I received a phone call last night. Late. Very late. It was an old friend. Who am I kidding? We dated. Seven years ago. Back then, the day after I broke up with her, I walked on crutches into the place where I’d always gotten my hair cut.Lisa was the name of the girl who cut my hair. It was a “salon” type place. I always felt awkward going there because it was the sort of “salon” that existed in a brown brick strip mall on a cloudy street sandwiched between a 2nd run movie theater and a Wal-Mart. There were always lots of women my mom’s age and less well-to-do, eyes blue-shadowed and bright red-lipped in that way that you only see in documentaries about people in trailers but then you walk two steps off the beaten path to the salon where the girl works who cut your hair since you were a baby and you realize “these are not trailer people, these are my neighbors and their shadow blue eyes do not want me here.”As I was saying, I walked in, on crutches, one arm still in an air-cast (that’s a type of cast that isn’t really a cast, you can take it off, but you shouldn’t because then you may unsettle things and you’ve clearly unsettled enough recently) and Lisa, now full-time cutting hair, part time designing images on a computer, and modeling at car shows on the weekends, looks me up and down. Her mouth drops open, scans from the cast around my ankle to my arm and to the top of my tousled hair that I haven’t touched in weeks.

I’ve only been that vulnerable in front of her once before then and I don’t think it counts. You can’t really help but be vulnerable when you are four months old and a strange girl in her late teens is swinging sharpened blades around your head snipping here there and your father is sitting next to you both looking around here there and up and down her here there. But I can only assume. I was four months old.

She says out loud, “The first time you can drive yourself here, and you stumble in looking like that?” I am sixteen with messy hair and two casts on. I am a wreck. There is no way for me to be more awkward.

I follow her to the back. As if the clientele isn’t giving me enough strange looks, the normally friendly girl who does nails looks at me like I’m going to split apart any second. I tried that once. That’s how this cast is on this arm. That’s why I haven’t been able to have my hair cut, the stitches had to heal. A two-story drop will hurt you just enough to make you look like you will split apart at any second. I guess the girl filing the woman’s nails is right. I ignore her. I can’t stand the noise that the file makes.

Lisa sits me down to wash my hair. I don’t say a word and neither does she, her long fingers gently pulling the tangles apart, I can feel the milky whiteness of the lacquer on her nails. Her belt buckle, cold and hard, digs into the unbroken arm and I welcome the opportunity to be that close. She washes and conditions gently, pausing only when she feels the scar tissue where the stitches were. She doesn’t say a word.

I sit up when she’s done rinsing and she swings a purple towel around my neck; one of the ones in all salons that has been washed and dried too many times and absorbs plenty of water but offers none of the warmth one expects from a towel. Nonetheless, she is just in time, scooping droplets of water from my neck before they can descend past my collar and cause discomfort for the remainder of the appointment.

I stand and jump on one foot twenty feet over to the chair that I’ve always sat in when I get my hair cut. Lisa puts her hands on my shoulders, leans down, begins lifting my hair from its soaking wet resting place, mussing it up again, and asks, “So what are we doing with it today? Just a trim? Want to do something daring?” She is smiling and buoyant. I still can’t figure out if she always was smiling or if this was one of those traits people attain at their workplace, something they don’t even notice, but it’s proper for the job, so they do it. Like principals and being more firm than necessary, like doctors and appearing in control.

“It keeps getting in my eyes. I don’t want to deal with it in my eyes. I’m okay with having to ‘do’ it in the morning, too.” I’m shrugging, knowing she’ll have more fun if she can be creative with my head. “Yeah… just go nuts. Let’s see what happens.”

Lisa gets to work, an expert behind the scissors and combs. She darts about, spritzing more water, snipping here, lopping off there. It’s only been thirty seconds and she’s moved completely around me twice, already tangled herself in the cord that connects the clippers in her right hand to the outlet in the wall.

“You mind me asking what happened to your leg and arm?” She’s broken it down. There was that wall, that comfortable feeling you have with someone you’ve known all your life that will, because of circumstances like being your hair dresser, never lead to judgment. Never will you suffer any ill because of what comes out of your mouth. She will not leave you disfigured because of anything you could say. You will not receive a phone call from your hair dresser at four in the morning, voices yelling, “what the hell are you doing with yourselfare you crazy you could have fuckingdiedareyoutryingtotearthisfamilyapart!?”

Lisa will not do these things no matter what I say.

“I drank a bunch of vodka. I took the rest of my dad’s meds and then jumped out of my window. It was dumb. The bushes broke my fall. Then I dumped my girlfriend yesterday. I had no reason to. I just don’t care.” I know my throat should be dry. It is warm, wet, and I want to keep going. I stop.

Lisa comes back from the back room. It’s been about ten minutes. I really don’t know for sure. It could have been an hour, I guess. I had just sat there looking at myself, hair soaked, one ear showing through freshly cropped fringes, the other completely covered by a matted nest of hair.

Her eyes are red and she sniffles once or twice. “Okay,” She pauses and I hold my breath, “Well… let’s get you fixed up.” She goes to work. Smiles. The whole time. We talk about cars.

My hair looks amazing. I leave Lisa an extra large tip. My hair is short and pomped and I look grown up and amazing and I radiate with energy as I crutch my way through the door even though another of the clientele has let it slam on my shoulder. I hobble through the parking lot and smile back at where I think Lisa is sweeping my head’s remains from the floor.

So the girl called me last night. She wanted to know why I’d broken up with her so long ago. I’d done it on the phone; she hadn’t seen me. She’d just hung up the phone and I didn’t even have to give her a reason. She didn’t even know about the fall or anything. Now she was crying. Sobbing about how her life as a teacher wasn’t making her happy, that she was sad all the time, that the prescription wasn’t helping anymore, that she felt guilty because she had a great life and was still sad.

It’s my turn. I act like nothing is wrong. I tell her she’s fine. That we’re all fine. That it’s normal. That I’ve been through things like that, feelings like that, and I’m fine. That she’ll work through it and that I have faith in her. In my head I can see her mouth twisting up into a smile as she lays on her bed staring at her ceiling while my drunken voice at 4 a.m. tells her that she has nothing to worry about.

Thank you, Lisa. I wouldn’t have had the heart to tell her that nothing will be okay. That the worst is about to happen. That she will never be the same and it will drive her crazy. Cutting hair is much easier.

Thank you, Lisa.