By Beth Cartino
“Don’t you secretly want to be fuckable?”
We were in my small kitchen and I was cutting her bangs when she asked me this. I had just finished dying her hair to cover the course white wires that were sprouting and multiplying on her scalp. I froze for an instant comb and shears halted in midair and then…
“No,” I said the word with conviction. Her brown eyes peered up at me through her thick dark brown hair, I could feel her assessing my answer trying to decide if it was the truth, and I looked way from her focusing instead on making sure her bangs weren’t crooked. We were both silent for a while and I moved around to the side and began to cut in long layers to frame her oval face (the perfect face shape according to every fashion magazine ever). Into the silence and safely unable to make eye contact with me she says, “I always want guys to want me, you know? I’m single and I’m almost fifty.”
I hear the unasked question in the slight tremble that enters her voice and the way it raises in pitch at the end.
What if no one ever wants me again?
What if this is it?
What if I die alone? Continue Reading…
