Kevin Ridgeway

 

WINCHELL-MAHONEY TIME

Mom called his shorter hairstyles
the “Winchell-Mahoney”—-
he wore it long or in glamourous
70s curls until he hit forty & just
starting shaving it all off, coloring
what remained with Grecian Formula
from the markdown aisle
at Thrifty Drug. I was
the world’s biggest adolescent
punisher with a swear jar
in my fist every time he said
fuck or motherfucker or the N word.
I would stare at his fake black
curled locks devastated by an
electric pair of clippers at
a discount hole in the wall
& giggle & piss him off royally.
He had been locked away
down at Terminal Island for years,
didn’t know how to live on the outside
so he tried to disguise himself
as a square or a lame, as he called it.
Nobody would hire him & my parents
would fight. He told me in car rides
to the methadone clinic that a man
is supposed to provide for his family,
not the woman. My mother was
the breadwinner and tired of being so.
It was only a matter of time before
I saw his pinned eyes &
Grecian Formula running
down his forehead, melting
him back into another
savage beast of the system.
I came home from school one day
& my mother cried, told me
the marshals took him away
on a parole violation. He did a
few more years time before we
saw him at home again. And
back to his Winchell-Mahoney,
the whole world waiting like us,
but against him all over again.