Shaved

I had shaved my head.

I had bought one of those shavers, or clippers, that come with various sized extensions. I used it to trim my bush hair. My genitals. I had done this since I was 14. I also trimmed my leg hair, and the hair on my forearms with a number two. I was a hairy fuck, but no one knew, since I had shaved since I started to get hair on me. I used a razor on my chest and stomach, so it was smooth, not just trimmed.

I felt like I was never supposed to have hair. When it started coming, I took it off. It wasn’t just because I was a gymnast, and there’s some unwritten rule that gymnasts must be smooth. (Have you ever seen a gymnast with hairy armpits?) That’s an excuse I used. Before it was even popular to shave body hair, I took a blade to my bod. This isn’t some kind of foreshadowing, by the way. It’s just the truth.

I don’t think even my mom knows how hairy I am. One of our favourite activities, growing up, was to suntan, and so there I was, all smooth, baking myself in the summer prairie sun, with razor bumps. Fortunately, I’m not so hairy that I have hair on my back…well, not until I was older, anyway.

Now I’m 40, and have some back hair. I’m not an ape, but still, there is hair on my back. I haven’t been shaving myself for about a year now, so I am able to reach back and pull and find a finger full. I’m not about to go show myself naked to someone, so after 26 years of shaving, I’ve given up the task for the moment. At least, my hair is a light brown, and fine.

I don’t remember the moment I decided to take the clippers to my head. The deciding moment. That’s lost to me. Looking at myself in the wall-to-wall mirror, the light a blue/white from morning sun mixed with Hollywood light bulbs and white walls, I took the buzzing instrument with a number one extension and glided it against my scalp. I started in the exact centre of my head. Methodically, I shaved it evenly, one stroke on each side, one after the other, tendrils of dark brown hair clinging to my nose and the stainless steel sink plugger. Ceramic white mauled by prickly brown hair chops.

Inches away from my reflection, I stared into my brown eyes. I was still drunk, but didn’t look it. The whites of my eyes were white. My brows framed them beautifully. Although most of my hair was gone I still looked like me, only unadulterated.

Once, on a crowded bus during rush hour in July, I sat next to a 30-something middle-eastern man who smelled of sex and sweat, and couldn’t keep his hands off his dick. Normally, this should be a turn on, but he exuded abnormality. He was wearing shapeless grey sweatpants, in which he slid his right hand down and started jerking. The bus was so crowded, people were standing hip to hip in the aisles, but this didn’t stop him. Maybe it turned him more on.

I think what turned me off is that he was turned on by me. And because I found him disgusting, I turned on him. If he had been blond or something, I wonder if I would’ve helped him, you know? Actually, that’s not the truth – I tend to find middle-eastern men extremely hot. It was his energy of perversion that grossed me out. My older sister told me when I was 12 that if a pervert comes onto you, that you should embarrass them publicly. Perverts tend to be cowards, and when you publicly state their perversion, they stand down. This all comes to mind while I’m sitting next to Mr. Jerkoff on a crowded bus, in the middle of a sweaty summer day, and he’s smelling of sex and perversion with his right hand bouncing up and down in his sweatpants.

I stated loudly, so all the bus could hear, “What are you doing? Masturbating?”

He looked at me incredulously.

“No!” he loudly proclaimed. Meanwhile, he was still spanking the monkey. He was looking me in the eye and denying that he was jerking off. How insulting is that?

“Do you want me to tell the bus driver?” I asked. A lovely blond woman standing in the bus aisle noticed our conversation, and carefully moved away from us.

The masturbator started threatening me, "I'm going kick your ass," etc. He looked me up and down, all over and sideways, his mouth and eyes agape. “What are you? Some kind of plastic thing?” he asked.

Ironically, I was terribly complimented.

By shaving my head I ended up looking even more plastic - like a science fiction, mass produced, in vitro clone. It made me look generic and indistinct.

I was at the end of a binge, coming down. It wasn’t the kind of binge where you’re just a little hung over once you woke up. It was the kind of drunk where you’ve inhaled 26 ounces within 4 hours, got blasted, said nasty things, ruined your life, then went to bed, woke up, and floated around still drunk. I was floating when I shaved my head. It’s was a graceful slow-motion episode, and every movement is meaningful and thoughtful. Including the grazing of clippers across my scalp.

It was a significant gesture, one that changed my life, forever. If I hadn't shaved my hair off, I would probably never have met Les...