My hair

has been growing, unbridled, since it was buzzed this summer. Do you remember how long it has gotten? My mom has gradually been stepping up with the "please, please cut your hair." After so many months, you get tired of asking her to calm down, to not worry about it and think of more significant things... really, goading her on, daring her, to stop nagging me- her youngest son, at the ripe age of nineteen. Her nags have, however, become more bold and specific, often thrown out as an afterthought when something unfortunate occurs so she can take advantage of the "and while I'm at it!"

But I held my ground, trying to change the subject to when my brother will get married.

One day,

"My dear boy, let's go to Sioux Falls tomorrow - we can see if you can get in our Sam's Club membership. (I can't.) We can try the new Japanese restaurant. (It's not bad.)"

"OK. That sounds like fun. We'll go before I have to work."

"Oh grand!"

"...yep."

"...there's a lady who can fix your hair."

"She's Korean isn't she?"

"She's been in America for twenty-five years!"

I've been getting my hair cut by Korean women for the first sixteen years of my life. I have never left an appointment without feeling that I resembled either a hairy, school bus-driving lesbian or someone who would be more comfortable in a cut-off flannel shirt, holding a can of Busch and watching very expensive, colorful cars driving in circles. I hated it. And when it wasn't by those women of our church congregation, moms of our friends whom I grew up with, it was by a Vietnamese lady whose only tie to our church was that her salon was on the way. She rocked. BUT her salon was bought by some pompous white woman and... she drove the business to the ground (but we moved away before that last part happened). I've made countless vows to keep away from Korean mothers wielding barber's shears and just to eat their food and flirt with their daughters.

But I love my mother. And the start of the new semester is pretty rough on her.

So I gave in, thought of the bulk food and sushi and violently shook my head around, feeling, for the last time, strands of hair waving and bouncing against each other, making that very subtle swoosh noise... like the sound a stove makes when the gas is cut off and the flame dissipates.

(OK. Maybe I liked how my hair was. As much as short hair is convenient, I did like the situation of how my head looked.)

The woman in Sioux Falls had happy, squinty eyes, like a Japanese cartoon. And she spoke with my mother as if she had helped raise me from the child unable to make his s sounds to the ravishing creature he is today. But it was still early for someone who gets off of work at 11 30 PM and also suffers from chronic insomnia (it's 4 08 AM right now, I'm not tired at all). So while my mother and the new ajhuma jibber-jabbered, I took my place in the chair, removed my glasses and walked the plank.

Without skipping a beat in the conversation, the woman whirled me around, pulled a lever to lean the chair back and began to massage my hair in hot water and shampoo.

I could have died. I forgot that, sometimes, this happens and I almost made a noise.

"Do whatever you want with me - just don't stop."

No, I made no audible noise and I probably left my droopy poker face on because the sound of rushing water cleared the talk and the calming, cleansing sensation of practiced fingers gliding through your mane is transcendental.

I sat in a daze and, after she circled my head, like a vulture, slashing she repeated the favor and I sat in the waiting room, trying to read an article on Interpol while she cut my mom's hair.

It was much later that I first saw myself in the reflection of our car window. She went with the lesbian look with a straight, no-nonsense, horizontal, "hair stops here" cut of my sideburns (and I think they were uneven). I kicked myself for leaving the house without a hat, but shrugged, let my mother lie to myself (and herself) (and to God) as she spent the afternoon remarking on how clean and pretty my new hair was.

After work that night, I buzzed my hair. We're starting fresh again.