Shave and a Trim

"Are you ready?" I ask, flicking the switch to the electric razor, bringing it on with buzzing life.

The sound startles you. You were taking one last look at yourself in the mirror, with second thoughts twirling their fingers in your luscious hair. You were beginning to wonder what on earth possessed you to call me over this morning to do this thing. The idea had been so random, occurring so suddenly last night while you were on Facebook, looking at old photos of yourself with your friends in high school.

You had smiled to yourself then, at the fixedness of the notion: Me? Shave it all off? Why not? You had been certain the idea would not survive the night, like so many other crazy ideas that made perfect sense during those midnight hours, when reality diffused ever so subtly, like a naked form sliding behind curtains of semi-translucence. But with sun's rising you had awoken, eyes lifting effortlessly to the soft glow coming in through the window shade. And there, still, the idea had been, a weightless memento to the previous night.

You had grabbed the phone and called me, and I answered: "Huhmmnuung ... yup."

"Mooorning. Think you can you come over today? Like in an hour?"

"Christine? What time is it?"

"It's 7. Sorry if I woke you up, but I have a crazy favor to ask of you."

"Crazy favor? How crazy are we talking here?"

"I'll explain it to you when you get here, if it's all the same. Can you bring your shaving kit with you?"

"Shaving kit? ... whoa, whoa: Okay. Slow down. One second ... We've joked about this before, you and I. Christine is it? This is still Christine I'm talking to, yes. You're not really going to do what I think you're going to do? Are you?"

Hearing the plain and simple silence on your end of the line, I said "-You know what, give me an hour aaand ... aaaaahh ... half. It is Saturday after all."

Two hours later and a knock, two knocks, three arrived at your door. You had been pouring yourself a cup of tea. Opening the door you offered me the cup instead with a smile saying, "Good morning, sleepy head."

Sleepy head, indeed. Last night had marked the end to day number four in what was becoming a marathon of back-to-back study sessions in preparation for the upcoming med-school exams. It is bad enough that I like to bury my head in books for sheer amusement's sake, receiving, if nothing else, the autodidact's self-assured pleasure that he has learned something, but when the school bell begins to toll, and hard, an innocuous tendency turns toward borderline obsession, with eyes straining for ten hours at a time, flitting back and forth from page to page; and at the end of it, never feeling like it was enough. My face was pale this morning, and heavy-lidded. Despite that, my eyes were active, alive with that certain vitality, which could rest from time to time but would never truly stop.

"Good morning. For me?" I said, face perking up at the sight of a steaming mug. I ceremoniously handed you the shaving kit in one hand, while accepting your tea in the other. And after taking a sip: "Mmm, good tea. What is that chamomile? Alright chit-chat aside, lay it on me. What's all this about? What's gotten into you?"

With a playful smile, you had craned your neck out the door, looking left and then right, and then, satisfied, said with conspiratorial tones, "Come inside," as you tugged my shirt sleeve-

"-Easy, easy, hot tea over here, hot tea ..."

You are looking at yourself in the mirror again. Your face is poised as if the hangman's gallow is ten feet away and you're about to mount the steps. The bathroom light glares at you. You have to squint to get a good look at my reflection in the mirror. No doubt, I must look like the eager executioner.

Forgive me; but as you had begun to explain to me your intentions in the living room earlier, I had begun to warm to the idea. "Something has to change," as you had put it, "and if not now, then when? I've had this hair since I was a little girl. It all seems so distant now ... I love my long hair, really I do; but just because I love something, does it mean I should cling to it? It is just hair after all." And I would be lying if I said I hadn't felt a hint of pride at that moment, at being the liaison, in which you placed your trust, for this big step.

But my face falls as I meet your eyes in the mirror now. "It's not just hair is it?" I ask, trying to understand. As a man it is hard to get a feel for this sort of thing; for, to a man, hair is hair is hair - repeat ten more times for emphasis. However, the solemnity that was in your eyes as you regarded your image in the mirror, as you look at me now with your guard down, almost pleadingly to let you off the hook, I see in a flash how vulnerable you are. Something fragile in your face, which is a far cry from that stridently confident girl I had come to know, always there to meet me every Tuesday for coffee at the campus lounge before classes, and, until recently, every Friday evening for a drink to toast the weekend. No longer are you that strange, sexless amorphic blend whose avatar the opposite gender assumes as they make the transition from college acquaintance, to friend, good friend, then trusted liaison; but something separate from it, beautifully so, almost hauntingly so. The fact that you are a woman and I am a man stand juxtaposed to one another like a cliff and an ocean. And the moment we presently share is that interminable shore where a man may, perhaps, in his lost wonderings, be graced by the presence of a mermaid glittering in the waves. This thought doesn't occur to me so clearly in the moment, of course, as I stand there dumbly with an buzzing hacksaw in my hand; but its unconscious intimations are enough to compel me to turn that grim instrument in my hand, off, and return the room to silence once more.

"It's not just hair is it?" You nod at the question and look away. You can feel tears perilously close to breaking. It's all so shameful. So much mystery last night, so much excitement this morning, so much coaxing and build-up; and now: "now I'm on the verge of crying infront of Isaiah like some silly girl with a silly idea," you think to yourself.

"It's not a silly idea, Christine," says another voice. It's not a human voice, but it comes, rather, from deep inside you chest. "You know what you know, and, in the end, you will never turn away from it." To your astonishment it sounds like - no, it 'is' - your father's voice. All of a sudden it dawns on you what it was all for.

You look back at me, determined to meet my gaze.

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" I ask, concern choking out any preamble of my accustomed levity. I have taken a seat on the edge of the bathtub, and am looking level at you, trying to make sense of this new glow in your face - a moment ago you had looked timid and cringing, but, now, in a flash, resolved. "Do you still want to do this?"

"I can't now," you say with steadiness in your voice. "I'm so sorry, Isaiah, for bringing you over like this. I can see by your face that I've done nothing but confuse you. All I can say is that I am as confused as you are. But I did realize something just a second ago. Now all I need is a little time to process it."

Relieved to hear the faint murmurs of Christine returning to you, I nod. "It's ... it's no problem, really. I am confused. I don't know what's going on, but a little confusion here and there never hurt anybody. It can even be revelatory, if that makes sense, a kind of moment of crisis that opens the door to something else(?), which, guessing by your expression, is what happened with you just now. I'll give you all the time you need. But, just to clear the air some, I will be free tonight if you do decide you want to talk."

"Tonight? Don't you have exams you should be studying for? I feel bad enough as it is, wasting your time like this."

"Believe me. It hasn't been for nothing. When I said 'confusion can lead to revelations,' I think it was as true for me as it has been for you. I may bury my nose inside my textbooks and go deaf to the world from time to time (if I've done that with you, then I'm more sorry than I can even find words for), but (what am I trying to say?) - but, if I cannot be a friend at a time like this, then what is it all for?: the studying, the striving, the aiming. You know? What does it matter, if I can't be a true friend? And if we do talk tonight, perhaps we'll have nothing to talk about when all is said and done, and so what."

You look at me, taken aback by this display. Granted, this potential had always burned in my eyes, you knew, but you also knew me to be the sort that kept things tightly under wraps, like a mummy, whose sarcophagus he would only rise from if school were involved. "Okay. Tonight then."