You Start to Live

Tom Perrotta
Bad Haircut: Stories of the Seventies
Berkeley Pub Group, 1997
Pick This Up!

It was just my luck to get coach Bielski for driver's ed. Even when I played football, he hadn't been that crazy about me. He didn't like my attitude, the way I'd shrug when he asked me why I'd thrown a bad pass or missed a tackle. And he didn't like the way my hair stuck out from the back of my helmet or sometimes curled out the earholes. He'd tug on it at practice and say, "Cut that fucking hair, Garfunkel, or I'll cut it for you. I just got a chainsaw for my birthday." (He always called me Garfunkel, because of my hair and because he'd once seen me in the hallway strumming someone's guitar. To Bielski, Simon and Garfunkel represented the outer limits of hippiedom.)

He was late for our first meeting. It was January and cold in the gym, but Bielski was dressed, as usual, in tight blue shorts and a gray T-shirt, the uniform that had made him a legend among Harding High football fans. He wore it every year to the Thanksgiving Day game, even if there was snow on the ground or a temperature in the single digits. People loved seeing him standing on the rock-hard field, breathing smoke, dressed like it was the middle of summer.

He stopped at the edge of the basketball court to watch some guys shooting hoops, then continued over to the bleachers, where I sat waiting for him in the second row, wearing my blue suede coat.

"Well, well," he said. "Looks like Art Garfunkel wants to drive."

"You start to live when you learn to drive," I said, quoting from a late-night TV commercial.

Bielski shook his head. "Do yourself a favor, Garfunkel. Lay off the wacky weed. It's not doing wonders for your IQ." He glanced at his clipboard. "Is Laura Daly here?"

I joined him in scanning the empty bleachers. "Doesn't look like it."

"Thanks for the input, Garfunkel."

He handed me the clipboard, then dove to the floor and started doing marine push-ups. He always did push-ups when there was time to kill, partly because he was a show-off, and partly because he was a genuine fanatic. He did a hundred without breaking rhythm - I counted the hand claps - and was breathing more or less normally when he stood up. I gave him back the clipboard.

"Do me a favor, Garfunkel. Go see if Daly's in the hallway."

I didn't have to go far. Laura and her boyfriend were right outside the gym door, making a spectacle of themselves. Keith was backed up against a locker, cupping Laura's ass with both hands. She was on tiptoes, wearing the white nurses dress that was mandatory for girls in the Beauty Culture program, licking his ear with an odd thoroughness, like a mother cat cleaning one of her kittens. I watched them for a while, then went back in the gym.

"She's right outside," I said to Bielski.

"Did you tell her to get her butt in here?"

"Not really."

Bielski tapped my head a few times, like he was knocking on a door. "You know what your problem is, Garfunkel? You're a spectator. You're happy to just stand around and watch. You don't take charge of a situation."

He strode out to the hallway and blew three shrill blasts on his whistle. "Break it up," he shouted. "Or take it to the Holiday Inn. No sex in the hall."

Laura followed him inside. Her blond hair was messed, but she didn't seem the least bit embarrassed. I noticed a couple of greasy fingerprints on her dress when she sat down. Keith's hands must've been dirty from auto shop.

Bielski stuck his finger in her face. "Listen up." He said. "I don't care what you do on your own time, but this class is my time. When that bell rings, you're mine, understand?"

He started a speech about how seriously he took driver's ed, but was interrupted almost immediately when Tammi Phillips tapped him on the shoulder. Tammi was a cheerleader who spent a lot of time around the coaches' office. She was small and had a cute upturned nose. Everything about her was girlish except her breasts, which were huge, way too big for her body.

"Coach," she said. "Telephone."

"Thanks, sweetheart."

Without a word, Bielski turned and jogged across the gym to the coaches' office. Tammi walked back in the same direction. The guys in gym class stopped playing basketball and exchanged glances as she passed.

Laura and I sat together without speaking. After about ten minutes she stood and stretched; her dress moved way up her thighs. She caught me staring, but only raised her eyebrows when she finished yawning.

"I'm going, " she said. "See you Thursday."

I stayed put until the end of the period. Bielski never showed up.

I had a hard time learning to drive. Bielski said I thought too much, and he was probably right. I hadn't expected to have to think at all and was startled by the complexity of driving, the need to calculate risks and make snap decisions while moving. I expected the car to make decisions for me, and when it didn't, I panicked.

"Change lanes," Bielski said.

In the mirror, I saw a van bearing down in the left lane; my hands tightened on the wheel. Should I accelerate and cut in front of it? Or should I slow down and let it pass? I had to think fast, but my mind was blank, humming like a refrigerator. I followed my instincts and slammed on the brakes in the middle of St, George Avenue. The tires squealed; Bielski and I snapped forward and back in our seatbelts.

"Sorry," I said.

His eyes were wide, frightened. Laura giggled in the back seat, and I spent the rest of te day running stop signs and missing turns. When we finally got back to school, Bielski took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.

"Land ho," he said.

Laura drove one-handed, like an old pro. She was such a natural that Bielski let her take us on the Parkway our third week out.

"Don't worry," he told her. "It's a piece of cake. Just get in your lane and stay there."

It was a sunny day, the first in weeks, and we were heading south. Traffic was light. Laura and Bielski were discussing a TV movie that I hadn't seen. From what I could gather, it was about a woman who suffers amnesia after a car accident and falls in love with her doctor. Laura liked the movie, but Bielski thought it was unrealistic.

"Come on," he said. "If all you did was watch movies, you'd think amnesia was a common thing. It's ridiculous. When was the last time you met someone with amnesia?"

"I can't remember," Laura said, and they both laughed.

While they talked, I gazed out the window at the other drivers. I saw a woman screaming over her shoulder at her kids, who were pounding each other in the back seat, and a guy in a business suit singing into an invisible microphone. I saw a nun eating a McDonald's hamburger in a station wagon. There was even a man who was reading a book. He was holding it up with one hand and moving his eyes rapidly from the page to the road.

One day in February, Bielski didn't show up for class. Laura and I sat in the bleachers for about twenty minutes, watching guys in fourth-period gym play their usual lethargic game of basketball while the jayvee wrestling coach, Mr. Guido, looked on in disgust. I nudged Laura.

"You wanna go smoke a joint?"

Her face perked up. "You got one?"

It was the early lunch period, so we didn't have to use any elaborate maneuvers to get outside. We just walked through the cafeteria and out the door. We crossed Fillmore to Seventeenth Street, a dead end where students parked when the lot was full. We sat on the curb in a narrow space between two cars. There was a leafless hedge at our backs, a rundown house across the street.

We had trouble lighting the joint. It was a windy day and the matches kept going out. I crouched in front of her to block the wind. She had the joint in her mouth and both hands cupped around one end. Our heads were close together, and she smiled at me as I struck the match.

Until driver's ed, we hadn't known each other at all. We came from different towns - Harding was a regional school - and took different classes. I was College Prep; she was Beauty Culture and Distributive Education, which was another term for work-study. She got out of school an hour early every day to work at Marcel's Beauty Chateau. Mostly she swept hair off the floor and stuffed it into plastic bags. She said Marcel sold it to a wig factory.

"I'm freezing," she said. "It's a good thing I put these pants on."

In the past couple of weeks, she'd taken to wearing jeans under her white dress. At first I thought it looked strange, but I was beginning to get used to it. She wore the same pair of Levi's every day. They had patches on the knees and "Laura + Keith 4 Ever" on the thighs.

"I'm cold too." I shifted positions so our knees were touching.

"Keith wants me to marry him," she said.

"Wow."

"I know. It's pretty intense."

"I can't imagine being married until I'm about thirty."

"Really?" she said. "I can't imagine being thirty."

"It's like driving," I said. "Remember when you thought you'd never be old enough to drive?"

"I've been driving since I was twelve," she said. "My dad taught me."

We sat quietly and concentrated on passing the joint.

"So what do you think?" she said.

"About what?"

"About me and Keith."

"I don't know. Do you love him?"

"Sometimes. We have really great sex."

I dropped the roach and watched in smolder. Then I stepped on it and smeared it across the pavement. She touched my hand. "I hope I didn't embarrass you."

I shook my head. Out of nowhere, a tingling rush traveled up from my feet and branched out through my body. I looked at Laura and started to laugh.

"You know what?" she said. "You need a haircut."

"Thanks a lot."

"I didn't mean it like that. I just think you'd look really cute with short hair. Long hair's out."

"I don't know," I said. I don't wanna look like a disco boy."

"I could do it for you. We give free haircuts on Friday mornings. You could come tomorrow."

"No way. I heard about those free haircuts. Didn't Phyllis Lavetti go bald from one of them?"

"That was a perm," she said. "You'd just be getting a trim." She put her hand on my knee. "You'd look really cute, Buddy. The girls wouldn't be able to resist you."

"They'd find a way."

The school bell rang, and I felt cheated. Laura put her arm around me and kissed me on the lips.

"Thanks for getting me stoned. It was fun."

I helped her up, and we started back to school. My body felt bouncy and light, like I was walking on the moon. The driver's ed car drove by just as we reached the corner of Fillmore.

"Oh shit," Laura said. "We're busted."

But Bielski drove right by. He pretended not to see us. Tammi Phillips was sitting in the front seat, but she ducked down as soon as we saw her.

I woke up the next morning and looked in the mirror. My hair was flat on one side and frizzy on the other. Laura was right: I needed a trim. It was a kind of defeat, admitting that to myself, a surrender of principle. I hadn't volunteered for a haircut since seventh grade.