Fingers

I kept it long for two reasons. My father, he said to me once, "Grow it out, son, because one day there won't be anything there to grow. Grow it while you can." It was years before I put his advice into practice. I guess it's usually years, isn't it? The other reason, I'm sure you guessed it, is a girl. It is always some girl.

All it took was five fingers, her little hand, going to work on my skull and I was hooked to the shag forever. We lay there side by side that first time and I remember thinking how cool it was. The middle of July and a busted fan, but still so remarkably cool. Is it possible for the heat of two bodies to cancel each other out? Could our magnetism be pulling us together and pushing us apart? She rested behind me, we stared at the wall, I felt her creeping hand walk up my neck. My neck, the back of my head, the top. She was careful and delicate and her fingernails were just the right size. She would stretch the hairs, let them dangle in the spaces between her middle and ring, let them fall back to me. "Promise me you'll always keep it long." So I promised her.

Of course I knew, even then when I promised her, that it would not last forever, that it couldn't. I was a shedder and, looking at my father, I knew what that portended. I tried to keep the promise as long as I could. But the strands that were left on the pillow, that rinsed out with the shampoo, they were growing in number, gaining in steam. She would remove one from her mouth in bed and say, "It's OK." She knew I was embarrassed. And the more I lost the more I knew that the length wasn't long for this world. The fingers, they would soon be gone. They were not the same against the smooth, unknown terrain of my bare head. It was not a sensation to which I wanted to grow accustomed.

I stopped buying razors. I stopped buying shaving cream. I let the beard grow wild and free. I finally understood why they were ever worn for protection. The hairs are not the same, and the length will never be equal. But it is a short distance from my neck to my cheek. It is good to feel her fingers. It is good that now I may kiss them more easily.