Can I Have A Lock Of Your Hair?
The other night, I met a boy I haven’t seen since 6th grade. He told me that I ruined his life.
We were sitting together at the Clover Club. He leaned over. “I have a story to tell you,” he said, grabbing my left hand. Caleb, who was sitting to my right, flinched a little and grabbed the other.
“Uh oh,” I said. Because I knew what was coming.
The boy, let’s call him Ringo, had been the son of one of my mother’s friends. His family was part of what I’ll call the “Catholic Crew,” the group of people who went to mass at 10:30am every Sunday morning, and then to Lange’s Delicatessen after for donuts and coffee.
The boy was not popular. He was, in fact, a little bit fat. The other kids made fun of him. Me, with my Catholic guilt and a mother who made me be nice to everyone, was sometimes the only one who acknowledged him in class.
My strongest memory of him is from fifth grade. We were playing kickball on the playground. Mr. Fingerhut, the old kook who was our teacher, was presiding over the game. Ringo went up to bat. He kicked at the ball, and missed. He kicked at the ball again, and missed again. The third time, he kicked at the ball REALLY hard, and then fell on his ass. As soon as he hit the pavement, he started to cry.
“Get up, you big fat baby,” Mr. Fingerhut yelled at him.
The screaming only made Ringo cry harder, so Mr. Fingerhut gathered together my class, and took us inside, leaving Ringo on his ass just as it was beginning to rain.
Me, a complete saint if you’ll believe it, felt really bad leaving Ringo like that. “Mr. Fingerhut,” I said. “Can I go out and get Ringo?”
“Sit your ass down,” he said. But I floated from my chair. “In the name of goodness, I will not allow this,” I said. Then I ran out into the pouring rain. I found Ringo lying on the concrete. I wiped off his brow. I turned the rain into wine, and he drank of it mightily. I cleaned off his lip with my hair. Ringo looked at me, and behold, he developed a massive crush.
I knew, by my actions, that I was on God’s side.
Not so much the next year, however, at my first school dance, when Ringo asked me to dance, and I ran away from him, and hid for the rest of the evening.
“Do you remember that?” he said. “That single event ruined all of my confidence for the rest of my life.”
“I do,” I said. “I still feel badly about it.”
But the truth is, at that moment, I would have rather cut off my right foot than have to dance with Ringo, even for a single song. Because he was overweight and unpopular, and the force of his love for me completely grossed me out.
After the incident, I crawled into the back of my dad’s Suburban.
“How’d it go?” he asked me.
“Ugh,” I said through my braces. And then I curled up in a ball.
The second I laid eyes on my mother, back at the house, I started hysterically crying. “What have you done, child?” she asked me.
“I ran away when Ringo asked me to dance tonight,” I said, flinching from the golden light of her maternal halo.
“You have shamed yourself, and this good Catholic household,” she said. “And you must atone.”
So the next week, she made me invite him over to go trick-or-treating with my family on Halloween. Fortunately, a few months later, he moved to Toronto with his parents, and I never saw him again, throughout all of my most awkward years.
Ringo, however, never forgot me. “Every time I thought of asking a girl out in high school, I would think of you, and then I wouldn’t do it,” he told me.
“I’m so sorry!” I said, rolling over on my back and showing my belly to signal submission, and acknowledgement of my sins.
“It’s ok, it’s not your fault,” he said. “You’re just the source of all of my problems with women.”
“Hold up,” Caleb said. “This happened in sixth grade?”
“Yes,” Ringo said gravely.
“You’re seriously still blaming her for the fact that you’re wearing a white dress shirt unbuttoned over a black t-shirt right now?” he said to Ringo.
Then he turned to face me, cowering. “And you’re honestly letting him make you feel bad about this?”
“Yes,” I said, hoarse with shame.
“This Catholic shit is wackadoo,” Caleb said, signaling for the check.
“Before I go, can I have a lock of your hair?” Ringo said.
I looked at him. I thought about it. The thought of it made me sick. “No fucking way,” I told him. And soon after, I escaped stealthily into the night.
