A few things you should know

Last Night.
How To Get Mistaken For a Hooker Around Taft Avenue Station Of The MRT.
Armed with an itsy-bitsy purse, and a backpack stuffed with hair products, eight pairs of new frilly panties, a laptop, a book, two dresses, and a partridge in a pear tree, I headed over to the outer lobby of the Kabayan Hotel, just a couple of skips away from MetroPoint, and Taft Ave. Station. I gave a winning smile to the security guards, and motioned to the ashtray. They smiled back, albeit warily. I grabbed a cigarette I deprived myself of for about 48 hours, give or take a couple of nervous breakdowns, and puffed away, imagining the bonemeal most probably coursing through my bloodstream, my shoulders slowly pulverized by the disgustingly heavy pack on my back (cuz you know, it’s a backpack!).

Halfway through the stick, a greasy old man walks up to me and asks for a light. He had big eyes, and one was more yellow than the other. I noticed he took an obligatory puff on his cigarette to light it, but then never put it to his lips again.

I inched away, pretended to be entranced by the landscaping.

And then he, shyly, in a way that may have been sweet if it wasn’t so creepy, asked me if I’d like to go up with him to his room. “It’s my first time here,” he said, as though that would make me actually consider the proposition.

I blinked. There was no panic. Merely utter confusion as to why anyone would confuse a girl with tons of baggage, literally, on her back and hanging off the crook of one elbow, to be a working girl. Cumbersome, much? Like, Excuse me, honey, can I charge my laptop while we get it on? Everything was starting to look funny, and hazy. The world was swelling, the way it did when I had too many margaritas, and puffed on too many Lethal Mentoses.

I shook my head, snorted out the hair that snuck into one nostril. I considered saying, “Boss, I haven’t had my balls removed yet.” Or, “Would you like to see the stillborn fetus in my purse?” Or, “Oh, I hadn’t had any action since the day before I left prison for a parole from multiple homicide.” Or even, “Oh golly wow, the doctor said it’d be difficult with a tumor hanging out from inside me.”

I blinked, again. Inched closer to the security guards. Considered laughing. Prepared myself to scream Fire, because Morgan Freeman told Brad Pitt in Seven that in rape prevention seminars, women are taught that no one responds to cries for help.

I considered laughing.

In the end, I said, as politely as I could, “No, thank you. I’m good.”

And the man with one eye more yellow than the other gave me this littlest smile that told me he knew what my answer would be even before he phrased the question in his head.

(This is what’ll get me in trouble one of these days: assigning humanity to people who mistake you for a hooker.)

*

The Day Before.
How To Let It All Go: An Exercise on Vanity
I felt—there was no other word for it—younger. I was itching to walk into the middle of the room, giggle, stun the crowd with my irrepressible youth, then leave, making them long for more. I was for whom The Cure’s Love Song was made. A sexed-up Shirley Temple. Like I looked like I just tumbled out of bed with some early San Franciscan swashbuckler who liked to wear tight pants. Like I woke up every morning to a kiss on the spot where my neck meets my shoulders. Like I could wear PVC pantsuits--not that I'd want to, I just could, you know?

“You look like that girl walking in the desert with James Bond,” said the girl who shampooed my hair. It was the first civil thing she’d said to me. Our relationship, up to that point, consisted of her pressing her hand on my forehead to keep me still, and her grunting when I got her wet when I sneezed just as she had her face close to my wet hair. I had committed the inside of her left upper arm to memory; she had a small brown mole about three inches up her elbow. It was a relationship that wanted of her smiles. I would never know her name.

I leaned back on the leather seat, squinted. The lights were too white; I could see every pore that had been compelled to bare itself to the world. My face looked like it needed a sandblaster. Oh, but my hair, my hair.

“Oh, nice,” said my mother, walking towards me, holding my copy of Rick Moody’s collection of short stories (which I got for 15 bucks at BookSale, HAH, KAEL, HAH!). She beamed at me. She looked at the shampoo girl, then she hastily looked away. She tried to catch the attention of the hairdresser, Miss Jocelyn, but the other woman was too busy parting her hair according to the starkness of her highlights.

“I told you to keep your hair,” she told me. Her head was cocked, the tips of her straight hair, threaded with gray, touching her shoulders.

I lip-pointed to the counter, watching myself, however blurrily, as I did so. I imagined myself in black and white, grains of sand sprinkled on my moist cheeks. Hello, good-looking, where have you been all my life?

My mother picked up the Ziploc bag from the counter, held it in front of her. She shook the bag. “There’s so much hair.”

I shook my head, my curls grazing my neck. “I know.”

I avoided looking at that bag. I’d already seen too much of it. Miss Jocelyn made Shampoo Girl hold my hair while she cut it. It was quite unceremonious. I still feel a tiny spurt of outrage whenever I think of this indifference. Do you know how long that’s been part of my life? I wanted to ask her. I held the Ziploc bag. She filled it in three goes: one clump of hair, another, then another. I stared at it for the longest time. And then I tossed it on the counter. I amazed myself at this roaring vacuum, of the sheer nothingness in my mind, not too much violent reaction to what was going on, not even a whimper. I had discovered Stoicism. There was no Undo button. Someone should be documenting this.

My mother was stuffing my plastic bag of hair into her bag. I thought of that scene in a short story I’d written, about how “Leah cut her hair, put it in a box, and gave the box to [her grandfather].” I was quoting myself in my head. I was on top of my tiny little fishbowl of a world.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

She patted her bag. “I have a better use for it.”

“Oh?”

“I’ll turn it into a wig. Or just attach it to my hair.”

“You’re going to wear your daughter’s hair.”

She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “I’ll gather it into a ponytail, and brush it every night.” She widened her eyes a fraction, and her voice came out breathy: “It’ll be like you never left.”

I laughed, then turned back to the mirror and run my fingers over my newly exposed nape. I saw the hairdresser was gawking at us. I tried to ease her with a smile.

I reached for my cellphone. No messages. I had texted P. about three times, telling him how earth-shatteringly short it would be. The last time I told him I wanted to get a haircut, like, seriously, he wailed Nooooo, and said, “If you do, I’ll bring it to bed with me every night, and whisper, It’s okay, it’s okay, no one's going to hurt you anymore.” That was a couple of months ago.

No messages. My swashbuckler was in denial.

“You look really nice,” said my mother. (I try not to recall when she asked me last night, “You want to get a nose job?” because my schnoz would prove detrimental to her plan to have me moonlight as model.) “Really nice.”

When we got home, I bullied all the boys into rating my new hairstyle. Joshua laughed, then ignored me the rest of the night. John looked like he’d rather be trapped in a cage with seven bloodthirsty gamecocks. The Father beamed and said, “You look happy.”

P. and I have messaged each other about Joyce Carol Oates, Ian McEwan, needing a bath, needing to sleep, travelling, Mucha Lucha. There is an elephant in the room. I have been painting it neon pink. Hello, good-looking, look where I’ve been all my life.