Such a Hermit

----

“I just like long hair.” As he says this, he flings it about as if he has just been caught on camera for a shampoo commercial. Or maybe it’s Maybelline, since he is also wearing purple eye shadow. It’s one of his favorite colors right now. He points at his eyelids, “It’s amaaaaazing how many people tease me for it!”

I try to avoid a direct comment, but I tell him that purple suits him.

And without telling me, I know he’s proud of his hair. It’s long, and more girly than any girl’s hair I’ve ever seen. I think it's because he likes to push the boundaries of what’s 'normal' for a heterosexual man, and to see people stare at him for it. He’s got girl makeup on, and walks about like he's in a Monty Python skit where everyone walks funny. He recognizes that there’s a stigma towards his personal choices, too, but he’s the kind of person who would run naked into a thunderstorm just to feel a 'natural shower' on his skin.

So, all in all, he's like a hippy, tree-hugging hermit. An intellectual loner in every right... because no one realizes how odd his quirks are. It makes him unique. And interesting to think about.

I smile at him, but I’m wary in doing so. No one usually smiles or laughs at the small things he does, and yet I do. Most people just think he’s weird, even though he’s magnetic because of it. He finds many friends even though he doesn’t think he’s popular. He has natural charisma, but tries to sit on the sidelines just to offer his modest, regal opinion. Lots of small quirks... for instance, he used to keep his nails sharp so he could have cat-scratching fights with his sister. He wears shorts in the winter, and uses pens because he thinks that the permanence of ink will keep his handwriting neater. Recently he’s been wearing a purple bandanna, “to keep the loose strands out of my face when I have the forge going”.

Oh, that’s right, he’s a blacksmith this semester, too. “I lost one of my favorite shirts to that forge…” he says quietly in response to himself. “I miss that shirt.”

Of course, that’s why I want to write about him—his peculiarity interests me, and then frightens me. I used to laugh and smile at these quirks, but the feelings are gone now. So earlier in the week, I asked him if I could do him the honor of showing his face to the world in a personal essay. It was during one of his late night shifts at his boring, small-time job at the art building on Northern Michigan’s campus. He gave me a curious look, as if I was telling him to divulge all his intimate secrets with me. Uncertain of my curiosity, he asks, “What kind of writing is it?”

“It’s an essay for a non-fiction class. I’ll know more about it in a week. I don’t have to write your name in it either.”

“Ah.” He continues to look at his computer screen, where his current lab assignment instructions are written for his lab class in the morning. It is eight hours away at this point in the night. “So is it a biography, or what?”

“Well it’s more about something interesting that happened to you, I think.” I stop looking at him at this point, since I’m trying to recall what my teacher said in class so far. I stare off into the table between us. “I have to write about someone I find interesting. I don’t even think there has to be a moral to it. I could write about someone else, but I don’t have many people around I can talk to directly.”

He still looks at his computer screen, but I notice a tinge of interest in his eye. Some mild disappointment maybe. I don’t assume he’s actually willing to go through with this, until he says, “Alright, when you find out, get in touch.”

The next day, we’re going about our regular schedules as we pass each other by. He raises his hand to me as he walks past.

“Yo.”

It looks to me like he is greeting me as a Native American would to a Pilgrim in a grade school play. I have always laughed at the iconographic gesture, and do again as he continues by. I stop to look back at him, but he keeps going.

Sadly enough, he’s never looked back. Ever.

It bothers me for the whole week, but at least he said hi. At least it isn't like the past year, where he didn’t even recognize I existed, and I avoided him like a plague just in case he was angry at me.

Soon enough, I text him about the assignment details, and we meet again at his workplace to get down to business. At the meeting, however, his face teeters between nonchalance and sarcasm. He hardly ever has a straight face as he’s talking. He seems excited almost. Giddy. Then serious and annoyed. I don’t comment on this, just write what I see. He sits down, stands up, paces, keeps pacing. Once his family calls. Then a friend. He stands up and leaves for a while. He is not still.

Mind you, this is normal to me.

At one point, he is waiting for me to finish typing out his last response, how he reacted to my asking what he wanted to talk about earlier. He is wondering why I have to write out how his “Mehs” and exaggerated shoulder raisings should be described in the essay. I tell him to simmer down and just let me write what I want to. His movement ritual starts again.

Randomly, he blurts out his recent trip home to Ironwood, and how his mom almost ran over my mom. I tell him, “I told you that a couple weeks ago now,” but he seems to ignore me. He continues, and talks about his sister. “That’s not entirely relevant either.” He counters by reminding me that I’ve just written an entire paragraph about “mehs” and shoulders. I smile at him in a warning way and hit my return key.

He talks about his student organizations, his schoolwork, his truck breaking down. I write in passing, and I tell him these are good details, and I’ll add them in some way. I stop writing now, so I can pay attention, and he continues pacing. I notice now that all the while, his back is arched and his head is lifted up in a regal manner so that he can feel his hair, now in a braid, swing behind him like a pendulum. I smile, but he looks over at me and his face looks confused at mine.

I explain, “What you’re doing right now is great stuff, trust me.”

“I’m not doing anything! I’m just raaaaaaambling! And paaaaaaaacing!”

I laugh at him, and he raises a finger up to me as if to scold. I laugh harder.

So I ask him simple questions about his family, why he likes his favorite color (green or blue “depending on if it’s goin’ in my hair or not.”). His favorite names, and favorite video games, but they’re a bunch of random questions I’m not putting in the essay because he mostly responds to them as if I’m writing a periodical on him. He’s still pacing back and forth when he gets up, and his hands are everywhere, like he’s painting something in the air like Gallagher.

On more serious questions, like how his family is doing, he actually stops to put his hands in his pockets. He doesn’t sit though. Also, he sometimes looks down when these questions come up, as if to think more deeply. Or perhaps not to tell me too much.

It begins to feel like I’m conducting a survey, and I think I should have written it all out on paper as a questionnaire and just let him fill in the answers. I think this because he seems rather awkward and annoyed at my timid tone when I have to ask personal questions.

It’s not a matter of what to ask him, it’s what not to ask him. I have to calculate what not to say so that maybe, just maybe, I can laugh with no reservations. But I know what my laugh means to him. He told me once that no one laughs at him like I do. I’m not sure that asking him about how his relationship with his girlfriend has been going, for instance, is even necessary, but it’s still a question. It's still relevant, too. He’s not a Johnny Depp or a Britney Spears, and I’m not the paparazzi or a journalist (though it’s safe to say I’m a student-equivalent at the moment).

The truth is, I used to know him very well. The first time I held his hand I was pretending I was asleep. Four hours before that, I had thrown bouncing puddy at his face. Four hours before that my sister gave him a picture of me with my hair up, and told him to never hurt me. Two days before that we were avoiding each other, unsure if we were mad at one another.

Now I can’t even summon the courage to ask the interesting questions. It’s awkward to see him respond like he’s upset I’m even interested at all. I can’t actually tell anymore what he means by his actions, if my natural response to his quirky personality is some indication to him how I must feel. Yet he’s guessing, too. It’s the price of a friendship that’s been neglected after the malicious exchange of words that neither of us meant or remember anymore. And we drifted apart, became islands of ourselves.

So I have questions I can not ask. It would feel like I am trying to get back into his life. I’m impressed to believe he does not want me there, but I’m not sure.

This is why I ask him about Arizona. It comes up within my own soup of uncertainties to interview him the way I am. “Hey, do you know when asking these questions would’ve been easier to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well if it was winter break two years ago I would still feel comfortable talking to you, that’s all. I’d be able to ask more personal questions. Get a better idea of who you are to the reader, you know? Last time we felt comfortable talking to each other was when you were in Arizona…”

He pauses, but his face slackens from a tight smile into nonchalance. “Ah, well… things just happen, you know. People move on.” Undoubtedly he thinks I’m going around a bigger subject between us (an elephant in the room, really), but his answer comforts me. It’s strange. He’s evasive too, of course. We stop talking for a while, and he manages to sit down before he goes, “You know, I hated driving in Arizona.”

“Really?” I begin to write this down, even though I already heard most of his stories from Arizona.

Apparently when you have long hair in Phoenix Arizona (maybe even ALL of the Southwest) you can’t drive without some cop pulling you over and giving you a citation. He recounts a specific time when his mother was the one driving, and they were pulled over because he was in the passenger seat with his gorgeous hair-commercial-worthy locks. He was pissed.

Only the natives of the Arizona area are allowed to wear their hair long. It’s a respectable practice in the area as some way of apologizing to them for our ridiculous bomb testing done on their land. I think this is a fair trade, but I also think it should be like license plates. If your hair is from Michigan, your hair shouldn’t have to abide by their state mores.

“I told my dad,” he says, “that I would drop out of school and join the army if I was ever forced to cut my hair. I couldn’t even get a job! I had to cut my hair JUST to get a job. I flat out refused to move back there for the summer because I wouldn’t get a job.”

“Well you do love your hair.”

“…I just like long hair,” he repeats from our last session. “ I can’t say I love it, but like anything you need to take care of, a lot of management goes into it.”

“Yes.” I say, as if in unison with the universe between us.

Even at this moment, he teaches me something more important than friendship. It’s something about his quirkiness, or his freedom gives me some sense of what it means to be alive. I don’t think I like him the way other people do. It’s a bit like respect. I see how he acts, and I feel like I know him, but I’m always lost, and always curious to understand him.

Sometimes I want to believe I have an impact on him too.

He looks at me and says, “Alright, time to close.”

“I should get going then, hmm?”

“Well… it’d be a good time to, yes.”

So I go.

I see him now and again—in classes, walking past, or just across the street chatting away with one of his friends. We sometimes text each other when we see each other like this, but never anything serious is brought up. After all, we’re just two souls trying to stay on our emotional islands, and pretend we never stung each other.

I’ll just keep turning back to watch his hair blow in the wind, ready for the candid camera.

And he'll just keep walking away.