hair now gone to morels

Today I had my hair cut and lost enough length to stuff a small teddy bear. Afterwards I crouched on the floor in the horseshoe swatch of paler wood worn on the black boards where the hairdresser stands every day in an arc that sweeps back and forth around each customer, and tamped up the soft, drying clumps in my fingertips, and put them in a paper bag they gave me. My hair had spread across a wide area and I gleaned back as much as I could. I feel a bit weird saying, Can you give me a bag, I want to take this stuff home: and even weirder about leaving it there lying on the floor. To get swept up. Mingled in with other people’s hair. Dusted in landfill, with its bad magic.

I had chosen for this outing a place I felt safe in, in a chic part of town where women carry little dogs in their handbags. All the trees have sprung into service and the old buildings gleam. On my way home feeling lighter and breezier in the fresh afternoon Spring air I pulled the handles of the bag apart and peered in – a soft knot of washed and combed ends and curls lay there in a heap, big as my two fists, coiled on itself on the floor of the bag like some little dog lured from its home.

I so hate getting my hair cut that it happens only once every year, or two years; for a long time I used to cut it myself, with the scissors on my Swiss army knife. The girl who took my appointment earlier in the day had a blond bob severely asymmetrical but her eyes were soft. “I will put you with Damir,” she decided. “He has an unusual name too.” Damir was very cool, as all hairdressers are cool, and reminded me of my friend M. Same quirked brow, same smooshed beanie on the back of his head; same deft hips. He let my hair out from its elastic and said, Ahh, in a tone of satisfaction. Took his time, handling the masses of it for ten minutes, parting and lifting it, weighing it, judging the curl and its spring and the way the colour grows. Only then did he say, “Let us go wash,” lässt uns waschen gehen. It was a pleasure to close my eyes and let myself be handled. He said, see how it’s much curlier at the back. See how it’s ginger at the ends, I said, and he said: that’s because you wear it up in a knot and that’s where the sun most gets to it. Right, I said, slowly, thinking: oh, riiight. How little one notices oneself.

Would you like something to read? He went over to a low table by the huge windows and bent over, sifting and separating. In the mirror I watched him choose me out three magazines and order them into a stack. One had a photo in it of the beautiful photojournalist Lee Mitchell, shortly after the death of Adolf Hitler, in his apartment taking a bath in his tub. When Damir offered me a drink and I said I’d like some water he said, Still oder mit. This translates, “Still or with?” Germans ask each other these questions about water, still or sparkling? With or without. “With” means with gas: bubbly. The salon was huge and only one other person was getting their hair cut in it. How much was all this going to cost? “I don’t care,” I said to myself, trying to calculate when it was last cut: more than two years ago. It was peaceful there under his hands within the tent of my own hair. I remembered how I used to go to nightclubs just for the dancing, and would dance alone, all night, all night. When men came up to me I didn’t yet know how to get rid of them so eventually I would take the elastic out of my hair and let it fall across my face like this, making a thorough curtain through which I could see out but no one could see in. I used to smoke and I guess it was eerie to see a woman sitting smoking stolidly through the sheet of her own hair, certainly no one persisted past that curtain and this reminded me of that. I closed my eyes and let sensation scratch at me all round. The fingers brushing the back of my neck. The tugging as he lifted wings of hair up high to trim the ends. The soft feathering as it fell down over my face. The scent of tobacco from his fingertips, that lay on the hairs hanging combed straight over my nose. The faintly tropical, faintly chemical smell of salon shampoo. “You never blowdry it,” he said, and I said, “I don’t even own a blowdryer. Or a comb.” “You can feel it in the hair,” he said, letting it run through his fingers like water in sand.