Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

CORPSE SMOKER

My friend Gizmo who works at the funeral home occasionally smokes the hair of the embalmed dead. The smell does not bother him; he is used to horrible smells. He claims that after a few minutes of inhaling, moments from the corpses’ lives flood his head like a movie. He won’t smoke the locks of children. “I did that once,” he tells me, “and I watched a dog die over and over for two days.”

“What happens if you smoke the hair of the living?” I’m a little intoxicated. I like Gizmo romantically, and I wonder if rather than having to tell him he could just smoke my bangs and figure it out.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Maybe then I’m just breathing burnt hair. Or maybe then I’d steal their memories and they’d never get them back.”

Memory theft is a pleasant concept to me. I’ve just been through a horrible breakup with my ex-boyfriend. As it dragged itself out, I often called Gizmo late at night while he was at work. In between tokes of hair he gave me really great advice.

The next day I decide to go to the salon and get the past fourteen months of hair chopped off. “I want the hair back,” I say, holding up a Ziploc bag. Since I knew I would feel strange requesting this, I decided to go to the Save-N-Snip where there is a large hand-drawn sign near the register that says IF WE FIND LICE WE CANNOT CUT YOU; the wording is sinister and when I leave with my hair bagged I don’t feel like the oddest animal they’ve ever seen.

At home I worry that strands of other peoples’ hair got swept in with mine. Who knows what memories of other people he could accidentally smoke and attribute to me? To be safe, I go through the baggie and take out anything even remotely straight. I am miles of curls.

The next night when I show up at the morgue with a bag of hair and a lighter, Gizmo is a bit skeptical.

“What if I take the wrong memories?” he asks. “What if I smoke this and then you don’t even remember your name?”

“I don’t think so,” I say, “you’d need toddler hair for that. This hair is all memories I can stand to lose.”

For a moment I ponder tricking him and pretending not to know anything right after he inhales. I could ask Where am I? then grab his hand with confused doe eyes.

Suddenly he gets a suspicious look on his face and lowers the joint. “Have you ever owned a dog who died a slow and painful death,” Gizmo asks, “and if so, did you stand by its side the whole time in constant vigil?” His expression is filled with caution.

“No dogs,” I report, “goldfish.” I make the sound of a toilet flushing.

Assured, he nods and takes a deep inhale. My head begins to feel warm and maneuvered, like certain parts of it are getting massaged. He coughs a little. “Is it working?” I ask.

“Truffles,” he says, putting his hand to his forehead like a fake psychic. “You really like truffles.” I nod; they are my favorite tuber. The contents of my head begin to fill with motion, like water is bubbling up in my ears. Tiny popping noises start coming from a place in my skull and grow crunchier. Suddenly, Gizmo’s eyes change.

“Your ex is a jerk,” he says. This seems right too, but when I try to come up with a specific example I’m left with a vague and unscratchable tickle deep in my brain. “You’re too vulnerable,” he says. “That moron could never have given you what you really want.”

All of a sudden, one of the dead bodies shakes and its hand rises up on the table. I scream and hold my bubbling head. “Don’t worry,” Gizmo says, “it’s just a death-rattle.”

“Just a death-rattle?” I laugh. “Do you even know how disturbing that sounds?”

Gizmo puffs more of my hair. I suppose he is used to the disturbing.

When we walk over to the rattling body, it looks vaguely familiar. “This isn’t him, is it?” I ask. “My ex?”

“No. But I can see the resemblance.” Gizmo turns his head a little and stares at the corpse. “Same chin.” As I admire Gizmo’s hands, they take a small clump of the body’s hair between two fingers. He gives me an inquisitive look. “Want to see what this guy’s life was like?”

I decline, for superstitious reasons. I figure I now have a memory hole in my head that might take a few days—weeks, even—to fill. I fear I might decide some other person’s memories are my own.

When I look over at Gizmo, he’s done with my hair joint and staring at me in a funny way.

“What,” I ask, “spill it.” We move towards a corner with a bench, and suddenly the sour smell in the air grows stronger.

“It’s wrong how we postpone bodies from rotting,” I say. “I can smell how wrong it is.”

“That’s what happened with you and the ex. It was going badly, but you kept holding on.” His gloved hands move under my shirt a little and around my bare waist. Knowing he has just handled dead flesh creeps me out at first, but then I move closer. Maybe, I decide, it is a nice contrast for him. After touching a dead person, my skin must seem quite special and alive. “You know,” he says, “I’ve smoked up many memories of bad relationships.” He takes off a glove so he can press his bare hand to my face. “I know what not to do.”

The body behind us gives another death-rattle. It startles me and I jump, but his hand stays on my face and I do not look away. “I’ve seen good memories too, though,” he continues. “I know how to be very romantic.”

I expect his breath to smell awful, like burnt hair, but instead it smells like Lilac Rain shampoo. I watch the fine layer of talc the rubber glove left on his hand glitter magically in the light, and the memory-hole in my brain turns hungry then hungrier.

Eat him with kisses, the hole says; it needs to snack on a new memory right away. So we kiss, and the weird smells of the morgue suddenly turn into something tame and slippery, something our lungs can slide over like jelly, something that can hold our hearts steady through our own quiet death-rattle.