I’m sitting at the kitchen table, hands clutched in my lap as I consider the scissors and comb I’ve placed there. I have a question, a favor, I’d like to ask you, but… I’m not sure how you’ll react. I see you come padding into the kitchen from the living room and I smile.

“What are you doing still awake?” You ask and I catch the strange undertones of scolding in your voice, even though you’re still awake, yourself. You place the bottle of vodka back in the freezer where it will sit until the next get together, getting started on tidying up so that we don’t have as much to do tomorrow.

You don’t call them parties… you never call them parties. You call them ‘get togethers’. The way you say it makes it sound warm and inviting and intimate, which is what they always are, here. You make them feel that way.

“Huh?”

Your voice tugs at me insistently and I look up. I didn’t realize I’d started daydreaming. Back to the items quite literally at hand. “Will you cut my hair?” I ask.

“What kind of haircut do you want?” You ask, fingers of your left hand still curled around the freezer door handle, a gleam of … something I can’t quite place in your eyes.

“Short,” I say.

Like yours, I want to say, but don’t. I’ve made up my mind. If this is what I am, what I’m supposed to be, then I should look like what I am, right? I mean, that’s the theory, isn’t it? Mark said that he could tell that you and Alice and the others were what they are because of their hair. He couldn’t tell much of anything about me. I was half hoping he would be able to see it, be able to look at me and say ‘Ah-ha! That’s what you are, see? And this is why’, but he didn’t. I felt… disappointed… even more lost than before.

But this… this is something I can do something about. Something I can fix. But I need your help.

You hesitate at that, studying me thoughtfully for a moment, and I see your eyes dart briefly to my shoulders, where my hair is draped against my skin. You let go of the freezer door’s handle and step away from the fridge and I see you glance behind me, out the window, and I wonder… did you hear us? Did you overhear what Mark had to say about you and your hair and how it singles you out in his eyes?

“Okay,” you say carefully. I was hoping you would just take me at my word, just see the request for what I was hoping you would see it for and not try to read anything more into it, but I should have known better. You always see me when the last thing I want to do is be seen… you understand when I want things to remain blurry. I’d hate that about you, but … no, you’re right. This is important.

You take a seat across from me at the kitchen table and sigh. You’re dressed for bed and I know it’s late.

“Do you want me to do it right now?” You ask, leaning forward in your chair to rest your forearms on your thighs, hands curling together between your knees. They’re bigger than mine, your hands… and broader. I glance down at my own hands as they’re clasped together in my lap… I think my fingers might be as long as yours, but I can’t tell. Couldn’t, unless we held our hands together, palms pressing. I think I might ask you, one day, to do that with me.

“Yeah. Yeah, I do,” I say quietly, feeling bashful, but at the same time, I want to get the words out before I lose my nerve. I know it’s late and you’ve had a little bit to drink and you’re probably feeling sleepy. You have work in the morning. I should have waited and asked you some other time, but the question is out there, now. I can try to offer you some kind of an out, at least… “If you’re not too tired.”

“I’m not too tired,” you say matter-of-factly and… god, you can read me so well.

“Okay.” My eyes drift back and forth between your face and my hands as they rest in my lap. Sometimes it’s hard to look at you… to look you in the eyes. Did you know that? Your eyes can take me apart, down to my very last molecule, in a heartbeat and do it so effortlessly, so casually… you do it with everyone, not just with me, but it scares me, sometimes, wondering what you must see when you look at me that way.

“Are you sure?” You ask and I can feel you dissecting me.

“Yeah,” I say, smiling as I chance a look up and they’re there, those eyes. I look down again. “I just feel like I… need to change.”

Like I need to change. I do… need to. Here, with you here, I need to. I don’t blend in, I don’t fit in, I’m not right. I look like a straight girl in a house full of lesbians and … I’m not. At least, I don’t think I am. Not anymore. I… I don’t know what I want to be, anymore. That’s the truth of it. So maybe I can choose this… make this choice for myself and maybe it will be right, maybe it will feel right the way that Tim didn’t… the way Marina wasn’t… the way Gene and dear, dear Robin couldn’t. Maybe then I’ll finally be able to see myself. I can’t see myself, my face, with all of this hair in the way.

“Okay,” you reply as you stand up from your chair, like it’s the easiest thing in the world… now that I’ve finally admitted it to myself and to you. As if that was all you wanted to hear, what you were waiting for. My reason.

You grab the back of the chair you were sitting in and pull it away from the table, towards the center of the kitchen floor and rest your hands on the back of it and there’s something so comforting in your smile and the look in your eyes is… inexpressibly warm. When I don’t move to stand up from my own seat right away, you nod down at your chair in silent invitation and I can’t help but smile. Such a gentleman.

I stand, move over to the offered seat and sit down, hands settling into my lap again and the joints in my fingers start to ache, my hands are gripping each other so tightly. I feel your hand, then, cupping the back of my head, smoothing my hair as you circle around and the simple gentleness of it makes me close my eyes.

You kneel down in front of me, fingertips catching on the ends of my hair, drawing it down around my face and I can tell you’re concentrating. Your eyes have a distant cast to them, now, trying to figure out what you should do, what might look good on me. What would… be good for me. What would be good for me, Shane? Do you know? I can’t take my eyes away from your face and I wish you could hear me so I didn’t have to ask it out loud, didn’t have to say it and sound as lost as I know I feel right now.

You cover my hands with yours and look up at me and the distance is gone and I almost want it back, because the way you look at me… almost makes me want to tell you to forget it, that it was just a stupid idea and that I really didn’t mean it, that I didn’t know what I meant, but it wasn’t this. I never wanted… any of this. I didn’t want to ***** my life up this badly… I didn’t want to be left alone, all by myself in this house, putting ads in Craigslist for roommates because I couldn’t afford to stay here but god, there was no way I could go back to Ohio.

“Okay,” I whisper and I can hear the tears in my voice even before I feel them in my eyes. I’m not ready. When will I ever be ready?

“All right?” You ask softly, thumbs smoothing over my skin, soothing… healing.

“Yeah.” I nod. I can do this. I need this. I need to be… bare. I need to stop hiding. I need for you to see me, then maybe I can see myself a little more clearly.

“Okay,” you whisper and your smile is full of this impossible, overwhelming joy. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.

“Okay,” I say with a soft laugh.

“Let’s do it.”

“Yeah.”

You stand and turn, retrieving the scissors from the table, leaving the comb behind, and circle around behind the chair and I can feel your hands, sure and steady, gathering my hair together, smoothing it down. Do you always know what to do, Shane? I almost ask but instead, I look up at the ceiling, fighting tears again.

Do you always know what to do? Always know the right answers? Always know just what to say, just the right smile to give someone to soothe their pain or calm their fears or make them want you? Have you always known how to do that? Could you teach me? Could you teach me to be more like you? As free and certain and sincere as you are? Can you teach me not to be the kind of person who lies and cheats and hurts the people she loves? Can you teach me that? Could you teach me how to be the one they all want… the way everyone always wants you?

I feel the scissors, then, the radiant coolness from the metal against the back of my neck as you hold my hair with one hand and start cutting with the other. I feel each and every strand as it gives way beneath the scissors and I can feel the weight of it lifting surely. You release my hair for a moment and I can feel it falling away… my hair… my life, old memories and bad dreams and mistakes on top of more mistakes, each one even worse than the last.

Your hands grasp the remainder of my hair and the scissors are moving more surely, now… more determinedly than before. I’m really doing this. This is really happening, now, and I feel lighter and lighter and lighter and with one final snap, it’s all gone and there’s a tear trickling hot down my face. I hadn’t even realized I’d started crying again. Oh god, it’s done, now. It’s really done.

I close my eyes. I don’t want to look. I don’t want to see that pile of ghosts sitting there on the floor next to me, beside the chair. Your touch is gentle, as always, as you stroke the back of my head, fingertips tugging lightly at the freshly cut ends of my hair, smoothing back the few shorter pieces that remain. You step back over to the table and pick up the comb and return, coming to stand beside me as I sit, and run the comb through the shorter locks of hair, combing them back out of my face so that you can cut them as well.

“Are you okay?” You ask quietly. My hand immediately goes to my face and I wipe the tears away as I let out a soft, self-conscious laugh.

“Fine,” I whisper. “I’m fine.” Out of the corner of my eye I can see you nod, just once. “I haven’t worn my hair this short in years.”

“Yeah,” you murmur, raising your voice over the soft snipping sounds of the scissors, perhaps trying to distract me from the sound of it. “It takes some getting used to, for some people.”

“What was it like when you cut your hair?” I ask and sniffle as I rub at each of my cheeks with a hand, trying to banish away the last traces of chilled tears from them.

You’re quiet for … a very long time. When you finally answer, you’re already done with the right side and have moved on to the left.

“Different,” you say softly.

“What made you decide to cut yours?” I ask as I fold my hands together in my lap again and sit up straight. Your fingertips press against the underside of my chin, gently tipping my head up the tiniest increment before you return to your work. More silence. I wonder if I shouldn’t have asked you that. Maybe it’s something that’s none of my business. I don’t know.

“I needed to change, too,” you reply, hand moving briskly in my peripheral vision as you comb my hair back, followed by more careful, precise snips of the scissors.

“Why did you need to change?” I ask before I can stop myself. “What’s wrong with you?” I bite down hard on my bottom lip as I feel the stroke of the comb slow. “I’m sorry. That – I … I didn’t mean it… that way. I’m sorry.”

“What’s wrong with you?” You ask, voice gravelly but you still speak evenly, calmly. God, nothing ever gets to you, does it? Even when it does.

“I asked you first,” I say, letting out a laugh. It’s childish, but … I want to hear. I want to know. I want to know what made you feel like you needed to be something, somebody else… I want to know who or what did that to you… made you doubt yourself that way. I didn’t think that was even possible.

You let out a soft ‘hmph’ of laughter and you don’t answer right away… but now, suddenly, I have the feeling that you will. I can feel the answer coming.

“I was … weak,” you say after several minutes of perfect quiet. “I needed to feel strong again.”

“So you cut your hair,” I say quietly.

“I felt like I didn’t have control over… anything,” you say and the tone of your voice makes it sound as though you’re agreeing with me, even though I didn’t see you nod. “But I knew I had control over that.”

“The way you look?”

“Yeah.”

“Shane?” I say and you lower the scissors and comb and look down at me, eyes questioning. I reach up and take the comb from your left hand and hold it in my lap and curl my fingers around yours, gently drawing you down to kneel beside my chair. I let go of your left hand and reach up, fingertips tugging lightly at the jagged fringe falling over your eyes and your eyes roll up and cross to look at my hand; I press my lips together to hold in the laugh I feel pressing against the backs of my teeth. “What were you trying to do… when you did this?” I ask.

Your eyes uncross and settle back down onto my face again and I can’t read you as well as you can read me… I see something in your eyes, but I can’t tell what it is, exactly. It makes your eyes look darker, stormier… and there’s sadness in there, too… but there’s so much more than that… there’s history, there, and it’s history that’s unfamiliar to me… and pain.

I realize, as I watch your eyes grow shadowed and shuttered, that I probably won’t get an answer to that question… not now… possibly not ever. I want to hope that someday you might tell me why… that you might trust me enough to tell me.

“You’re still beautiful,” I whisper, fingers lightly touching the wispy strands that flare out from your face. “If you wanted to know,” I add with a small smile. The corners of your mouth twitch upwards briefly before you purse your lips.


“I’m almost done.” Your smile is soft but fully fledged as you stand and return to your work.

I fold my hands in my lap again and wonder what Tim would think of my new haircut, if he was here, but he’s back in Ohio now… trying to… get on with his life after the shipwreck of me. I hope he’s happy and I hope that he finds a girl to give that ring to. Someone who can make him happy, someone who won’t… hurt him… take his love and his goodness and his trust and throw it all back in his face the way that I know that I did. I didn’t mean to… I never meant to become that person. Wanting is… wanting is not a good thing. No, that’s not right. Wanting is fine, but… acting on it. That’s where I fucked up.

I’ll just… try not to want anything (anyone) for a while – see if I can handle it. I feel you rake your fingers through my hair, smoothing it into place and… I feel the touch of your blunt fingertips on my scalp, sending tingles down my spine and spreading across my shoulders, causing gooseflesh to rise along my arms. You circle around to the other side and fuss there for a few more moments.

I risk a glance up at you and you’re staring at me with a critical glint in your eyes, considering your work and if you need to do any more. Not that I have much left, from the feel of it, but I’m sure you could think of something. Your eyes sharpen and dart down to look at my face and you’re out of stylist mode. You offer me a smile and it’s broad and bright and lovely. You’re pleased.

“I’m done.” You place the scissors on the table again and my eyes follow you as you saunter out of the kitchen. “Let me go get you a mirror so you can take a look.”

“Okay,” I call after you.

Immediately, I reach my hand up and… god, it’s so short. In the back, it’s barely an inch long. It’s a little longer in front, but still — so short. My fingertips feel out the ends of my hair, careful not to muss the style you’ve combed it into.

“Here,” you say as you return to the kitchen, holding out a hand mirror to me. “Check it out.”

I cast a quick, anxious smile your way as I duck my head and look down into the mirror.

I can see my eyes widen in the mirror as I see my new haircut for the first time. My face seems more round, now – softer than before… but at the same time, more… sculpted.

“I look like Audrey Hepburn,” I whisper, a soft giggle tumbling from my lips. I cover my mouth with my free hand, but it’s impossible to hide my smile as I look up at you.

You do that little thing that I find so charming where you laugh without making a sound… your face and your body and your eyes all communicate laughter to me, but there are no noises to go along with it. Church mouse. Your lips twist into a warm smile, eyes twinkling with amusement and fondness as you look at me. “You look exquisite,” you say quietly as you walk over and retrieve the broom from the corner, hand stroking over my shoulders as you go.

“Thank you,” I say, voice hushed as I lower my hand, sharing my smile with you as you pass by me and start sweeping up the leftovers of my old life from where they lay on the floor at my feet. I peer down at myself in the mirror again, fingertips fussing with the short fringe of my bangs in front. “How long do you think it’ll take to wash, now?”

“Not as long as it used to,” you say with a chuckle as you disappear behind me, the broom’s bristles making dry, rasping noises against the hardwood. “Do you like it?”

“Oh, god, Shane… of course! I love it!” I twist about in my seat to gape at you. You’re still sweeping, eyes concentrating on your task, but I know that you’re listening to me. I reach out with my free hand and catch your wrist and you fall still and look up at me, meeting my eyes. Your eyes are dark and green and so deep, I almost feel like for a second as though I should brace myself on something so that I don’t teeter over and fall into them. “I really, really love it,” I whisper.

You smile and… I can feel the quiet pride and satisfaction radiating from you, now – your eyes shining as you tuck your chin down against your chest.

“Good,” you say softly, and I can tell that… with everything that you are in this moment, you mean that.

I let go of your wrist and can’t stop my smile as I turn back to look in the mirror again. So different. Is this me? Is this who I am? Who I’ve always been, underneath everything? Is this who you saw when you looked at me before – who you could see inside? I want to ask you but it’s getting late and now’s not the time for questions that deep. Though, I know that if I were to ask you… I know that you would answer me. I’m just not sure, yet, if I want to hear what you’d say.

I was wrong. Meeting Marina and kissing her and sleeping with her and getting fucked over by her… that wasn’t my coming out story.

This is.

And I feel so … grateful, happy, relieved, comforted, thrilled… that you were here to share it with me. That you were here to help make this happen.

I open my mouth to tell you just that, but a yawn overtakes my words and I cover my mouth to muffle it.

“You should go to bed,” you say gently, reaching over to grasp my shoulder for just a moment.

“Yeah, I should,” I say, scrubbing a hand over my face. “I’ve got class. Early.”

“Then I’ll see you in the morning.” When I glance back at you, you’re smiling at me as you lean on the broom.

“Don’t you want my help?” I ask, gesturing to the floor. “I can get the dustpan -”

“No, no,” you murmur, shaking your head as you wave off the suggestion. “I got it. It’s all right. Go get some sleep.”

“All right,” I say. I stand and place the hand mirror and comb on the table, next to the scissors and it feels strange, moving around and not feeling my hair brush against the back of my neck or my throat or my face as I lean over. I throw you a sleepy smile as I turn and start out of the kitchen. I reach out and touch your shoulder, just lightly – just for a moment as I go by. “Good night, Shane.”

“Night, Jen.” You glance up from your sweeping, lips twitching into a quick, sweet smile.

I make it as far as the hallway, my fingers already curling around the doorknob of the door to my room, when I feel the impossible tug. I’m sleepy, but… this is important. It’s important that I say it. It’s important that I tell you what’s going through my head right now – how much what you’ve done for me tonight means to me.

I turn and walk back towards the kitchen and, as I step into my writing room, I can see you in the kitchen, just through the doorway. You’ve swept all of the mess into a neat pile just behind the kitchen chair and, as I watch, you stoop down, nestling the broom handle in the hollow of your shoulder, and you reach down, fingers closing around a long, dark lock of my hair and lifting it from the soft black heap. You stand and straighten and you shift your weight from one foot to the other, broom still leaning against you as you fashion the length of hair into a loop, tying the ends of it into a knot. You rub your thumb over the loop of it for a moment, a small smile forming on your face, before you tuck it into the pocket of your sleep pants.

You already know … what it means to me. Of course you know. Because you see me, when the last thing I want to do is be seen… you understand when I want things to remain blurry… and you know, better than anyone else, that there are some moments that go beyond the mundane necessity of words.

Thank you… for sharing that with me, Shane.