Joshenilia (12)
By:
March 12, 2016
One in a series of posts exhuming the juvenilia and significant objects of HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn.
The summer after I graduated high school (1986), my younger brother, Patrick, and I shaved our heads. Our decisions to do so were made independently. I think Pat and our mutual friend EK — from Jamaica Plain — were working as cooks at a summer camp, and EK probably shaved Pat’s head. Our mutual friend Kevin — also from Jamaica Plain; his older brother, John Dooley, has been mentioned several times in these posts — probably shaved my head. I was working as a skateboard courier, in downtown Boston.
I may be mangling the chronology, here. Maybe this was the summer after my freshman year (1986–1987) in college? Or even later?
At some point, that summer, whichever summer it was, Pat and I accepted an invitation from our cousin, Martin, to visit him at his family’s summer place in Eagles Mere, Penn., where we had spent many happy days as kids. Neither Pat nor I had a driver’s license, much less a car. We also didn’t have air fare. So we took a Greyhound bus from Boston to Philadelphia. The photo shown here — a photo of the photo, snapped by a friend of my brother’s who ended up possessing it for many years — was taken at a bus terminal photobooth. It came with a little plastic frame around it.
My brother (left) was a Deadhead — you can just make out some kind of tie-dye t-shirt he’s wearing, and maybe a necklace. I was into hardcore punk, so my haircut made a bit more sense than his. Somehow, though, he’s the one who looks punk, while I look like a dazed hippie. I hope I was mugging for the camera — that is, I hope my face didn’t look like that all the time, back then.
That trip wasn’t the greatest success. We were trying to revisit our childhood — we even tried to play a few games of D&D with Martin — but there’s no going back. Also, our cousins (except Martin) and uncle seemed a little freaked out by our shaved heads.
A couple months ago, I flew to Philadelphia with Patrick, to attend our uncle’s funeral. Although it was a sad occasion, it was great to see my cousins. And I realized how awesome it is to travel with Patrick. As Deadheads might say, it was copacetic.
READ MORE essays by Joshua Glenn, originally published in: THE BAFFLER | BOSTON GLOBE IDEAS | BRAINIAC | CABINET | FEED | HERMENAUT | HILOBROW | HILOBROW: GENERATIONS | HILOBROW: RADIUM AGE SCIENCE FICTION | HILOBROW: SHOCKING BLOCKING | THE IDLER | IO9 | N+1 | NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW | SEMIONAUT | SLATE