A Fantastic Collection of Combs

by David Duer

It is March 4^th, so Auggie the Aussie and I march forth. Winter is wasting away. As the snow melts, discarded or abandoned objects appear, reminding me of a time some thirty years ago when I shared a flat on Fairchild Street with an art student named Thomascyne Buckley. We were all about Duchamp and Rimbaud and Zappa and Devo and The Talking Heads. One of Thomascyne’s friends, Walter Sunday, was a crazy artist who, I imagined, lived in Hickory Hill Park and survived on various hallucinogenic drugs. He carried around a bag filled with his prized possession: combs that he’d found in the streets. I became enamored of these combs as symbols of not only spring and hope but also the concrete humdrum world. I began to collect them too and wrote about it:

Once, Walter, obsessed with the debris of combs,

casually left a pile of them on our kitchen table.

Black and anonymous, as common as money, they

remained there, an arrangement that lasted through the winter.

Their purpose squandered, never again would they

orchestrate the wave of hair through their fine teeth.

Then the sun returned and the snow melted, disclosing

this residue of combs scattered throughout the city.

Combs on the sidewalk, steaming with ownership,

still holding the private tangled strands of lives.

Combs made of hard rubber, DuPont nylon, all the plastic

brands—Pro, Goody, the ubiquitous black Ace, the Unbreakable.

I went beyond necessity, down back alleys, taking

different routes each day to make new discoveries.

My comb collection became a competition, a rite of passage. The line between passion and obsession began to blur. The combs I found on the streets seemed both mundane and mysterious.

Combs loomed up at me, as large as whales,

black humpbacks with the strain of their teeth gone.

Some combs were fresh and glistening with human oils;

others were mangled and crushed relics of modern archeology.

An orange comb was embedded in ice—I got down on my knees

to chip it out but broke the precious handle in haste.

One day, Walter and I nearly collided as we each

stooped to grab a particularly beautiful bright red comb.

In a bible store, I shoplifted dozens of combs embossed

With the self-righteous ejaculation Jesus Loves Me.

Waiting on a park bench for people to drop their combs,

I would rush like a derelict to rescue them from rejection.

Meanwhile, Thomascyne was busy bringing together like-minded artists and musicians and performers and poets. Hanging from the trees in the backyard at Fairchild Street were these five-foot-tall aluminum wire sculptures called Boingers that made a lovely shimmering sound when strummed with a stick. Thomascyne constructed six wire-frame egg costumes, and the Eggthings were born. Brenda was fabricating out of whole cloth Madge and Howard, the first Monos’labs and the accomplices and cohorts of the Eggthings. The combs began to signify for me the ephemeralness of objects, of love, of life.

Brenda gave me a beat-up green Unbreakable one day,

and the maze of her blonde curls began to disturb my dreams.

I found a light blue comb in tune, and when I looked up,

the sky swarmed all around me, singing Hallelujah.

Long tapered groomer combs bent to the curve of the ass,

slipped from hip pockets during the act of surveillance.

Combs struggling to communicate a disease—

dandruff, eczema, heartbreak of psoriasis, loss of hair.

Fat-toothed combs of many styles and colors, escaped

from the claustrophobic influence of women’s purses.

An Afro pick with a clenched-fist handle that had

slaved to glorify the power of nappy hairdo dynamics.

Combs that ordered marine crewcuts to attention;

combs that kept disco blow-dried ’dos perfect in the hustle.

We even found hairbrushes swimming in rain-filled

gutters, heavy with deposits of twigs and silt.

The Monos’labs formed a band called Pink Gravy and, for a time, dipped their toes into the mainstream of rock and roll. I wonder where Walter is now. What about the Monos’labs? What has become of the dreams and fantasies of our youth? More interestingly, is there a lesson to be learned from these events by my high school students today?

One night, Walter threw away his fantastic collection

of combs in a splash of madness on a streetcorner.

My friends worry that some day I’ll stop to pick up a comb

on the avenue and be struck by the hugeness of life.

I reassure them: I am going about the business of

salvaging meaning and purpose from the smallest matter.

Take the comb: with a little wax paper, it has another life,

becoming an instrument of music … ready, begin …