1

Mine was long, fine, and blonde in 1979 when I was fourteen years old in South Bend, Indiana, living in a home painted by a Vietnam vet named Jim with piercing green eyes, a limp, and a scowl that set me on edge. I avoided him and instead would walk to Jon’s house, listen to the Stones, and kiss on the gray shag rug.

2

This is not about my hair. It is not about Jon. It is about the movie where a man, George Berger, sacrifices himself so that another can find true love. A movie where the Age of Aquarius made me yearn to dance in Central Park and skinny dip with a coven of hippies and sing my way out of jail. Where I could celebrate the way the dead cells that drop from my body were all accounted for, were what we adorn ourselves with as reminders. They are far more beautiful than headstones.

3

Tiny blood vessels at the base of every hair follicle feed the root to keep the hair growing. Let’s call each of those vessels love. When I was fourteen, I watched Hair and fell in love with George Berger, how he was like the Jesus I was forced to gaze at every Sunday dangling from the cross at church, dangling like my hair over my ears listening to a sermon about sacrifice. But I wanted to make love to George. I did not want to make love to Jesus. The editing of the movie left out George’s gruesome death, whereas the Catholic Church hung it in their cathedrals.

4

Sacrifice isn’t about paying a price. The Vietnam vet Jim didn’t pay a price; something inside of him just died. Jon never kissed me out of love but out of the dance in a park of his heart where the Rust Belt of our home was left untouched by its brutal corroded iron, its nails. Later I protested subsequent wars: Kuwait, Iraq, the Cold War with its nuclear weight. I grew my hair, I chopped it, I dyed it colors based on whims while falling in and out of love, while watching for an Aquarian sea change and singing my way through the dark.

Bio: Kika Dorsey