Hair Today
written by: Patrick McAteer
Curly black hair, how annoying! It is so difficult to keep in shape. No matter how many times I comb it, it always rebels back to its original shape. Even when I let it grow long, it forms an irregular dark shadow around my head. I hate to discover my reflection on the glass door on my approach to the school building in the morning. The nearer I get, the worse it looks. Having pulled open the door, I enter and there she sits as per usual, the Kate Bush look-alike goddess in the dark lackluster environs of a school’s interior, sitting on a bench facing the doors. She comes early as she lives in the country and needs to come by bus. Her eyes meet mine for a moment, a moment that lingers long after I have passed. Perhaps she thinks well of my curls. Whatever, I still would like to have straight hair.
I left school but failed at lots of jobs as well as college before ended up working in a hotel. Those curls were still there but had not the same excited state as before. All was going its way until I saw her. That young lady emerging from the escalator in a subway station in the crowded rush-hour. Her hair was short, dark and spiky and she had a round face. Our eyes met for the briefest of moments as she emerged from that well into which I was bound. I wanted to stop and talk to her but I was being washed down the gullet. She, on the other hand was being squirted out. I imagined talking to her, getting close to her, reaching a point where I would eventually summon enough courage. I would then have kissed her. She was the ideal height. I would not need to bend down. Her hair would be next to mine. Both styles would begin to shower compliments on each other. The moment passed and all there remains is a memory. That is at least something for a balding, silver-haired man sitting at a desk trying to escape the monotone voices of a modern day call-center. That something being a spark which continues to fizzle through the gray fog of old age.
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