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{"id":4036,"date":"2021-01-08T18:18:16","date_gmt":"2021-01-08T18:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writer-insighter.com\/?p=4036"},"modified":"2021-01-08T19:57:14","modified_gmt":"2021-01-08T19:57:14","slug":"my-buddy-duane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writer-insighter.com\/my-buddy-duane\/","title":{"rendered":"My buddy Duane"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
It was about twenty years ago when I went to Washington D.C., to stay at the InterContinental, renew my acquaintance with Duane Reed and interview the United States Coastguard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was supposed to go to the Coastguard H.Q. to interview them face-to-face, which is something not many people can say because they don’t let people in, but we were a very specialist company and people very, very rarely said no to us. Hence the five-star hotels and Business Class flights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I needed a haircut, and the uniformed, top-hatted junior doorman recommended a place just across the street. I also needed not to have the humungous cold I’d realised I was incubating. Which is where my old buddy Duane Reed came in. I’d met him before on a job in New York. I should have remembered what happened next, but thanks to him I never remembered anything much. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He sold me some nasal swabs. Like ear buds, but with the bud part suspended in its icky micro-capsule of god-knows-what. Nowadays they sell something similar as Zicam, but back then all I knew was it stopped you feeling you had a cold in about ten minutes flat. Now ok, there were some slight downsides. You stopped being able to remember the end of your sentences too, as well as their beginnings half-way through. Balance was a tad problematic too, but you certainly didn’t feel as if you had a cold. Bargain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’d had one just before I went downstairs and asked the doorman where I could get a haircut. That was several light years away from the chintzy confines of the InterContinental. Everyone in the place was black, like people in a film. Not the dawg droopy-trousered type of black person you see in films, but an older, familial culture I found if anything, more disturbing. There was a deference, an eagerness to comply, and at the same time a distinct impression that I was in the wrong place. I said, clearly enough, I thought, in my newish Crombie overcoat (single-breasted, single vent, very dark grey, slant flap pockets, ticket pocket, three button. By Crombie, of course, not some Charles Tyrwhitt knock-off. And yes, it did<\/em> take some finding, thank-you. Some money, too), that I was going to do an interview at Coastguard H.Q.. I thought later that they’d took that to mean I was having an interview at Coastguard H.Q.. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which was why they gave me a Number One crop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is nothing you can do. They can’t stick it back on. And it was freezing outside. If you’ve ever been there, you’ll know. It’s a special kind of freezing, like Amsterdam, or Manhatten or anywhere else surrounded by very cold water in the middle of a continental winter. And no hair. Luckily, I’d brought a fedora, but the stares it got made me think that Bogart style had left these shores some time before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n