A Bucket of Crabs

Vunderkind’s note: I wrote this long ago as a sort of self-test, after the style of Tai Pei by Tao Lin. I must warn you: it is pretty long and round-about.

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I used to know a guy named Lucky.

He worked at one of the barbershops in Downtown, a part of town where parents would rather shave the heads of their children with blades than patronize the barbershop. Haircuts were a luxury here, and people tried as much as possible to squeeze in the longest possible time interval between their last haircut and the next one; here, afros and dreadlocks were more an economic necessity than an actual fashion statement.

If you have a fresh haircut here, people would ask if you are going for a job interview and when you say no, they’d call you something along to the lines of “rich,” or “enjoying” (they would say you…