his energies into finding investors and willing participants for the documentary, I continued reading anything I could get my hands on about hemophilia and contacted the film foundation. This was, after all, a worthwhile project, and nothing, to our knowledge, had been attempted for the general public about hemophilia. In fact, early on Brent received a video from the National Hemophilia Foundation in which there was a passionate appeal for someone to tell the story, factually and visually.
We would return to the barbershop at about four on weekday afternoons, Fish’s lunch break. Brent would have his beer and watch the shop, while Fish would step out to the yard and have lunch with Alva. Fish had images of straight razors etched on either pinky nail. I usually retired to the apartment for phone calls and more reading, a lot of which I wasted on Dr. Deusberg, who I felt was basically saying that AIDS wasn’t his fault. When the money from up North didn’t come, my visit began to wear on Fish. I sold a few things from the back of the truck. One of the things I parted with was an old fiddle which I had picked up at a yard sale many years ago. I didn’t know how to play it, but Toots the cat used to strum the strings on many a lonely night whenever I was living under a roof that I could call home, and could have my things spread about.
I continued to do chores around the shop, and gardening, but the food stopped, except for occasional leftovers and the Saturday feasts. I stayed out of Fish’s way as much as possible, and made certain that I didn’t seem to be having any fun. The hope was that Brent and I could get the necessary funding quickly, and start production—but then I began to find things out.
For one thing, Brent had attempted other fund raising ventures, such as raffles and concerts. He had ideas, but didn’t fully follow through—he gave up. The boxes of newsletters, which I had assumed he had a mailing list for, were actually sent in bulk to a few home-care companies and may never have been distributed. And finally I found out how the hemophilia community reacted to Brent’s views on HIV. What I saw as denial or legitimate doubt about whether HIV causes AIDS, people who were dying and whose friends or relations were dying saw as a slap in the face.
Two companies, however, had sent money in good faith in response to a proposal for a film which I would produce and direct. Of course, they didn’t know me from diddly or that I had just been thrown out of film school, but they had responded to a proposal which I had basically written. They did know Brent and he had been the messenger. I had escaped to Wilmington and the opportunity presented itself to tell a story–make a movie. Brent was a professional hemophiliac, that’s how he made his living. By now we had used part of the money to acquire an attorney, form a company, and have stationery printed. I was still counting on Brent to raise the money, I knew I couldn’t. But I feared he would fade on me. And then along came Lemonhead.

Brad began picking me up every weekday and we made the drive into Wilmington to his cave. The office was located in the Cotton Exchange on the South end of downtown. There was a shared receptionist who screened calls for the occupants, from psychics and massage therapists to insurance salesmen and a consumer protection agency. The manager of the building, Cleo, was an attractive dominatrix with a voice that could crack a windshield.
“She’s evil,” Brent told me.
“Nah,” I answered.
The building had just gone through a great transition and many of the tenants had vacated over personality conflicts or the usual petty stuff, politics. Or it was just time for them to move on and the gossip was created to intensify the drama in a place where not very much actually happened.
Cleo’s family owned a great deal of property downtown. Cleo was getting her wings and throwing her ass around whenever she could, having graduated from being the black-sheep hippie girl of the family to daddy’s little girl going through culture shock. Cleo wooed tenants she wanted to keep. Brent was one of them. He had planned to move out on the first of the month, but she promised him a larger cave with a view and a nearby parking space. For the past year he had been dragging his leg from blocks away. No wonder he thought she was evil.
By the first of May I still hadn’t seen any money from Mountain Valley, but Brent moved into his new office with a view, which we shared. We came up with a proposal for a 90 minute film and promptly sent it out to eight different companies. Two said that they would send money. Bingo! North American
Biologicals Inc. sent five thousand dollars. A home-care company out of New Jersey that had operations in the Carolinas sent five hundred. I tried to collect the last 30,000 dollars from the sale of my business, but the guy never returned my phone calls. He could have paid me in a heart beat—his regional thing was booming. So I simply threw a curse on him.
Aside from the money thing that came with film, I realized we were dealing with very sensitive subject matter. The number of people from the hemophilia community that was believed to have been infected with HIV from clotting factor concentrates ranged from six to ten thousand or so, including spouses and family members who were also unknowingly infected. We wanted to do everything by the book, according to Hoyle.

Sunday was the beach day. Fish and Chips had spent the night at the other end of the island at Chip’s condo at the beach. Chips worked as an engineer for a furniture manufacturing company in the middle of the state. She did well. Fish had introduced me to Maxwell Beauregard Rules, a clean-cut, gray haired southern gentleman who was often typecast as a Klansman, whenever he was called to do extra work, in some of the movies and programs filmed in the Wilmington area. After a morning visit to Toots, and my daily ritual of tai-chi in a vacant lot, I sauntered over to the beach with reading and writing material and a bamboo straw mat. Maxwell was sitting alone in a lounging chair, wearing a straw hat and sunglasses, sipping bottled spring water through a straw.
It was April, but sunny and hot. Hardly any people were swimming; not very many people were on the beach. Maxwell invited me to grab a patch of sand as he pointed out flocks of large brown pelicans and the bikini clad young women and other visual candy. The finger he pointed with had a confederate flag decorating the nail. He was more daring than darling, with an inquisitive mind and engaging manner. He owned and managed several properties on the island and catered to disengaged Yankees who didn’t mind being verbally abused by a southern gentleman.
“Yankees! Y’all bring money and leave. I like that. I just have to double up on my insulin when y’all around.”
Once the word got out that we were working on developing a film about hemophilia, everyone began telling me their ills. I was torn between getting some Jack Kervorkian cards to pass out or simply listening. Nobody really cared about hemophilia except for hemophiliacs, their families, and those who benefited, the homecare and pharmaceutical industries. There were so many distractions and temptations that it didn’t take me long to realize that I was there for a reason, because the blood thing kept sucking me in deeper and deeper, keeping me focused: The Royal Disease, Rasputin the Mad Monk, the “bleeder” thing, the HIV thing, the AIDS thing. I was hooked.
“If it’s fundable, it’s doable.” Was it fundable? That was the big question.

And then came Saturday, the Feast at Fish’s Barber Shop. That’s when I met Gastro, a big guy who came from Cuba as a baby, and fought in the Vietnam War as a kid. He walked around with a big grin all the time. Most Vietnam Vets I had known were, excuse the expression, really fucked up and over from that War, but Gastro was three hundred pounds and happy. Of course he wore his hair in a DA, and he had a big furry beard. He was a cross between Ricky Ricardo and Fidel Castro, with a Carolinian accent, always smoking a cigar and drinking mead from a Styrofoam cup when he cooked the Feast at Fish’s. Fish had filled me in on everything beforehand. That first Saturday there was to be a big pot of gumbo and smoked pork butt.
After feeding Toots across the street in the truck the first thing every morning I practiced my tai-chi in a vacant lot to help my healing process. I was startled to see smoke pouring from behind the outside fence of the barbershop. Fish was off on his Saturday morning run of yard sales. I walked over to the back gate and peeked over the fence. Gastro, with a cigar in his mouth and smoke engulfing his entire body, carefully turned large chunks of meat with his big beefy hands.
“Good morning,” I said.
His head turned toward me. Sure enough, he had this big grin on his face with a cigar between his teeth and hot meat in his hands.
“Butt,” he said. His attention turned back to his work and the ash fell from the cigar onto the meat as he placed it back on the grill. He brushed it off and chuckled. “Heh, heh, heh. A little piece of ash ain’t never hurt nobody.” He put the lid back on the smoker then rubbed his hands briskly together, adding with a smile, “If yer careful, heh, heh, heh.”
Fish pulled alongside the fence in his old pickup truck with the day’s booty in the bed. He turned off the engine and sniffed the air, filling his chest, smiling.
“EHHHHH! Butt,” he exhaled.
My foot throbbed just thinking about it. The pork sure did smell good. Fish climbed from the truck and we began unloading air conditioners onto the lot in the back of the shop. They were in a variety of sizes and dismantled stages. The little red convertible pulled up to the front of the shop, and Brent came limping around the corner, sniffing the air. He had a perky little grin on his face. He raised his eyebrows.
“But when?” Brent exclaimed with his finger pointed at the sky.
“Noon!” Fish answered with a rigid gruffness.
“Give him meat.” Brent said squinting, and handed me a small stack of 3×5 cards with the other hand, turned and limped, with his finger shaking in the air to a boogie only he could hear, back to the car and pulled off.
I riffled through the cards quickly, slid them into my back pocket and continued unloading air-conditioners, sore back, burning toe joint and access to a couch to sleep on.
Fish opened the shop promptly at noon. I was next door, attempting to put Brent’s cards in some type of order. I was working on a three act system, since my leaning was toward the dramatic content of the story, though it be a documentary. Alva set up shop in the corner of the yard for nails and Gastro held court at the oversized butcher-block table in the back. The regulars drank beer from long neck bottles and ate bowls of gumbo and butt, while sitting at wire spool tables on wire spool stools.
Saturday was Fish’s customer appreciation day. The food was free, but the cigar box was stuffed. Only the regulars were allowed in the back and that’s where the beer stayed when the tourists were in town. There was only mead and coffee in the front. If someone should ask about the beer in the back, they were told that people had brought their own beer, but that certainly wasn’t allowed. Fish was a businessman.
“I appreciate my customers much more when they give me money,” Fish said.
Gastro cooked the food and drank free mead, but he paid for his beer and cigars. Fish did pay for the food, though customers occasionally brought other things for the feast.
Chips, Fish’s new lady, worked and lived about four hours away. I hadn’t met her yet with the exception of a few phone conversations. Fish spoke to her everyday, but when he wasn’t close to that skin for awhile he got a little testy. That ain’t good for someone who gives close shaves. She was coming in for the rest of the weekend. No one took a shave until after she arrived and Fish took lunch, which was a Saturday ritual in itself.
“Fish, ya gonna eat wit us?”
“Uh-huh,” he replied brusquely while working on his last head before four o’clock. I had been forewarned so I was sitting in the shop with Brent and a few others to watch. I was told he probably would have thrown me out of the apartment bodily when Chips arrived.
At one minute to four Gastro walked in the shop with one large bowl of gumbo and a chunk of butt. “Your butt’s here, heh, heh, heh.”
Fish looked at the wall clock. “Can’t you see I’m still cutting hair.”
“It’s lunchtime,” Gastro said.
“I know it’s lunchtime.” Fish replied looking out the front window, and there she appeared right on time, a cute little bulldog with a DA, Chips. Fish was almost giddy. “It’s time to eat! Brad, take over.”
The haircut wasn’t finished and the tourist customer looked around in bewilderment. Brent was already past his third cup of mead. He was willing. Fish handed him the comb and scissors. The tourist looked rather frightened, but Brent simply climbed into the other chair as though it had been rehearsed, announcing “It is time to eat, I am in command here.”
Gastro said, “What about this food?”
“Eat it!” Fish exclaimed, and he was out the door in a flash, joining Chips, gone.
The tourist looked over at Brad, questioning and pointing to his head.
“Don’t look at me. I’m here to guard the cash register. GRRRR!” he said, holding up the scissors and comb.
Gastro shoved the bowl of gumbo into the tourist’s hands. “Eat it.” he said. He turned and walked out the door. It was almost like a lottery.
A few minutes later, a full-dressed Harley pulled up to the front of the barbershop and parked. The rider was wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, gloves, black leather pants and boots, and a black helmet with a rooster painted on the side. He dismounted, removed his helmet, brushed his hair and walked straight in the front door.
“Ahwant ma hare cut.” he announced. His voice was like coarse sandpaper wearing a dirty southern diaper. There was a large scar at the base of his Adam’s Apple. He strained for volume but commanded attention. He looked over at Brad. The tourist sat tight in his chair, munching on his butt and gumbo.
“How’s yer bug?” he asked.
“Harmless,” Brent said.
“Mon ain’t. Kilt off ever fren Ah thought Ah had. God damned rednecks, scared of somethin called by litters. Fish is the only barber I know that gives a good duck’s ass and don’t care what cha got. Where’s ee? Tellim the Rooster’s here.”
The tourist laughed and blurted out, “He’s having lunch.”
Rooster glared at the tourist. “You got the bug?”
The tourist looked down into his bowl. “What bug?”
“H-AH-V. Ah do,” he said nodding at Brad, “he does.” Rooster looked at me. “Ah know all about you. Fish told me.” He turned back to the tourist. “Ah don’t know about you. What’re ya eatin’?”
The tourist looked at him meekly. “Gumbo,” he hesitated, “and butt.”
Rooster coughed a laugh and smiled. “Well, kiss ma ass. BUT WHAT!” Rooster slapped the tourist on the shoulder, laughing. “You musta hit the lottery. Gastro makes the best gumbo this side ada street. Let me know when a chairs empty.” Rooster walked through the shop and out the side door to the back.
The tourist looked over at Brad. “You have AIDS?”
Brad lowered and shook his head. He raised his glare and his eyes got real big, staring directly at the tourist. He held the comb and scissors and pushed himself out of the chair. “I have something called HIV and I’m ready to cut your hair.”
The tourist removed the apron from around his neck and stood from the chair. He held onto the bowl of gumbo. “I like it the way it is,” he said.
“Good. Pay for it then,” Brent said.
The tourist looked over at me and I smiled. He scrambled in his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, placed it on the counter. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought I was in North Carolina.” He dropped the bowl of gumbo into the plastic lined, covered trash can, turned and walked out the door.
Brad limped over to where I was sitting and picked up his cup of mead. He looked like an angry Jersey hood. “That’s the problem,” he said. Then he limped back to the chair and sat like a King.
A woman with long frizzy hair and the skin texture of a worn sunbather walked through the front door. She wore a long cotton dress and large loop earrings.
“Gumbo in the garden,” she announced on her entrance. Her voice had the deep texture of pecans eaten from the pie. She stopped and looked through the window at Alva who was eating a bowl of gumbo, and then spread the fingers on both hands like a cat baring its claws. “Oh, GOD, she’s free.” She ran out the side door and pretty soon plopped herself down in front of Alva with her fingers spread wide, almost holding her head.
I looked over at Brad.
“Evita—the shrink.”
A six foot surfboard came marching through the front door, pulling a skinny blonde man. “Is that chair taken? Where’s Fish?”
“He’s having lunch, Rollo.” Brent said.
“Chips is in town!” Rollo yelled. “GUMBO!” He wedged the surfboard into the empty barber chair and raced out the side door.
“Rollo—Evita’s patient.”
Fish and Chips walked in the front door. “Did I see a surfboard walk in here?” Fish spotted the surfboard. “Jesus—-Rollo!” Fish went charging out the side door.
I stood up and introduced myself to Chips and casually eased back on over to the solitude of the apartment. I was worn out.
I continued to go through the papers of the German retrovirologist. It was interesting, but it just didn’t make any sense. It made sense to Brad, and if I had been in his shoes, it might have made sense to me. The suicide doctor made sense to me, this was 1995, when it’s time to go, go. But why would anyone continue to argue, in this age of the electron microscope, that a virus, which by now had been witnessed and tested and shown to be the cause of the suppression of the immune system, was harmless. I mean there was a lot of money out there working on this thing, and Dr.Duesberg didn’t have any. Anyway, neither did I. I took the cards of information that Brent had given me and began to compose a proposal. Brent’s humor and cynical point of view of history was so interesting, it was easy to stay focused on the hemophilia, especially since he perceived HIV more as life-interfering than life-threatening. Everyone in my family died of heart attacks and lung cancer, environmental reasons, cough. This was nothin’ but a Blood Thing, focused with a flow.
I made my way back over to the barbershop to see if any gumbo was left for dinner. Fish was cutting Rooster’s hair. Brenda had joined Brent and Chips at the front, sipping mead from Styrofoam cups, so I sat with them for a few minutes. Brent handed me a few cards and then left to use the restroom.
“This movie’s good for him, he’d lost his enthusiasm,” Brenda said to me. But this was only the beginning. I wondered how long she was going to feel that way. I knew what I was getting into. I wanted to do features, that is what I had been practicing writing. The reality of the situation was that I thought it would probably be easier to raise a hundred thousand or so for a documentary film, than millions for a feature—I had a hard time getting anyone to read my scripts.
The hemophilia community was small in numbers, with only 25,000 estimated in the U.S., though hemophilia did cover the world. It is, however, a multi-billion dollar a year industry in this country. Brent’s company C.H.A.P.S Concerned Hemophiliacs Acting for Peer Strength, sent out a newsletter to 3,000 people, he told me. He was financed by a pharmaceutical company, Armour Pharmaceuticals. He was the executive director of the organization for hemophiliacs which he had founded. It was a natural. It was insane.
I moved to the back, where Gastro was still presiding. It was dusk. I sat at a table where Evita was reading Tarot cards for a blonde with frightened blue eyes. The multi-colored Chinese lanterns strung around the perimeter of the yard were lit and Evita looked like a gypsy. Alva had done Evita’s nails in midnight blue with white crescent moons and stars. The blonde had hers done with blue and white unicorns and a pink foundation. Alva was an artist. The blonde was a babe. Gastro passed me a bowl of gumbo and butt, and then he left. The deal was that I would clean up—and I did—
after a little
gumbo and butt.

Fish opened the Barbershop at noon, six days a week, not one minute sooner. Brent would show up every day around two, after a few hours at the office. He’d grab a beer from the back and pour it into a large Styrofoam cup, then he would take a seat up front and watch Alva doing nails through the window. There was always a large thermos of real coffee next to the huge coffee urn which had an “ALCOHOL” sign hanging on the front. Fish explained to curious strangers that he bought rubbing alcohol in bulk for sanitary purposes, but the in-crowd knew it was mead, “the nectar of the gods.”
“How are you?”
“Fine, thank you. How are you?”
“Fine, thank you.”
God, that’s absurd. “Hello.”
Are you speaking to a human being or a Robot? Is there a connection?
“My community, the hemophilia community, is lost over this HIV thing,” Brent said while slugging a beer from a cup and staring through the window at Alva doing the nails of the mayor’s wife.
Fish cut the hair of the mayor of Carolina Beach, an Italian fella from Jersey. The mayor sipped from a Styrofoam cup. Nobody gave a shit, but Fish gave a good duck’s ass.
“AIDS is an industry contrived by that Doctor Gallo who stole the virus from the French,” Brent said. “HIV couldn’t hurt a fly.”
It sounded as though he was going though some awesome denial, but he seemed healthy and if it worked for him, why not. But it was the blood thing, the hemophilia that struck me. Blood! I had been a regular blood donor for years, feeling that it was healthy to have the blood drawn only to replenish itself in the marrow, keeping the engine well oiled and functioning. And maybe it would help somebody out. At least, I knew it wouldn’t kill them unless someone were to spike the punch when I wasn’t looking. My behavior didn’t eliminate me from the donor pool. The promiscuity of the seventies was long gone and latex was always close at hand if the occasion should arise.
Blood, those semi-solid corpuscles suspended in plasma, circulating through the heart, conveying materials from one part of the body to another–The food of vampires and mosquitoes.
I recall tasting a Polish soup made from the blood of Ducks, “CZARAINA.” My father had sacrificed that duck which had been raised from a duckling by my cousin. The meat was good too. Busha cooked the duck and the soup. You gotta eat. Good gravy!
I limped around the shop and apartment for days from the gout and helping Fish carry a large air conditioner I hurt my back. Brent would come in at two o’clock, limping because of severe joint damage from internal bleeding, carrying information and stacks of papers by a German doctor, one of the world’s foremost retro virologist. His name was Doctor Dunesburied or something like that. Brent knew him personally. The doctor wrote that AIDS was caused by lifestyle and poverty and AZT, not HIV which he claimed was harmless. He was considered a dissident in the world of science and could no longer get funding for his work. I thought that this might be the guy who created HIV in the first place, and he was simply trying to cover his tracks. Possibly he was in some awesome state of denial that it was the virus which he had innocently created in a Petri Dish, gave it up for adoption and the cute harmless baby turned out to be a real son of a bitch. But that just didn’t figure. It would be easier to cover up the origin of something than to create a concrete myth out of nothing and have it believed by millions of people. After all, everyone knows that the earth was created in seven days and Eve came from Adam’s rib and everything is her fault.
Brent also gave me a book entitled “JOURNEY,” which was about a family living with hemophilia through the 50s and 60s, before factor concentrates came out. The modern treatments for hemophilia had been plasma and cryoprecipitate a concentrate derived from fresh frozen plasma from single donors. Advanced clotting factor concentrates were derived from pooled plasma from up to 20,000 donors and maybe more, and carried HIV to the hemophilia population in the late 70s and early 80s. Hepatitis was another gift of the concentrates, besides controlling the internal bleeds of the hemophiliac. The concentrates were put on the market in 1967, opening up a whole new world for the person with hemophilia. After reading “Journey” I realized the gift of my life and all lives, including those of pigs. I knew it was pork that made me lame, gave me the gout, the other white meat. I drank black cherry juice and eventually got rid of the gout. Black cherries had been killed to make that juice.
After a few days of getting to know one another at the barbershop, Brent picked me up in the morning in his little red convertible. We took the 30 minute drive along the inter-coastal waterway into downtown Wilmington to his cave situated in an obscure corner of an office building, Wilmington’s historic Cotton Exchange. The window in Brent’s office was close blinded, blocking out any natural light. Boxes and papers littered the entire closet-sized space, and the only other chair besides Brent’s contained a bear’s head, with missing teeth. I could identify with that bear, having been decapitated at school just a month earlier. Brad, the bear and me decided to make a movie, a truthful movie, whatever we found that truth to be, the naked truth. We formed a company and called it Bear Naked Productions. The movie was going to be about hemophilia; we decided to call it A DROP OF BLOOD. Brent was going to raise the money and be the main character, and I was going to create the film, a documentary film about hemophilia. It was that simple.
We began the quest. I still didn’t know diddly about hemophilia, but Brent did. He’d lived with it all of his life. Brent began writing down, on three by five cards, his personal relationship with hemophilia, how it had affected his life, how he believed the world saw him. I’d review the cards and if any questions came up, I’d ask him and he’d write his answer on a card along with any questions he wanted answered about hemophilia. It was coming from his perspective: a hemophiliac born in 1967, when the new treatments had become available. A lot had changed since the book “Journey” had traveled through the fifties and the sixties, the era of blood drives to treat a single patient.
Brad had a younger brother who didn’t have hemophilia. Go figure. All this stuff began to sink into me. Like the fact that the hemophilic gene is carried by the mother and there’s both a fifty-fifty chance that her sons would have hemophilia and her daughters would be carriers. I’m a little bit slow. But it was like standing under a hot shower—if you stand there long enough and do a little bit of scrubbing here and there, eventually you get clean. I had to do a lot of scrubbing and reading and re-reading to see what patterns would emerge, what kind of story we could come up with. Then there was the money problem. There was none. I was hoping for the stipend from up North in early summer from the fascist who had bought my business, but he was such a dick I didn’t know what to expect. Fish thought I would get the money, so the living accommodations were cool, for a minute.