I had to go over to Gino's house to pick up an Amazon order that I, of course, sent to my old shipping address because I forgot to change the 1-click settings. He was not there yet when I arrived, and I had some time to kill so I talked to his brother Ricco and Ricco's best friend Matt for a few minutes. Gino got home a few minutes later, and told a story about coming home from a party and being so hammered he forgot how to walk. I was, once again, happy to be living on my own, away from a living situation that occasionally felt like a college dorm. Gino also mentioned that while he was being driven home by someone he works with, he spilled about thinking one of the massage therapists he works with is cute. "Who is it?" I asked, unsure even to myself why I was so anxious to know.
Gino told me her name, but I didn't know this person or what she looked like, but from Gino's history I assumed she was a brunette. "No," he said, "Her hair is kind of like yours. She's like, dirty blonde."
This did surprise me, only because the women Gino usually likes (and I have had to hear about all of them) are dark-skinned and dark-haired, usually with brown eyes. "Well, that's unusual," I said.
"Yeah, well, the girls I always find really good-looking never want to be with me, so I kind of just end up with girls like you," he said.
For the first time in months, I wanted to punch him. This is part of the reason why I was so insecure for so long, why I would look at myself in the mirror and think, "You're okay, but not even the man you married thinks you're beautiful."
It took everything I had to keep myself from turning into a shrieking harpy she-devil. I couldn't keep from losing my shit just a little, though. "You will never learn," I said, "That's not the way you talk to women if you want them to like themselves."
"Sorry, I'm not a liar. I like girls with dark hair and brown eyes, not girls who look like you," he said.
"Well, maybe you should learn to lie just a little bit if you ever want to have a fucking girlfriend again," I said.
It was just a little unfair, because at this point, I think Gino actually is worried he will never have a girlfriend again, and he responded to me by grumbling something about honesty as he left the room. I looked over to Ricco and Matt, who were sitting on the couch, trying not to show how much they were laughing over this argument. Just to have the last word, I muttered, "I'm pretty, damn it."
"Yeah, you're pretty, that's not what I was saying," Gino answered back.
Gino has this ability to tell me I'm pretty without making it feel like he believes what he is saying. It feels as though he cannot deny the fact that other people think I'm pretty, but he personally doesn't feel that way. His attitude toward my appearance is one of an agnostic, denying the existance of what some people believe in, but still acknowledging that those beliefs exist. There were plenty of things I did wrong in my relationship, like the fact that even though I encouraged Gino to better himself and loved him enough for it to not matter, part of me never really took him seriously, and spent just as much time as he did fantasizing about other people. The difference between him and me is, I didn't talk about it all the time. I didn't burden him with the knowledge of what type of dude I would be looking for if I had my pick, because I had found him and I liked how he looked. I never told him to grow five inches or any other impossible thing, or try to manipulate him into someone he was not, but it felt as though he was subtly trying to do that with me on occasion. If I went blonder, he reminded me that he didn't like blondes. If I talked about getting more ink, he reminded me that he didn't like girls with lots of tattoos. I didn't stop basically doing whatever the fuck I wanted, maybe because I knew that if any of his high school crushes showed up and said "Take me now," he would leave me in a heartbeat. To me, it felt like he had one foot in and one foot out the entire time because, when it really came down to it, I look nothing like the girl of his dreams.
Speaking of hair, I looked at myself in the mirror today and thought, "God, I am really going to need a haircut soon."
I haven't gotten a haircut in months, not since before Gino and I separated, and no one other than Tony has touched my hair since I was 20 years old. I always trusted his judgment, let him make me darker when he felt like it, lop off as many inches as he wanted, give me platinum blond and orange highlights if he really wanted to try them out on someone. He never gave me a bad cut, never gave me a color that didn't work for me, and always sent me away from his house or the salon feeling like I was a frigging rock star. Now that we are not really speaking any more, and I will die before I impose on him again, I have to seriously consider finding a new hair stylist. This is even scarier than thinking about having sex with someone else was after only having sex with Gino for seven years. At least when you have sex with someone new, if it's terrible, you don't need to walk around wearing it on your head until it grows out like you would with a bad haircut.
I had to go to one of the hair stylists who works at the same resort as me to get my bangs trimmed, and that experience was nerve-wracking enough. Feeling someone else's fingers on my scalp, trusting them with sharp scissors so close to my eye, I could barely breathe for the entire four-minute process. I had to do it because, well, I do need to see, and I can't trim them myself.
I am not ready to let someone else touch my hair. Allowing Tony to have final say, essentially, on what to do with it, I don't even know what I would want someone to do with my hair. I have almost zero opinion on the topic because I never had to think about it. I might tell Tony that I was thinking about a major change, that I was a little tired of looking the same way all the time, and he would come back with a plan for a whole look for me. I didn't have to go in with photos of celebrities, hoping that the stylist would be able to make me look even halfway like them, I didn't have to watch what he was doing, even. I just had to sit back and let him work his magic on me, and I was never unhappy with the results.
This is where I have so little faith in the world. When you trust someone, really trust them, the fact needs to be faced that you may never find that again. I put all of my trust in Tony to give me a bangin' look every time he touched my hair, and I can never give over to someone like that again. I will have to actually prepare, and think about how I want to look, and give them a lot more information than, "So, I was watching season 3 of The L Word the other day and it made me want a new haircut."
Tony was so good at this, and we had been friends for so long, that he would know exactly what that meant, and when he did my hair, it was perfect every time. As I said, this is even scarier than the idea of dating someone new. Relationships end all the time, but my relationship with my best friend was one I thought could never just end altogether. Tony and I are not the same people we were when we first became besties. I still need him in my life, but whatever I added to his in the past, he does not need any longer. That is his right, to choose who he has in his life. I have to respect that and I have to just be a grown-ass woman and trust someone else to cut my hair. The worst that could happen is I look terrible for six weeks and then it grows out. I can wait for a bad haircut to grow out, just like I know I can wait for my heart to grow back.
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