The Story of Bucket Head

Finding out his real name would've been easy enough. After all, he was in the office every few weeks, filling out "Roommate Wanted" ad forms. But none of us, it seemed, ever really cared to know his name. To us, he was simply Bucket Head. n Some people called him Bucket Man instead.

He went by both names, really, at least to us. Either way, he was the stuff of legend.

There are a lot of characters in this world, I've found, who go by the name "Bucket Head." Wacky types, most of them. But nary a one, I promise you, could top this guy.

I forget what year it was when he first appeared, though it had to have been late 1995 or early 1996. The New York Press offices were still on the ninth floor of the Puck Bldg., and my job at the time was to guard the front door.

After only the first few months, very little of what walked through that door could surprise me. Bag ladies complaining about the radio transmitters the CIA had been using to keep them from availing themselves of public bathrooms, hefty and unconvincing drag queens, drunken pirates, paranoids and deviants of every stripe.

Few of the people who worked at that front desk, or in offices that had a view of the front door, were surprised by these things anymore. Most of them got to be pretty old hat before too long.

But when he made his first appearance, Bucket Head surprised us all.

He was a tall man?or maybe he just seemed that way to us. He was a burly fellow, certainly, who wore amber-colored wraparound shades, a neck brace, smeary, blotchy white face paint of some sort and a white muumuu (which, come to think about it, might've just been a hospital gown). He also wore a plastic five-gallon bucket atop his head. It was his crowning feature, if you'll forgive the obvious pun.

His appearance was not unlike Marlon Brando's in The Island of Dr. Moreau. Brando, in fact, may well have patterned his character after his own encounter with Bucket Head.

People who were there at the time recall different details about him. Morgan, who was working there with me while we were still at the Puck, remembers a wrinkly t-shirt instead of a muumuu. She may be right about that. Come to think of it, I think I remember him wearing a "Mr. Bubble" t-shirt once. She also remembers the towels he had packed into the bucket to keep it on his head. There remains some question as to what it was, exactly, he had smeared on his face, but whatever, it seemed to have been applied in a rush.

She remembers noting that no part of his body from the shoulders up was left uncovered.

Bucket Head scared people at first. Someone who looks like that opens the door and walks into a small office when you're not expecting it, well, you figure it can't be good news. He rarely said a word, which made it all the more creepy. He would walk in the door, step off to the side, grab a form out of the tray full of forms, fill it out and leave. Same as anyone else.

At any second, though, during the few minutes it took to accomplish that, you knew he could explode into a murderous frenzy.

I did, anyway. Most people in the office simply laughed openly at him, though from a distance. Other people stopping by the office for other reasons would often turn around and leave upon catching a glimpse of him. Whatever it was they wanted, I guess, could wait.

Word always spread fast when Bucket Head showed up. People whose offices were hidden away in the distant shadows?even on other floors?would peek around corners to catch a glimpse. After he left, he would remain the topic of conversation for the rest of the day.

Nobody dared to walk up and simply ask him what the hell the deal was. We preferred to speculate.

Was he just some East Village type, trying much, much too hard to be kooky and outlandish? Was he an enigma or a genuine eccentric? Or was he, quite simply, dangerously insane? What did his driver's license look like? Did he have a job? Didn't he have a hell of a time hailing a cab or riding the subway looking like that?

He wasn't homeless?we got plenty of those in the office, too. No, Bucket Man had an apartment. Upper West Side, as I remember. And that was the funny thing about him. Well, funnier.

Bucket Head, see, was absolutely regular in his appearances. He would show up every six months (appearances far enough apart so as to keep each sighting fresh and interesting). And every six months, he would stop by in order to fill out a "Roommate Wanted" ad.

It took a while to put two and two together. The ads didn't run with a photograph of the person who placed them. And maybe when someone showed up to answer the ad, he left the Bucket Head get-up in the closet until the ink was dry on the six-month agreement.

At the end of that six-months, well, it was time to get a new roommate.

Unless, of course, he was killing them.

He kept us quite entertained up there at the ol' Puck. And so far as I know, I'm the only one who ever talked to him.

He had made one of his clockwork visits. It was summertime, and it had been one of those beastly humid, slow afternoons. So that day, Bucket Head had exchanged the plastic five-gallon bucket on his head for a bedpan. My guess was that he got more air circulation that way, but I could be wrong. Maybe it was all just a question of fashion.

After he filled out his "Roommate Wanted" form in exactly the same way he did every time, he looked around in confusion. Then he came over to my desk.

I'd been trying to ignore him, trying to get on with whatever it was I was doing, trying not to gawk and trying not to laugh. Now I had to face him.

My eyes slowly trailed up his body until they stopped on his face. I tried not to stare at the bedpan on his head.

"Can I help you?" I asked, biting the inside of my cheek really hard to keep from smiling. I didn't know what to expect.

"Yes, um," he said, in a gentle, unremarkable voice. "The basket where I normally leave these is gone... Would you be able to take care of it for me?"

"Sure," I said, as I took the form from him. "No problem."

"Thanks," he said.

Then he left. That was the last time anyone ever saw Bucket Head. The offices moved north a few months after that, and so far as I'm aware, he never took out another ad.