Oh, Jack Kerouac. by FellowTraveler

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It is a particularly sunny Wednesday, and Jack Kerouac is sitting in my living room with a bedcover draped around his shoulders.

The sunlight pours in, spilling over the rich locks of black, glossy hair that begged to be threaded through by somebody’s fingers as he chuckles at me, shaking his head as he says:

"Is that dreadful haircut happening today, or what?"

I give him a chuckle in return, picking up the clippers with their number four attachment on and a plastic comb from the table, one in each hand; as I stand firmly behind him, he throws his head back and looks at me with his blue eyes, thick lashes fluttering as he grins, looking at me with excitement.

I place the clippers against his temple and wink. Before snapping them on, I tell him:
"This’ll teach you not to bet against me again, Kerouac."


*


Two weeks earlier, mid March of 1941, we’d just arrived at my apartment after a day full of tiresome lectures that seemed to go on from dusk till dawn, when Jack found a piece of paper sticking out of his textbook.

He found me in the kitchen while I was heating up yesterday’s leftovers for dinner, and put a finger over his lips before he showed me the paper; plain and simple, it was a drawing of a green carnation.

We both knew what it meant: somebody out there was keeping an eye on us.
The drawing was an agreed-upon code that served as a discreet warning from one friend of Dorothy to another, meaning: you are being followed, do your best to stay safe. Oscar Wilde himself coined the green carnation as a symbol of a love that was as forbidden then as it was now.

It was a risk we were both aware of â€" we’d heard of it happening to other men who lived the way we did; with the red scare behind us, two men in love was not a welcome thought. The stories of how they tracked these men were fruitful grounds for paranoia: they followed us in their cars, bugged our apartments and watched our windows until they had the evidence needed to wait for the time we were walking down a dark street on a lonesome night.

Jack and I exchanged glances over the humming of the fridge and the ticking of the oven’s timer. His dorm room was across town; if he left tonight, he could be attacked in the dark â€" if he stayed, their convictions would come one step closer to being confirmed. It was a double-edged sword.

We both flinched when the oven’s timer went off.
Clearing my throat, I asked him to hand me the oven mitt from where he stood against the spice rack; I was crouching in front of the oven, so as he handed it over to me, my fingers slid against his and I pulled him close enough to whisper: "We’ll figure something out."
Jack nodded, his eyes clouded with worry.

For the night, we slept on separate sofas, satisfied with the breadcrumb of at least sleeping in the same room. Around midnight, there was a creaking sound on the fire escape ladder; a sound that I knew only came to be when a heavy weight pressed against the weathered ladder. Jack told me in the morning that he’d seen the vague silhouette of a man in the light of the streetlamp that poured in through the window.



*

Over the following week, we stole small moments here and there, less of them every day. We didn’t go to his dorm or my apartment together anymore, and our contact was mostly reduced to shooting snarky comments at one another; as a result, neither of us received any new green carnations.

Seeing as our schedules hadn’t had much overlap between the two classes we shared, he’d taken to teasing me publicly during breaks. He was still a football player at the time; that famous photo of him with his beautiful hair swept back by the wind and hours of running, with a few strands tossed onto his forehead, curling towards his hairline while damp with perspiration, was taken earlier that week.

To the casual onlooker, it seemed somewhat natural: it was an almost expected dynamic between the jock and the nerd. His fellow football players always flocked around him in these instances, laughing at his jabs as though they were the funniest things in the world.

"Do you ever, and I mean, ever, take your nose out of that thing?" he asked, standing in front of me and blocking the early spring sun. His gaggle of friends sneered.

"That thing is called a book, Kerouac; I’m sure that those are a foreign concept to you."

He snorted, crossing his arms. "What are you even reading about that is so interesting?"

"I’m revising for the linear algebra exam we have today."

One of his friends nearly choked on his soda. He swallowed hoarsely, only to ask a confused: "Wait, we have what exam today?"

"Linear algebra is that thing with the numbers â€""

"F*** that," another one of his friends cut me off. "We have a game today anyway, we’ll use it as an excuse to pass that exam later. Who cares about algebra, anyway?"

Jack scratched the back of his head. "My scholarship depends on my GPA, so that’d be me. I bet I can take on that exam anyway, though; I’ll pass easily."

"Yeah," I said with a snort. "I’d bet on that."

"Well, let’s bet, then" he said. "I’ll bet you that I’ll pass it on the first try. It’s not that hard."

"I’ll bet you that you won’t. If you studied half the time that you spend chasing that ball around, you might have a chance; this way, I really don’t think you do."
"What do you want to bet on?" he asked.

His friends were chuckling, joking among themselves as they looked from him to me and so on. As per the agreement we struck in private, I looked Jack in the eyes and said,

"A haircut. You have nothing I want or need, and I have no use for making you do stupid dares, so let’s do it this way: the winner gives the loser a haircut â€" any haircut he wants â€" next week when the results come out."

Jack’s friends erupted into laughter, hitting him on the shoulders and teasing him; Jack, to his credit, smirked. He shrugged, then extended his arm towards me and said:

"Alright, then. You got yourself a bet."

We shook hands. He was laughing the whole time, and then, to my surprise, dug his fingers into my hairline. They lingered there for a moment before he slid them to the back of my head and cupped it in his palm; no one could see as he caressed my hair with his thumb and forefinger. It was a familiar touch â€" gentle and sweet, shared between us many times before.

Eventually, to continue the act, he placed his hand on my shoulder and clapped it twice before saying: "Get ready to walk around the place with a baldy cut next week."
His friends seemed to share one brain cell between them, bless their hearts; they cheered him on, completely and blessedly unaware that they were a part of our plan.

Our plan, desperate as it might be, was the following: we wanted to get one more afternoon together at either of our places so that it’s easier to keep ourselves sane until we were clear of the suspicion. The watching eyes and ears would still be hot on our trail, but we’d have a publicly known reason to be seen together and to be close to one another.

We came up with the rough sketch of a plan in the morning after he’d received that green carnation drawing. I let the water run in the kitchen and kitchen, the blinds on the window still closed, and spoke with him as he helped me to "do the dishes".

Jack and I came to an agreement pretty quickly: we’d have to see each other less and less in public, and the easiest way to do that is to pretend that we had a falling out over something as trivial as a stupid bet.

"A haircut," I repeated after him. "You want me to give you a haircut?"

"I want you to run your fingers through my hair again," he said, "I don’t care if it happens while you’re cutting it all off â€" I just need to feel that sensation again. We can’t do that in private anymore, so the only reasonable way for you to do it is while cutting my hair."

"And it really needs to happen in front of the window?"

"Whoever’s watching will see it happen," Jack said. "We’ll put on an act before the bet and during it; I’ll act like the typical jock and you’ll be wounding my pride by giving me a short haircut. They’ll see us drift apart after that because I’ll pretend that I hate you for ruining my chances with the girls. It will make sense, trust me."

I looked at him for a long moment. His hair was black and glossy, with thickness and a great body to it; it was the kind of hair that you wished you could press your lips against and kiss â€" it took all of my constraint not to do just that as he stood in front of me, with his hair still unruly after a bad night’s sleep, tousled and with strands falling over his forehead as if he were taken right off of an Adventures of Superman comic book page.

After a deep sigh, I agreed with him.
"Just how short are we talking, though?"

"Properly short, to last me a good while," he said. "I don’t want anyone but you touching my hair for as long as I can make it look presentable."

Oh, Jack. Something softened within me at his words; I took his hand into mine and nodded.


*

The results came out this week.

As expected, late on a sunny Wednesday, Jack Kerouac was standing on my porch, looking sullen. I chuckled to myself at his acting performance while heading from the window to the front door.

He looked up at me and winked quickly before continuing the act. Sighing, he ran a hand through his hair and said, "Well, a bet’s a bet, I guess. I came to see about that haircut."

"The living room barbershop’s waiting for you."

As he was passing me by with his best attempt at a grumpy face, he whispered:
"Blue car; end of the street".

I looked after him with a smile, then looked to the end of the street to see a blue car I never saw standing there before, parked next to a vacant lot. Its lights were still on, but the foliage of the nearby tree concealed whoever sat inside. Shivers rose up my spine as I closed the door and made sure to lock it.

He was standing on the threshold, his feet halfway in the hall and halfway in the living room; as I passed him by, I quickly brushed my fingers through the back of his hair. Jack took a deep breath and squared his shoulders at the sensation, giving me a crooked smirk as I entered the room.

I picked up the white bedcover from the table and motioned towards the chair placed by the window; whoever was watching us out there was about to get a good glance at the side of Jack’s pretty face. Speaking of Jack; his cheeks were flushed when I glanced over at him, just in time to see him do his best to hide his broad smile.

I nod towards the wooden chair, one hand resting against it and the other holding the home version of the barber’s cape; he all but sprang from the threshold. As he was about to sit down, he whispered in my ear: "I was counting down the days."

Me too, I wish to tell him in nothing resembling a whisper. I throw the cover over him and fasten its ends around his neck, making sure to brush the back of my fingers against his nape as I move them up and down while tying; this draws a short, sharp breath out of him.

I put my hand on the shoulder obscured from the window’s prying eye and move it up the side of his neck as I reach for a comb with my other one; gently, I dig my fingers into the side of his hair, going from his nape all up to the top of his head. Jack’s breathing grows quicker as I close my fingers into a tender fist and pull on his hair.

It’s as smooth as silk as it spills from my grip, even longer today than it was the last time he was here â€" that morning two weeks ago, when he first proposed the plan. Jack mutters something inaudible to me; I clear my throat as I flip the comb in my shaking fingers, doing my best to sound convincing as I say, "Let’s see what we’re dealing with."

Before putting the teeth of the comb at his hairline, I swoop in with my fingers to pick up the rebellious strands that always hang over his forehead. He lets out a small whimper as I pull his hair back before running a comb through the top, assessing the length: his bangs fall over his eyebrows, seemingly never running out from beneath the comb as I make my way to the crown. His hair is long and thick, a shade of black so dark that it looks like a river at night. As I comb through his messy side-part, all I can do is imagine how all this hair is going to look when it lies still against the white cover.

"You’ve got a good head of hair here," I tell him, running my fingers through the top again as I stick the comb into the front pocket of my pants.

Jack chuckles, shaking his head. "That won’t stop you from cutting it too short, I presume."

Clapping on the shoulder visible to the window, I tell him: "No, sir. You wanted to give me a baldy cut, remember? It’s only fair that I match that generous offer."

He shakes his head as I step back and turn towards the table, fully out of the window’s view. Glancing over my shoulder, I look at his hair again; it has such a great body and fullness, and the sunlight spilling over the now neatly done side-part gives its black color a warm, reddish and golden tint.

It was that moment when I’d decided not to give him a buzz cut as I previously joked, if only for the reason that it’d be a waste of beautiful hair. Hell, my eyes start tearing up at the reality that I have to cut it at all when the only thing I want is to run my fingers through it again and again.

There is another haircut that comes to my mind as he calls my name. When I turn around, the sunlight is still pouring in, spilling over the rich locks of black, glossy hair that begged to be threaded through by somebody’s fingers as he chuckles at me, shaking his head as he says:

"Is that dreadful haircut happening today, or what?"

I give him a chuckle in return, picking up the clippers with their number three attachment on and a plastic comb from the table, one in each hand; as I stand firmly behind him, he throws his head back and looks at me with his blue eyes, thick lashes fluttering as he grins, looking at me with excitement.

I place the clippers against his temple and wink. Before snapping them on, I tell him:
"This’ll teach you not to bet against me again, Kerouac."

"Do your worst," he says with a crooked smile and a wink. He closes his eyes as I dive my clippers into the inch-wide bump of hair at his temple, my other hand’s fingers buried in the hair on top, gently pulling it to the side as I make my way from the temple to the crown.

Thickets of hair spill onto his shoulders, the hungry sound of the clippers much quieter as it cuts away at the beautiful hair. There’s a gap now â€" a hard disconnect â€" from the wilderness on the top and the slightly overgrown bits of hair hanging over the tip of his ear; it’s made of black, sharp bristles. I suppress the urge to run my fingers along the shorn patch, instead running the clippers along the same path once again, only to this time sweep into the hair on the crown. The clippers seem to struggle for a moment, but soon enough, long strands start falling as the clippers emerge from the hair; they spill left and right, some of them landing on the cape as the others bounce off of it and land on the floor.

Jack chuckles. "Damn it," he says with his eyes still closed and a blissful expression lighting his face up. "You’re taking me down to nothing, aren’t you?"

"Just sit back and relax," I tell him, taking more hair off of the top. "You’ll like it."

With half the top taken off with my clippers, the difference between the nine-millimeter-long crown and the nearly nine centimeter long front is starker than ever. I’ll cut the other half short enough to match in the end; the current pathway of the clippers is along his other temple and to the crown, then the back of his head. There are moments when the clippers sound their struggle, only to come up to the top of his head victorious as mounds of hair tumble down the cape and onto the floor â€" some of it even onto my shoes.

Once the bulk is taken down, I switch to a number two and run it along the sides and back again, leaving the top as is; then the same again with a number one, ending its route at the height of his eyes. It’s not the neatest look as I’m no professional barber, but it serves its purpose enough to look like a decent, gradual taper.

Jack didn’t let out a single sound throughout the whole ordeal; his breaths grew slow and deep, as if he tried to inhale every single second of this process. He’d cleared his throat, but said nothing as I switched the clippers off and picked up the scissors. As I moved to stand behind his chair again, I realized that there was a circlet of hair around it; a crescent moon of black locks, matched with the even thicker and taller one around his shoulders.

I put my hand on his crown, nearly startled by the bristles; they gave resistance against my palm as I tilted his head forward, nearly pinning his chin to his chest. Blending the line between the clipped part and the remaining hair on top was the hardest part of the haircut to manage; I positioned my comb and scissors in so many different angles that it eventually all blended into the sound of crunches and snips, Jack’s steady breaths, the faint click of scissors against the plastic comb and the visage of a cascade of hair falling into his lap. Eventually, I reached the bangs â€" the cherry on top.

I combed his bangs back and closed my forefinger and middle finger around them. They were still bulky, flopping well past where my fingers were placed against his hairline; my hand trembled slightly as I opened the scissors and brought their cold metal against the back of my fingers. As I snapped them shut, the last remnants of Jack’s long hair ceremoniously fell into a nest of black hair.

When some finishing touches were done â€" lining up his taper and cleaning up the arches around his ears to the best of my ability â€" I ran my hand over the top of his head. Where ten minutes ago my fingers tangled in beautiful hair, they now ran freely; the longest part of his hair was as long as my fingers were thick.

Getting no word from Jack throughout most of the haircut had me worried; was he regretting his plan now, and would it drive a wedge between us both in the act we were putting up, and in our private lives? What if I cut it too short for his liking? I tried to stir up conversation after I undid the cape’s knot at the back of his neck.

"You okay, Kerouac?"

He gave a small chuckle before his reply.
"Point me to the nearest mirror and I’ll give you your answer, you damn bastard."

Concern nearly twisted my stomach into a knot of its own as he rose from the chair, not even bothering to look at all the hair on the floor; I told him where to find the bathroom and the mirror hanging over the sink. He walked into the bathroom first and I followed once I was done folding the bedcover into a sack and putting it down onto the chair; I needed the moment to steady myself for whatever reaction might be waiting around the corner.

When I found him in the bathroom, he was grinning from ear to ear. Once he saw me, he pushed the tap up and let the water flow, then made sure that the window and its blinds were both closed; only then did he thrust his arms around me and pull me into an embrace that could best be described as hungry.

His arms were wrapped around me in a strong grip and his fists caught handfuls of my sweater in them as he let out a shaky breath. "God, I missed you."

Jack buried his face in the crook of my neck and inhaled; only then did I find the courage to wrap my arms around him as well. My hand went up to the back of his head, used to the soft, bouncy hair there; it was met with sharp, short bristles now. I let out something between a chuckle and a cry at the different touch; this seemed to remind him of the haircut.

He pulled out of the embrace, met me eye to eye and put his hands around my face before kissing me quickly. "I love it," he whispered, leaning his forehead against mine. "You did great."

I kissed him back and ran my hand against the back of his head again. "It’s not too short?"

Jack shook his head. He turned around to face the mirror; the overhead lightning was accentuating the different lengths on the sides and back, as well as giving the smallest of shadows to his bangs. Looking at the mirror, then back to me with a satisfied smile, he said, "I look like a marine. It’ll get heads turning my way for a good reason again; that’s for sure."

I stood up on my toes, placing myself somewhat taller than him, then kissed the short hair on top. Jack’s cheek rose under my palm, pushing my thumb up to his temple. I was caressing his temple in slow, gentle motions as Jack ran his own hand through his hair.

"I’ll think of you whenever I touch my hair," he said with a heaviness to his soft voice. "I’ll feel the way it brushes against my hand and know that you like it this way."

"I like your hair in any style, you prick."

This elicited a small chuckle out of him. He embraced me once more, pressed a kiss against my lips and remained silent for a few seconds, his eyes closed. He was soaking in the moment; I was remembering it by looking at every small detail of his face and doing my best to memorize every wrinkle around his eyes and mouth, each one the memory of his laugh.

With a shaky sigh, he nodded and turned away to close the tap. Looking at me with tears in his eyes, he mouthed three words and cupped my cheek one last time before opening the door once again and walking into the hallway.

His touch lingered on my cheek as I stood on the threshold, watching him open the front door. He gave me one last, long and teary look before walking out of my apartment and gently closing the door behind him.

*

That was the last time I saw Jack in person.


1941 seemed to pass quickly after that day; spring tumbled into summer, summer into fall and then the winter came. The U.S. joined the war in December; I enlisted quickly after, in order to get away from the city and the ghost of our memories haunting me on every corner.

Jack enlisted in December of the following year, scoring himself enlistment in the Naval Reserve, but didn’t stick around in the military for long. Years later, I found out that he kept the haircut I gave him all until his time with the military had ended; it’s the one he’s wearing in the photograph of him available in the Google search.

He met Allan Ginsberg two years later. For some time, I suspected that they were together, despite Jack’s marriages to various women; in every published photo of him I could find, he looked happier with Allan than he did with his wives.

I bought a copy of his Mexico City Blues in hopes that I’d work up the courage to walk up to him in a promotion of the poetry collection; courage, however, seemed to avoid me just as we did each other in the following years.

The last time we ever crossed paths was when I attended his funeral in Massachusetts, late on a sunny Wednesday.

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