But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.
(Luke 12:7)
1
Having reached the ripe age of thirty-six, I’ve heard, seen, and felt just about everything you can think of. Yet nothing in my odd and strange life would have led me to believe that I would ever re-grow my thinning hair–and all through faith, chanting, and foam!
Call me Luke.
The reason that I am writing this down is because my shrink has asked me to, as part of her therapy. Soon you will see that this is really about love and a death triangle among three of us: Melissa, Erica, and me.
Not long ago while shopping at Brooks Brothers on 5th Avenue, I walked in front of a fancy mirror where you can see yourself from several angles. I caught a glimpse of a shiny bald spot on top of my head. Even though my doctor had warned me that some hair loss would occur, a fast receding hairline was bad enough, but a huge bald spot is tough to accept. Because I have a mild case -non-life threatening- of Hairy Cell Leukemia (HCL), I’ve been undergoing chemo treatment.
“This is bad, man!” I cried, the image of that shiny silver dollar sending me into deep depression.
One day, a sales lady from an Ad agency was making a pitch to us -I am the Vice President of Finance of a manufacturing company- about labeling and packaging for one of our new products, when all of a sudden I got paranoid.
The woman -leggy and tall- did nothing but stare at my bald spot, making me nervous and jumpy. My reaction was to give her a hard time; one can say I was really mean spirited. Not only did I interrupt her, but I was sarcastic and mocking, finding fault with every little detail in her girlish chatter.
My nasty remarks really knocked the wind out her sales pitch.
As the meeting came to an end, it dawned on me that my personal hair-problem was affecting my work and my life.
Chewing on the problem I raced to my office.
When I raised my eyes, I saw through the glass Nick Santoro –the Director of Marketing and Public Relations– rushing towards Rusty’s office; Rusty Reed is our CEO. Not that I dislike Nick, but the fact is that Nick is a busybody and a politician who is always fawning for a promotion. .
Without much worry I got busy with my favorite spreadsheets, and started to amuse myself with “what if” scenarios about what various price changes would do to some revenue centers that were a little weak.
The intercom buzzer startled me, drawing me out of a most enchanting reverie.
“Luke? Mr. Reed wants to see you, now,” my admin assistant’s voice came over the intercom.
“Figures,” I said. “Tell him, I’m on my way.”
Not a second did Rusty –my boss– waste in scolding me about the meeting.
I nodded.
“Just watch your outbursts, Luke. Control your temper.”
After a few more trivialities, Rusty came to the real point. Given the change in my personality, he told me, I had to see the company shrink–Doctor Lori Twinrivers.
2
Never in my life have I had a need for a shrink, but I felt that perhaps now it was a good time. In no time I got to Lexington Avenue. Lori, the shrink, might be close to fifty, but a striking “young” fifty, not a single wrinkle in her light brown skin. The décor of her office and her voice both had a soothing quality, and in no time I felt at ease and uplifted.
“Obviously the hair shedding is the cause of your depression, Mr. Cooper,” she said, “I can help you with that.”
“Please call me Luke,” I asked the good doctor.
To be frank, I was a little disappointed because all she did was prescribe a well known foam, which I’d seen advertised on TV. After two months of rubbing and massaging my scalp with the damn foam, nothing happened. Not a single stump of hair sprouted. On the contrary, it seemed to me that all that friction was causing the bald spot to be as large as a tea saucer.
In one of my sessions with Lori, I broke out sobbing. Suddenly I felt depressed, paranoid, in total despair. With childish babbling I told her that I had been contemplating suicide.
“I can’t take it anymore!” I yelled.
Lori came around her desk and held me in her arms and soothed me in a motherly manner. I don’t know what she did besides her embrace, but whatever it was it did me wonders, for my funk left like when fog burns off when the sun comes out. My spirit soared. Was it an out of body experience? Never in my life had I felt so purged and pure! Much to my happiness, the suicidal impulse had been replaced by a joyous wish for life and adventure. A strange power seemed to have taken over my reasoning faculties. Some strange divinity?
That night all I could think of was Lori’s office: the artifacts in her office, her framed diploma -which proudly displays the letters M.D. followed by PhD, from Iroquois University in Michigan- -and other grand certificates and testimonials.
Unable to sleep I started surfing the Internet. I logged on to my dating service, which has been a total failure, for I haven’t had a single date in three months; that is since July, when Erica left me.
Out of the blue, one solitary message read: “I see you like Italian food … I do too. Know any good places? Melissa.”
My heart jumped for joy!
With nervous fingers I typed and sent a witty reply. Then I went to sleep reciting Melissa’s name–no longer thinking of either Doctor Lori Twinrivers or Erica, my Viking golden girl, who sadly abandoned ship in July.
Within two months my hair was all gone; even the sideburns and the eyebrows. Yet, though I have my moments of melancholy, general anxiety, dread, and delusional paranoia, I feel my life isn’t so bad since my mild leukemia is not only checked but in total remission.
Then one day Lori Twinrivers changed tactics.
“The power of autosuggestion and chanting works like a miracle if you have faith; that is what prayers are–all religions use it,” she explained. This particular day, Lori had her long abundant hair all fluffed up; she look like a priestess, or an enchantress.
“I don’t understand,” I replied
“Have faith, Luke!” she said in a firm voice, “No more arm-chair and couch talk, it’s time to chant.”
Massaging my scalp with tender strokes, she ordered me, “Now, sit on the floor, cross your legs and repeat after me,” adding, “Ko nea Ko nea raghsige -purify me and let my hair grow– Ko nea nia-wen.”
One month later after we started the chanting, I was stunned –and this is God’s truth, I swear!– to see that the top of my head was no longer bald. A faint growth of stubble had sprouted!
Yesss! Hair!
Screaming and giddy with happiness, my heart bursting with a rush of adrenaline, my spine tingling with delight, I stood frozen, savoring the instant. But my euphoria was short-lived for when I shifted the hand-mirror, the stubble disappeared. It must be the bad light, I thought.
Like a wild madman I ran to Brooks Brothers to use their mirror and great lighting, and lo and behold–the stubble was there! I quickly ran my hand over the top of my head and the stubble felt like the fuzz on a tennis ball.
I rushed to see Doctor Twinrivers.
Turning on the tensor-white light-lamp, Lori examined the stubble, she then grabbed a magnifying glass from one of the bookshelves, confirming beyond doubt that indeed genuine hair was really growing.
“It feels thick-thick shafts,” she said.
“I don’t care, as long as it grows. Is it blond?”
“Not really-quite dark.”
But I didn’t give a hoot. Hair is hair, I thought.
3
Things in my department are under control. Nick Santoro is still the same mean old man. Some people can only be happy by making others unhappy.
To me, though, happiness is when everything’s going my way.
Melissa, my online dating prospect, has agreed to go on a date with me. Given that she had had some previous unpleasant dates, she asked me to meet her at a very public Starbucks Café across from ABC TV near Lincoln Center. The date was set for Saturday afternoon.
Melissa turned out to be shy and quite lovely young, doe-eyed woman. Not only was she pleased with me, but she said that she liked me even better for being so honest about the hair.
Much to my delight, it turns out that Melissa is taking evening courses at LaGuardia Community College; and being a bookkeeper now, she wants to become an accountant. Of course, since I’m a business major, we have lots in common and we have no problem chatting about finance, economics, accounting, management, business law, etc.
Melissa now fills my life and keeps me happy. But that happiness is cut off sharply by an icy feeling traveling up my spine as I think of Erica, my golden girl-friend who one hot day in July left me.
Ah, Erica!
Erica and I lived together for about five years-five good years. Things aren’t always smooth in a relationship, but I still don’t know what I did that was so wrong that one hot, humid, wretched day, Erica left me. By way of explanation all that she offered was a lame excuse:
“You smother me, Luke.”
After she graduated from Sarah Lawrence she went on to get a law degree from Boston University. How well I remember the day Erica called me to tell me that she had breast cancer. Better yet I remember the number of times I had to accompany her to the different cancer specialists; the long waits in doctors’ impersonal offices where the air seemed laden with gloom and doom.
With what clarity I seem to recall the dark days when I cared for her, as I changed the bandages on the lumpectomy, and the ensuing radiation therapy trips. And despite Erica’s physical decline, I came to love her even more.
Oh, no! It wasn’t in the stars for us to stay together. When she said good bye to me, as we stood in front of the building, I could barely utter a word, for both my heart and my mind were filled with an oceanic wave of goodwill for her regained rosy looks. Having recovered fully from her cancer, her gentle face glowed with a new vitality, and her new hair floated in the wind with dazzling brightness.
“Don’t forget to drink your tea,” I mumbled, a lump forming in my throat.
Resigned at the prospect of being alone once again, I stepped back into my apartment, where the walls seemed bare, the hallways narrower, and the carpets dead silent. And my legs felt weak, my face flushed, and my stomach queasy; the suddenness of the anxiety attack forcing me to lie face up on my bed, staring at the ceiling, utterly bathed in despair and solitude.
Then it dawned on me where I’d gone wrong with Erica.
Someone in the office had told me that a few cups of black or green tea reduce the chances of breast cancer ever recurring. Based on that I was relentless in making sure she’d drink her share of that magic herb.
4
Two months later, after Melissa moved in with me, the day after Christmas, early in the morning, my doorman woke us up with a long and insistent ring of the intercom. This doesn’t bode well, I remember thinking.
“Who?” I asked.
“Miss Erica,” the doorman mumbled.
“Send her up.”
Frozen to the floor I stood, my mind blank. Talk about women’s intuition: as I hurried to open the door, I noticed that Melissa was right behind me.
Standing in front of me (a valise by her side), wasn’t the golden girl –blond hair, healthy rosy cheeks– that had left me so broken-hearted back in July. What Melissa and I saw was an anorexic girl, with sunken eyes, unkempt hair, and thin unpainted lips.
“Do come in,” I heard Melissa, as she stepped in front of me to grab the valise.
Still unrecovered, mute by the shock of seeing Erica in such pathetic state, all I could do was stand, stare, and think: She didn’t drink her tea.
Erica had come to die.
Around Thanksgiving time, she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer once again. So rapidly had the malady progressed that there was no time for chemo treatment or any kind of treatment. Having lost her job and her health insurance coverage, she went to stay with her father in Branson, Missouri. When Erica was at Sarah Lawrence, her parents had divorced, and her father had remarried, built a house, and retired there-Branson, the entertainment Mecca of the Midwest. After a few days, her mother-in-law let her know that she wasn’t welcome there. Sick and weak as she was, she rode bus lines to reach Des Moines, Iowa, where her mother resided. To her ill luck, it turned out that her mom was living in a trailer park.
Unwanted, unwelcome, and unwell, she made the decision to come back to New York, to Manhattan, to the only person in the world who had ever loved and cared for her: me. Yes–me. In her condition, it never occurred to her that I might have moved on and found someone else.
Melissa and I agree to take her in.
From December till March, Melissa and I took care of her and her needs. And after she could no longer walk, even to the bathroom, we sponge-bathed her and changed her linen and pajamas. A day before Saint Patrick’s Day, Erica died. When I called Erica’s father, all he said was that it was impossible for him to come to New York for the funeral. Disgusted, I hanged up.
Melissa placed an ad in the Obituary section of the Times and a few people showed up for the funeral service: two former co-workers (both attorneys), a man who had once sold her some mutual funds, a friend from the Junior League, a deacon from Rutgers Presbyterian Church, and two representatives of Sarah Lawrence and Boston University (both from their respective Fund Raising offices).
Knowing that Erica loved Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp, I asked the funeral director to play it. I’m not ashamed to say that hearing that piece tore me up totally, turning my initial muffled sobs turned into loud weeping, and then into uncontrollable heaving and screaming.
“Control yourself, Luke” Melissa whispered.
But hard as I tried, I couldn’t. The speech that I had prepared went unread, for when the director said it was my turn to speak, I was such a wreck that I could only emit guttural sounds.
5
How ridiculous my preoccupation with my hair now seems.
One fine morning, Melissa was stunned to see that the peach-fuzz had grown into a long strip of stiff porcupine hair –actually stiff thick bristles– on top of my head and nothing on the sides and the back.
Half-dressed I bolted out of my building and went to see Lori Twinrivers. Not that I was unhappy with the results, but I told Lori I wanted hair all over my head.
“I insist!” I cried.
But it wasn’t in the stars.
“Only that strip of hair will Otkon -the god of the Mohawks- allow growing,” said Doctor Lori Twinrivers in a solemn voice.
Bewildered, I only looked at her.
“If you see hair around the Mohawk, shave it right away! Or, the leukemia and your suicidal tendencies will come back.”
In May, when Melissa gets her Associate Degree, I will be at her side for the commencement ceremonies. If you see a tall dude, with a close-shaven head and a magnificent Mohawk on top, that will be me. Melissa shaves and waxes my head every day, for she’s determined not to let that damn leukemia, or my suicidal tendencies, or anything for that matter-to break us up.
With knee on the floor, that same day I will pop the question.
Now I must go to Tiffany’s to order the engagement ring.
But given my experience with women, Will she say yes? I keep asking myself, and a mild depression sets in my aching heart.
