Felix Salmoran (they/he) is an indigenous Mexican writer, musician, aspiring tattoo artist, sustainable fashion enthusiast, and lover of all things striped. They studied English Language & Literature at the College of William & Mary. His poetry won the 2019 Academy of American Poets Collegiate Prize, appeared in Underground Magazine, and is forthcoming in Makeout Creek Magazine. He lives on occupied Powhatan land with chosen family and 2 cats.

cutting it close

felix salmoran

content warnings: mentions of addiction, cancer, death/suicide

And at the bottom, it wasn’t a fear at all but a desire. River Halen, “Dream Rooms”

My first issue with hair was that I didn’t want it.

I got my curls from my mom, and she made me into Samson. Whenever I wanted a haircut growing up, she would warn, no more than two inches. Although we’ve stopped speaking, I’ve internalized her voice. In the mirror, mostly, antes muerta que sencilla [1].

I spent my childhood pulling my hair back as flat as I could into a single bun, getting as close to bald as possible. When my body hair entered the scene, I was petrified. The day I found my first leg hair, sitting on the floor of the elementary school orchestra room, I came home and cried to my mom, who nodded and handed me a razor. By high school, I was shaving nearly my entire body.

Out of desperation, I bleached my arm hair, I tried Nair, and I'd taken to flat-ironing my head hair almost every day, continuing through my sophomore year of college, until one day I didn't want to, and haven’t since. I had just come out as gay then, and was down to shaving only my ‘stache, torso, fingers and toes—my debut double-cast in the role of “other.”

When I met my hairdresser, I had just moved to a new city after undergrad, and had gotten a bad haircut at the Hair Cuttery right before graduation. In the next year, I had half a dozen drastically different hairstyles—my hair went from hip length to baby mullet, which I then grew out for almost two years. My mullet born, I started using they/them pronouns, and stopped shaving completely—liberated by my deviance.

Once I felt like I’d reached peak mullet—neon orange tips with the sides faded to the scalp—I had my hairdresser chop it off, leaving me with four inches of curl on top, which I immediately dyed platinum.

*

When I shaved my head for the first time, it was to shed the outermost edges of my existence, turn the soil, see how the land had changed, and what newness could grow. I was just barely pre-T; falling out of touch with my mother; my dad had just been diagnosed with stage IV cancer; Denim, my cat, soulmate, angel, and my inspiration when I first dyed my hair gray, had just died. I was addicted to Xanax, and I quit my tech startup job, although I can’t remember which happened first. I shaved my hair down with no guard twice, and grew it out for half a year afterwards. That was the longest I’ve ever gone without a haircut, and coincidentally my first six months on HRT. When I finally saw my hairdresser again and got a fresh fade, I went home, had my housemate do my eye makeup, and took a dozen pictures of myself.

The second time I shaved my head was this past summer; I was no longer speaking to my mother; it had been over half a year since my dear friend—B, who had the most beautiful bleach blonde curls—died by suicide; I was a few months sober; and I had gotten misgendered at my new job three times in 48 hours, not long after I’d reached my maximum dose of testosterone. My stomach was the first place to get hairy on HRT, so I found myself with more hair there than on my head, and I excitedly brought out my old crop tops, feeling newly comfortable with the implicit femininity.

I stayed bald longer, noticing the recession of my hairline, which caused panic and gender euphoria. I scheduled my top surgery consultation, and in order to ground myself for the Big Chop, I resolved to have my curls again. I dreaded the growing out process, so I had my hairdresser clean up my sides and shape once a month. I have another haircut scheduled soon, just in time for my wispy sideburns to connect to the the distinct shadow growing along my jawline.

Earlier this year, I posted a series of pictures to my Instagram stories, rating my hairstyles from high school up to now. Laying my selves out like a puzzle, it’s clear to me that each piece makes up my own reflection, willing to stare back.

Recently, my housemate said to me, your hair has lived so many lives. And in each one, I survive a world that tells me I can never look in alignment with how I feel; I ferment my own becoming. My hair—shaving lines into the sides, growing it out, coloring the tips, styling a wet look—is not my crown, but my shield. It’s how I honor and heal a multiplicity of selves and actualizations, how I establish and express my expansion.

Faithfully, my hair is the first to catch up to my heart, in this relay race against only time, with infinite beginnings. And what becomes time in the face of immortality? [2]

[1] Sooner dead than simple—this is more than my mother’s catchphrase; it’s a truth by which she lives (one that I hated growing up, and associated with inauthenticity and maintaining some level of performance to control the illusion of how others perceive you, even those closest to you).

[2] There is a myth that your hair and nails keep growing after you die. It turns out this is an illusion caused by the shrinkage of the skin around the follicles drying out, shriveling up. I decide this illusion is enough, for me.