Mutual Amnesia

“If I cut it like that you’ll lose all this,” Jonny grasped a small sheet of my hair between his index and middle fingers. “I told you I cut it myself with kitchen scissors, what the hell do I know, Jonny?”
He had been cutting my hair for almost eight years now, his hesitance and requests for permission and direction hurt my feelings. “You do realize that you have been doing this since I was seventeen? Stop acting like you are cutting a strangers hair,” I said, shoulders slumped, my head sticking out of a nylon cape, I could see myself in the reflection of the window, I looked like I was wearing a garbage bag. “Well, how do you want it to look?” He tousled my hair,
“Make me look like a rich lady,” “Fine, but you’re going to have to do it differently from now on, and you know you have about a year till all this bleached, damaged hair grows out,” again he asked permission, but had already begun cutting while he said this. "However, this part, " He gripped my bangs, "is bouncy and beautiful, I can't wait till its all grown." "Its not fair, I look like a drowned rat,"
"I think you are the one that insisted on blue hair for four years, Courtney,"
Earlier that day I had been idly flicking through a thick stack of old pictures, each glossy photo making a gentle clicking sound as they were separated, sheet by sheet. I saw myself age before my eyes, a sliver of shocking blue peeking out of my bangs spread throughout my hair slowly, then rapidly, like a glinting, beautiful, azure cancer. I tended after the blue, mixing together several shades of neon dye, perfecting the ratios, applying it religiously every other day. There was a distinct difference between myself and the other blue haired freaks, mine was so specific and vivid, there were times that I had to take off my pants to be reminded that it wasn't my natural color. "I thought I would keep it forever," slivers of hair fell and tickled my face.
"I remember that, it was nice for a time, but I like this better,"
"I was just tired of being a caricature of myself, do you remember Tweeder? I mentioned dying it once, and he said, 'Courtney! You can't, you are your blue hair," I bristled a little and rolled my right shoulder back quickly, a tuft of hair slid to the floor. "It never occurred to me that I could be defined by hair dye I bought at Hot Topic,”
“Forget that,” Jonny coughed dryly, “but it was always kind of amusing to find strands of blue hair on my pillow after you left, or sticking to the bathroom wall.”
I was accustomed to the sight of blue hair caked into my brush, my bathroom looking like a Pollack painting, but I couldn’t help imagining how foreign the spider web fine strands of my Technicolor hair must have looked clinging to someone else’s porcelain. “Sometimes I still expect people to stare at me, and approach me with asinine comments, but now I don’t stick out,” I wondered if anyone would have noticed me at all during those four years if I had kept with a more traditional color.
“ Huh, sorta harder to be noticed without a blazing blue crown of glory,” Jonny blew tersely, directly into eyes to clear away errant hair. “I broke up with Mica,”
“You told me, but you sounded drunk, what happened?”
“ So I met a kid,” I felt out of breath already,
“Like a child?” “Practically, he’s only a few years younger, but he makes me feel like my boyfriends must have felt when I was fresh on the scene,”
“How did they feel?” Jonny was always one to ask more questions rather than assume he knew what you meant.
“I dunno, too wise, like a kid who discovered Santa Clause was actually your parents earlier than he would have liked to,”
“Okay,” Snip. Snip. “I guess I haven’t been surprised by anything in such a long time, the older I get the more I find myself finishing other’s sentences in my head, and guessing how ‘this’ll end…’ But Jonny, this kid knocked the wind out of me, and was totally unexpected,” I took a breath, and looked at my chipped toenails. “Like Jonny, he makes me feel predatory and feral,”
“Hah! Good lord,” “Which I don’t think is a good look on me, but for the first time in about a year I could feel my blood running through my body,”
“I guess you have seemed a little listless,” “Come on, you know when you’re life feels like a movie, like when you were nineteen and love didn’t seem like some ridiculous notion that you are rapidly growing to resent? You know? I never thought my life could feel cinematic again, I thought Nick was the last time that would ever happen to me.” I felt inarticulate and cliché, my eyes groped a box of Camel Lights, and saliva surged, hot and salty underneath my tongue. “I know what you mean, there were times where I thought I would never have that feeling again, it happened again, but not the last couple of times,” I recalled his last few girlfriends, and how crushed they would be to hear him say this. How crushed I would be. And guilty for feeling the same way about my last few boyfriends. “But what about Mica?” he said. “Yes, so, the other night, I invited this kid over for some wine, and to share music from our Ipods, God, you know when you were a kid and your mom was on the phone, you know, a long conversation with one of her sisters or something? And you needed to tell her something desperately, but there seemed to be no pause in her conversation?” Jonny liked this and visibly remembered a similar situation, his laugh trilled like a bird’s. “Yeah, so when she finally got off the phone your palms were sweaty and you couldn’t tell her what you needed to fast enough?”
“Oh yeah,”
“That’s what it has felt like not kissing him all this time.” “Hah!” “After a few drinks I assaulted him with one of those ‘fling your arms around his neck’ kisses, like they do in the old movies after someone comes home from war, where their faces are pressed against each other super hard, but they arent opening their mouths,” I could smell the kid’s wet coat and smoky breath, and saw Gable kissing a starlet in a scratchy black and white world. “Christ Courtney, next you’re gonna tell me you were standing outside in the rain,” I smiled widely and bit my lower lip, “Naw, it was in fog so thick you couldn’t see ten feet in front of you.” “Oh for the love of God,” Jonny stopped cutting my hair and rubbed his eyes vigorously. He removed the cape and shook it out, “Go to a mirror and do not touch your hair.” I marched to the bathroom, I stood on my tiptoes and took in my reflection, new haircuts always seem like artificial limbs, not quite part of me.
“I love it Jonny!” I yelled across the apartment. “Okay, Now you can touch it.” I scratched my scalp quickly, fluffing my hair, and running my fingers through it, there was a satisfying feeling when the ends of my hair stopped blunt, and premature. “So, you and the kid are lost in a moonlit wooded glen, kissing in the fog, then an obscure indie song swells in the background…” “Oh shut up,” I peeled away a strand of hair that had dried to the corner of my mouth, “We hung out till six in the morning, I mean, the conversation was effortless, we listened to music, drank ourselves silly, Lord, he reminded me of me when I was his age and was so unselfconscious and resilient, if I had fangs I would have bitten his neck and drained him of that quality,” my lungs felt hot and I wished I hadn’t been so drunk that night, this was just part of what I could remember, I felt like I was having lunch with someone who was talking loudly to me, while a conversation peppered with my name was happening two tables over. “And then?” Jonny’s scissors dangled haughtily from his knuckles.
“And then,” I swallowed, “I woke up not passed out on the floor, but slumped over, sitting upright, TV blaring,” I looked at Jonny, and even though this was supposed to be the climax of my story, I could sense him slipping, fine sand that I was trying to move across the beach clenched in my hands. “Mica was sleeping on my bed,” Jonny paused, “Wait, why?” “ Ya know how you give someone your key thinking they will never use it? Well he decides he doesn’t want to go back across town when he got off work, so, yeah, he just came over.” “Oh shit,” He tilted backward, slightly, as if he were drunk. “So, all day, He doesn’t let on a bit, I smell like another man…I mean, at least I am fairly certain, and there is evidence everywhere, have you ever tried to keep your heart quiet?” “What?” He opened my closet, grabbed the broom and began to sweep, lifting corners of carpet, he laughed then looked up from his crouched position, “ever notice how hair can be so sexy and beautiful, but once it touches the floor it’s disgusting?” “Yeah, like Jell-o, once that stuff falls to the floor…anyway, like has your heart ever beaten so hard you thought it might incriminate you? Dude, he had to have felt it vibrating through the couch.”
“Ha,” he brushed the dusty hair into a circle. “Yeah, so, He made me Mac ‘N Cheese, and he’s in the kitchen for a really long time, so I go to check on him. He is standing with his arms crossed, and I ask him if he wants to watch a movie, and he says, ‘No,’ and I ask him why not, and he says, ‘Do you think I am stupid?’ and I tell him of course not, and then he says, ‘Yeah right. What? I am supposed to ignore six bottles of wine in your garbage?’ and I said, ‘Well, why would that be a problem?’ and he said, ‘Oh yeah, sure, what the hell Courtney? Your place is a wreck, the bed is a mess and you aren’t even in it. Come on,’ then he said maybe we should break up,” “Okay,” my floor was clean now. “I told him I was sorry, and then he left.”
“Well I could tell you weren’t that into him anyway, I mean,” “Do you think I am bad, Jonny?” “What do you mean?” “You know, for this?” “Well, its not like..” “And for what we did?” “Come on, it was clear you were just filling the gaps, and shit, I mean, fuck Courtney, you never just wait for the right time, you just press, and push and force things to happen too quickly.” I remembered the fourth of July morning where I found myself alone, sticky and humid, on his bed, I peered through his bedroom window and saw him in his backyard, yellow with buttery sunshine highlighting his shoulders and darkening his face. I walked lightly down the stairs, trying to be elegant and delicate, despite a head that felt heavy and urgent. The stone path was already warm, and my bare feet were comforted and welcomed . The memory of me being completely nude outdoors seemed preposterous to me now that it was so cold outside. I could still feel what his cotton shirt, damp with sweat, felt like against my nipples and stomach as I hugged him. I stood in his garden, naked and unashamed. Jonny handed me a purple, heavy tomato. It smelled like being forced to pull weeds in my mother’s garden as a child. It was veiny and I half expected it to beat like a human heart. Jonny broke the pristine silence, “Tomatoes used to be called poison apples.” I squeezed the tomato lightly. “Apples eh?” I smirked and took a bite, the skin was tense against my teeth then gave way, and burst in my mouth, fleshy and savage. Acid pulp overflowed and trickled down my jaw and settled between my breasts, watercolor lines of seeds and juice. “The tomatoes you buy at the store are ripened prematurely with gas, they are green tomatoes that are turned red through a chemical process.” I shivered, barefoot again, my apartment floor a stark contrast to the welcoming stones of July. “Jonny?” “Yeah?” “You’re right, I wasn’t about him, I mean, not head over heels at least. And even though Mica was pissed I could tell he had been looking for an excuse for a long time, I think we were just together out of convenience, and this kid, I mean, yeah, this kid, I felt reawakened by him, but where the hell could it go? I mean, I guess its not like he and I are gonna take long weekenders or jet to Paris, and I’m not going to give him my key, or Christ, can you imagine him introducing me to his family? Even without the blue hair, I’m stamped with tattoos, and reek of a closet filled with bones, and Hells gonna freeze right over before he meets my…” The words came out like someone opening the door to a jam-packed closet. “Courtney!” “Jonny?” “Yes Courtney,” “You think its gonna work for me?” Jonny silenced his sigh politely, “Work how?” “With a guy? Think someone’s gonna get me?” “Courtney…” He breathed my name. “Like, that it won‘t be complicated all the damn time, and I will find the person for me?” “Courtney,” He put his coat on, “either someone is gonna love you or they won’t.” The words, icy and true, made it hard to maintain nonchalance, the air in my apartment was replaced with the absence of love. I laughed, loud and hollow. “Jeeeeeesus, typical me, ‘Hey Courtney, can you make it more melodramatic?’” I mocked myself.
“Hey, well I have to meet someone for dinner, I will see ya when those bangs start poking you in the eyes.” He hugged me and his coat was cold and starchy. I went outside after I heard his car pull away. I sat on the fire escape, the wet bars made my ass feel cold, it sorta pissed me off. I settled in and hugged my knees to my chest. I saw fog collecting at the top of the mountain in the distance. I thought of the last time I drove through fog, In a frozen desert, in a Saturn with shot transmission, I couldn’t get out of fourth gear. I was terrified. It turned out to be a Zen experience on amphetamines, my adrenaline competed with a soothing acceptance of my own mortality. A voice in my head kept repeating, ‘just drive for as far as you can see, then when you can see some more, drive for as far as you can see…’ then, eventually I was home.