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My friend Star (that's right, I have a friend named Star--get over it) says that hair is where our lives begin. No matter what a man claims to some other effect, he sees a woman's hair first. She could be wearing a slinky red party dress in the middle of a lumber mill, and the first thing he'll see is that lock of yellow hair rolling down the inside of her right breast or the trail of hair slipping down the center of her back, ending just above the low-slung top at the back of the outfit. He makes a move on that hair first, before the dress, the body. His tongue professes love, but his hands just want to touch that hair. Months later, years later, the babies arrive. It's all because of the hair, she says.
Of course, Star worked at Clippers during college, paid her tuition with tips from perms and dye jobs and thousands of snips of the scissors. She kept it up for two years after as well, paying for the upkeep of Rose, her daughter, until a job came along in her field of study (well, sort of--she studied anthropology, and now she catalogs natural-history artifacts at the university here in town). My point is she has an exaggerated sense of the significance of hair.
Certainly people judge us by hair, I'll agree with her. In that she's right. But hair is not destiny. Destiny is in a name more than in one's tresses. I bring up Alexander the Great. I don't know what his hair was like, but he conquered the world, and how could he have failed, a name like that? Star points out that he earned the "Great" after what he did, not before.
But past or future, they all run together, two sides of the same thing. What of Prince, Madonna, Valentino? If it's all a matter of earning a reputation, why does Hollywood perennially name its stars?
Star is not a star, of course, or so she says, but I beg to differ. She's a star to her daughter--which is more than I have.
But all this is a long-winded way of getting to yesterday.
Yesterday, the three of us--Star, her daughter, me--sitting sticky on a blanket at Bishop Park in the evening heat, waiting for the dark to get dark enough, for the sticky to stay but the heat to somewhat decline, for the marching band that wasn't marching to disappear into the background as the fireworks arose overhead, Star made a proposal.
She didn't want to hear anything more about Ken. Men are not worth grieving over when so many others are to be had, she said. Our own lives roll on, so it's best to start fresh.
She brings up hair again. It all comes down to the hair for Star.
She's going to reclaim her past profession for me, give me a new identity. Clip off a bit here, snip a bit there. I'll be born again.
I don't know what she's proposing exactly, what kind of cut. I've had the same hairdo since age sixteen, shoulder length, rather straight, but I can curl the bottom when I desire and I often do. It's versatile. Big if I want it big, flat if I want it flat.
Star is proposing major surgery, something that takes a stand, makes me into something I've never been. No compromises, no vacillation.
What do I have to lose? Certainly not a boyfriend.
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