Content warning: death, substance abuse, and incarceration.

I first shaved my head at the age of 23. My then-boyfriend (soon-to-be fiancé) shaved it for me in the kitchen sink of our tiny Baltimore apartment up a yellow wind of stairs. He learned in the Air Force, he said, a part of his past I somehow always forgot. He was my biggest advocate defending my new name and they/them pronouns, and now he used his military training to give me a new look to match.

I didn’t know how to shave it myself. I paid $30 for a trim the first time I had to look presentable after he died, when the theater where he was the resident musician hosted a memorial party. I hoped it wouldn’t be obvious I was emerging from a drunken stupor to see the plaque they made with his name, hoped a real haircut could hide just how sick I had become in his absence. Everyone knew anyway.

In the recovery house soon after, dope fiends cut it for me in the living room. A stocky, permanently stubbled man named Johnny who had just come home from seven years in prison for a crime he wouldn’t name gave me a fade that couldn’t grow out fast enough for my comfort.

Billy cut it for me for a year, my tangled recovery romance who would take a bus across town to fuck me and bake cookies while I revised my play between work and rehearsal. His sixteen years in prison for crimes he had no problem naming made me feel safe, his willingness to show up at a moment’s notice and his surprise when I lent him my car and debit card for an afternoon created a trust and care that was more like mutual aid than love but fed us until it didn’t. 

When I fled to grad school to try to escape everyone who had both held me and seen the worst of me in Baltimore, I had to learn how to shave my head myself. I discovered the slope where my spine began as I weeded long tendrils from the fuzz I couldn’t see, tried to remember to shave above my ears where my glasses always hid the beginning of curls. I made friends with the crests and valleys my skull made, hugged the clippers around them to let everything match in its softness.

A few years passed as I created a more thorough map of my skull, until the process took no more than fifteen minutes for a new cut with tiny hairs that would be lifted by the wind. My efficiency faltered when I started testosterone and didn’t want to be a white man with a buzz cut. I let my hair grow just to see what would happen, but I still couldn’t contend with the idea of paying someone to touch it. I learned how to take care of myself, how to size my needs down to what I could easily accomplish. I hid under hats and pretended no one could see the back of my head and it felt fine, thank you, perfectly fine.

Now, Jess trims the parts I can’t see above the bathroom sink. My body is a new place, one that grants me access to the gay male spaces and hookup apps where I first met him. I feel into the tenderness I trained myself not to need, his careful tracking of the electric razor over the sides of my skull, his chest resting gently on my shoulder as he works, his light scissor snips to my mess of curls. Jess still feels new to me, ever-evolving, as we build our love over months and years and quietly invite each other to work toward a life that’s just a little more lovely, a little more attuned, a little more wonderful.

My love asks if I would consider getting haircuts together, maybe for a premiere or an opening night. He loves celebrating with me, feels dressing up as a way that we mark big events in my career, part of how he supports me, lifts me, makes space for me to pay attention to moments of success and transcendence. His love and touch is not confined to his amateur barbering. He wonders if a professional might give me a look that would make me feel even more like myself.

I am too attached to my pair of kitchen scissors and the electric razor my father gave me years ago. I can’t quite conceive of spending money to leave my house and let some stranger shape me. But my hair is consistently scruffy, especially when I’m stressed at the way each tiny particle will take up residence in the creases of the sink.

The gay boy I want to look like probably gets his hair cut outside of his own home, but Jess doesn’t rush me. He just takes up the electric razor, sometimes offering before I even ask because he sees the way I’m fussing with my too-long beard. He asks me how I want to look and he helps me as he can. I am grateful for his act of care – and, just maybe, part of me wants to explore that imagined version of me, the version that dresses up with Jess, that can go confidently into a barber shop and articulate their vision of themself.

I still can’t picture myself actually doing it. But maybe, with enough gentle affirmations from Jess of how cute I would look and assurances that it will be a date and a celebration, that will change.

Maybe, with him, I’ll try.

About the author

Lane Michael Stanley is a transgender writer and filmmaker whose work explores queerness, class, restorative justice, grief, and wholeness. His writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Brevity, HowlRound, and Talkhouse. He is an alum of the Tin House Summer & Winter Workshops, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ Voices. Lane’s films and plays have been presented by 31 film festivals and 20 theaters in 22 states and four countries, and shown in soup kitchens, meditations gardens, addiction treatment centers, and San Quentin State Prison. He holds an MFA from UT Austin. Lane is currently hard at work on a novel and a memoir, both of which explore the healing and liberatory powers of BDSM. www.lanemichaelstanley.com.

Photo by Matt Bero on Unsplash.