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Tomomi wanted to shave my head.
She was girl I'd met through a friend one evening in early March. For the next several months, we hung out one to three times a week. I didn't know where this was going--or rather, because of how often she'd said she wasn't interested in any kind of commitment, I figured this was going nowhere, and I figured this was for the best. We didn't share the same religious beliefs. I tried not to focus on the future and instead enjoy the friendship or relationship or whatever it was for what it was, for the time that I had with her, the time that she gave me.
She was from Japan, a culture that had long fascinated me, and for those months that I spent with her, I learned as much as I could about it--and about her. She loved America and wanted to move here, but the things she loved about it sometimes made me a bit sad--the independence that people could show here; the absolute freedom to do as we please no matter how dishonorable, in my mind, that was; the bustle and energy, the anonymity and crowds, of that big city of New York, which she had visited several times. She, in turn, thought of me as sort of Japanese, though I'm not sure why--perhaps, my sense of duty to those around us. And yet, for all her independent thinking, she seemed very Japanese to me, as if the most she could do was try on America, never fooling anyone about what was inside her.
We spent several evenings drawing or painting one another. She was a great drawer, having taken several lessons and having an enthusiasm for fine arts. I was not an artist, but I enjoyed looking at her, and so sitting across from one another, drawing our respective faces, was an activity I came to relish. Her hair varied from black to black with maroon highlights to totally maroon. The latter two occurred whenever she got it dyed, for blond, a fad among the Japanese at the time, would never hold very well on hair so dark. Her hair was short, barely shoulder length--sometimes spiky and sometimes shaped around her face like a vase. Her cheeks were full and round with dimples when she smiled, which seemed to be often when we were together. I, too, was happy. I hadn't had a close male friend since moving to Texas, and a girlfriend had never been part of my life. But here, now, I was with someone I enjoyed being with, and it was wonderful.
On my birthday that year, my company had its annual picnic at Six Flags. Tomomi was not able to attend with me, a large project for school due the next day. I was to go with some other girl, but that other girl did not pick me up as we had planned. She did not call. She did not return my calls. After waiting two hours, I left, showed up at the picnic by myself--as I had the year before, as I had almost always.
That night, having returned from the picnic a little depressed, having ridden a few rides by myself, having hung out a bit with a coworker whose company I enjoyed but whose accompanying guests I was not comfortable with, Tomomi called me. She was done with her project, and she wanted to hang out. We went to Denny's restaurant and ate dessert. We talked. We wrote out questions for one another on a piece of paper and answered them. The sadness dissipated. Who could care that the day had been so bad when a few hours at its end could be spent like this? It was early May. In a few weeks, she would leave for New York for a summer internship. I would miss her.
Time away from her gave me opportunity to reflect. One Saturday night, having ventured into Dallas for a rare visit with church acquaintances there, I went to see a movie with an Internet friend and his girlfriend, and three other people. The girlfriend was gorgeous and intelligent and of the same faith as me, and the two them held hands before and after the picture. I thought of my own time with Tomomi, how much I liked her, how much I missed her, and how much I had wanted to hold her hand but had not let myself because I was unsure about dating someone outside my church. I didn't think I'd get past that, and it made me sad--sad because I'd never met a church girl like Tomomi where there was mutual interest, sad because I could see that we would never be a couple, sad because I had never held a girl's hand and probably never would, at least not without a certain amount of guilt over its inappropriateness. It seemed best I make certain she know we're just friends, and I told her so in an e-mail while she was in NYC. She hadn't expected anything more than that anyway, or at least that is what she told me.
She called me when she returned that fall. I loved seeing her again, and soon we were hanging out two or three times a week as we had before. Over the summer, I had heard rumors that she had been seeing someone in New York, but the most I had heard about him from her, in our frequent e-mails and infrequent phone calls, was that he was a friend she hung out with a lot. I had met him in July, when I'd gone to New York to visit her and another friend of mine from grad school, and I saw him again alongside her in the many photographs she brought back from her time up there. I willed myself to ignore the obvious.
Seeing her again, being with her again, I thought that maybe I had been wrong. Maybe our religious differences didn't matter so much. A month or so after she returned, I told her that I loved her. A month or so after she returned, I held her hand.
Things got confusing. She had a boyfriend already, she told me, in New York. Of course. Of course, I should have known. That was that, I thought, beaten again, because of indecision. And yet, we continued to hang out, as "just friends," just friends even though at times that seemed merely a label. I wasn't a boyfriend, but it seemed clear that I wasn't just a friend.
Meanwhile, my job came to a halt. I was going to have to move to stay employed or find another vocation. With my unclear friend status, my need for work, and Tomomi's own desire to return to New York immediately after graduation, our time together was drawing to a close.
It was late October and time for my haircut. I didn't want a shaved head, so I could not completely grant the request she had made so many months ago now. But I would let her use the clippers on the shortest band there was, would come as close to shaved as possible without actually being shaved. This seemed a good deal for both of us. For me, I would get a decent cut. Inevitably, the first week, after I used the clippers on my own hair, I would find patches that I'd miss, patches of residual long hairs. After all, one can't see everything in a mirror, and feeling one's head never seems an exhaustive means for finding strays. For Tomomi, she would get the closest to what she'd ask for as I would let her.
The cut did not go as smoothly as I had figured it would. Her hands were rough on my skull, and at times I felt as if my hair was being tugged out rather than cut. And in the end, there were still small patches where no clipper had trod that I had to go back and touch up over the course of the next few weeks.
Still, sitting on the toilet in her bathroom (where the linoleum would make for easier cleanup), her hands in my hair, the back of my head and then the front of my head at her stomach, was unlike any cut I had ever had before. This was not a task to be borne for each of us, something to get through as quickly as possible so that we could go forth to our other Sunday activities. This was the activity, one that brought joy to each of us--or at least, some amount of joy--no matter the difficulties that cutting hair in a small bathroom presented.
I didn't give her everything. I didn't think I could. I held back the stubs of hair because I was afraid, afraid of what would be if I had gone completely shaven.
Later, looking over her photographs of New York, I would see again the man she called her boyfriend. They were at the beach, his arm around her waist, the two of them smiling. Like me, he wore glasses, but unlike me, his head was shaved.
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