The clippers over my scalp, back and forth, patch by patch. Every four days. The shades are pulled in the bathroom but the white daylight leaks in from the sides. Bright and long rectangles across the bathroom floor. The scrape across my head. The hum through my skull. My face in the mirror. Someone's face, anyway.
Beard is gone. Moustache is gone.
Bright and long rectangles across the bathroom floor.
My hair had been thinning for the last twenty years and I had largely been ignoring it. Growing it long. Cutting it down. Growing it long again. I had said for a year that I was going to shave it all before I did. It had to be the right moment. It had to mean something. Eight months ago the moment came. The meaning.
But it hadn't worked. I kept trying to shed whatever tightening chrysalis had built up around me, shave it off, but it wasn't going away. There were moments I could see through it. Where the color came back. Where the bright and long rectangles shown through. But they were only moments.
I turn and use my phone camera and the mirror to get the back of my head and begin trimming down in rows and squares. It always reminds me of wheat fields. Combines and tractors. An honest days work and a purposeful life. For a moment I can lose myself in the fantasy but then I am back. In this body. In this room. In this life. The hair falls in small piles into the sink and onto my shoulders and the floor. The last four days fall in small piles, gone now.
I'm hungover and I hadn't slept. I could blame the anxiety and sadness on that. I could ignore the truth of it for the morning. It was just the alcohol. I was just tired.
Run the clippers over my head a few more times. Just in case. Unplug them, wrap the cord around and set it all back in the box. Go to the kitchen, grab paper towels, and clean most of the hair up. Turn on the shower. Wait for the warm water. Stand in it.
I stand and can't move. The water runs over my head, neck, shoulders, body, taking away the hair and sweat and I imagine it taking away layers of the chrysalis. The conversations. The regrets. The death of it all, right down my sides and legs, across the tub and down the fucking drain. I imagine the water baptising me, freeing me, washing away all of this. I stand and can't move.
The water doesn't change anything. It takes the hair and the sweat and finally I can will my body to move again. I spread the soap around my body. I breathe. I close my eyes and I regret it. Faces in the dark. Voices echoing. I try to shut it off and I can't and I come back to the room around me. Finish the shower, towel off, climb out. Keep moving. Keep occupied.
Stand in front of the mirror. Breathe.
Keep moving. Keep occupied, I think.
It doesn't matter.
There is music on my phone in the sink and I remember I had put it on earlier but I hadn't heard any of it.
It doesn't matter.
