9.4: In Sight of Myself

This narrative essay, developed from a journal prompt in class, shows the beauty of Natalie Goldberg’s advice to “give things the dignity of names” in her advice essay entitled, “Be Specific.” Valentine takes the reader through the settings of a mid-sized midwestern town, naming everything so the reader can be right there in the scene. Sometimes in nonfiction writing, the author must take liberties with names to protect identities, but Valentine captures the essence of identities of places and people in this piece. Again in this piece, exposition is peppered throughout as the author frames a journey of identities in a simple trip to the hair salon.

“So, what now?” I asked.

My boyfriend, Ben, slipped into the seat beside me. We were sitting in his car with two chairs stuffed into the backseat. The nerdy little bar we used to have our D&D sessions at, The Bronze Dragon, had recently closed down, and the owner made us the first to know when everything would be half price at their garage sale. After two and a half years, Ben and I would be living together in a month, and two chairs for $12 felt like a steal. A small, rotund plush of a black cat in a pumpkin suit smiled at me from the dash. I had always found it strikingly adorable. The perfect impulse purchase, if you asked me.

“I don’t know! We could get lunch, go home and watch a show, or go somewhere else?”

His hair had fallen in front of his face when he got in. He pushed it back behind his ear. An idea clicked in my mind.

“We could go get our hair cut together? We’ve both been needing to do that.”

He looked over to me, grinning and giddy at the prospect. “That would be cuuute!”

I rolled my eyes fondly. I preferred keeping mine short. It only needed a few inches trimmed to escape the awkward length it had grown into. Ben, on the other hand, had grown his hair out just past his shoulders. Chopping it off was like a sign the sweltering summer heat was really here, and he’d been complaining for weeks about needing to get it done.

I looked through salons on my phone, checking for what was closest and their wait times while he queued music for our ride.

“I usually go to Cost Cutters,” he offered.

“I’ve never been there. I’ve always gone to Great Clips, the one down near Central.”

“Would you prefer to go there?”

“I don’t know. It’s whatever you prefer.” I spoke in that rushed ‘don’t ask me to make a decision’ voice I’ve always had when unsure of something. I really didn’t care much, so long as they could cut hair straight and give me what I asked for.

Ben went silent in thought as he weighed the options. His lips pursed in thought as he finished curating the perfect playlist for the drive. He pressed play before casting it to the side. As the music began, he placed his hands on the wheel and smiled.

“Let’s go there.”

We stopped back at his dad’s house to drop off our chairs and sat on the couch scrolling through our phones for reference photos of the last time we each cut our hair. With the time spent giggling and pausing to show unrelated, goofy pictures we had of each other in our camera rolls, it took longer than it should have. By the time our favorite photos were all sorted out, the salon’s wait times were all about the same. I placed our names on the online check in for the nearest one out in Onalaska.

When we arrived, two empty seats greeted us at the front of the salon just behind the counter. I showed the stylist my pictures as I relayed our day. I could hear Ben doing the same.

It always felt exciting, sitting in one of those seats, with my face staring back at me in the mirror and not knowing what it would look like once it was done.

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I’d never done anything special with my hair as a child. I’d get it trimmed when I was small, back when my grandma would take me to the mall to cut off any split ends in exchange for lollipops and temporary tattoos. It was for maintenance rather than anything of self-expression. The thought never occurred to me to cut it any other way.

The more I grew, so too did the itch sitting under my skin. It was like something existed between my ribs and my heart, waiting to either implode or crawl its way out. I noticed it in fourth grade, when puberty began and I started to learn more about human anatomy. It spread through my veins like a fungus, eating at my bones and consuming my body.

I told myself every girl felt that way. Everyone dreaded the thought of what it meant to be a woman, and how their body had begun to change. Everyone wanted to be something other than they were. Everyone hated the feeling of leaving the locker room and entering the gym, standing silently in the center as teams were divided into boys versus girls. Everyone hated walking to their designated side.

Once I got to middle school, I was begging to do something with my hair. To dye it, cut it, or do anything else that would make it feel more like mine. By the time I was in high school it had grown past my hips. I felt like a dark-haired version of Rapunzel. It was a chore to maintain, but more than anything it just wasn’t me. I hated seeing myself in mirrors, and I hardly ever wanted to be in photos.

Every time I brought up the desire to cut my hair, I was bombarded with the idea that I was going to regret it. It took people years to get the length I had, what if I hated having it short? It’s not like I could get it back once the job was done. And what would guys think? They might not want a girl with short hair. Even my brother tried to discourage me, saying I’d be less likely to get a job because employers wouldn’t want me.

It all sounded absurd. My mom kept her hair around shoulder length at most, and my brother hadn’t cut his hair in years. I knew girls with pixie cuts who had boys chasing at their feet, and short hair had always seemed to be the more professional or mature choice both on TV and in my own community. I didn’t care about any of those things, though. If anything, less harassment from boys sounded like an incredible win. I wasn’t trying to be a pretty girl or an attractive career woman. I was trying to be me.

By sophomore year, I finally broke. I had asked again, and again, and again. The empty promises of doing it ‘someday’ had been built like a sandcastle waiting to be washed away by the shore, and my tide was coming in. If my mom wouldn’t take me to get it done professionally, I would take a pair of scissors and do it myself, and we both knew how lovely that would turn out.

My mom relented and agreed to take me to a salon the next day. She wasn’t happy when I held her to it, waking her up and reminding her every few minutes of what was going to happen. Stil, she traded her nerves for optimism for my sake. I showed her photos of styles I liked, and asked what she thought would look good on me. When we arrived, I listened to her anxious chatter with the stylist about never having done this before. All the while, I was bursting with excitement for the person I would become.

A collection of thin black ponytails were gathered in a plastic bag. I hoped they could be donated to someone who would love them more than I ever could. The rest had carpeted the floor around me, like someone had dragged in the hide of a dead bear and laid it out at my feet.

When the stylist spun me around, I stared in the mirror. It wasn’t exactly what I asked for. The stylist had her own opinion on what would suit me. She had given me a short bob, one that just reached my chin. It looked more like something she’d give to a woman in her 30s or 40s than a teen, but it was nothing a little extra styling couldn’t fix. I had already started considering where I left my bobby pins for when I got home.

Still, it was a step in the right direction. My head felt lighter than ever. I shook my head around and ran my fingers through it with astonishment every time. The weight on my scalp and the dysphoria it gave me had been cut off within an hour, as if it was never there to begin with. I still looked like a girl, but this, at least, was something I could make work.

In the days after, I’d catch my reflection in the mirror, and more often, I found myself smiling back. My camera roll began to fill with pictures of me, selfies sent to friends of the things I was up to, or just because I liked the way I looked. I had never cared to do that before.

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The stylist’s scissors snipped at my hair as she combed through it to make sure each layer looked nice. Each little shik sound of the blades coming together and another clump of hair falling onto my shoulders sent a jolt of excitement up my spine. She’d ask now and then how I felt about things, like if she had parted it right, or if I wanted to go shorter or keep the length as it was. She listened to my thoughts and trusted my judgment. This was her job, she told me, and this was for me. It seems every time I go, every time near the end where I’m asked if I like it as it is, I find myself asking:

“Can we go a little shorter?”

She took out the clippers and carefully started to trim the hair at the base of my neck. The loud buzz rang in my ears like a massive mosquito flying around me. I’ve never gotten used to it being so close, but I resist the urge to shoo it away nonetheless. Once finished, I felt the tiny hairs poking at my neck. I’d probably leave traces of them everywhere I went until I got in the shower.

When the stylist asked again how I felt about things, I told her it looked good. Hell, I loved it. She pulled the cape off my shoulders, letting more stray hairs fall to the floor. They stared at me, waiting to be swept up as I stepped away. I glanced over to my partner. His golden-brown locks had joined mine on the graveyard of the floor, and his stylist was just finishing neatening the edges. I couldn’t help but laugh as I told the others there how they had sheared him like a sheep.

The moment we were out the door, he grabbed my shoulders and began shaking me around with excitement.

“You look so good! You’re so handsome!”

He rambled on more compliments. If a positive word for appearance existed, it was only a matter of seconds before it came out of his mouth. I laughed and told him the same. He’d done this every time I chopped my hair, got new clothes, or simply tried something new with my makeup.

It had been just under two years since my first haircut when we met. Despite the confident personality I presented with, I still felt entirely other. It had seemed the world would never love me for who I was, and I had made peace with that fact. Walking through the halls on the first day of my senior year, I didn’t know what name I’d go by. When I reached my class, my favorite teacher asked, and I threw caution to the wind. Soon after, Ben followed me in and took a seat across the room. Soon after, he gained a new crush.

Ben drove me back to my house. Songs I introduced him to took over his taste in music, and they played through the speakers as we both sang along. At every stoplight, he’d look over to me, and that wide, shining grin would consume him again.

His unrelenting positivity absorbed my insecurities like a sponge and squeezed them out into something new. I still get that itch, the one that says I’ll only ever be seen as some frail young girl, and not whatever gender-messed version of me I’d rather people see, but it’s calmer now. Less and less do I find myself concerned with anyone else.

I view myself like a butterfly emerged from its chrysalis, or maybe one still climbing its way out. Occasionally, I offer a friend a rare photo from before I cut my hair, something from school or my mom’s Facebook since I never kept any myself. Their eyes flash between the photo and me, taking in every similarity and every difference between the two.

“You look like a different person,” they tell me. “You look more like yourself.”

I’m inclined to agree.