The Mane of My Existence (by Siobahn Hyser)

(Creative Non-fiction)

I hate my hair. Well, I used to hate my hair when it was long. Until I chopped it off, my hair was well below my shoulders, a mass of curls that parasitically existed upon my scalp. My hair had a life of its own. People were happy to meet my hair. They remembered my hair. I’m sure they would have taken it to dinner if they could. My hair reveled in the compliments and praise it received, rustling about like sea anemone in the ocean.

*

I have always had long hair, until a gay boy with an electric razor made a drastic mistake. When my hair and I were very young, the long curly locks were a beacon that attracted strangers. "What beautiful hair she has!" they would exclaim to my mother in the grocery store. "It’s so long!" I would smile and bask in their adoration. Mom always told me my hair was pretty, but she never told me I was pretty. When I got older, in high school, she would constantly point out, "Your hair is so thin on top!" I don’t think it actually was. But her insistence caused it to believe that I was going bald, becoming an ugly freak.

*

My hair had become my identity. If it didn’t look good, I was ugly. I wasn’t a girl: I couldn’t even do my hair right. Some days it would be this beautiful masterpiece of loose curls, and other days it was a frizzy mess. And then there was the whole going bald on top thing. Some days my hair would look great from what I could see and then I would use a handheld mirror to look at the back of my head. Sure enough, there was a scalp showing through. Years later, I discovered the simple reason for the seeming "bald spot", a cowlick that made a bunch of my hair into one big curl. My mother wasn’t much help. She just let me linger in the horrific prospect of baldness and ugliness for my senior prom. Mom wasn’t really a hands-on sort of mother, although she would help wash my hair in the sink before school if I ended up with too much goop in it.

*
After graduation, I couldn’t give it up; I was still worried about losing my hair. I was still afraid of being ugly. Soon, I thought, I will be one of those old women with cotton ball wisps floating about their heads. I couldn’t think of anything more horrific.

*

I kept my anxiety to myself, not seeking help from friends or my female relatives. It was shameful to be losing my hair; I must have done something wrong. I had failed at being a girl. If I couldn’t do my hair, much less hold onto the hair I still had, was I really a girl? It sounds dramatic, but my late teenage years were spent in the rave scene where sexual confusion hung in the air thicker than the smoke from the dry ice machine. The baggy pants and oversized shirts, the baseball caps and short hair: who knew who was a girl? A boy?

*

One evening about four years ago, I was at Jeremey’s house. His roommate had a friend over and they were all going to trim their up hair with clippers. "Jeremey," I said, "Do me, too." I had had enough. The past few years with their deaths and sorrows had left me feeling naked. First Daddy died, and then Anna was killed six months later. Around the same time, Nana, Daddy’s mom, died of old age. Why should I have any hair to hide behind? I didn’t feel beautiful, and my hair wasn’t sad for my losses. Isn’t that what women used to do anyway, cut their hair off when they were in mourning?

*

Besides, if I was going to do something drastic with my hair, Jeremey was the one do it. He’d gone to acting school in New York and had cut hair for his theatre friends to make money. He was gay and had an inherent sense of style. Unfortunately, he’s also an inveterate drunk.

We went upstairs to the bathroom and I sat on the side of the tub. We chopped off most of length and then he said he was going to trim it up with the clippers. He kept going back and forth from one side to the other. I ended up with sort of a faux hawk in the middle. "That looks so punk rock!" he said, "You totally need to keep it." So I did.

*

A few hours later, and a few – well, a lot more – beers later, Jeremey decided he needed to touch it up a little. Again, we went upstairs. Again, I sat on the tub. Jeremey picked up the clippers. He put the razor to my head, above my right ear and shaved around my ear. "Okay," he said brightly, standing back and crossing his arms, clippers still in hand, "We have two choices. We can either shave it to the skin around your ear on the other side or shave it all to the skin except for the mohawk." I looked to the mirror as my jaw dropped. All I saw was a blur because my glasses were out of reach on the counter by the sink.

*

Jeremey continued, never failing in his chipper tone. "I forgot to put the attachment on the blade so it shaved your head right there."

*

Did I mention we were drunk?

*

Ten minutes later I have a checkerboard pattern on my head, squares of skin and fuzz, with a mohawk in the middle. Over the course of the next week, repeated visits to Jeremey slowly remove the rest of the hair from my pale, white scalp. I am as bald as Vger from the Star Trek movie. And I like it.

*

Suddenly, showering takes 5 minutes. No wonder guys get ready so fast. I can leave the house without looking in a mirror. My hair doesn’t get in my mouth or my eyes when I’m driving with the windows down. My budget for hair products just went down to zero.

*

It never gets past my chin again. With full time school and full time work, I don’t have the patience for hair anymore. I tried growing it out a bit a couple of times. But as soon as it gets a few inches long, the curls erupt and I have two choices: back to the hair product aisle or back to razor. I keep choosing the razor.

*

Shaving my head was the most liberating thing I have ever done. I’ve heard other girls say the same thing. I got rid of something that had been weighing me down most of life. My sense of self became detached from the parasite that devoured hair goop and shampoo. My sense of self was now… my self.

*

When I first got rid of my hair, there were some ingrates at the bars who taunted with me "dyke" and "Where’s your girlfriend?" I flashed a guy on the street one day because he thought me and the guy with whom I was holding hands were gay men. I had never done that before nor have I done it since.

*

I realize now that my femininity does not emanate from my hair. It does not determine my sexuality or my beauty or my life. I thought no one else could see past my hair because I couldn’t. Not letting it grow has allowed me to grow. I get it cut every 4-6 weeks, telling the girl to cut it like Alyssa Milano’s character on Charmed. I’ve discovered I don’t have a pointy or dented head.

*

I still hate my hair, especially when I remember all the time and effort I put into it. Especially when I think of the stress it caused me and the hundreds, if not thousands of dollars spent on yet another fix-it-all hair product over the years. When I think of all the time I spent worrying over my mother’s idiotic and uncaring fixation on my thinning hair, I can’t believe I didn’t chop it off sooner.

*

It’s funny how I still get compliments on my hair; chicks tell me how brave I am, how they never could do it. They tell me I have the right face for it. I never believed anyone who told me I was pretty until I had no hair. I knew now they meant me, not my hair. It makes all those years of standing in front of them mirror seem all the more pointless.

*

Rapunzel was an idiot. She should have used that rope of hair and saved herself.

____________

WRT310 Creative Writing, Fall 2005