Almost Everything Grows Outward With Time

I didn't look good as an orange blonde. I found that out an hour after this picture was taken. The girl doing the procedure had decided I was entirely way too cheeky for my own good. She convinced me that a few streaks in my hair would be "dashing". I had always been too young to be "dashing", so I agreed to let her bleach my hair in orange stripes so I could be "dashing".

She claims it was an accident. I claim it was revenge. She claims she followed directions. I claim, someone put her up to this.

This was in Auckland, New Zealand and this girl was A. Girl A had a volkswagon, and we rode it on a beach. Girl A had the hots for me. But she also had it out for me.

It all started when my friend G and I got invited to stay with A and her extended family of crazy-lovables in Herne Bay just up the road from the Auckland Harbor bridge. A's father was a builder and a yachtie, a man who had sailed around the world and back, and her mother was a mother hen with all of the selfless and amazing love you don't find with skinny-wasted big bosomed beauties.

Theirs was not a beautiful house, but a fairly large one, with two rental units built alongside the main house and a wonderful little "doll house" out back with a loft. There was a double bed in the doll house downstairs, and a double bed in the loft. The loft had a two by two window for peering out of and sheets and a blanket. That was where I slept.

A's parents slept upstairs, as well as her sister J. A slept in the dollhouse below me in the double bed. Her room in the house was rented to a Cockney Plumber from England named Tommy who told jokes as much as you would listen and made them funny by his accent alone. He had a brother who was a good looking-- straight-- hairdresser who landed all the movie jobs as film companies came to NZ to shoot their films cheaply. He worked on the hair of some of Disney's finest, and the girls who collected around him were made for television and a long conversation-- if you know what I mean...

In the downstairs apartment a fella by the name of Rick lived and loved, bringing home women from the pubs the way some might collect matches. Rick was a drummer and a pub crawler, and a house painter and a twin, though his brother was a doctor and looked ten years younger than Rick.

Rick had gone to Oz when he was eighteen with a twenty eight year old French traveling girl, and had watched while he urinated on the side of the road as a large truck ran her over and the motorcycle they shared. She was ripped apart and dragged for several hundred feet. It gave Rick a drinking problem and a bit of a drug problem. Nobody seemed to mind, as Rick stayed pretty mellow even though he talked a bit punchy at the worst of times.

Above Rick on the second floor was an Indonesian guy and a Kiwi girl. The guy was from a wealthy enough Indonesian family that he was able to get to Oz on a bribe, then to New Zealand on a lie, and then to permanent resident and possible citizenship status because A's mum knew the boys down at the immigration office, and she baked a mean kiwi pie.

His name was Alex and he had the reddest-haired, fiery-Kiwi girlfriend an Indonesian guy could possibly have. She was all of 5-2, but she had lived in places like Afghanistan and had run hashish around back in the 70's, and was a bit of an anti-chauvanist ready to take on all sizes of all comers...

Her name was C and she told a mean tale about the rocky Afghan culture in the seventies, before the Russians came. She still loved her hash as well.

And here were G and I, fresh urban American boys with zero life experiences quite in this realm of lunacy and coolnes, trying to fit in and be part of this wonderful little enclave community that had some of the most interesting characters coming and going, dropping by with fish caught out in the bay, vegetables grown in backyards, beer made at home, cloth bought for cheap at a garage sale... and so on and so forth...

A's mum had invited the world in to share in life with her and her family, and the world came. There was always someone sleeping on the couch. Someone interesting and from far away. They came like we came. They were invited.

So amongst this backdrop, G and I, the two urban American miscreants, had started a food fight with A and her English friend P. P was so sexy you would smash your potatoes in your ear if she asked you to. But she was also a lot of fun. She talked so fast, the only way to understand what she was saying-- which at the time of the fight was some ridiculous stuff about American boys being juvenile-- was to shove a cake in her face to show her she was wrong.

This act became a war. This war became an entire night spent sneaking in and out of the kitchen and the entire morning spent with a rug shampooer and embarassing taunting by Tommy the Cockney plumber and Rick the hung over sex fiend... G gave the best and A got the worst. P took a knee to her pubic bone on accident, and was sidelined much earlier than I had hoped. This food fight set off a chain of events that culminated in finding A hanging out of that two by two window in the dollhouse loft, her butt and legs out in the cold after-midnight air, the rest of her trying to get in. The whole house had come to see the event as if she were Winnie The Pooh himself, which she obviously was not. She was a butt and a set of legs, unable to move in or come back out, and I was busy taking pictures.

There was no film in my camera which I knew at the time, but the flash was working perfectly and every flash lit up the comic nature of the situation and brought laughter all around. Always play up to an audience, that's my credo. If you've got your enemy on a window ledge unable to pull herself in, flash her and spank her, and make sure everyone there is there to watch.

After she got me with the orange stripes in my hair, I forgave her and cut my hair short. We were walking up to the Ponsomby Pub a couple of times a week, usually staying late on Saturday nights, and on this particular Saturday we stayed till closing, and staggered home. A was maleable like young girls get when over-drinking. She was pliable. She was ripe for revenge.

"I don't have the keys," (I did).

"Oh no. Now what do we do?"

"I'll boost you up into that window..."

"OK"

"Put your foot on my hand and hold my shoulder and then grab the window..."

"OK"

A got up and half-way in with my insistence and physical pushing. Then she was on her own. Her waist was wide enough to not fit without lots of extra help. I had other plans. I used the key to let myself in the dollhouse, climbed the loft ladder, and asked A if she were comfortable stuck like that. She said she was gonna kill me. I went for help.

I woke up everybody. They all came to help me celebrate a successful revenge to orange stripes and to hear A curse. A was not normally a curser. She was more of a precurser.

If only there was film in the camera...

I left a few days later and went to Sydney with my hundred dollars worth of savings. A went on to work for Air New Zealand as a stewardess.

She has vowed to find me and even the score. The score is something like 7 to 5, and I'm in front. I look over my shoulder and to my rear in anticipation of numbers six and seven from an Air New Zealand stewardess. So far. No good.

G had left and gone on to Oz and then home, where he was back in school. I had done the same, sort of, but had come back for a second and third round with A. The second time I was in Auckland, I snagged a letter from G. G was very sweet and kind and friendly to A in the letter he wrote to her that I intercepted at the mailbox. The one I wrote and replaced it with was much better--

"Dear A. I know you love Scott so much that you would never think of me in this way, but I am madly in love with you and am wishing to spend the rest of my life with you. Forget about Scott. He is no good. He likes P. He will break your heart. I am the one for you. I love you. I adore you. I want you to have my baby..."

A's mum was in on the joke. She giggled like a school girl hidden behind a door while A read the letter to herself and just exclaimed "Oh... my... God!" over and over as she read. The letter was long and very loving. It was written in a reasonable facsimile of G's handwriting. It had some poetic bits that surprised A, for she had never looked at G that way before. G had always had a girlfriend back home. G was always just the nicest, most mischevious and fun American guy one could ever want to know.

Now he was writing a steamy love letter full of what-I-want-to-do-with-you's, and A needed to share.

She read the letter to everybody. Nobody but her Mum knew it was my master forgery. Everybody had been surprised by G's new focus. Everybody was soon filled in on the joke, and A chose a busy moment in the house to call G and express her surprise and delight as G remained completely confused on the other side of the conversation and A completely enthusiastic.

I"I can't believe this!" said A, enthusiastically.

"Huh?" said G, confused.

"I never knew!"

"Knew what?"

"When did you decide this? You were always so distant!"

"Huh?"

And like that.

A room full of people who cannot stop sniggering is evidence of foul play. I know that. YOU know that. But A was completely unaware of that. She thought the sniggers were for G, who had embarrassed himself by professing untoward and unfathomless love for her. G was asking reallly dumb questions on the phone. G was saying "Huh?" a lot. G was not acting like his letter sounded...

A had the boys help her shave my pubic hairs while I was sleeping in retaliation for this letter. She wanted me to wake naked in a confused and embarassed state.

I did.

I put laxative in her food and she ran for days. She put pepper sauce in my tuna melt, and tried to put something in my food that prevented erections for weeks but I heard about the plot and foiled it.

We were the best of friends.