Bret Calvert

After the 2007 CMT Music Awards, my fellow writer, Justin Cooper, and I were waiting in the Nashville airport for our flights back home. You could see the exhaustion that follows any live production on our faces. Hell, you probably could have seen it from across the terminal. Writing a live show is a difficult, pride-swallowing, thankless endeavor and we were both ready to get to our respective homes and sleep for a few days.

I had about 20 minutes to kill before my flight, so I dragged myself into one of the smoking lounges. One of those disgusting glass boxes thick with stench and cinder. I’ve been smoking for 20 years (I’m not proud) and even I find these little rooms repugnant. Yet, there is not a smell or a cloud of filth on this earth that could disturb me nearly as much as the conversation I overheard in that awful room. I swear to you this is true…

“Do you get to see him often?”

“At least once a week. I make his mama bring him over so I can wash his hair. I mean, he has some of the most beautiful hair you’ve ever seen on a kid. Gorgeous, long blonde hair…but she doesn’t take care of it. It’s all over the place and frizzy and just looks bad. So, I told her ‘you bring that boy over here at least once a week because I’m going to take care of that beautiful hair myself.”

“You’re a good grandma.”

“He doesn’t think so. He gets all fussy. But he’ll thank me someday. Every time he steps foot in my house I tell him. ‘Go get your clothes off and get in that tub. Grammy’s gonna wash your hair.’ I go the full nine, too. I use conditioners and all that. It takes about 20 minutes but guess what?”

“It looks great, right?”

“Amazing. You’ve never seen a kid with such a beautiful head of hair. He’ll thank me someday when he starts being interested in girls.”

“Yeah. Someday. How old is he?”

“He’ll be a senior in the fall.”

I’m nowhere near a good enough writer to describe all of the things that happened inside me at that moment…but they culminated with a bizarre sound and my cigarette flying out of my mouth. I picked it up, crushed it out in the ashtray and left as expeditiously as possible. I must have been wearing the trauma of the experience on my face because when I got back to where Justin was sitting he took one look at me and asked, “What the hell happened in there?”

Can you imagine the horror this poor kid faces on a weekly basis? Just sobbing in a cold tub with his grandma chain smoking while she conditions his beautiful hair. I have no idea what else was going on in this kid’s life…but this had to be his deepest, darkest secret. He’s probably 25 or 26 now and paying some sort of professional to listen to his grandma’s bath story. There’s no way to tell if it’s a psychiatrist or an extreme fetishist prostitute. There’s also no way to tell how many people he has serial-killed by now…but I’m guessing it’s a lot.

Her words still haunt me…probably always will.

As many times as I have thought about it and reviewed the conversation in my head, there is only one thing I can say about it with absolute certainty.

He is NOT going to thank her someday.