Shirl Thing

There are periods in my life that even my family knows nothing about.

I once lived with a woman named Shirl, who was my cosmetology instructor's weed dealer.

As I was wrapping a perm on my mannequin, I told my teacher, Tanda, that I needed a new place to live. She brought up Shirl as a possible solution: "Uh, they's a friend 'a mine needs a roommate. She's kewl. She gets me my green. Don't tell nobody. You need to be wrapping them rods tighter."

Shirl was 32, and I was 18ish. "Hey, girl!!!!!!" Shirl blared when I walked in to inspect the place [a trailer in Statesville, NC. There was a lot of brown and burnt umber in the decor. Go ahead, judge.]

"You wanna get high?" Shirl asked me. Then, the 5' 1" brunette with a shaggy haircut licked my neck and nuzzled her face in my boobs; she was feeling mighty fine from the hit of X she took prior to my arrival.

"Oh no, thank you. That's nice of you, though," I answered.

It was a match made in heaven because I didn't want to smoke any of Shirl's stash, and she was desperate for a roommate to fund her pain pill addiction with the $125 monthly rent. Yup. $125.

"Girl, you kewl. You can stay if ya want to," Shirl declared. "But, just so you know, I got me a boyfriend. Girl, he's 22, and he can fuck all night loooooooooooooooong."

"Oh, that's good," I said. "I'm just gonna look around. Which one would be my room?"

Shirl offered me the one with the refrigerator.

"The kitchen? You want me to sleep in the kitchen? Maybe, um, do you have a room with a bed?"

"Aw, fuck yeah. My bad, girl. There's that one up there," she pointed to the front of the trailer and rubbed my face. "You want a back rub, girl?"

I declined. The room, only mildly inhabited by spiders and mildew, was sadly up to my standards. I moved in a three days later.

When not selling weed to cosmetology teachers and high school students, Shirl worked at a local factory for 12-hour shifts. To comply with the regular drug tests, she frequently snuck condoms full of urine in her underpants--to keep them close to body temperature, of course. She bought them from her preacher's wife, who did what she could to help the fold.

Now, Shirl was dangerous and dumb and drugged up, but she did invite me to spend Thanksgiving with her family. They were more hospitable than you might expect and got 123V snockered--SNOCKERED!--in complete defiance of the law.

"You're only 18? Well hell, if you'll cut my hair for free, we got two bottles of Mad Dog with your name on 'em!" her Dad boomed.

Still, six weeks down the road, as I bumbled out of bed at 7 a.m. to make my morning cosmotolegy classes, I walked into the bathroom to find Shirl's 22-year-old boyfriend and his friend, DeeKay, smoking crack seated on the floor next to the toilet.

"Hey, 123Val. Go on and get you a shower. We don't mind," DeeKay politely said.

"Oh, no, that's okay, maybe if you can just hand me my toothbrush, that'd be kewl," I asked.

Then I promptly packed up my mannequin, my perm rods and my porn and left Shirl's place.

God, I miss her.


Hey! We haven't had a picture of my boobs in a while (Thanks Kristin!):



In the Comments section, tell me about your own personal Shirl. The winner gets two bottles of Mad Dog.