I cut my hair yesterday. Here's the beginning of a story I'm working on:
"You cut your hair!" My ex-boyfriend looked at it hanging over my bloodshot eyes without seeing them at all. I had cut my hair. It had been weeks since my haircut, weeks since I had seen him, weeks since we had been driving to go out for coffee and he said he couldn't do it anymore-- I got out of the car and he moved out of our apartment, leaving me prone to frequent episodes of sickening anxiety. When I slept, I slept with both ears off the pillow. The sound would be too padded if I was on my side, and I wouldn't be able to approximate distance of noise-- like a person with one eye and no depth perception.
His new apartment was white-walled and white-trimmed. So clean and spacious with two big couches. You could really utilize a place like this. Creeky wood floors, metal bathtub. Nice.
"How have you been?" I asked him. I knew what his answer would be.
"Great! Really great! I actually. . . I quit my job yesterday. I had been invited to go sledding with Mark and Tally and about twelve other people first thing in the morning. We drove and drove out into the country and everything was totally covered and I could hardly tell where we were. Isn't this the strangest snowstorm? Inches of powdery snow and then a sheet of ice trapping it all in, making the ground hard again. Totally dangerous. We got out to this huge hill. I think it might have been a levee. It took forever to climb up that ice and snow, and we kept cracking through and falling. I have bruises all over my legs! We got to the top and someone pulled out a handle of whiskey and we just drank it straight and went down that hill all morning. When my boss called in the afternoon I was completely drunk. But, I didn't care. I told him I was never coming back. I'm never coming back in! How have you been?"
I shook my head and had to leave. I thought about it this morning at school, probably an exact year after. So vivid, I wondered why. I bought an Earl Grey tea and shook my thoughts to a child-like girl in my German class. She told me about a German fairy tale in which an evil Earl steals the souls of children. The King tries to escape his kingdom with his son, but as they gallop away on horseback, the Prince screams "I can feel the Earl coming for me! He's coming back for me!" Before the King can slow his horse, the Prince is dead.
"Makes me want to drink Earl Grey tea," I had said, searching for an out as we walked out of the classroom. A punchline.
"I will never drink that again," replied the girl. "I had to use bags of it to pad my mouth when I ran out of gauze after my oral surgery."
I was sipping my paper cup of it when I ran into her this morning. Embarrassed, I tried to hide its tag, as if she would notice it in passing. So many things happen in pairs. So many things break my heart-- Neil Young's "Harvest" playing in the coffee shop, my tea bag being slightly punctured, its leaves floating in dark water which still tasted like water. No strength. I kept to class, waiting for the pair of my memory to complete itself.
