Dingleberry Gazette

I’ve been dipping my pinky-toe in the dating pool again. Having been monogamous the last five years or so, I’m a bit rusty. While I hardly have the itinerary of Justin Timberlake, I’ve been meeting a few girls. Still, I tend to have the most fun with the tried and true. And while I didn’t “get lucky” last night, I had a steamy, romantic evening hanging out in my bathroom.

Yeah, I got a haircut.

After a four-month separation, I’ve been blessed with seeing Clairissa twice in the last week.. Things seem to be coming together for her. Business has been good, and she’s formulating a plan to move from the van to indoor living any month now. (Winter takes a lot of the fun out of vagabonding, but she’s a stubborn little thing.) Until then, she’s doing hair out of a duffel bag wherever and whenever the opportunity arises. Last night things arose at my house.

I awoke to a waiting text message. “Got a bunch of clients today. Mind if I do you last instead of first? Like around 6? So I can chill, no rush. Maybe a root beer?”

I had diet root beer in the fridge, but Clairissa has been looking scrawny of late. The woman needs calories!

I rushed right out and bought her a Henry Weinhard’s Root Beer.

I came back from groceries, and realized I had no pressing engagements. I could watch the baseball playoffs and surf the internet until she arrived. I showered and slipped into a comfy tee shirt and a pair of shorts.

She showed up about sixth inning. Her previous client dropped her off in front of the house. The family dog loves Clairissa, but the dog sounds like a K-9 episode of COPS whenever anyone arrives. She’s an eighty-pound German Shepherd that behaves like a chihuahua on ecstasy, and slobbers on Clairissa almost as much as I do.

My niece held the dog while we escaped to my room. We went from cacophony to calm in about ten steps. I was given a hug and kiss. I sniffed her neck.

“Eww. I probably smell like sweat and hair product.”

“Nope, you smell sweet. You smell like girl.” I raised her arm, worked my index finger into her armpit and gave her the scratch and sniff. I love the smell of girl-sweat. “Mmm… you smell like… deodorant?”

She was amused that I was disappointed. “Yeah, baby. Not all my clients get into the pheromone overdose thing like you do. You’re kinda kinky like that.” She winked. “But then, so am I…”

I told her about the root beer. “I also have a PBR…”

“I’ll take that. You’re my last client today, and I want to decompress for a while.” She peeled off her sweatshirt and tossed her boots in the corner, stretching out on my bed. I tended bar, claiming the root beer for my own.

“You’re watching baseball? I never knew you were into sports.”

“I’m not a fanatic, but I know how the games are played, and it beats watching the same old reruns every night. It’s also a survival thing. Everyone at work is a sports nut; it’s hard not to pick up on the enthusiasm.”

“I’m a dyke. I don’t know anything about balls.”

“Not even softball?”

That earned me a Jack Nicholson eyebrow twitch.

The conversation took its typical twists and turns. Something got us onto the topic of crabs, scabies and bedbugs. Tally? Crabs: both of us. (My source: Ex-wife and roommate. Hers were from a Greyhound bus in Louisiana.) Scabies: Her. (From camping at age twelve.) Bedbugs: Neither of us. I had to tell her what they were. All her bloodsucker bedbugs were of the two-legged variety. I’ve been lucky there, too.

“Do you realize we just spent twenty minutes talking about sex-bugs?” she asked. The subject matter turned to blow jobs. She countered with a fisting story. Before long her beer was finished and she was ready to do it.

“It’s dark outside. Where you wanna do this thing?”

The dog would be humping her leg the whole time if we used the kitchen; not cool when straight razors are in play. I suggested the bathroom. We went into the tiny space. She said, “Well, you could stand, or I could do it while you sit on the toilet…”

I did not want that image stuck in her head forever. “I have an idea.”

I grabbed a chair from my room. We wedged it in and I took a seat. She strapped on her toolbelt. (Yes, she has a toolbelt. She resembles a handyman stripper. It’s fucking hot.) She sat on the toilet and played with my hair. “What ya want to do first? Ears? Neck?”

“I have a forehead pube that needs removal.” It’s an odd eyebrow that grows an inch away from the others, on both sides.

“I tell my other clients you have horns.”

Twenty seconds later, her tongue and teeth held the prize. (She even got one that I couldn’t see; a baby pube!) She appraised it. “Look, it’s blonde here, red here, and almost black here. That’s probably the darkest hair on your body. What color are your pubes these days? Gray? Got some steel wool goin’ on down there?”

I laughed. “Probably. You are familiar with my meticulous grooming habits. I do have a little patch in a safe place I could show you…” I carefully pulled my shorts down to reveal a tuft of hair that surrounds a skin tag. She was fascinated.

“What’s this?” She fingered the skin tag, a cylindrical growth a little bigger than a pencil eraser.

“I tell girls it’s my dick, then they’re not so disappointed when they see the real thing.”

She giggled. “Wish I had a Sharpie, I’d draw a smiley face on it.”

“You can, when we’re done in here.”

She marveled at the overgrowth inside and around my ear.

“Should have seen it before I trimmed it last week.YO-DUH!”

She ran the razor around the perimeters. “I can’t do inside your ear with this. Wish I had my little clippers.”

I pointed to my long-neglected beard trimmer. “That’s what I use.” I removed the guard.

“You use this on your junk too?” she asked.

“That thing’ll make you bleed down there. I prefer the good old-fashioned safety razor.”

We discussed pube-grooming (or lack thereof) for the umpteenth time. A delicious moment of show-me-yours I’ll-show-you-mine followed, leaving me dizzy. “It’s like we’re out behind the schoolyard,” she whispered. The kids were in the hallway.

Back to business. She fondled my neck, stroking the undergrowth. “Want the hairball?” I asked.

“Yes!” She fetched it from my room, the golf ball-sized clump of neck hair that she’s been saving for several years. There are three contributors, and I’ve had custody of it (and our dead frog Freddie) since the barber shop closed. I held the ball in my hand as she scraped around my jugular. “We need to name that thing.”

“I thought we named it Critter, after the movie,” I said.

“That’s so generic. It needs to be something dignified, like Prescott Wellington the Fourth.”

“I’ll work on it, and text it to you for your approval.” We really should make babies. We’d make great joint-custody parents.

We may have created another tradition. Until she gets another shop, I want my haircuts to be done in my bathroom. Talk about a captive audience. The House of Merde and Coiffe? I’ll have to find a picture of a barber pole to hang on the door.

Neck, ears, nose defollicled. “Now, what to do with your head…”

“Well, I don’t want to end up on menwholooklikelesbians.com. I want it to grow, but I’m tired of the Dorothy Hamill look. I also have this ‘Joker-thing‘ going on in the morning.” I pulled my red-wings out to show her.

She grinned. “That’s kinda cool, actually. But if you want your hair to grow out, you’re gonna have to live with that for a while.” Note to self: Stay out of Batman’s way for a month or two. Could be tough, with red-wing hair and an umbrella. (If they ever cast for The Penguin, or a PenJoker mutation, I’m trying out.)

She snipped a couple things, and we were done. We retreated to my room, and she called her wife to check in. For them to coordinate by bus to meet up to go back to the van would be an effort similar to our Butthole adventure. I did some Transit Tracking, and we had a plan. Thank god for cell phones; it would never work otherwise.

She looked me up and down. “Hair looks good. You look good. How much more weight you gonna lose? You’re swimming in that tee shirt.”

I borrowed a line from Lester Burnham in American Beauty. “I just want to look good naked.”

She smiled, ran her hands under my shirt, squeezed my man-boobs and gave me a titty-twister. “Honey, you already look good naked. You have nipples like a teenage girl!” she squealed.

“Gee, that makes me feel all manly.”

“I mean, they’re small and perky.”

“Yeah, and if you keep playing with them, that won’t be the only thing perky in here…”

“Dude, you get hard and I’ll chop it off! I swear! I have scissors, and a razor blade and-”

“Yeah, yeah. Point taken.”

“Can I still draw the smiley face?” she asked.

“Absolutely!”

“I need a Sharpie.”

I pointed to a Vegas coffee cup filled with many colors of Sharpie. “May I suggest purple? Or green?”

I laid down on the bed, working my shorts down carefully so as not to flash her. She smiled. “Aren’t you cute, trying to hide your junk. Don’t worry about it.”

All righty then. I pulled them down below the hip bone and let her have her way with me.

A couple minutes later, I was sporting a skin tag with a smiley face. She took a picture. “I wish it was a little bigger. I’d give him hair. Green hair.”

“Do whatever you want.” I’d venture to guess she’d not spent much time around a guy’s business end, and I was enjoying watching her doodle on my lower belly, tip of tongue sticking out as she concentrated. She tried this color, that color. “What are you doing down there?”

“It’s a surprise. You’ll see later. Or I can take a picture for you.”

“Do that,” I said. She took another photo. I saw it and burst out laughing. “You realize I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow?”

“Sweet…”

I stared at my floral friend, hoping it wouldn’t rub off before I could show it off to the student nurses.

Alas, the bus system was forcing us to end the night. I insisted on walking her to the bus stop.

“Honey, I have knives, scissors, and three rolls of quarters from my last client.” She made a fist. “I’ll be okay.”

“Do you mind if I walk with you?”

“Not at all, I’d love it. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to get dressed and go out just for me.”

I dropped my shorts to the floor and had pants on before she finished the sentence.

“Wow, that was fast.”

“Well, no sense being shy now…” Another minute and I was shod and ready to walk. We marched the overly-excited me past the overly-excited dog and made off into the night.

We held hands on the way to the bus, and I rode with her to her connection stop. We’d just missed one, so we spent half an hour hanging out in front of the porno store. My pleas to browse inside were declined. (But.. but… I really do know the guy that works there…) Alas, the bus finally came, and we parted. Until the next time…

I always feel fulfilled after spending time with Clairissa. No matter how long we hang out, it’s never enough. Maybe that’s why it seems so sweet when we do have time together. I may not get knee-buckling sex, but I get a ton of emotional satisfaction, and that makes her extra-special.

As I rode the bus home, I got a text from her. “I’m going home, stuffing myself w/pizza and whacking off until my hand cramps. What about you?”

I couldn’t suppress a grin. I shot back, “I’m saving it up for Saturday night. I have a date!”

My room smelled like girl. I loved the look of the PBR with the straw sticking out of the can sitting on my nightstand, and the Henry’s bottle next to it.

And now? Time to come up with a classy-sounding name for a ball of neck hair. I can’t be neglecting my pseudo-parental duties…