I've picked hairs out of many strange places before, but none so strange as
the orchestra pit of my local municipal national Eddie Murphy memorial
deconstructive dance theatre. I walk past it two or three times a year in
the hope that a deconstructive dancer will shatter a toenail and be unable
to perform. They'll be so desperate for an understudy that they'll pull
someone off the street who'll turn out to be shit, and then they'll pull
someone else off the street and it'll be me. I'm not a deconstructive
dancer, but fear would carry me through, and I'm sure I've got some natural
aptitude for it, if only on a genetic level - my great great grandfather
once danced at a wedding. A career in deconstructive dancing would follow,
before I grew weary of the fame and money, and redefined my milieu to
deconstruct deconstructive dancing; more fame, more money, then I could
reconstruct and deconstruct at will. It'd be sweet as a nut - a roasted,
sugared nut, not a bitter raw nut.
"Hillewww burrrrrrrddy, huw wid yeuuuuu leeeeeeeeeeeeik turrrrrrr do me a
favoursnarf?" asked the man who burst out of the theatre flushed and
floating, his trousers summing up his character as succinctly as trousers
ever could a man. They had a small blue stain around the left calf as did
he.
"I'd like that muchly," I replied. "However I must warn you that I have a
strict policy of only doing favours for people whose accents can be easily
pigeonholed or explained."
"How strict is this policy?" Look ma, no accent.
"Very." Look ma, me neither. My no accent's better than his no accent isn't
it ma?
"I'm going up for the part of King Lear in a rather progressive adaptation
of Piggle; I thought I'd try an accent and I'm fiddling around. Vhat, you
don' like? You vahnt I should do it Yiddish? Oy, I'm so vashnukad I could
plotz." I smiled approvingly so as to get my dance career careening along.
"Life. What's it aboot eh?" I smiled again. "You gonna do me this favouro,
amigo?" This time I shrugged whilst smiling, hoping he'd take it as an
indication that I was actually paying attention and I thought his other
accents were better, rather than I was pooh-poohing this accent, or perhaps
turning down the request for a favour. Actually the other accents were
better, even the first one; I couldn't tell whether the last one was
supposed to be Spanish or Mexican.
"Sure I'll do you a favour," I squealed. "Give me a moment or two to say a
few more things though, because so far you've said far more than me and it
just doesn't really look fair. I don't have anything to say other than I'll
do you a favour, but... well, if I had to listen to your shitty accents you
can at least me redress the balance by saying nothing whilst I say nothing
more vociferously than you." Oh, I didn't squeal any of the stuff after I
told you I squealed; it wouldn't have been appropriate.
"One of our violinists started moulting during last night's show," he
explained. "You know what it's like: when one of them starts moulting, they
all start moulting. As the show progressed the amount of loose hair falling
in the orchestra pit mounted up. When the flautist took a deep breath before
his solo, he damn near choked to death on hair and dandruff. Luckily the
harpist was quick on the draw, noticed that the flautist wouldn't be doin'
any soloin' any time soon, and jumped in with a fancy rendition of Tool's
Schism - we'll have to pay some royalties, naturally, but it's far cheaper
than having to refund the audience's tickets because their enjoyment was
spoiled by a dying flautist.
He continued on to a new paragraph, which is why I didn't close the speech
marks at the end of the last one. Wow, it's funny and informative. ...Well,
informative. "Ordinarily we have a small woman - and when I say small woman,
I mean a normal sized woman - who picks up the hair if any or all of the
violinists start moulting, but... but... total honesty is important I think.
To be frank, I killed her. I stabbed her through the nose with the sharp end
of an Anglo-French dictionary. Oh, don't worry, she dared me to; her exact
words were 'I dare you to stab me through the nose with the sharp end of an
Anglo-French dictionary.' I'm hoping it'll stand up in court, and if it
doesn't, well at least I'm not ugly. What I need you to do dear boy..." It's
true: I am both dear and a boy. "...is pick up the hair from the orchestra
pit so we can perform tonight. I'm relying on you, dear boy." I was still
dear and boy-y. "Can you do it? Will you do it?"
I weighed it up like a fat person weighs up pick and mix sweets - with the
scales provided. It wasn't what I had initially hoped for, but it was a foot
in the door. It was a foot in the rapidly closing door. It was a foot in the
rapidly closing heavy door. It was a shattered toenail. I knew then, as I
know now, that the chemical symbol for silver is Ag. "Ag," I said.
"Interestingly enough it's the chemical symbol for silver, as well as being
a rather ditsy exclamation, in this case, and somewhat surprisingly, it's an
exclamation of pain. Maybe the Au of gold would have been more appropriate,
but I think gold looks rather tacky, and you'd just have confused it with ow
(chemical symbol for continuum) anyway. I suspect that my dancing career
won't start careening today, but having shattered a toenail and spent a
little deal of time talking to you, I would like to see inside the theatre;
if that means picking up the violinists' hair, then sobe it." I said sobe,
rather than so be so that he might think I know more words than him.
I won't pretend that picking up the hair was anything like a walk in the
park because it had neither the walk nor the park elements. They told me I
did it so well that I can go back again and pick up hair next time, provided
I don't dare the man to stab me through the nose with the sharp end of an
Anglo-French dictionary. I think I'm going to like it there.