The Frizz Monster
Metaphorically, falling in love with the goth princess at the Renaissance Faire is my life.
The smell of American Spirit cigarettes brings me back to a lot of memories, mainly because my mother never stopped smoking them, so every memory contained the smell of them. She’d point the stub at me accusingly, despite the fact that we were just sitting at a diner eating pancakes, and say “Don’t you ever smoke. It’s bad for you. Very bad,” where I’d say, “But mom, you’re—” and then she’d point again with said cigarette, down at my plate, saying: “Eat your damn pancakes,” making the waitress finally come over and say: “Ma’am, there’s no smoking allowed in here,” where mom would then roll her eyes and snuff it out in her sunny-side up eggs.
And she didn’t tip.
We’d go back home to the trailer park and she’d hold me close around the arm, on our 1970’s potato sack textured sofa while she watched Cartoon Network with me, telling me to never—never—let someone tell us we didn’t have a nice house. Those with big houses were only constantly pissed off because big=drafty and small=cozy, so their perpetual state of cold made their survival instincts kick in, including irritability.
She had really found a way to justify everything in our lives.
And here I found myself suddenly, in my apartment, all my shit shoved in the far right corner by the one window, my roommate, taking up most of it because I liked it better that way. I sit by the window, one leg up, one leg hanging off, and one elbow on my knee, posing real cool, just like that famous Jim Carroll photo, which might almost resemble me if I didn’t have all the rotten banana looking freckles, which only turned me into the Wendy’s logo instead.
That’s when I get a whiff.
I didn’t even hear him light it.
My head turns, and I’m looking at him at his desk, not so far away, typing something out. A cigarette is poked out of his mouth.
I can feel my mouth trying to come up with something.
“Wha...why would you get those?” I say, and I could hear myself falter, like a little kid who just came out from beyond the giant trench coat that’s making me up, I guess.
He looks over as he finishes typing, looks back, then to me again. “What are you talking about?”
We stare at each other.
“Do you want me to do it outside?”
“No, no,” I shake my head a lot. My hands itch themselves and I start smiling. “You never get that brand.”
“Oh,” he smiles tightly, “Yeah, they were all out, so I had to get these. Good eye.”
“Nose,” I correct him, pointing to it. My finger accidentally slips inside my nostril and I retract.
He’s busy taking another drag and doesn’t notice. I inhale as he exhales, and there’s so many of those memories, all lined up in front of me, so I pick the one that’s in my happy place.
The Renaissance Faire.
I remember holding my mom’s hand as she dragged me along, feeling her rings cold, her veins popping out, her hands trained at being nimble, making it so I didn’t even have a chance to escape.
She worked six days a week as a janitor, went for dinner with “the girls” every month, but this was the big deal. People never thought it, from what she was like. Especially back then, she was to be feared in the trailer park. Along with the cigarettes she smoked so much they became an accessory, she wore black wife beaters that showed off the star tattoo on her left bicep—and if her shirt rode up to show her tramp stamp, she’d just leave it. Her hair was both bleached and permed out, meaning it was insanely damaged. You could tell on those humid days, when it became a cloud. She at least had a sense of humor about it on those days, and called it the “Frizz Monster”, meaning she’d barge into my bedroom growling with her claws up, making me laugh hysterically. But I did wonder, if she was so comfortable like that, why she still decided to spend a half hour in front of the mirror every morning to fix it.
Her credit card clicked against her nails as she tried shoving it into the ATM slot, but her acrylics were getting in the way, although she’d never admit it. At the same time, she was trying to keep the cigarette going in her mouth, taking it between two fingers and dragging, giving her an angry looking underbite.
I had gone all out, as was the case each year. Every year was like Halloween—and although there was an obvious theme within the Renaissance Faire, I went dressed as whatever I wanted.
That year I was Robert Plant.
Mom asked me if I was sure.
I’d never been more sure of anything in my life.
My frizzy wig covered half my body and my bell bottomed sleeved blouse and bell bottomed pants made me nearly look like a Lord of the Rings elf.
Therefore, I belonged.
“Goddamn ATM fee is seven dollars. Seven dollars! Goddamn,” Mom was saying, “Unbelievable,” she said and paid the fee anyway.
My arm got tugged this way and that as I held onto hers, but still, I wouldn’t let go for some reason. It kept on tugging mine more and more out of its socket, like a loose tooth, I thought, as she nearly killed me, getting excited at the thought.
As the horns cried, I looked towards them.
“ALL HAIL THE PRINCESS!” Some guy in a kilt shouted. It’s always some guy in a kilt. “The princess hath arrived in her chariot, escorted by her noble steeds, guarded by the king's men as she maketh her way to the Royal Joust.” Okay, asshole. Who the fuck talks like that?
My head did not turn, but fell towards my shoulder in awe as I became aware of the wagon after the cheers were heard, since the curtain had parted, and the princess was there.
You already know she was beautiful. It doesn’t even matter.
Her hair was long and black; her lips bloody red; her eyes, tired looking and winged with eyeliner. She looked terrifying, like a caged vampire behind the window, and I imagined instead she was on her way to be burned at the stake.
I felt like you might find her deep in a foggy forest, somewhere behind it all, to be found curled up in a tree hollow.
As soon as she felt the eyes land on her, her smile lit up perfectly and I wondered if it was actually real. It was like Kristen Stewart finally smiling. It wasn’t natural. She was trapped. You could see it in the smile—it was too sudden. Miserable.
She was a princess, bound and thrown around—and no one else was seeing it.
I don’t know how, but something flared up in me as soon as her hand waved at me directly, painted in red nail polish like Mom’s.
I had been a knight, or at least, a noble bard who sang about lemons, or something. I would be the one to save her.
Mutton stank through the air and I hoped there were maggots in it—maggots buried deep within the flesh for all the people to scream at as they bit down. That’s what they would get for taking part in the Faire, blind to the suffering. I became obsessed by the idea of maggots, and couldn’t go near the sellers. Mom asked if I wanted anything repeatedly, but I said I was okay. She took us to get drinks anyway and downed a German stein-full of beer, where a group of men howled once she finished. She smiled and swayed backwards, letting out an “oh” like she was innocent, and holding her head like she’d done something brave.
She sat down at the counter and ordered another as she started commenting on the tender’s outfit: “What’re you, Lord Farquad or sum shit?”
She had forgotten that I couldn't reach the bar stool, so I drifted away back outside.
I made my way, looking up, never at my feet or myself, but at the colors around me, at the man on stilts, at the fat man with mutton in both hands, the witches with their racoon eyes, or the other kids who looked at me funny, with those expensive dragon puppets on their shoulders.
“What are you supposed to be?” asked one kid, holding a cotton candy stick like a torch from a dungeon.
He was dressed like a typical elf—but the Christmas kind, which honestly didn’t fit in at all compared to my costume.
“Robert Plant.”
“I don’t know who that is.” He takes a bite from his cotton candy. “That’s weird.”
“Why are you dressed for Christmas?”
“Huh?”
“Why are you dressed for Christmas?”
“I’m NOT!” He wails, instantly furious, tears welling up in his eyes. He runs to his mom and buries his face in her dress.
When the crowd became denser and I almost lost my way, I clung to a wooden pole for dear life. After a moment of feeling like I wouldn’t float away, hugging the pole like a buoy as people swiped me still, I forced my eyes open to stop the panic.
I told myself I could do it. I was at my happy place. I was Robert Plant. Whole Lotta Love. I could do anything.
Knives, all line up neatly in their rows on a table in front of the tent I was staked at, finger prints on some, tiny daggers with jeweled hilts. It reminded me of Romeo and Juliet, despite never reading it. I only knew she stabbed herself with it, and that’s all I imagined, through a crushed velvet dress. I couldn’t imagine her face, though. I didn’t know about death, and all that.
The only way I could picture it was something like those models in classic paintings, like that one by Caravaggio, Judith beheading Holofernes, where he’s rolling back his eyes in mild annoyance while it’s happening—you know, because they had to hold the pose for so long. There wasn’t room for any expression that would take a lot of muscle.
I looked to my right, and a path revealed itself for just a moment between the crowd, before I heard the horns again. I felt that was my call to duty, as Robert Plant the Rivendell elf, to follow.
“Oh,” an older woman’s voice comes from above me, “Are you lost, sweetheart?”
I look up, squinting, as the sun comes in over her shoulder. She looks like, if she wasn’t here, she’d be working in a library. Right then though, she was dressed in what looked like a milk-maid uniform.
“No.”
“Oh...okay,” she said, sounding worried, because I clearly was, when she got distracted. “Now, who are you supposed to be?” She kneeled down to see me under my wig.
“Robert Plant.”
“Oh,” she says, looking confused. “Is he from the Beatles?” She asks, then throws up her hands, laughing, “Oh, you wouldn’t know.” Promptly, she gets distracted again: “Oh, Laurie! Hi!” she exclaims, hurrying off.
Lifting my shirt from the bottom, I not so carefully slid five knives into the pouch I’ve made, and cupping them like gifts, took off through the opening, with my two inch heeled boots breaking my ankles behind me.
I crouch behind a bush, where behind me the mud show goes on. A roar upstarts as the woman pushes her “husband” face first into the mud, where he stays motionless as the laughter rises.
The wagon approaches steadily as the kilt man appears again, really not funny at all, and then the wagon. This time a posse of young girls follow. They’re dressed up in light colors and flower crowns, waving, all pure and unknowing. They were the ones that belonged in the wagon—not the princess. They even looked the part! It didn’t make sense to me why this was happening, but something was not right here. It felt suspicious, like one big hoax.
I had the impulsive thought that if she did not find true love the second she stepped out of that wagon and looked into their eyes—baby duck to its mother scenario—she would not be saved.
I aim like I actually could, and throw the first knife at the wheel. It bounces off the wood and shinks to the ground. It’s hard, when they’re not made of rubber.
The same happens with the next—and the next.
At the fourth, I grew angry, and with oncoming temper tantrum rage, sliced the air with it.
That one did the job—it made it between the spokes, paralyzing the whole thing. Nobody noticed of course—they must have thought I was playing the part of an angry dwarf and it was all according to plan.
The horses kept pulling the cart as long as it slowly began to tip, and the crowd's faces did as well—all of them, a hundred people, their good moods all killed instantaneously. It’s the moment that really showed me my actions had consequences, I think.
The wagon landed on its side with a crack, and I stood up straight, gaping with that blank face children get when they’re experiencing something they haven’t yet learned to cope with—and I could not cope with my princess being broken when this was how I was supposed to save her.
I skipped over rocks and wobbled on my heeled boots, pushing through the people to her.
A-ramble on, and now's the time, the time is now
Sing my song, I'm goin' 'round the world
I've gotta find my girl
The shouts quieted in suspense as four burly men grabbed onto the corners of the wagon, grunting “One...Two...Three!” amidst dying voices who realized freaking out wouldn’t do anything. There I waited, way too close to the thing, as I tried to find her through the wooden block. Nobody stopped me, because I was still too small to notice—that, or it was a dream.
It creaked like a trapdoor moat. The bottom, which was on the side, facing me, fell out in pieces as it was lifted, the princess coming along with it in the fetal position. She let out a groan. The big men attempted to throw the wagon back into place to give their hands a break, and nothing more.
The chatter began again, and I could feel the air start to move around me—but I was the first one, since I nearly ducked under the wagon to get to her.
She lifted herself on an elbow and forearm, looking around strangely. Dirt patches appear on her red velvet dress, and her hair sticks up awkwardly from the clips.
As I crouched down next to her on my knees, her eyes uncrossed onto my face—I was the first thing she saw. I gave her a tight smile and made heavy, unbreaking eye contact.
“Hi,” I said.
She rubs her head and looks around me, confused.
Finally, after being so patient, her eyes settled onto me, and it seemed like she wanted to say something, but just started to smile tiredly.
“Is she okay?” Came from behind us in many different forms.
She scoffed a little, like she was impressed, and smiled, like she was drugged up. “Robert Plant?”
I smiled and nodded frantically.
“That’s funny,” she said, “hah, oh my god, that’s really funny. That’s so cute...”
“I thought you looked sad.”
“Huh?”
“You looked really sad inside the wagon. I thought you were in trouble.”
She scoffs again, in such a way that made me think she never wore dresses outside of this job, “Nah little dude, I just really hate this fucking job.”
I light up. She said “fuck.” That was so cool. And she said it in front of me, meaning, now, I was cool too!
She moans again, bringing up her hand. “God, my head.” Her hand, with her head in it, settled onto the ground where she covered her eyes like a kitten.
Arms hooked under my shoulders and pulled me up into the air. A burly man has me.
I started yelling, telling him “NO!” then screaming, screaming “NO!” before I kicked at his belly behind me, and am tossed away from the center of the crowd, back onto my knees.
I let out an impulsive scream, going “I HATE YOU! HATE YOU!” at the man as he walked back to her without looking behind him.
Looking for an opening, I found none. Breathing in deeply through my raggedness, I went to push through again when something else took me from behind.
“Oh my god, for fucks sake, why did you run off like that?” Mom’s hand whipped me around to face her. “We talked about this. Why? Why would you do that? You’re so lucky I found you. You know how many perverts are at a place like this? Goddamn. Goddamnit.” She pulled me towards her and I’m suffocated in a hug between her enormous breasts.
Almost immediately, I started to fall apart and cry.
Pulling away, I screamed for her to let me go.
“Wh-wha? What? What’s going on?” She said, her panic rising as mine did.
“I wanna go back!” I tried tugging my arm from her grip with my whole body. “LEMME GO!” I screamed, in the way a kid does, so loudly you can’t even make out the words—all high pitch.
“What the hells the matter with you?” She yelled louder than me, as her way to calm me down and shut me up. “Honey, you’re working yourself up. What’s going on?”
Somehow she had a now lit cigarette in her mouth despite only having one hand to prepare it with.
My face must have been deep red, my eyes leaking pockets of tears.
I was the only one who knew how it happened.
I tried to make her less miserable and I only made her terrified.
She still needed me to make things right. She lay among a pack of apes, spiraling down as she held her head in the dirt, still playing it off as a bad job—whatever that was. My princess most definitely was still being held hostage. I could see she had been truly suffering, but maybe I was just an intuitive dog who could sense her cigarette withdrawal.
“Honey, why do you always feel like you have to save everyone?” She coughs, clearing her throat even though it makes no sense. Then, she sways, stumbles, and falls onto her ass, drunk as all hell, leaving me standing there alone in the chaos of EMT’s, who completely shattered the medieval illusion.
I remember staring at Mom’s hand, which still grasped my wrist even though the rest of her had gone limp. Hating it; wishing it was dead and maggot filled. Despite using all my strength to be free, she didn’t even have to try to keep me in place as I tried to go back to the princess—her grip remained so strong. I remember her cigarette too, between her two fingers on my forearm, the filter against me as it burned down, closer and closer to my skin.
Yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah, yeah-yeah
Ooh, my, my, my-my, my-my, my-my, yeah
I can't find my bluebird, I'd listen to my bluebird sing
but I, I can't find my bluebird
Great great great