Grief and Regrets by Whittaker

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Rain was bucketing from the sky; Rowan could feel it sneaking past his raincoat and trickling down his long braid, making his whole back wet. As he pedalled his bike through the rivers that flowed down the edges of the street his socks wicked water which trickled down into his shoes.

The hood of his coat muffled the sounds of the cars splashing past him and obscured the edges of his vision. Why did the cars feel like they were driving faster in the rain? He gripped his handlebars a little firmer each time another one skimmed close enough for him to feel its wind.

He approached the next intersection and a feeling of dread hit him, there was something familiar about this place. His heart started racing, and the rain came down even harder. He began to cross the intersection when seemingly out of nowhere a dump truck ripped a right turn in front of him. He didn’t have time to think let alone stop, he collided with the side of the vehicle and fell to the pavement. Confusion, dizziness. Something grabbed his left arm and pulled him away. His feet were still clipped to his pedals, so the bike got dragged with him. He couldn’t see. All he heard were horns and sirens and the sound of his helmet grinding against the ground.

---

Rowan woke up in a cold sweat, breathing heavily. The nightmare was becoming more vivid. He sat up and grabbed his notebook off the bedside table and quickly jot down the details, then put a little star on his calendar to mark that he had the dream again.

Rolling up out of bed, Rowan padded over to his dresser and picked out a soft t-shirt to go with the pyjama pants that he had slept in last night and pulled it over his head. He moved to the other side of the room and sat down at his and his husband Ethan’s shared vanity table. He studied himself in the mirror. His bandages were off, and the stitches had all been taken out. He was for all intents and purposes "healed" at this point. All that was left to do was watch his scars fade over time. Well, and physiotherapy…

He studied the sensations surrounding his left arm, a peculiar mixture of absence and presence. He tried to move the stump but found that his brain wanted to limit his range of motion. It wasn’t painful to move his shoulder, there was just some sort of mental block there that held him back. He had much better range of motion when working with the support of his physiotherapist.

He imagined moving the elbow and fingers that were no longer there and found that this morning it wasn’t sending shooting pain up his arm like it sometimes did. He flowed through the sequence of exercises assigned to him by his physio. They were still beginner exercises, but he was progressing well. He had worked as a personal trainer before his accident and had a great athletic base which was helping him work through this new set of challenges. His doctor said he was an excellent candidate for a prosthesis. He undoubtedly possessed the discipline and drive to train is body in new ways. He was already dreaming and brainstorming about going back to work, learning how to train again, and then bringing a tailored personal training service to other amputees.

With his exercises complete, he chose to attempt the monumental quest of untangling and re-braiding his hair single-handedly. Rowan had a gorgeous mane of hair, white-blond, and pin straight. He had been growing it out since he was in his teens. He had worn it around waist length through college but then somehow without noticing it, it had drifted down to his hips, then over his butt to finally tickle his thighs. His husband had intervened at that point, fearing it would strangle one of them in the night, and Rowan let him trim it a couple times a year, bringing it back to classic length.

He placed the end of his current sleep-mussed braid into his mouth so that he could slide the tie off the end without pulling his scalp. Then he began working the strands apart from one another, moving whatever part was in his mouth as he gradually worked his way up the length. When he got to the detangling stage, he attempted a similar technique. He placed his hair in his mouth with about 12 inches sticking out at the end and attempted to run a comb through that section. It was not easy. The hair did not want to stay organized and the force of the comb snagging on knots kept pulling locks out of his mouth and creating more mess and tangles than he had started with. He kept having to pull the whole thing out of his mouth, try to smooth it down, and then put it back in and resume combing all with one hand. He maintained perfect composure on the outside but on the inside, he wanted to scream.

Ethan padded up the stairs with a plate of breakfast in his hands and smiled at the sight of his husband patiently attempting to wrangle his gorgeous hair.

"Here let me help you with that, Roe", he said, setting down the plate of food on their vanity.

Rowan scoffed and smirked. "You know, Love, you can’t take care of my hair every single day for the rest of our lives."

"I could if you would let me" Ethan smiled at him through the mirror.

He took the comb from Rowan’s hand, and the hair from his mouth, and laid it in a beautiful curtain down his back. With Rowan sitting in the chair, it almost tickled their hardwood floor. It had been a while since his last trim; Rowan was never particularly eager for them. Ethan had been surprised, when Rowan had returned from the hospital, that he hadn’t lost a bunch of hair from the stress of his accident.

Ethan sat down on the floor behind Rowan’s chair. Starting at the bottom he carefully picked through each knot that had formed while his husband had been sleeping. As each lock was organized and perfected, he laid it back down. Rowan hummed with delight at Ethan’s soft ministrations. When he was done, the gleaming mass of pale hair shone with the love and tenderness that Ethan had put into its care.

Rowan sighed. "Ethan, would you cut my hair for me?"

Ethan smiled "Of course! I suppose it has been a little while hasn’t it? Time got away from us again…"

"Mmhmm" Rowan mumbled, eyes turning downcast.

Ethan went rifling through their vanity drawers for their trimming scissors, when he found them, he brandished them with a flourish and gave them an experimental snip.

"How much do you want me to trim?", Ethan asked. "Just a bit, or do you want to go back to the length you were maintaining at last time? The condition of your ends isn’t actually all that bad. Maybe three inches is all that needs to go? What do you think?"

"Whatever you think", he replied. He peered over his shoulder to inspect how far his hair fell down his body. He ran his hand down it, picking up the ends and staring wistfully at them as he inspected the quality.

Ethan gathered all his hair up again and combed it in long, broad strokes, when he decided that it was as perfectly arranged as was achievable, he drew the scissors up to the ends. "Don’t move" he told his husband. Rowan held his breath and closed his eyes. He always did that; he didn’t know why. It only took a couple quick snips to get through the thin, scraggly ends.

"All done", Ethan said, and Rowan let out his breath as slowly and quietly as he could. He turned to look at the light dusting of strands on the floor, standing out against the dark wood. It looked like Ethan had decided to go with three inches.

His husband ran his fingers against Rowan’s scalp, massaging him in smooth, languid motions. He gathered up all the hair and twisted it into a loose coil which he draped over Rowan’s shoulder. "Is that okay? Sufficiently meeting your expectations?" he asked.

Rowan unwound the coil and stroked the ends over his thigh. "Yeah." He sighed.

Ethan furrowed his brow. "What’s going on Roe, you seem upset this morning?" He pulled Rowan’s hair back behind him and split it into three strands for weaving back into a braid.

"Don’t be mad"

"I doubt I’ll be mad. What happened?"

Rowan sighed again and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I think it’s time to say goodbye to the long hair."

Ethan flushed and his hands stilled in the half-finished braid. "I would never be mad about something like that. Just… sorry." He picked up his braiding again, his hands a bit less certain this time.

"I just don’t see a future where I’m ever able to take care of this much hair with only one arm. I can’t comb it; I can’t put it up. It’s going to end up being a frazzled disaster constantly."

"I haven’t minded taking care of it these past few weeks", Ethan said. "Actually, I’ve really enjoyed the intimacy. There’s no expiration date on my offer to help you if you want to keep it."

"I’m a grown man." Rowan snapped. ‘I should be able to take care of my own hair’, is what he didn’t say. He tucked a strand behind his ear, tugging against his husband’s work in progress.

Ethan stilled again. "I know that", he hesitated. "I’m just offering. I have a hard time believing that you want to cut it, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to, just because you need a little help right now."

Rowan huffed out another stressed exhale. "I’m sorry. I know. I don’t want to… I’m just thinking about further in the future. Once I’m back at work it just won’t be practical. I’m usually constantly having to adjust it throughout the day as I’m working out, running drills and stuff… Your offer to help me just isn’t feasible long term."

"I get what you’re saying. I’m sorry that that’s the way it is. But you don’t have to worry about it right now. We don’t know how long it will be before you’re back to work. We can wait, I can help you with it until then."

Rowan thinks about it. He wants to say yes. He loves his long hair. He hates the thought of losing it.

"No", he answers. "I just need to do it. Rip off the proverbial bandage."

Ethan sighs. "Okay, if that’s what you want." He finishes tying off the braid and lets it flop against Rowan’s backside.

"Will you…. Do the deed?"

Ethan grimaces. "Oh, I don’t know Roe… Trimming you ends is one thing, but cutting a bunch off? I’m worried I’d mess it up".

"I think you’ll do fine. I’d rather have it turn out a little wonky than have to deal with the attention of going to a real hair place. They’ll be all like ‘Oooh so much pretty hair’, ‘Oh my god no don’t cut it all off’, ‘Oh you lost your arm you poor thing’, ‘Boo hoo blah blah’. Or it’ll be some crotchety old homophobe who makes comments under his breath the whole time about the decline of society as he ‘turns me into a real man’."

Ethan grimaced again "Ugh that is exactly how it would go, isn’t it?" His hand found his own shaggy hair and he tugged anxiously. "Damnit, okay fine, I’ll do it."

"Thank you", Rowan said, resigned.

Ethan ran his hands down the braid a couple of times, tugging on his gently. "What length were you thinking?"

"Short. Like, shorter than yours is right now."

"Actually, Rowan?!! That would mean giving you a completely different hairstyle! I have no clue how to do that! I don’t think it needs to be that short for you to be able to comb it one handed. Can’t we just like… cut it to waist length and see how that goes first?"

"It’s less about the combing and more about not being able to put it up on my own. I can’t have it flapping in my face all the time."

Ethan whined "I dunno if I can do this. I don’t know how to cut short hair."

"What do you mean? You do your own all the time?"

"Yes, and my lack of skill is reflected in the quality of the result!" He ran his hand anxiously through his hair again. At the moment he was sporting a shaggy, eclectic, hipster-mullet kind of style with shaved sides that were overgrown. "Besides," he continued. "My hair is thick and wavy and honestly, sometimes I accidentally cut random pieces too short and they just kind of disappear into the rest of it and I move on. I don’t think I should be trusted."

"Please Ethan."

He kept digging his hands into his own chaotic hair. "I’m not going to give you a mullet."

"I appreciate that"

"I have a strict one mullet per household rule, and I was here first."

"I don’t want a mullet"

"Good, you can’t have one." He crossed his arms stubbornly.

"I just want something plain and boring and out of the way."

Ethan grumbled low in his throat. "Ugh, fine. I can’t believe we’re doing this right now." He took another hair tie and secured it around the top of Rowan’s braid at the nape of his neck. He grabbed the scissors and watched himself bring them to the base of the tail. He held them there until Rowan pointedly cleared his throat.

"I’m sorry, Roe. I don’t think I can do this to you."

"You can. Just do it, it’ll be fine."

"I might cry, is that okay?"

"I might cry too, it’s fine."

"Well now I really can’t make myself do it, if it’s going to make you cry!"

"Ethan please stop, please just cut the braid."

"Can you do the first cut?"

"No."

"But you won’t have to see it!"

"I’ll have to feel it!"

"But—"

"Ethan! Cut the f*cking braid!"

Ethan took a deep breath in. He firmly grasped the braid in one hand and dug one side of the scissors in between the strands. His hands were shaking. He closed his eyes, and then he closed the scissors. Rowan flinched and hissed in a small breath at the sound of the cut. Ethan opened his eyes to inspect his crime. A small chunk now tarnished the formerly perfect rope of moonlight. It was hideous and obvious. There was no going back now.

Ethan steeled himself, and with eyes open this time, cut through the rest of the braid in a series of determined snips.
When the weight separated from his skull, Rowan let his gaze tip up as he slowly let out the breath he was holding. Tears stung his eyes, but he managed to hold them in. The fresh ends tickled the back of his neck and made him shiver.

"I am so sorry" Ethan whispered. He clutched the braid tightly to his chest. He stepped away from the chair and turned his back to Rowan as he tried to compose himself. As soon as Ethan wasn’t looking, Rowan let his hand slide into his hair. It slipped out way too soon, so he did it a few more times in quick succession, trying to get used to it. He had an awkward, uneven, chin length bob. It was not a flattering look. His stomach churned with anxiety at the thought of what he had just done. He had been protective over his beautiful long hair for the last two decades, and just like that it was all gone.

Rowan could see the back of Ethan’s head through the mirror and caught him discreetly dabbing his face with his sleeves.

"Love, please don’t leave me looking like this."

Ethan sniffed. "Sorry, I’m coming"

He turned and placed the braid down on the vanity table. He ran his hands through what was left of Rowan’s hair a couple times before picking up the scissors again and holding them poised over his canvas.

"I am going to mess this up. I have no idea what I’m doing."

"I trust you."

"I appreciate the sentiment however it does not suddenly fill me with the knowledge I require."

Rowan chuckled.

"Can we please go to a salon? Now that the braid is gone?"

"I’m not going anywhere like this, but if you want to look up a tutorial I’ll wait."

Ethan groaned with anxiety. "Ugh you’re killing me here, fine…" He pulled the phone out of his pocket and quickly googled some diagrams and a short tutorial for a basic men’s scissor cut.

He sectioned off the top of Rowan’s hair and clipped it away, then began carefully snipping at the sides of his head as per the instructions. Rowan had his eyes closed and was trying to focus on his breathing instead of his lack of hair.

---

"Ethan, you’re stressing me out. You keep making anxious noises."

"I’m sorry! Your hair in pin straight, okay? It’s not very forgiving."

He made a couple more tentative snips, then set down the scissors and walked away, breathing slowly and deliberately, and pressing the balls of his hands into his eyes.

"What’s wrong?" Rowan asked.

"It’s not going well." Ethan whispered.

"How bad?"

"Your hair is so straight and fine, every cut looks like it was done by a toddler with some craft scissors."

Rowan squirmed uncomfortably.

"I want to glue it all back on." Ethan said

"Okay, and if that’s not an option?"

"I think if I use my clippers, I can do a better job. It’ll make it more even. It’ll make up for my shaky hands."

Rowan’s face flushed and his heart sped up at the thought of clippers. He managed a strangled "Okay" and hoped Ethan couldn’t hear how nervous he was.

Ethan rummaged through one of their vanity drawers and pulled out his clippers. He fired them up and Rowan winced in response.

"God that’s a nightmare right there", he chuckled nervously. "Somebody going for the back of my head with a set of clippers."

"Welp. The damage is already done. Sorry for bringing the nightmare to life."

"Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that"

"It’s fine." Ethan snapped the biggest guard he had, a 9mm, onto the blades. "F*ck." he whispered, before plunging them into Rowan’s hair beside the ear.

The device peeled through the strands like they were smoke. He ran them over one side of Rowan’s head a few times and began to feel a little better. It was definitely shorter than he wanted, but at least it looked even. The sound of the clippers and the feeling of the vibrations on his scalp caused tears to finally leak out of Rowan’s eyes.

"It’s looking much better now" Ethan was so focused on his shaving that he didn’t notice Rowan begin crying in earnest until he grabbed Ethan by the wrist and pulled the clippers away from his head. Ethan’s mouth dropped open.

"Oh no, Roe I am so so sorry, come here." He shut the clippers off and opened his arms to hold Rowan as the man sobbed. "I’m so sorry that I messed it up."

Rowan shook his head as he buried his face into his husband’s shoulder. "I just need a break," he mumbled.

"Of course." Guilty tears leaked from Ethan’s eyes as he rubbed Rowan’s back in slow, soothing circles. "Of course." He repeated softly.

"Last time—" he stuttered. "Last time I had clippers used on me was when my father found out I was gay."
Ethan startled. He had never heard this story before.

"I was 15. I had always preferred keeping my hair long and my parents had never seemed to care until they found out… My dad beat the sh*t out of me… Shaved my head… I lived at a friend’s house for the rest of high school."

Ethan cried some more. He had known that Rowan’s parents were homophobes (hence why he’d never met them), and that Rowan had lived with a friend in high school because of it, but he’d never been told this particular detail of Rowan’s fallout with his family.

"F**k Roe. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that I f*cked it up and that we’re in this position now, and I’m sorry that your parents are sh*t"

"It’s okay, it’s my fault that we’re in this situation. I pressured you into this. I should’ve just left it. I didn’t want to cut my hair. I don’t know what came over me. I’m not the first person to lose an arm, there’s no way there isn’t somebody out there putting up one-handed hair care tutorials on YouTube." He pulled away from Ethan’s shoulder and wiped his eyes. He reflexively went to tuck his hair behind his ear and whined sadly when all he felt were short little bristles.

"How do we salvage this?" Ethan hung his head in his hands.

"We don’t. We keep shaving. I lie in the bed I’ve made. I just need to—" he paused to wipe more tears away. "—collect myself."

Ethan nodded and reached to embrace his husband again.

"I just feel so lost" Rowan admitted. "The arm, the hair. I thought that if I kept telling myself that I just didn’t care that I could make it a reality. Like if I could just keep forcing myself to be positive, eventually it would be sincere. It hasn’t worked. I’m so sad, and scared, and—I don’t even know what the words are for how I feel. I’m devastated, but also confused? I don’t recognize my body. I don’t want it to be like this. I wish I could go back in time. It’s such a sh**ty feeling. Like intense regret for a thing that I couldn’t control."

Ethan sighed. "It’s my worst nightmare, that you’re having to go through something like this. All things considered, you are handling this better than I ever could, façade or no façade."

"I just wish I could be like an amputee motivational speaker or something; documenting my story, uplifting people, showing them resilience."

"I think you could do something like that, but there’s no rule that says that you can’t also allow yourself space to grieve."

Rowan smooshed his face into his husband’s shoulder again and took a few more deep breaths, enjoying his comforting scent. "Okay." He pulled away. "I think I’m ready to keep going."

Ethan placed his hands on Rowan’s shoulders. "You sure? We have nowhere to be, we can take as long as you need."

Rowan nodded. "I can feel how ridiculous I look and it’s making me uncomfortable."

He really did look ridiculous, with the top half of his hair tied into a little ponytail that looked like a palm tree, one side of his head shaved, and the other side a raggedy bob.

"Okay, let’s do it then."

"Please make it fast." Rowan requested.

"So fast." Ethan assured him. He fired up the clippers and dug them into the left side of Rowan’s head, efficiently peeling away what was left. The sensation of the clippers instantly triggered more tears to fall and Ethan hesitated.

"Don’t stop." Rowan begged. "Just get it over with."

Ethan pressed on even though it killed him to see his husband crying because of what he was doing to him.

He finished as quickly as he could and let down the top of Rowan’s hair, which splayed to graze between his chin and cheekbones, depending on the strand. He tried to trim it into something that looked moderately okay. He was running into the same problem as before, Rowan had pin straight, unforgiving hair. It wasn’t perfect, but he outright refused to shave Rowan’s entire head, so he declared himself finished. He set down his tools and kissed his husband on the top of his head.

"All done." He whispered.

Rowan stood and embraced him. His shoulders shook as he burst into tears again. Ethan joined him and they held each other and swayed until Rowan split for the washroom to clean himself up in the shower. Ethan plunked himself down in the vanity chair and stared at his red, tear-streaked face. He brought a hand into his shaggy overgrown shaved sides and peeked the clippers out of the corner of his eye.

‘May as well clean these up while we’re here.’ He thought to himself.

Holding his longer hair out of the way with one hand, he began trimming the old, previously shaved portion. He squared it off perfectly and then repositioned his hands to isolate the other side. He held the clippers there and paused.

"Oh f*ck it." He said and plunged the clippers right down the middle of his head. Hair exploded out around him as he angrily attacked it. He paid no attention to evenness or making sure he hit every spot. "F*ck this day enormously." He grumbled. "F*ck that goddamned f***ing dump truck. F*** bicycles. F*** the city and their sh**ty, barely-there bike lanes. F*** me for not being there. F*** Rowan’s parents and f*** Rowan’s hair." He slammed the clippers down with finality just as Rowan stepped out of the washroom. He stopped in his tracks and stared at the mess Ethan had made of the floor and of his head.

"I couldn’t let you have all the fun." Ethan ruefully offered as an explanation.

Rowan let out a teary chuckle and went to run his hand over his husband’s chaotic head, brushing random loose strands onto the floor and surveying the damage.

"The look suits you." Rowan emphasized a couple long missed strands by giving them a gentle tug. "You gonna keep it like this?"

Ethan shrugged "Maybe."

Rowan chuckled and grabbed the clippers from the table. He nudged Ethan’s head so that he was bowing forward and began to peel away the strands that his husband had missed.

"Okay, I’m guessing that’s actually a ‘no’." Ethan chuckled as Rowan tried to fix the mess as best as he could given the limitations of being unable to stabilize Ethan’s head as he shaved it.

"What are we gonna do about your one mullet per household rule, now that you’re no longer representing?" Rowan joked.

"Well, the dog’s been looking pretty shaggy lately…" Ethan grinned

"Oh my god" Rowan wheezed with laughter. "If you come for Miss Maple, she and I are moving out in protest."

He snapped off the clippers and ran his hand over his husband’s short hair a few times. "I meant it when I said it. You look good like this."

Ethan leaned forward in his seat to examine himself. "You did a better job that I did… On either of us… I’m really sorry again Roe."

Rowan shrugged again but the motion jostled him out of his former composure and he started crying again. Ethan stood and held him.

"God my emotions are so close to the surface today" Rowan rolled his eyes through the tears. "I am not holding it together holy sh*t"

"Shhh. It’s okay. You don’t need to hold anything together. It’s my turn, K? Just let me hold it for a little while." He ran his hand over the nape of Rowan’s neck which made both of them shiver.

"I’m never cutting my hair again" Rowan mumbled into Ethan’s shoulder.

"That's okay. You can do that."

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