Asides

Last night I dreamed about Seattle and woke up near tears. If I read this in another context, one where I hadn’t written it, I might have scoffed. I don’t generally hold any sentimentality about dreams, nor do I find mine, (or anyone else’s), particularly entertaining. And yet, I’ve been awake for several hours and still can’t shake the way I felt in that dream. I dreamed of a winter, though wet and gray with low-hanging skies, where I could still go outside every day. I could wait at a bus stop for 15 minutes without freezing the tips of my fingers. I could see life growing in January, a different kind than in summer, but life all the same. I could curl up for hours in my favorite tea shop, the pot warmed underneath by a tiny lit candle, the daylight waning outside.

I know I loved these things about Seattle when I was in Seattle, but I don’t know if I love them more now in the act of missing than I did when they were my reality. I wonder if the fact that I am still thinking of Seattle two and a half months later and missing it as fiercely as when I left is important, or if it’s just something I need to let go of.

When I first moved to Seattle, I met and talked with a disproportionate number of transplants from other parts of the country. I heard an overwhelming number of people say they were drawn to the West and wouldn’t ever leave. I assumed that this was largely due to the scenery and the mountains, and without a visual reminder of the climate, I would not be similarly drawn back if I left. But I have left, and it wasn’t the mountains at all. I don’t know what it is. I suppose it doesn’t much matter, all that matters is that I feel it and understand it deeply.

I wonder if there are places we all dream of returning to, and what percentage is just plain nostalgia and what percentage, if any, is actually worth paying attention to. Do you dream of places you’ve loved and lost, and wake with fierce yearning to return? And if you, too, are inexplicably but insistently called West, maybe I will meet you there someday.

This is my second time in Vermont. I traveled here for the first time five years ago to look at a grad school, (my grad school quest has been forever long and winding), and I stayed in a story-book New England town in southern Vermont called Brattleboro, which rests right up against the Connecticut River and, on the other side of that, New Hampshire. For that trip, I took Amtrak from South Station in Boston, a new experience for me, and one which I loved. To this day, I dearly wish Amtrak were cheaper.

I started this present Vermont journey in Brattleboro as well, and had a few moments of surprise as we wandered the small downtown. I remember five years ago, how I took a taxi to the grad school open house, spending a night among welcoming strangers, who chatted and ate junk food like it was summer camp. The next day, I took a bus back down the hill to the hotel I’d booked, then walked from that hotel to a coffee shop to the co-op and back. I ate that co-op dinner on the floor of my hotel room, my back against the bed and my feet stretched out, and I thought, as I would of many other cities I’ve visited, that I just might move there. The next morning, I bought coffee and walked to the Amtrak station, boarding my train to Springfield, and then back to Boston.

This may seem like a mundane story in the life of a wanderer, and yet, I remembered it with surprising clarity on my return this week. It was the last time that I traveled alone, making all the arrangements myself, managing my own independence. It was an exhilarating challenge to walk the streets of an unknown town all by myself, even a sleepy one like Brattleboro, even when I had to stop to ask for directions when my GPS got me completely lost. I made friends with the guy at the Amtrak station, who knew to look for me on my way back. That roasted portobello sandwich from the co-op looms in my memory not because it was delicious (though it was), but because it represented my freedom and the power I had over my life and my whims. I could do as I liked, independently, and I succeeded and survived.

Upon returning, I wondered how I’d done it. I felt a pang of nostalgia, of wishing for that person who made that trip happen, who took small risks and reaped a huge sense of accomplishment. I wondered if I could still find her after Seattle, after the closing of NILA, after moving back to Minneapolis and not immediately finding the joy I’d hoped for.

This time in Vermont, I visited another school, this one in Montpelier. Within the first half hour of the open house, I was tearing up and almost had to leave the room. I hadn’t been around writing students, prospective or otherwise, since my last residency at NILA. It was like coming home, and maybe you realize someone has been there rearranging furniture and leaving you a love letter, and even though it might look and smell a little different, it’s still home nonetheless. I felt sad and happy. I felt like this might be the perfect place to take new risks.

There’s something about Vermont that just feels good. It’s similar to how I feel in Seattle, breathing clean, soft air, feeling the sun pour liquid light over my head, walking up and down hills briskly enough to feel just a bit breathless. Like in Seattle, my legs feel strong and capable here. I am drawn to the feeling of state pride, of pride in the land and the food it provides and the mountains and the crisp air, a state of co-ops and a culture of community.

Risk and revelation is what I want. Community and connection, hope and healing, my heart and mind full of infinite possibility. That’s what travel does for me. That what this trip, in many ways, has done.

How about a good, old-fashioned rant today.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about accommodations, and how we accommodate people with disabilities, (or don’t). The ADA has given us a term for this, “reasonable accommodations.” Everybody says these words like we all know what they are, but it’s really just an easy buzz wordy way to make black and white something that, by its very nature, is always going to be gray.

I’d like to talk, specifically, about the reactions of people who hear about the “reasonable accommodations” someone with a disability might receive. When, on the rare, rare occasion that I’m given some printed text in an alternate format, whether it’s Braille or a Word document or an audio file, I’m thankful for the consideration that has been given to me and my situation. I will usually thank the person responsible, and mean it sincerely.

However, if someone else finds out about the alternate format, they often will break into a gush about how fantastic that is, and how nice they were to provide an accommodation, etc etc. And, don’t get me wrong, it is incredibly thoughtful, and I appreciate that, but it is only particularly noteworthy because of how rarely it happens.

I could count on a few fingers the times I have not had to ask and advocate for my own accommodations. Most people have know idea what accommodations are, and how to define “reasonable.” I tend to say that, for a blind person, a reasonable accommodation is whatever is comparable to what a sighted person receives in a given situation. This is most important, for me, where text is concerned. If someone sighted has access to identifying text, I should too. It is not “nice” for someone to do so. It is the law. It’s not “nice” when it’s done for sighted people, either, and it would be silly for someone to say so.

Since most of the reasonable accommodation giving centers around employment, and whether or not a requested accommodation is, indeed, reasonable, I’ll mention, too, that I’m sick of the way we talk about people with disabilities finding and sustaining work. Often when I have a job, I feel enormous pressure to be constantly positive about it, because someone was so “nice” and “took the risk” of hiring me. And often, an employer will expect so little from a blind employee, and be all too quick to say, “Well, it just wasn’t working out. They just couldn’t perform the essential functions of the job.” (In case you were wondering, “essential functions” is another ADA phrase which employers love and I loathe.

Blind people, overwhelmingly, are not unable to perform the “essential functions” because they don’t have the skills to do the work. They are unable to perform the functions because they are not given adequate, reasonable accommodations. Can you imagine if a sighted person didn’t have something as simple as an agenda for a team meeting in a format that they could read? What if a whole population of sighted people were continually not given agendas? When someone comes to me and apologizes for not getting printed materials to me in a manner in which I can read them, my expected response is supposed to be: “Oh it’s ok. I know you’re busy. … Yes don’t worry, you have a lot to do.” Certainly, everyone has a lot to do. But what if blind people had permission to say something like, “I understand you’re busy, but not having the same materials as everyone else compromises my job performance and my job security in turn. How can I work with you to ensure I get the materials in advance next time? And how can we work together to get me the materials for today as soon as possible?”

I’m sure many of you, looking at the above, diplomatic statements, are thinking: “Say it! You go girl!” And certainly, I wish we as blind people could all feel empowered and confident enough to say these things. But even if we’re not told by individuals, we’re told by society that we should simply be grateful to have a job. If we’re not making adequate money, or don’t have full materials, we should just be grateful someone took the risk when our skills are inferior to others. We need a shift far greater than “reasonable accommodations”, which only sounds good to a certain point. It needs to be practiced, to be demanded, and to be honored without repercussions. Of course, there will be blind people (just like sighted people), who will turn out not to have sufficient skills to do a particular job. They may have to seek other employment. But blind people should be given everything comparable to what a sighted person receives, so that there will be no question about why it didn’t work out.

I’m sitting on the porch of my childhood home, or at least the home that we moved into when I was thirteen, just a few blocks from my then middle school, which now, as far as I can remember, no longer exists. The house sits a block off a main avenue, and moving in at 13, it was the first time I’d lived somewhere where I could walk to restaurants with my friends: McDonald’s, Dairy Queen, a snowcone truck, a coffee bar where I drank a few hot ciders in the fall. I remember feeling grown-up, even though I never walked anywhere by myself. But the fact that my friends and I had the freedom to get cookie dough blizzards without our parents, was novel and exciting and, in a way, addicting. Today, I still feel that same thrill when I go somewhere new, and especially when it involves ice cream.

Last September, I wrote about what summer felt like in 2015. 2016 summer has been a tapestry of new and old places: Lopez Island over Memorial Day, where we read books and watched movies and dared to be as lazy as we possibly could; a cold, rainy June day on Whidbey Island with my parents, where I felt the strange realization that I would never get my degree there all over again; fourth of July in Seattle, revisiting Slate Coffee Bar and flying high and crashing on caffeine. This summer, I rode a tandem bike up and down the main drag of my neighborhood in the Fremont Solstice Parade, wearing nothing but a jingly bellydance belt and sandals. It amazed me how quickly our varied, beautiful bodies became normal, and how no one hurried to dress at the end. This summer, I sat on a blanket under a generous sun, eating blueberries and listening to Neko Case sing one of my favorite songs from the past few years, radiating awe and happiness to my core. This summer, I worked from home on long afternoons and canned cherry butter and pickled garlic scapes and wondered what I’d be at this time next year. This summer I spent two nights in an author-themed hotel on the Oregon Coast, reading in a top-floor library with spiced wine in my belly and a fire at my feet. This summer felt like adventure, felt like I could do things, had permission and desire and just barely enough money to do a little living. This summer, I ate way too many thin-crisp fries at Brouwer’s, and drank way too much beer, and fell in love with blackberries, again.

This summer I left Seattle. I cried and questioned and dragged my feet, and yet, in the end, I ultimately left. This summer, I made another life-changing decision, and will spend the time until next summer seeing how it plays out.

What did this summer feel like for you?

This week, you are traveling east, back to a place you left for hopes of a better one, which, whether you found it or not, (and you’re not sure, but you think so), you are leaving anyway. Your stoicism looks good except for the cracks, the tremble in your chin, and the fact that you have trouble swallowing. You say, “See you later!” instead of “good-bye”, and hope noone knows your sadness.

The states between the two stretch wide and press close, somehow at the same time. You want everything: to get there, to go back, to have the drive go on forever so you never have to choose. Miles of mountains and no water, and you try to picture how it would be to live here. To raise a family in a state that makes you feel so small.

And then you arrive, and you’re in another new apartment, trying to find some joy, and if not joy, comfort, and if not comfort, resignation. Instead, you feel a sense of loss, of the person you were when you left, only a year and a half ago. Maybe now you are better, or at least maybe now you know more, but you are surprised to miss who you were, or who you think you were, and you are dismayed that you can’t find your old self again in the streets and the people and the places that dared continue in your absence.

You miss the sound of the boats that floats to you on the breeze. You miss the distant seagulls, the mist, the blessedly cool cradle of night. How the city grows wild, how you always wondered idly if someday no one would be able to hold back the blackberry brambles and the mulch and the heavy-hanging branches. You miss the idea of the closeness of the coast, you miss that “going to the beach” actually might mean a beach, sand and bracing salty water and a tide. And not a lake.

But you’re here now. Comfort or not, you’re here now. You dig through the boxes for the things that will make it feel like home, the candles and the soft blankets and the teakettle and the spices.

Everyone says, “Give it time.” You wonder how much time you should give it. You are often impatient. You often want things you can’t have, so you pretend you don’t want them, because it’s easier that way. Or that’s what you’ve been telling yourself, anyway.

Maybe, hopefully, you will find your feet here again. The worst that could happen is you don’t, and so you’ll just keep moving. You try to remind yourself that this won’t mean you’ve failed, that you’re just living, the best way you know how.

As much as you thrive on discomfort, on the high, on the adrenaline of new challenges, this seems like an old challenge you know all too well. So you do what you’ve done, what you know, what you must: you pour the tea. You pull the chair to the table. You picture your shadow, there with you, offering comfort, keeping you from being alone. You settle in for a long night.

We are all scattered in the plains and the hills.
Visits, all tiny postcards of life
I fold us together a sunset picnic
so you can watch the night birds on the Sound
You buy me coffee while I write our lives entwined.
We climb what there is to climb.
You bring me lavender in escaping bundles.
I sleep some of my best nights under your watch.
Whenever I leave I am welcomed back
and I need to remember, re remember, re re remember
how I’ve been given the precious gift of so many homes.
We kicked around tourist towns
you talked about architecture, I pulled you to the ferry deck
and breathed until the salt air shocked my lungs alive.
You showed me your city
I fell in love and hauled everything across the country
only to haul it back.
Who knows what is right forever
I can only guess what is right right now.
You hold my hand when we’re walking
You make jam with me in a cramped kitchen
You painted my toenails, once, and I wore flip flops for a week.
You showed me the softness of your life
I reveled in it all.
I’m always looking back while walking forward
and you tell me you’ll love me whereever I decide to go.

She said, “I hope this is ok to tell you. The reason I decided to sit on the board of the Lighthouse for the Blind is because I needed to be hit over the head, again and again, with the knowledge that blind people can and do have better skills than I do. That, as an individual, I am not a sighted person talking to a blind person. I am a professional talking to a professional.”

I sat quietly in my straight-backed desk chair, listening to her speak, though what I really wanted to do was shout, “yes!” and “thank you!” and “You win!”

No person, no “professional”, had ever talked to me like this before, with such candid admission of prejudice, of having thought that we, blind and sighted, were not equals, that we couldn’t be equals based purely on what one of us had and what one of us did not have.

People don’t want to tell me this. I see it all the time. I see prejudice around me, from people who are basically kind, from people who would unequivocally deny their prejudice to my face and then, in the same conversation, remind me what an inspiration I am. They don’t see that in that basically “nice” sentiment lies the assumption that I should not be as independent as I am, that I should not be capable, and that the act of doing something as mundane as get out of bed and get to work makes me inspiring to someone who believes, no matter how innocently, that they are more capable than I will ever be. That it’s an inspiration that I’m even trying to measure up to them.

People are always telling me they don’t “see” my blindness. They don’t think about it. They don’t make assumptions based on it. But based on their actions, I know they do and that’s ok; what’s irksome is to be told that they’re not.

Finally, finally, in that closed office, where we could be real, someone was telling me this, what I’d always known and what no one had quite had the nerve to tell me before. That sighted people do, in fact, dismiss blind people’s skills and talents because they are blind. That sighted people do have lower expectations for blind people, because they’re just amazed that we can dress ourselves and make an omelet. Finally, somebody had enough respect for me to tell me, and also to tell me she was wrong.

The Lighthouse for the Blind is an organization in Seattle (with chapters elsewhere, too) which employs blind people who have skills working with hardware, tools, and machinery. All things that I know nothing about. All things that awe me slightly when I see someone who knows a lot about them. I say, “I could never do that”, but not because I’m blind. Because I’m closed-minded about my own skills and ability to learn. I am in awe of anyone who hammers a straight nail, regardless of whether they are blind or sighted. I try, as hard as I can, with regular checking of my thoughts, to be impressed by skill and not by my assumptions about how hard I perceive that skill to be for any particular person. I’m not perfect, I don’t always succeed. But I know what it’s like to be an “inspiration” just because I crossed a street. I don’t want to put that heavy weight on anyone else.

I’m so glad Lighthouse exists for blind people who have skills and who are overlooked because of their circumstances. I’m glad it exists for sighted people who “get it” enough to actively change their thinking by purposefully interacting with blind people, and being willing to take that hit again and again until our worth is ingrained. And, I’m glad that someone had the guts and the humility to say all this to my face. Thank you, Becky.

I order the same americano every day at the same coffee shop. I order it hot, with a little cream or coconut milk. This morning, I wanted it iced because Seattle is hot, and I am in the throes of a drippy, burning-throated spring cold that is making my tolerance for hot beverages very low. The barista making my drink chatted with me idly; she’s seen me come in here for months, usually at unseemly morning hours. She interrupted the smalltalk to say, “Just one more shot. … Oh, oops, it’s iced today, isn’t it? I’m going to have to remake it.” She had made the drink hot, as I’d asked for every other morning for months.

“Oh, it’s ok,” I said quickly. I like her. I figured if she’d already made a hot americano, I’d happily drink it. I didn’t want to give her another silly thing to do. “It’s not a big deal. I’ll drink it hot.”

Without missing a beat, she said, “You’re a big deal”, and started to remake my drink iced.

This seems like an incredibly innane recount of self-centered coffee minutia, but I promise I have a point. When she said, “you’re a big deal”, it viscerally triggered in me an overwhelming desire to burst into tears. I held them back, because that’s just weird, and as much as I’ve worked to be ok with crying in public, I really didn’t think now was the time. But I felt so pathetically, disproportionately grateful for such a small, dear kindness, words that she’d probably utter to anyone. I get that it’s her job to remake drinks if necessary. But still, I felt so utterly taken care of in that moment, with no expectations attached.

That interaction, and the immediate reaction I had to it, made me realize that I’ve felt under-valued for a long time, in the most particular, intimate interactions in my life, and in the broader context of the amount of energy I put into things like my job. I knew this feeling existed, but had only a passing acquaintance with it; I didn’t want to dwell on it too much because it made me sad. But having such a reaction to a near stranger telling me I matter pushed it to the forefront. It’s amazing how, when other people reflect back to you through their actions that you don’t matter as much as others, or even matter at all, you begin to sort of believe it. Or, at least, I begin to believe it. I begin to believe, to assume, that based on how others respond to and treat me, I have no skills, nothing to offer, and that anything I could offer would be too tedious upfront to even bother with. It’s so easy to begin to believe that you don’t matter or aren’t worth it, based on everyone else.

I don’t know how to fix this for and within myself. I do know I can and should and need to tell the people who matter to me most just HOW MUCH they matter. And not only to tell them, but show them. I need to remake that figurative coffee, again and again, until it’s right.

“When a woman gets on stage and makes a ton of noise, she’s breaking the rules about how to be a woman. And that idea of freedom and that idea that the rules don’t hold you, it spreads to everybody in the room. Everybody feels that sense of possibility breaking open.” Sara Marcus, author of Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution

I’ve gone through periods of my life where I am just so damn angry. One such period pushed me to start my first blog, which I centered specifically around having a disability. I wanted to explore how that felt in an open space, not just behind closed doors, in therapy, with my closest friends and family. I wanted to have conversations about how people perceive those with disabilities, what perspectives lay outside my own. Certainly, I wanted to have cordial discussions, but if I’m being honest, I also really wanted to rant. I wanted to advocate for myself and talk about injustice and leave it all bare. I wanted to make noise.

I think way more about making noise than actually doing it. You might call me mousy, and it wouldn’t be an ungenerous term. Twice in as many weeks, two different people have told me I have a “strong personality” and both times I had to remind myself they were talking about me. Maybe I am noisier than I perceive. Maybe there’s a sea change happening that I haven’t even noticed yet.

Last week, I attended a talk on feminism by Andi Zeisler, one of the co-founders of Bitch magazine. During the q and a, an older gentleman got up and started raving about how he couldn’t believe we were all here celebrating a magazine called Bitch, how could we as women use that word, and also, we all really do just hate men, don’t we? I felt like I was in the campiest trope of a movie, where the script just says, “Ok, brain dump all the anti-feminist bullshit you’ve heard people spouting since the 1950’s right here. Make sure you really mansplain it too. Go!” As he ranted, as my jaw dragged on the floor, I could feel the room stir, shock giving way to restless mumbling, the tension escalating with my every heartbeat, until I was sure we were gonna start a riot. I felt the riot in my body. We all felt it.

“Why are you fucking here?” someone demanded behind me and we all collectively agreed. It was one thing to hold these opinions after years and years of women fighting for themselves and men who get it fighting with us. It was another thing to hear those opinions in a space that should have, by its very nature, deterred them. I know how privileged I am to have barely scratched the surface of the worst of it. But I was seeing a little of that surface, and seeing the response, and knowing that, if Andi Zeisler hadn’t deftly handled the situation as she did, we would have all made a hell of a lot of noise and I would have welcomed it.

I often feel that visceral need to make noise, to say things loudly, let people stare, they’re staring anyway. I’d like to give them something to really see. I can’t count how many times I’ve been shushed in public for saying even the slightest “off-color” things. Sometimes I just want to scream: “People! We all poop, we all have sex, we all cry, we all die eventually, get over it!”

Mostly my want for screaming threatens when I feel like I’m being pigeon-holed into a box that’s labeled “blind” or “woman” or “queer”, a box whose label means that people don’t have to listen as much. When I’m walking down the street, and someone stops me to try to pet my dog, or when someone drunk tells me I’m pretty at the bus stop for the umpteenth time, I just want to scream, “Fuck you!!! Fuck you!!!” More than that, I just want to scream no words, just sound.

Somewhere in this noise, too, there is kindness, there is joy, there is passion, there is the overwhelming want to grab hands and hug and scream with others, just because we are so here and right now and alive. There is rage in noise, but there is also ecstasy and peace.

In her poem “Eve’s Mouth”, Alix Olson repeats one phrase several times: “She screams at the top of her lungs, “I’m whole! I’m body, I’m heart, I’m mind, I’m soul!” I think this gets to the heart of what we want. We want to be seen as everything human we are, not just “woman”, “queer”, “trans”, “black”, “blind.” When we’re seen for all we are, the beautiful and the flawed bits, we are given so many possibilities. We are open to receiving them, and offering possibilities in return. When women make noise, when social norms are challenged, we are thrown for a loop, thrust into a world where what we’ve thought and perceived is no more, and what we might build could be infinite. I’d argue that sometimes, most times, this is the best possible place to be. Body, heart, mind, soul, whole.

I’ve been hungering for short hair for years, but it’s been a slow process. As a teenager, I wanted nothing but long locks, all the way down my back. I wanted ponytails on hot days and updos for fancy occasions and a thick mane cascading down when I pulled all the pins and bands and clips out at night. I wanted a curtain to hide my face behind. But, I could only grow it partway down my back before my impatience would flare and I’d hack it up to my shoulders again. The ponytails were always lumpy, the pins hurt, the long mane was more limp than luxurious.

In college, my desire for short hair coincided with coming out, and my desire to be read as a little bit queer. I thought perhaps having what my friends and I affectionately called the “dyke haircut” would cut down on people asking me if I had a boyfriend. I only managed to cut my hair to chin-length during those years, because as much as short-short hair intrigued me, I was also afraid of sticking out even more than being blind already stuck me out.

Finally, in my twenties, I was ready to commit. I liked the idea of a “pixie cut.” The stylist who cut my hair in Minneapolis wasn’t keen on this; he said that he thought my forehead was too big for a pixie cut, and that it would take more maintenance than he thought I wanted. He may have been right about the maintenance; I can’t be bothered with much more than washing and brushing, which is why my ponytails always had lumps. I don’t know about the big forehead. He said his girlfriend looked a bit like me, and he’d seen pictures of her with a pixie cut, and it was all Big Forehead. I appreciated the honesty, truly. It’s harder than you’d think to find sighted people who will tell it like it is and not worry about offending me when really, what offends me is walking around with a big forehead or a weird-fitting shirt because no one could summon the nerve to tell me. So, while I wanted the short-short hair, I also respected his reservations, and continued with my safe and short-enough bob.

When I moved to Seattle, I tried again for short-short. The stylist I consulted was concerned about short hair being at odds with my face overall. It wasn’t just my forehead this time, the angles of my face weren’t made for anything above the chin. I let it go again, because I was paying her to know best.

The last straw came a few months ago when, for several mornings in a row, a man followed me down a particular block in my neighborhood shouting, “Are you blind? Are you blind?” at my back. These encounters happened early in the morning, before most of the world was awake, before the Seattle winter daylight filtered weakly through the clouds. It was obnoxious, and frightening, and I was generally fed up with this and situations like it, where I felt my feminine looking hair made me more vulnerable. I was tired of looking blind and soft. Though I don’t think I should “have” to chop off my hair to cut down on street harassment, I wanted short hair anyway, and I knew I wasn’t likely to get it at a salon.

So, on a Friday night in early March, I stomped through my friends Arlie and Betsy’s front door and said, “Let’s cut my hair.”

Arlie calmly said we could do it over the weekend. I not calmly rejoined with, “No. Tonight. Now. If I don’t do it now, I might not ever do it.”

So, fortified with a few gulps of wine and a fizzy feeling of the unknown, we set to work in the upstairs bathroom. Rather, Arlie set to work with clippers and his camera. As the whirring blades made their first swipes at my too-long hair, I was so happy that there was, for once, no turning back.

I love my short-short hair. It gets out of the way of my bare, un-made-up face. It barely wisps the back of my neck. It sometimes sticks up a tiny bit on the top. No strange man has asked me about my boyfriend since March.

For weeks after my haircut, no one spoke to me at all on the bus. I like to think this wasn’t coincidental. Maybe it was, but regardless, it was such a lovely respite, to go about my life without being approached by people I didn’t want to talk to, most notably men who wanted to comment on my looks or my blindness. As my hair has gotten longer, the Kiva comments have come back, most notably, “what a beautiful dog”, “can I pet your dog?”, and referring to the dog while not actually acknowledging me. It’s annoying, but certainly better than being followed or asked for my phone number to give to some dude’s blind “friend.”

Again, it’s a tough speculation to swallow that hair makes a difference to catcallers and other bored people on the street. I love my short hair, but that shouldn’t matter, and yet, at least in my experience, it seems to. Long hair says femininity, vulnerability, approachability. I’m not sure what short hair says. All I know is that it leaves my face out there in the world, plain and simple, big forehead and all, no hiding. No hiding seems to suit me best.