Stories (because I'm Organizing my English portfolio for class)
Growing up, I spent most of my time at the hair salon where my mom worked. Doing laundry, running errands, gossiping with forty-year-old women… these were the activities of my youth. My life was marked by constant change- though this was manifest in the hairdos of the elderly women who wandered in looking for a new way to style their fading hair.
As I got older, my time spent at the salon took its toll; my hair became my instrument for unconsciously conveying whatever phase I was experiencing. At twelve, I chopped off my long mane of messy blond curls and grew out the bangs I had deemed childish. When thirteen rolled around, I dyed my hair magenta, to match my favorite t-shirt. At fourteen, my hair changed color monthly, moving between red, brown, and blond (which, because of the other colors, ended up being more of a yellow).
And so it went, on into high school, as my hairstyle became a tightly-coiled bun positioned awkwardly on my head. I was shy; I did not hide behind my hair- I hid my hair behind me. I envied the girls with the long, shiny tresses, their hair spilling onto the desk behind them and the sweet smell of hair products lingering long after their presence.
I refused to leave my house with my hair down. It did not look like the beautiful styles of the popular girls; instead, my hair, when worn down, more closely resembled the tattered brooms used by the janitors.
I finally wore my hair long after I decided to put it into dreadlocks during my senior year of high school, much to the dismay of my mother and art teacher. For the first three months, my dreads looked (and smelled) as though they'd been made the nest of a host of small animals. Later, though, they grew more uniform and I learned how to care for them.
To celebrate their half-birthday, I dyed my dreads lime-green and electric blue. I had now become the 'hippie' of my high school; still quiet, I now had an image that my peers viewed as legitimate. I happily bought into it… or maybe, I had finally found a way of expressing who I really was. Either way, I embraced my inner-hippie, wearing hand-painted jeans to school and buying Grateful Dead albums. I had finally found the image I so badly desired throughout my adolescence.
When I graduated high school, I was still the hippie. That summer was spent wandering barefoot, jobless, attending outdoor 'open mic' nights. I came to college with a set of door beads and year-old dreadlocks, excited and nervous to enter a world where I knew this image would have to be substantiated with who I read and what I wrote.
My hair changes have slowed down now, marked only by a change from my high-school dreadlocks to normal hair, and back to dreadlocks. I shaved my head last November, as a final farewell to my attachment to hairstyle; with or without hair, I'm still who I am. There's no changing that.
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The concept of marriage has always eluded me- I don't understand the idea of committing to one person, one path, for the rest of my life.
I went to a wedding once, with a boy who thought he was my 'One and Only.' It was the wedding of his friends Amir and Baharak- two people I had met but didn't know very well.
We drove all the way to Toronto on a Friday afternoon, after an intense all-nighter spent writing a paper for my independent study. The trip was also excruciating- our car was searched by Customs, Scott forgot the gift and card, and we got lost at least three times on the way to our hotel. When we finally got to the wedding hall, however, we were the first to arrive.
After wandering the surrounding grounds for an hour, avoiding all of the old relatives who spoke little English, Scott and I took our place in the balcony overlooking the ceremony. It was a Persian wedding, which meant long-standing traditions of which I had little understanding. Instead of walking down the aisle, the bride and groom were seated in throne-like chairs, behind an elaborate table decorated with hundreds of morsels of food.
A man standing before the congregation read a foreign language from a long scroll while the couple fed each other small bites of each symbolic food. Honey for sweetness in life and sticking together through good and bad times, an elaborate flatbread for prosperity, decorated eggs and nuts for fertility… It lasted for hours.
As I stood overlooking, hand-in-hand with Scott, I pondered the significance of the idea of love. Are these two people truly giving their hearts- their lives- to one another? Does love exist in a different way for them than it does for me?
These questions still remain unanswered, almost a year later. I spent the rest of that day feeling lost and self-conscious, wandering through the laughing crowds of relatives and friends.
There was hope, though- suspended in that cup of honey that each lover drank from. Maybe it’s not a hope that maybe someday I would be willing to share that cup- my life and love- with someone else, but it is, at least, a hope that the substance of my life will always be as sweet as that honey.
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I’ve never really been on a date before. I’ve ‘hung out’ with guys, I’ve ‘gotten coffee’ with guys, but dating isn’t something that I do.
My last boyfriend, Scott, and I had our first ‘hang out’ two weeks after he took up my roommate’s lease for the summer. Can you ever really date someone that you live with?
Scott and I broke up last month- right before Valentine’s Day, I think. After that, guys seemed to come out of the woodworks; random men, old friends, new acquaintances were all asking me to go out with them. I’ve still never been on a date.
Today I am meeting Tom for a drink. It is not a date- but we might kiss. Tom is one of the surprises that happened after I broke up with my boyfriend; two weeks after I was ‘single’ according to my Myspace page, I get a message from Tom about a band that reminded him of me.
Tom is a boy that I didn’t date two years ago- one that knew me intimately, but not at all. We had been ‘not dating’ for two months before I left for Africa. When I came back a month later, he was taken- dating a girl that looked and acted all too much like me, only better. Slightly prettier, slightly smarter, slightly better at getting men like Tom to date only her.
What will he think now, after two years? Have I changed and not realized? My growth has become so fluid- I don’t even notice anymore.
I’m supposed to call him right now. How does his voice sound? Will I be nervous? do know that I’ve gotten stronger, more passionate, smarter, over the past two years. Will I throw that all away the minute I see him? Become nineteen again? Or will I blow him away with my cool?