Rollins' Hair

Lesli Baker

I wonder if I'm the only 55-year-old, aging and crusty punk who can no longer see with
their own natural unassisted eyes, who KNOWS so much went down but struggles to
tell a single story about that time. It's like looking at the Planet 10 crowd and trying to
discern a single individual face, arm, or leg, but it's all melded into one big mushed up
mosh pit.
Henry Rollins came to stay at Georgia Street. Rollins Band was playing at Planet 10
with Gruel and Human Scarecrow on their Lifetime tour and I was 18. BTW, that album
was produced by Ian MacKaye and I LOVED it. I didn't know how much though, yet,
because I hadn't yet seen the show, and this was 1988. I did know that HENRY FUCKING
ROLLINS was spending the night in the same house that I was spending the night in
that night, and I was DYING! At some point I stuck my head in the back room where the
band was crashing and said something like, “I'm really looking forward to this show! I
saw you with Black Flag in Tallahassee last time you were here!” I don't remember
exactly what I said, but I DO remember Henry’s hair: long, and wet. And his response: a
solid dead eye stare. Oof.
Fast forward a couple of years later when I started reading the personal work he was
publishing on 2.13.61. I wrote him a letter letting him know how much I liked what he
was doing. He wrote back. He said “Hey thanks for the letter. I don't get to Florida much
anymore. I don't like it there, too many skinheads”.
I later moved to L.A. and met my future ex-husband who, it turns out, had moved to L.A.
that same year to work at 2.13.61. I met Henry again and OK, this time I had to be an
adult. I hung around the office some, a group of us went to a Lollapalooza after party, a
jazz show or two, and those encounters became the norm. My daughter was born,
Henry called to see how it went. I brought her into the office, she gurgled on the floor.
Henry needed a haircut for the first day of shooting for Johnny Mnemonic. He didn't feel
like going to a barber, and my ex told him I used to cut hair in Tallahassee... so now I'm
cutting Henry Rollin’s hair, the hair 18-year-old me remembered: long, and wet, now
short, buzzed, with the white patch in the back of his head where someone wacked him
hard enough to knock the pigment out. While I cut his hair he ran lines for an Infiniti car
commercial. I gave feedback. I felt like I was 18, dying inside again.
We lost touch., We weren't great friends or anything, and some drama had occurred
between my ex and 2.13. 61. But this year when my first husband died suddenly of a
heart attack while making stir fry in his kitchen in Hawthorn, I messaged Henry. He got
back to me quickly; said he was sorry and wished my daughter well. I wrote back and
thanked him for his kind words, when I probably should have let it drop there.