Well, Dave's mom was really gone. It seemed like just last week when she was baking cookies for the boys and they were camping in a pup tent in Dave's backyard. Poor Dave, he wouldn't ever be the same, and Mark knew it. He almost felt guilty, as if he wished he had lost something so irreplaceable. As it was, all the consoling in the world meant nothing to him. It was just words, no real sentiment.

After staring at the ceiling for a while, he grew angry with himself. He reached for the phone to call Dave in Denver.... No. The last thing you want at a funeral is to hear from your worthless roommate. There had only been enough money for one plane ticket, and Mark blamed himself, having been out of work the past two years. Lousy sponge, leech, parasite! He hurled the phone across the room and started pacing. He had to make some kind of sacrifice for Dave... but what? It wasn't like he had anything. Everything in the house was Dave's, even the phone he had just wrecked. He started looking around for something, anything. His guitar? No, that was his baby, his passion. It was the only thing he did well enough to make a living, and even then, a few days' worth of pennies in the guitar case didn't add up to much. Aside from that, there wasn't much else that was his. He and Dave shared a communal sock drawer and the mattress he slept on came from the curb across the street. Some friend he was!

He stormed into the bathroom and pulled back the shower curtain. Shampoo bottles, those were his. All twelve of them, seven fifty each. Seven bloody fifty! No wonder he was broke. Oh, but he needed that shampoo. He had another passion besides guitar -- his hair. His long, wavy chestnut ponytail that reached to his waist, with copper highlights that glowed like a bright penny when the light was perfect. There were stories grown into that hair, like all those ex-girlfriends who caressed it with painted fingers and smelled it with rhinoplastied noses. And Sharon... oh, she was a real catch. She said his hair smelled like heaven. But Mark didn't get it, you don't cheat on heaven.

But then...then Mark hesitated, looked in the mirror. Now he knew what he needed to sacrifice, not his guitar or the communal socks. He had to cut off his hair -- for Dave, for Sharon, for himself. He knew if he thought about it too much, he'd wimp out. So he ran to Dave's desk, rummaged through a drawer, and got the scissors. Those hungry, silver metal edges yearning to slice into something... He pulled back his ponytail with one hand, and closed the scissors with the other. The blade sliced through his hair with a delicious crunch. His pulse throbbed in his ears. Oh my god, he thought, what have I just done? His hair fell down around his face, stopping at his chin, shorter than it had been for years. He draped his ponytail across the back of a chair.

He returned to the mirror to inspect his handiwork. The cut had given him some kind of thrill, and by now he was so aroused that his knees were wobbly and his face flushed. He ran his hand through his hair. He was nearly crying, but part of him had begun to like having his hair short. So, what next? Could he bring himself to do more?

With a trembling hand, he lifted a highlighted chunk from in front of his face, and with his other hand, he chopped it to the root! He stumbled a little bit. This was something he couldn't undo -- his white skin showed beneath the patch of cropped hair. He ran his fingers along the bare spot, and it felt tingly and velvety. A tear rolled down his face, mingling with beads of sweat and splattering in the sink. He breathed heavily, his chest tightened. No turning back. No turning back now. He had to finish what he started.

He opened the medicine cabinet, with the damn door that always stuck -- he couldn't finish the job with those office scissors. There, sitting behind the toothpaste, was Dave's beard trimmer. It was a cheap thing, but surely it had enough horsepower to gnaw right through Mark's thick auburn locks, right down to the bare skin. He plugged it in. The clippers began to buzz, and everything around him started to buzz too. His hands shook violently but he wrapped them around the clippers anyway, and made a firm pass down the middle of his head.

It was as if he was shearing away the past ten years of failed relationships and unemployment. And it felt...it felt so good! He continued, clipping up the left side, exposing his double-pierced ear. No one even knew he had ear piercings, they were always hidden. He sheared away the rest of his hair, and went back over his head with the clippers to make sure there were no missed spots. The severed bits of hair stuck to his damp forehead, his hands, and just about everything in the bathroom.

He leaned close to the mirror to inspect what he had done. He cautiously ran his hand down the back of his bald head... it was the most amazing feeling in the world. It was like velvet, only warm, and alive. He could see now that his skull was a beautiful shape, and now there was nothing to hide behind. This was the most amazing thing he had ever done! He began to feel dizzy, so he sat down beside the toilet, surveying the heaps of fallen hair on the floor. He stared down at his dirty, hair-covered hands, and started to cry. For nearly an hour he simply sat there, crying quietly about anything and everything. And when he stood up, he felt strangely purified.

That evening he heard a knock at the door. Shit, he thought, and he pulled a beanie down over his head and ears and answered the door. It was Sharon. But she was only a girl, not a goddess like he remembered.

"I've come to get some books I left here," she said dryly. Books, ah yes. Those things Mark was using to prop up the television. He started to go get them, then remembered what he had done. Sharon didn't know.

"Listen," he said quietly.

"I don't want any bullshit--"

"No, just trust me for a moment. Shut your eyes." So she closed her eyes, and he took her hand and placed it on his bald head. She felt for a moment, and her face contorted. Her eyes shot open.

"Oh my god. Mark, what have you done to yourself?"

"You don't understand. I'm different now. I want to start over."

"You've already blown it. And now you aren't even sexy." She looked at his eyes, just glanced at them. There was something different there. Maybe he had changed... people do change, right? At least he had some definition to his face now, and she liked his piercings. The spark of metal beside his face was oddly intriguing. There was a certain elegance to his new look, but she couldn't tell him that.

"About my books?" she said impatiently.

He gave her books back, and she left. He stood for a little while, contemplating the door. Well, so what if she wasn't going to come running back? He had other things to worry about, and lots of lost time to make up. And who knows, perhaps Sharon would come back to him someday, and perhaps not. In any case, there was time to wait.