Your Unit is Ready

“Hi” began the breathless email I just got. “This is Brian! I ordered your new unit and need to hear from you for confirmation on delivery date!”  So ‘Brian’ here clearly wants me to think that not only are we such pals that he needs no last name but also that I will smack my head and say “Oh my UNIT! I totally forgot I ordered it!"  Pretty cute using the word “unit” too, a generic term that applies to so many things, your conditioner, your apartment, your toupee.

Speaking of 'rugs', I had a six-foot-three, 230-pound hair-stylist friend I’ll call Huey. By night he wore leather chaps and chains and participated in various tableaux in which he dressed like a giant painted woman but by day he made things pretty. In the salon he was all you could ask for: he fitted wigs on hair-loss people like nobody's business, he cried when you cried and he could do anyone’s hair living AND dead and send them to the party looking better.

Since he was bald himself  he talked a lot about his own unit. I'd go see him and ask about his day and he would treat me to such vivid descriptions of his morning rituals I felt as if I was sitting right next to him at the dressing table in his apartment - and naturally there was lots of talk about his unit, which was strictly top drawer and got more attention than most people’s pets.

I sigh to think of him. Maybe someday I’ll have a unit too and yes I DO know the word has another meaning and no I don’t contemplate sexual reassignment surgery QUITE yet BUT IF I DID – or if I were bald, hot or needed an apartment why I’d write right back to Brian here lickety-split and say “My UNIT? It’s ready for shipment? Well here’s my home address, bank account numbers and Social honey! Now you send that thing right on out, I’ll be waitin’ by the door!”