When
I was a kid, I had long hair, and I liked to play with it just like
any other girl. I combed it, brushed it, styled it, and went to the
hairdresser twice a year to have it done. I looked through the
magazines and the style catalogs and tried out the different styles
to varying degrees of success. I've had cornrows, dreads, single
braids, highlights, waves, and weaves. My hair was long and black and
somehow managed to be free of the kinkiness that affected the rest of
my family. My mother's hair was puffy, my brother's was frizzy, and I
couldn't tell what my father's was because he kept it buzzed off. But
mine was an anomaly, and it disappointed the hell out of my mother
that I never wore it loose. She would say, “Your hair's a blessing,
Kaliwanara. You should show more of it.” I think this was the
reason that I didn't
show
more of it; no teenager wants to do what their mother says. The other
more sensible reason was that it was always in the damn way. I was a
runner, and the stuff weighed me down. It whipped out behind me like
a banner strapped to my head and bounced against the back of my neck
while I ran. It got caught in necklaces, scarves, and zippers. It
snagged on fences and even doorknobs I was passing by. I ran around
in the woods and the hills and came back with who-the-hell-knows-what
in it. It seemed like my hair was only a blessing to somebody like my
mother, a conservative Ghanan woman who worked at a law firm and
cooked and didn't do much else.
I began to admire the women on my father's side of the family. These were Kenyan women, with burnt cinnamon skin and long arms and legs like sycamore branches. Most of them had no more hair than my father, if any at all, and the heads of the bald ones gleamed like golden coins in the sun. They could probably run like bullets, and never had to worry about their hair being yanked in a fight or pulled by some idiot boy who sat behind them.
I decided that this look was something to work up to, to get a feel for. In my sophomore year, I got my hair cut short so that it fell just above my ears. I had inherited my father's ears that stuck out like wings, and the idiot kids called me “Dumbo the Elephant.” But they would've called me anything; in ninth grade I was “Siren-Mouth” because I was loud, and in eighth grade I was “Skeletor” for my long, skinny legs. I'd been made fun of enough to stop giving a damn about being made fun of. All I cared about was that I was free from the shackles of long hair. I ran like a bolt with nothing weighing me down, and Dumbo-like or not, my ears were glad to be free. At the beginning of my junior year, I got gauge piercings and nobody called me Dumbo anymore. By then they had moved on to calling me “Riot” for mouthing off and getting into fights. I still don't see how that was supposed to be an insult.
They say that changing your hair marks a change in who you are, that it's the first outward sign that you're an entirely different person than who you were before. When I finally had my hair buzzed off completely, just after I had gone away to college, I looked in the mirror and saw a different Kali looking back at me. This Kali had a hard face and fiery, eager eyes, ready to see the whole world that existed beyond her little West Virginia town. She was strong, built like a tree from years of running. She pursed her lips and looked angry, fierce. She smiled, and her teeth shone stark-white against a dark chocolate complexion. I loved this fierce-looking, bald-headed Kenyan-Ghanan girl, and I wanted her to love me back.
That Christmas, I came back home without a single hair on my head. My brother, who was still a little shit when he wanted to be, cried out, “Ha ha! Kali's a cueball!” My father smiled and told me it was a good look for me. “Now you look like a true Muburu,” he said, comparing me to all the aunts and cousins with shaved heads on his side of the family. I thought about how they'd all react the next time they saw me.
But then there was my mother. My mother would never have stopped me from expressing myself in any way I wanted—of course, she drew the line at a tramp stamp or a nipple piercing, but she believed that my body was my own to do what I wanted with it within reason. She let me have the gauge piercings and did not object to the coiled snake tattoos around my right arm for my eighteenth birthday. I'd gone around with my hair in neon yarn falls or dyed the color of red velvet cake, and she didn't protest. If I wanted to buzz off my hair, that was my decision to make. She knew that and she respected it.
But she couldn't hide the hurt and disappointment in her eyes. My hair, my “blessing,” the kind of hair that she herself had longed for but never got to have, was gone.
I began to admire the women on my father's side of the family. These were Kenyan women, with burnt cinnamon skin and long arms and legs like sycamore branches. Most of them had no more hair than my father, if any at all, and the heads of the bald ones gleamed like golden coins in the sun. They could probably run like bullets, and never had to worry about their hair being yanked in a fight or pulled by some idiot boy who sat behind them.
I decided that this look was something to work up to, to get a feel for. In my sophomore year, I got my hair cut short so that it fell just above my ears. I had inherited my father's ears that stuck out like wings, and the idiot kids called me “Dumbo the Elephant.” But they would've called me anything; in ninth grade I was “Siren-Mouth” because I was loud, and in eighth grade I was “Skeletor” for my long, skinny legs. I'd been made fun of enough to stop giving a damn about being made fun of. All I cared about was that I was free from the shackles of long hair. I ran like a bolt with nothing weighing me down, and Dumbo-like or not, my ears were glad to be free. At the beginning of my junior year, I got gauge piercings and nobody called me Dumbo anymore. By then they had moved on to calling me “Riot” for mouthing off and getting into fights. I still don't see how that was supposed to be an insult.
They say that changing your hair marks a change in who you are, that it's the first outward sign that you're an entirely different person than who you were before. When I finally had my hair buzzed off completely, just after I had gone away to college, I looked in the mirror and saw a different Kali looking back at me. This Kali had a hard face and fiery, eager eyes, ready to see the whole world that existed beyond her little West Virginia town. She was strong, built like a tree from years of running. She pursed her lips and looked angry, fierce. She smiled, and her teeth shone stark-white against a dark chocolate complexion. I loved this fierce-looking, bald-headed Kenyan-Ghanan girl, and I wanted her to love me back.
That Christmas, I came back home without a single hair on my head. My brother, who was still a little shit when he wanted to be, cried out, “Ha ha! Kali's a cueball!” My father smiled and told me it was a good look for me. “Now you look like a true Muburu,” he said, comparing me to all the aunts and cousins with shaved heads on his side of the family. I thought about how they'd all react the next time they saw me.
But then there was my mother. My mother would never have stopped me from expressing myself in any way I wanted—of course, she drew the line at a tramp stamp or a nipple piercing, but she believed that my body was my own to do what I wanted with it within reason. She let me have the gauge piercings and did not object to the coiled snake tattoos around my right arm for my eighteenth birthday. I'd gone around with my hair in neon yarn falls or dyed the color of red velvet cake, and she didn't protest. If I wanted to buzz off my hair, that was my decision to make. She knew that and she respected it.
But she couldn't hide the hurt and disappointment in her eyes. My hair, my “blessing,” the kind of hair that she herself had longed for but never got to have, was gone.
Nine
years later, I still don’t have any hair. I've contemplated letting
it grow out again, and got as far as letting a bit of fuzz accumulate
before deciding to buzz it all off again. Bald is freedom. It's the
summer sun warming the top of my head and it's looking good in every
hat
when winter comes around. Bald is saving money on shampoo, brushes,
and combs and having a shorter morning routine, free of wrestling
with tangles and mats. Most of all, bald is driving the neighborhood
men crazy.
They hate it. With my bald head and boyish clothes, but womanly figure and particularly visible assets, they can't tell what the hell I'm supposed to be. While most of the hair-topped ladies I know—the pretty Anna Ming, the tall Bex Driver, the small and quirky Vera Sherwood—have been catcalled or flirted with at some point, the guys that I pass by don't seem to know what to do with me.
“Man, what do you think that is?” one of the men across the bar asked, his eyes and his seedy friend's eyes fixed right on me. He wasn't even pretending or trying to be subtle about it; I and the other “RiffRaff” around here can never tell if it's worse when people try to be subtle and judge you silently, or when they come right out with it.
I stood up and propped one elbow against the bar. “Now, I'm not an expert on such things,” I said, pinning them to the bar with my left eye, “but I think that she might be a human being, and therefore not to be referred to as that. Am I right?”
The guys immediately turned their heads away and pretended they were never looking and had never said a word. Who's this crazy bitch? What's she going on about?
“Am I right?” I asked again. “Go on, tell me if I'm right. Is there ever a moment when it's appropriate to refer to a person as 'that?' Well, is there?”
They didn't answer. They just got up and moved away, taking their beers with them.
When you're grown up, no one calls you Dumbo for your big ears anymore. They don't point at your bald head and call you Cueball, or comment on your Siren-Mouth. Nobody really pays any attention to you at all, until they can't decide whether or not they want to fuck you.
They hate it. With my bald head and boyish clothes, but womanly figure and particularly visible assets, they can't tell what the hell I'm supposed to be. While most of the hair-topped ladies I know—the pretty Anna Ming, the tall Bex Driver, the small and quirky Vera Sherwood—have been catcalled or flirted with at some point, the guys that I pass by don't seem to know what to do with me.
“Man, what do you think that is?” one of the men across the bar asked, his eyes and his seedy friend's eyes fixed right on me. He wasn't even pretending or trying to be subtle about it; I and the other “RiffRaff” around here can never tell if it's worse when people try to be subtle and judge you silently, or when they come right out with it.
I stood up and propped one elbow against the bar. “Now, I'm not an expert on such things,” I said, pinning them to the bar with my left eye, “but I think that she might be a human being, and therefore not to be referred to as that. Am I right?”
The guys immediately turned their heads away and pretended they were never looking and had never said a word. Who's this crazy bitch? What's she going on about?
“Am I right?” I asked again. “Go on, tell me if I'm right. Is there ever a moment when it's appropriate to refer to a person as 'that?' Well, is there?”
They didn't answer. They just got up and moved away, taking their beers with them.
When you're grown up, no one calls you Dumbo for your big ears anymore. They don't point at your bald head and call you Cueball, or comment on your Siren-Mouth. Nobody really pays any attention to you at all, until they can't decide whether or not they want to fuck you.
“Hey,
you look like a monk.”
I open my eyes and behold Rickie Johnson, standing there looking at me like I'm an interesting specimen under a microscope. “A monk, huh.” I sit up and fold my legs into the traditional “zen monk” position, with my hands resting on my kneecaps and three fingers curled into the air. I doubt that very many monks wear long black t-shirts with “STONESVILLE ROCKATHON 2016” printed on them.
“Yeah,” he says, “a monk. Very calm, very zen.”
I close my eyes. “Ohhhhhmmmm.” Taking advantage of the situation, Rickie starts flicking the top of my head.
“Ohhhhm-if-you-don't-cut-that-out-I'mma-snap-that-finger-clean-offffffff....”
I open my eyes. Rickie's way too close to my face. I sock him on the nose, but it's all in jest, and we crack up. Rickie's probably the closest thing to a more-than-best-friend I have, but there's no commitment involved; Rickie has made it clear time and time again that I'm not his type when it comes to that. His “type” includes Greta Slokov, a raven-haired, red-lipped cookiecutter beauty who walks around the grocery store in uber-tight crop tops that land just under her boobs. My personal opinion is that if you're going to be showing that much navel, you had better have a barbel piercing to show for it. Her personal opinion is that the appearance of a man and the appearance of a woman should not overlap, and if you're going to walk around in button-downs and shorts you should at least have the decency to have a full head of hair, or if you're going to be a bald-headed woman you should at least put on some dresses and some skirts because it's your god-given duty to keep from confusing people. To sum it up, she finds me disgusting and the feeling is mutual. Rickie is way too good for that bitch.
I haul ass down the paved trails while Rickie chases me. I run to the jungle gym and jump up onto the ladder, scrambling up there in about two seconds using my runner's legs. Rickie crawls up the slide to come after me, and I throw myself down the opposite side and take off like a bolt. The mothers with their strollers shoot glances in our direction, but what the hell are they going to say? I'm laughing too hard to breathe. Rickie catches up to me and fires a few finger guns, and I block them with an imaginary bulletproof shield.
We're crazy.
Would we be less of a spectacle if I had hair and looked like a woman? Probably not. But in a hick town like Tanager, where absolutely nothing happens, a bald woman and some blonde guy running around the park like two kids is probably the most interesting thing they've seen all day.
But I've got something even more interesting.
“C'mere,” I tell Rickie. I grab his hand and he doesn't object. I may not be “his type,” but he's never actually passed up an opportunity to get close to me. I don't know if it means anything, or if he's just so desperate for the touch of a woman that he's willing to take it even from a bald one. Either way, he lets me lead him far away from the playground and out to a private little cluster of trees where guys usually take their ladies for a quickie. It's broad daylight and nobody's really doing anything, but there's one or two couples here and there, holding hands in the grass and making out the picnic tables. Otherwise there's just people passing through.
I tug at Rickie's hand. “Let's give 'em a show.”
He's all for it. “How?”
I sit myself down right in front of the Latina woman locking lips with a guy with a guitar on his back, folding my legs into the “zen monk” position. “I'm Buddha,” I tell Rickie. “Rub my bald head for a hundred years of good fortune.”
“Only a hundred?” Rickie asks. “I don't know, I plan on living longer than that.”
“Then kiss it,” I tell him. “Kiss it and you will live for a thousand years.”
Rickie kneels down. “A thousand, huh? Well, I don't think I can rightly pass that up.”
He puts his lips right where the sun warms the top of my head. There's something raw and just so right about the feeling of lips against a bare head. Hair acts like a shield; it blocks out the soft feeling of the two lips and suppresses the pressure of them pressing against you. He holds them there for fifty full seconds counted in my head, then he pulls away. “Was that worth a thousand years?” he asks me.
I grab him by the collar and pull him down. He's so close to me that his moustache stubble scratches against my bare head. I move his hand on top of my head and hold it there, and there's no hair to block out just how warm it feels. I hear the Latina girl go “ugh,” and she and her guitar guy take off for elsewhere.
“It was worth eternity.”
I open my eyes and behold Rickie Johnson, standing there looking at me like I'm an interesting specimen under a microscope. “A monk, huh.” I sit up and fold my legs into the traditional “zen monk” position, with my hands resting on my kneecaps and three fingers curled into the air. I doubt that very many monks wear long black t-shirts with “STONESVILLE ROCKATHON 2016” printed on them.
“Yeah,” he says, “a monk. Very calm, very zen.”
I close my eyes. “Ohhhhhmmmm.” Taking advantage of the situation, Rickie starts flicking the top of my head.
“Ohhhhm-if-you-don't-cut-that-out-I'mma-snap-that-finger-clean-offffffff....”
I open my eyes. Rickie's way too close to my face. I sock him on the nose, but it's all in jest, and we crack up. Rickie's probably the closest thing to a more-than-best-friend I have, but there's no commitment involved; Rickie has made it clear time and time again that I'm not his type when it comes to that. His “type” includes Greta Slokov, a raven-haired, red-lipped cookiecutter beauty who walks around the grocery store in uber-tight crop tops that land just under her boobs. My personal opinion is that if you're going to be showing that much navel, you had better have a barbel piercing to show for it. Her personal opinion is that the appearance of a man and the appearance of a woman should not overlap, and if you're going to walk around in button-downs and shorts you should at least have the decency to have a full head of hair, or if you're going to be a bald-headed woman you should at least put on some dresses and some skirts because it's your god-given duty to keep from confusing people. To sum it up, she finds me disgusting and the feeling is mutual. Rickie is way too good for that bitch.
I haul ass down the paved trails while Rickie chases me. I run to the jungle gym and jump up onto the ladder, scrambling up there in about two seconds using my runner's legs. Rickie crawls up the slide to come after me, and I throw myself down the opposite side and take off like a bolt. The mothers with their strollers shoot glances in our direction, but what the hell are they going to say? I'm laughing too hard to breathe. Rickie catches up to me and fires a few finger guns, and I block them with an imaginary bulletproof shield.
We're crazy.
Would we be less of a spectacle if I had hair and looked like a woman? Probably not. But in a hick town like Tanager, where absolutely nothing happens, a bald woman and some blonde guy running around the park like two kids is probably the most interesting thing they've seen all day.
But I've got something even more interesting.
“C'mere,” I tell Rickie. I grab his hand and he doesn't object. I may not be “his type,” but he's never actually passed up an opportunity to get close to me. I don't know if it means anything, or if he's just so desperate for the touch of a woman that he's willing to take it even from a bald one. Either way, he lets me lead him far away from the playground and out to a private little cluster of trees where guys usually take their ladies for a quickie. It's broad daylight and nobody's really doing anything, but there's one or two couples here and there, holding hands in the grass and making out the picnic tables. Otherwise there's just people passing through.
I tug at Rickie's hand. “Let's give 'em a show.”
He's all for it. “How?”
I sit myself down right in front of the Latina woman locking lips with a guy with a guitar on his back, folding my legs into the “zen monk” position. “I'm Buddha,” I tell Rickie. “Rub my bald head for a hundred years of good fortune.”
“Only a hundred?” Rickie asks. “I don't know, I plan on living longer than that.”
“Then kiss it,” I tell him. “Kiss it and you will live for a thousand years.”
Rickie kneels down. “A thousand, huh? Well, I don't think I can rightly pass that up.”
He puts his lips right where the sun warms the top of my head. There's something raw and just so right about the feeling of lips against a bare head. Hair acts like a shield; it blocks out the soft feeling of the two lips and suppresses the pressure of them pressing against you. He holds them there for fifty full seconds counted in my head, then he pulls away. “Was that worth a thousand years?” he asks me.
I grab him by the collar and pull him down. He's so close to me that his moustache stubble scratches against my bare head. I move his hand on top of my head and hold it there, and there's no hair to block out just how warm it feels. I hear the Latina girl go “ugh,” and she and her guitar guy take off for elsewhere.
“It was worth eternity.”
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