Lowe Light

Mission 1. Hook up with someone as old as my mom (54) and as young as my sister (20) in a month.
Mission 2. Live a completely gay lifestyle (without the gay sex) for a month.
Mission Three: Live without an apartment for a month.
Mission Four: Reconnect.


I awoke this morning to the sudden realization that I am writing about things that happened a month ago. A fucking month. Is there a bigger slacker among us that pulls 30-day-old diary entries from his ass? What about the SATs Rob? Did you forget about those? Anyway, I thought I would pause before the Pennsylvania reception to catch up everyone on some present day happenings. Let's start from the bottom and work our up.

Studying has brought the dreams again. Insidious dreams. Dreams of missing the test and ruining my life. Even though in the back of my subconscious mind, I know the outcome of the SAT will have no bearing on my life these days, I find that my mission set cannot be separated from my graduated reality. When I close my eyes, I am a Jr. in high school, boner in hand, stuck inside a poster-puttied, anxiety-fueled nightmare. In my dreams, I retreat to my parent’s bourgeois Ivy League parenting. I am stalemate once again.

When I'm awake, I study. The SAT test is December 3. I have been focusing mostly on the math and logic, just like I did in high school. I went to Kaplan to check it out, and the cost of their program is almost $3500. That’s the cost of two hookers in Vegas (in the off season), so I didn’t really want to blow it on some lame SAT class with pimple-faced punks wearing Ecko. Instead, I spent $70 on an online course and am taking a free practice test in Torrance on November 19. I’m going to kill it.

Alex thought I was crazy for doing this SAT thing. But that’s because I destroyed him in our original SATs. In a strange turn of events, he decided to take the test with me this time around. It's his chance for subtle vengeance. We’ve been study buddies for the past week-and-a-half, exchanging notes, doing practice questions together. But come test day, there will be no friendship. The competition will be stiff and severe. Because we have more than bragging rights on stake. The person with the highest test score will get an entire evening with my two “Professional Vegas friends,” courtesy of the loser’s bank account. The stakes have definitely been raised.

Living with Alex has brought me back even further to my adolescence, to the good part of it. It is pretty fun to have your best friend living with you. There is no pretense or pissing contests beyond that of normal testosterone-filled egomaniacs. We are both happy and content and kindly overlook each other’s peculiarities. It is one giant summer sleepover.

But one can barely overlook the poor-quality TV that Alex gravitates towards. The show Numbers with Rob Morrow makes me sad. That guy looks old and Judd Hirsch reminds me of some other show that I can’t remember without checking IMDB. But as dumb as the show seems to me, it did show me the light in a visually persuasive manner. As I was watching, the brother looked vaguely familiar. But the vague was brought into my personal arena with Alex’s chiding.

“That dude is you,” he said, hoisting his PBR hand.

I looked up from the test book, but there was nothing on the screen but a building.

“Hold on,” he said, hitting the 8-second rewind on TiVo and pausing on the short ugly brother with the bad lid.

“Him,” he said enthusiastically.

“That dude’s ugly,” I said.

“No, not the face, well maybe the nose,” he said smiling.

I returned to my study guide.

“Ok, I’m just kidding about the nose, but check out the guy’s hair. If your hair keeps growing, yours'll look like that.”

That fucker. He was right. I could imagine my hair longer, looking just like his. Maybe that’s why I never grew it out. I hate my hair, especially on him. I hate me.

“Why’d you have to say that?” I asked.

“I’m just trying to save you from that, strange..wet...curl...stuff,” he said pointing, “you don’t want to look like that guy.”

I didn’t. I don't

“All right, let’s cut it.” I said.

“Where, here? I’m not a fucking barber, Lowe.”

“I don’t give a shit. I go to fucking Supercuts, so I’m not really expecting Jose Eber. C’mon, my shit’s easy. I’ll do the front and you do the back.”

“I’m sensing some homoerotic undertones here, but what the hell,” he said.

I began to rethink things. Like a good friend, he didn’t let me squirm long.

“Let’s get someone else to do it,” he said, “We don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.”

“Good Idea,” I said, just happy not to have him cut it.

“How about that Shelf dude, didn’t you say he cuts hair?”

“Fuck no Alex, he shaved his wife’s bush in the fucking hot tub. You need to pay attention to my drinking stories.”

He laughed.

“No, I knew that part. I just thought he cut hair too. I don’t know,” he continued, giggling.

“How about a gay guy? Daniel?”

“Oh, he might do it. I’ll call him,”

I dialed the phone.

“You dare to interrupt me during my program?” Daniel said in a Darth Vadar-like voice.

“You need to get TiVo, dude.”

“It sounds too complicated. Anyway, can you get to your point? I don’t mean to be rude, but your boy is on my screen. And you know how I love to watch him.”

“All right, can you cut my hair?”

"What the fuck, do you think I’m Vidal? Just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I cut hair. Ah, the generalizations.”

“Alex just thought,” I said, deflecting the blame.

“Oh, Alex. Well, then, that’s a different story,” he said, flaunting his man-crush.

Mission accomplished.

“Seriously, do you cut hair? If you do, I'd like ya to cut mine.”

“If you trust me, I can do anything. Bring some beer. And Alex. And, well, that's it. For starters, anyway. Don't forget Alex.”

“Wait, have you been drinking? I’m not gonna do this if you’ve been drinking.”

“Rob, I had one glass of wine. Don’t be such a worrywart. I’ll take care of your darling locks.”

“All right, we’ll be over in fifteen.”

“My shows, darling. Make it a half hour. And stop at the store. None of that cheap beer you straight guys drink.”

“Ok, we’ll be there,” I said, wondering why I always made simple things complicated.

I put down the phone and closed my book.

“Well,” Alex said, looking at me.

“We’re on.”

All of a sudden the phone rang.

“Maybe not,” I said, responding to the sound.

“Hello,” I answered, without looking at the caller ID.

“Rob, it’s me. Tara and I are super-bored. Do you have anything to eat?”

“Some old Chinese.”

“Let’s go to Jerry’s or something.”

“I’m actually out the door, but we can meet for drinks later if you want. I’m getting my hair cut.”

“Rob, it’s 9 at night. Who gets their hair cut at 9 at night?”

“Yea, it was a spontaneous thing. I saw this guy on TV. Well, I’ll explain it all later. Daniel is cutting it.”

“Rob you are so weird. Ok, we can meet later at the circle or something. We’re driving down.”

“I’ll be in West Hollywood, why don’t we meet at Daniels and we can go out around there.”

“Ok cool, does Daniel even know how to cut hair?”

“Of course,” I said with feigned confidence.

“If he fucks it up, we’re over, you know that?”

“Yea, I like to live dangerously,” I said, laughing.

“Later Lowe,” she said.

“Later, Heather.”

I hung up the phone and sighed.

“Tara?” Alex asked.

“Yea, she’s coming. They’re meeting us later.”

“Sweet,” he said, happy as I’ve seen in a while.

“Let’s go to the barbershop.”