HairSnip.com

This story sat on my harddrive for a while. 

Alright, I'll be the first to admit, I'm not exactly known for my succinctness.  Thought I'd take a crack at it, though.  I've been meaning to for a while, but I thought I'd explore a handful of adolescent incidents, from before I had a word for what I felt.  Something other than shameful, unhealthy hair obsession.  Fetish.  Kink.  Either way, there was a charge there, and one frequently sparked by a (thoroughly) platonic friend of mine.  So bear with my diary-esque ramblings, if you're so inclined.

In high school, I had the most loquacious, interesting friend.  Let's call her Molly.  She was vivacious and bubbly, the sort of girl that was always smiling.  Passionate in the way only the second-generation Portuguese can be, about politics, about fashion, about ancient Egypt, and about those she cared about.  As far as she was concerned, that was family and friends, but being Portuguese that meant Family with a capital F.  A really warm girl.  Now, she and I weren't the closest of friends, but we were in the same circle, so we spent a lot of time together, and she always had the most interesting things to say. 

Molly's mother was (and still is) a career hairdresser, and Molly'd always been very proud of that.  It was kind of a family business--and her mother wasn't afraid to share it with either Molly or her sister Tanya.  They'd all tried their hand at it a bit.  And, though Molly knew she was destined to become either an archaeologist excavating in Egypt or a college professor, she considered dabbling in the family business her birthright.  She was passionate about fashion, so why not hair too?  She could apply killer eyeliner, or chop in bangs.  It came in handy--in high school, who didn't want a friend who could keep them from tweezing their eyebrows lopsided?  And she kept up to date with it.  After all, if her mother happened to take a technical course on a new haircutting technique, why shouldn't she benefit from it, and learn too? 

As far as her own hair went, I thought it was perfect.  Style-wise, exactly on point.  At first she kept it bright bottle-red, then deepened it through phases of brown before she settled on a rich black colour.  And always, it was not a hair out of place, perfectly pin straight with an incredible sheen, layered just so, and reaching maybe four inches past her shoulders.  My own wavy, undyed chestnut hair resembled either a nest of snarls or a valiant lion's mane, depending on whether the glass was half full or half empty that day. 

Once at a party, she offered to chop in bangs for me.  She was really enthusiastic about the idea, and my first subtle deflections didn't faze her.  "Nahh, I just finished growing them out.  It's been too much work . . ." my fifteen-year-old-self tried to shrug it off, afraid I'd give myself away with a telltale squirm.  Could everyone tell the thought of it made my heart beat faster?  I couldn't say why, but it was something that always happened with me. 

"But it'll look so good.  So cute on you.  And the sewing scissors are right here . . ." she insisted, dark eyes glowing.  "I know what I'm doing.  I've cut my mother's hair before.  Not just trims, but whole new styles." 

The scissors were snatched from the sewing armoire before I knew it.  In her hand, she toyed with them, and I backed away a little across the carpet, and tried not to look too nervous.  "It took me more than three years to grow them out," I insisted, all the aggravating, awkward lengths flashing to mind.  The stupid initial eye-level length, when they had just started to grow out and had to be bobby-pinned out of the way.  Chin length, which you'd think would be long enough to tuck behind the ear but somehow wasn't long enough to stay there.  Or sad mid-neck level, when it felt like they'd already been growing out forever and were still stranded in the middle of my hair's bulk! And looking really dorky, but I couldn't bear to chop in layers just yet, or hack it all to that length. 

"Come on, this doesn't need to happen tonight," my friend Joann came to my rescue, with only a trace of her trademark sarcasm trickling into her tone. 

"Let's play Truth or Dare," Lauren chimed in enthusiastically, ready to steer the party on full steam ahead.  It wasn't until we were seated and tossing around the almost-honest hearts' desires of our tenth-grade selves--or goading each other to dance like strippers--that I breathed a sigh of relief.  Though my stomach still roiled a bit every time it was Molly's turn to choose.  When she asked me, I wouldn't choose Dare. 

I'd almost forgotten about that; that almost-was.  What a strange, keenly-felt memory . . .  Strange to think about those sorts of things.  I wonder, now, which has the greater impact.  Having the bangs, having to bear them, and have them grow out again or find an improbable new style of them that I loved, or else thinking back on it, like this, and wondering . . .  Regretting the doing or the not-doing.  Such an impressionable moment. 

There are other things with Molly, though, that I haven't forgotten.  Her stories, about hair.  She'd tell them over lunch sometimes, interject them in her loquacious stream.  More stories about her family than anything else, really.  Like the time she cut her mother's hair. 

As far as a stylist goes, her mother had quite long hair, for a while.  Past her shoulders.  One day, after work in the kitchen, she'd asked Molly to trim it for her.  The ends were getting a little split.  "One inch," she told her daughter sternly, after setting out the chair in the middle of the kitchen floor, and draping her shoulders with a towel. 

"Of course," Molly replied, all wide-eyed innocence and eagerness to get the job done right.  She took her time, careful and exacting.  But, try as she might, the line wasn't progressing quite according to plan . . .  A few more snips remedied it easily enough.  "Done," she announced. 

The patient mother raised her hands to the back of her neck, and flicked the hair forward, over her shoulders.  Several inches less than there should have been.  "Amelia," her voice came, dangerously calm, "what have you done?" 

That's where that story ended, but I was mesmerized.  A mother who trusted her untrained daughter enough to cut her own hair?  A daughter bold enough to do it?  And one who capped off her story with a shrug, and declared proudly, "it might not have been the length she wanted, but it was perfectly straight!"  That was a moral if I ever heard one.  Now, there are several dozen other questions I might ask if I got the chance.  But of course, back then I couldn't probe too much.  It was too weird, too shameful. 

One day, though, she told a lunchtime story that absolutely blew me away.  I remember exactly where we were sitting, that patch of carpeted hallway in front of her then-locker, beside the guidance office.  Relaxed and eating my yogurt-lunch.  But I couldn't tell you who else was present for this conversation, or what we transisted from when all of a sudden . . . 

". . .  Oh, I wouldn't do that.  I don't get jealous of my friends.  But Tanya did something like that once.  To Melissa."

"Melissa?" I prompted.  I didn't know where this story was going, but Molly's beautiful sister wasn't exactly renowned for her humanitarian spirit.

"Yeah, Melissa.  They're best friends."

"Are?  Were?"  I never could keep Tanya's strange secondhand social circles, in the mysterious realm of college, straight.

"Oh, are," Molly continued happily, "They go to different colleges now, but they still talk and everything.  They've been best friends since like grade one."

"How old were they then?"  I asked, though Molly was wound up like a clockwork now, and was going to get to this point whether I asked or not.

"Fourteen, I think?  Anyways Melissa has the most gorgeous hair.  Honey-blonde with these AMAZING red highlights, perfectly straight," she added with a sniff for her own hair, which she painstakingly straightened every day, "and really thick.  And all the way down to her butt.  Just gorgeous.  All natural, you wouldn't believe it.  Well, like I was saying, Tanya was jealous.  She lived across the street from our old house, and they used to hang out like every day. So one day they were hanging out after school, and she asked Melissa if she could cut it for her."

"Oh," I replied, trying not to look flustered.  Thank goodness Molly was wrapped in her own story now, and didn't have the attention to notice anything was off about me.  I hoped.   

"Well Melissa was really into sports and stuff and didn't care, so she just said, sure.  So Tanya got the scissors and they sat down in the living room and she cut all of Melissa's hair off really short."

"Really short?"  My discomfort now had to be palpable.

"Yeah.  Above the ears short.  She cut it all off, kind of like a mushroom cut.  She looked like a boy."

I swallowed, hard.  "What did Melissa think about all this?" I managed to choke out.

"Oh, Melissa didn't care," Molly replied glibly, her usual sunny self.  "She doesn't care about her appearance, or things like that.  Her mom sure did, though.  She got really upset when she found out, and yelled at Melissa.  And she told my mom and Tanya got in BIG trouble."

Such a short conversation, when I think about it, but I've had nightmares about it since.  And I have to say, every time I met Molly's sister after that, it was the first thing to pop into my mind, regardless of the current state of her fiancé drama, or the college essay she'd recently paid her younger sister to write for her, what program she'd recently switched to, or her lofty college drinking stories.  Of any of those things, this one anecdote was the one that most coloured my opinion of her.  It pestered my dreams, and kept my naïve, sixteen-year-old-self awake at night, thinking people actually do that?  It seemed like something from a soap opera.  I'd been sheltered.  I had no idea.

There are so many questions I'd like to ask.  I'd like to ask Tanya (from a safe distance), what she'd been thinking.  Whether it was worth it.  What she thought when she saw that wrecked head of hair that day, and every day after that, until it grew out into something pretty again.  Pride?  Smugness?  Pangs of remorse?  A sinking feeling of oh-my-god-what-did-I-do?  Though I've never met her, I'd like to ask Melissa what she was feeling.  I want to know why (or if!) she didn't set boundaries.  And, most of all, whether or not she really didn't care.  As for Molly herself, I want to know, does she really believe it?

I can't help but wonder.  Maybe Melissa cried herself to sleep that night.  Maybe she was just trying to seem strong.  All I know is that fourteen is a fragile age. 

I ran into Molly this summer.  I was at a bar, belatedly celebrating my graduation, and she was celebrating a cousin's birthday.  Portuguese.  Family.  Mystery solved.  I hadn't seen her in about two years, so it was a prime chance to catch up.  She was still sweet, still chatty.  The hair hemline had gone up, to just below her chin, and her skirt hemline had dropped considerably.  She looked good.  She was more modest, though, and less ambitious.  "I'm an old lady now," she confessed, "old at twenty-two.  I spend all my time working and playing with my nephew."  Her sister was married now, "to a great guy," and had settled down a lot.  As for Molly, she'd taken up painting now, in her free time.  Given up writing. Was still devouring the occasional historical fiction.  Sported an Egyptian Eye of Ra tattoo on her lower back, just the design she'd always said she wanted.  We planned to get together to catch up over tea again before I left town, but it just didn't quite work out.  Too many crosses in the lines of communication . . .

Makes me wonder, though, if I should shoot my technophobic friend an email.  Or something.  We don't have much in common anymore, but maybe we could recommend each other books.  Start a two-person long-distance book club.  Either way, I know what we won't talk about.  This hidden, directionless and absurdly-charged layer to the friendship, though better understood, is my shame alone.  Some things haven't changed, at all.

Rate this story now.
5- Excellent 4- Very good 3- Good 2- Needs work 1- Poor  

Enter some comments about this story or see what others have said on the forums.