Keith
then sought less traditional solutions. He went to voodoo practitioners,
Wiccans, spiritualists, psychics and conspiracy theorists, anyone
he thought might have a clue for him. There was even that brief
but rather regrettable episode with the Scientologists. They all
had suggestions and ideas, but none of them panned out.
The whole time, Keith’s hair kept getting longer. He couldn’t
cut his hair anymore. He just couldn’t. Every time he tried,
he felt like he was committing murder. It was even worse considering
that every single strand of hair seemed to have its own voice.
Stabbing a small animal would have been quieter and less unnerving.
When he left the hair alone, it stayed quiet.
Finally Keith resolved that if that was the price for his sanity,
so be it. He’d had enough. The hair had won. It clearly
didn’t want to be cut and Keith no longer had the energy
to fight it. So he let it be. He still didn’t know why it
was happening and to the end of his days he never found out either,
but then, it didn’t really matter. It was enough that it
was happening.
He still took care of his appearance, at least at first. He bought
expensive shampoos and conditioners, not the generic supermarket
brand. Showering went from taking three minutes to ten. In no
time at all, he had a splendid, full mane of hair on his head.
It really offered him no problems. It was rich, luxurious, easy
to manage – all the things you hear about in the commercials.
Soon enough, it grew past a mane into a long flow of hair. Now
it was starting to be bothersome, if nothing else than for the
fact that it was constantly in his eyes. So, he tied it back in
a long ponytail. He had expected a little murmur of dissent from
his hair on the issue, being tied up and all, but there was none.
The hair was agreeable.
Other than his hair, though, his appearance started to change
in other ways. He went a few days without shaving once and decided
he liked the way it looked. So he grew a trim beard (his facial
hair, at any rate, didn’t give him any problems). He had
always hated ties but had never thought of not wearing one. Now
he decided he wasn’t going to anymore, and didn’t.
At first he was going to give them away but he had a lot more
fun burning them in the back yard on his grill. He didn’t
know why but it amused him to no end. Maybe it was the mental
image of his neighbors watching horrified at his impromptu pyre.
He stopped wearing pants and started wearing jeans. He stopped
wearing loafers and started wearing sandals. He rolled his shirtsleeves
up. He left the top two buttons of his shirt undone.
Changes were also taking place in Keith’s home life. He
saw his girlfriends less and less. It had started with Janine.
One night, after dinner, she remarked that she didn’t like
him with a beard.
“Why not?” he’d asked her.
“My father and brother have beards,” she said. “I
don’t like it on them and I don’t like it on you.”
Keith didn’t know what her father and brother had to do
with anything but he told her he’d decided to keep the beard
and his long hair. After that night, he didn’t call Janine
again and she didn’t bother trying to contact him. Over
time, he stopped contacting his other girlfriends as well. At
first, it was because he was embarrassed about his appearance,
following Janine’s comments. Once he started spending time
by himself, though, he realized he didn’t miss their company.
After a few weeks, he stopped returning their calls. He stayed
at home a lot in the evenings, reading or watching TV.
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