Head Size 8

by Jan Henrikson

“Head, Size 8,” Tony said gravely as I stepped through the door of his apartment. He waved a tiny slip of paper in my face. “In case you ever want to buy me a hat.”

Why would I want to buy this odd little man a hat? Things were getting way out of control.

Tony proceeded to wave scraps of paper at me. Arm size. Neck size. Height: 5’9”. Weight: 140 lbs. He acted as if these weren’t invitations to intimacy but vital documents that would see me through thousands of miles of checkpoints and safely back to my home country.

He handed me a mug shot of his solemn face caught in a round, nautically-themed frame. The smiling heads of two mermaids met on the top center of the frame, their fins fluttering by each of his ears. “Here, you ought to have this,” he said. “We’re both Pisces. Thus, the mermaids.”

Mermaids, body part sizes. This was not what I signed up for. I signed up for a trip for two to an island paradise in Mexico. Tony won it, all expenses paid. I was his third choice travel mate. After his two top choices bailed at the last minute, a mutual friend, one of my best friends, who I trusted down to my toes, recommended me, a complete stranger, to him. I was floating on a particularly free-spirited current in my life, buoying from one adventure to another. So why not?

Pre-trip, Tony and I sat on a picnic table outside his apartment. “Tell me everything people have ever hated about you,” he said, fanning his palms out. “And I’ll tell you everything people hate about me. Let’s lay it all on the table. So we know what we’re getting into.”

I liked that. Ten days on an island with a friend could get tricky enough. But with a stranger? At a resort that you could only reach by ferry? With no phones or electricity. Nothing but solitude and showers.

“One more thing,” Tony said after our confessional of worst traits. “I won’t make a pass at you.” He paused. “But if you make a pass at me–ooo-chee-baboo–I won’t turn you down. I just wanted to put that out there.”

 My stomach flipped. His body looked too bony, thorny, almost. His movements, staccato.

Never mind that. We started training for paradise, shopping for supplies. We ran on pure elation from the Universe’s sudden gift, perfectly timed with his birthday. Just as we were about to book our flights, the company sponsoring this godsend said no, no, we misunderstood. Airfare was not included. Several threats and phone calls later, they agreed to pay for one of us to ride a bus from Tucson, our hometown, to Mexico.

But forty hours on a bus to Mexico? Banditos, friends insisted. You are gringos. Who will they rob first? Not to mention chickens and blistering heat and narrow, harrowing, one-lane cliffside roads.

Sadly, we said adios to Mexico. Sadly, Tony asked me if I’d keep him company on his birthday anyway. “I’m going to sue them,” he muttered as we got tickets for a movie. “I’m going to expose them for who they really are.” Inside, he took out a sloppy sandwich from his backpack and angrily crinkled and crunched for endless minutes. Thank God, it was a nearly empty matinee. Somehow, in the midst of all his crinkle-crunching, he cut his finger, too. He started biting and sucking the skin off with gusto.

Maybe the vanishing trip was the real gift. I shivered with relief. “What? What?” he asked, feeling my eyes on him, talking through his teeth.

The next thing I knew he had his hand on my foot. I’d like to say I fell backwards into that moment, unawares. That I honored my vow to drop him off at his apartment after the movie and go home, calling it a day. But the truth is, when he said, “At least let me give you a foot rub,” I nodded yes and kept nodding yes while he prepared a bowl of warm cinnamon water and then tenderly bathed each toe, each arch of my heavily-hiked feet. After hiking in the nearby mountain trails nearly everyday, my feet melted into his hands.

His hands lit up. They infused me with sheer kindness, benevolence, a delicately spiraling sexuality. Feathering, fanning, expansive, concentrated energy. And that was just my feet! I could barely walk to my car for the euphoria. That was it. I was synchronized to his touch.

Mortified, I began to seek it out. In this body too skinny for my visual taste, and behavior too quirky for a long-term relationship, lived a man fluent in touch, as creative in lovemaking as he was with language. We were surprisingly fluid, swimming in each other’s skin for hours at a time before giving into exhaustion.

“You are excitably delicious,” he’d whisper. “Every time I see you is a jubilee.”

Away from my skin, he had a fondness for cracking his neck and saying, “Thank you very much” afterward. Once he greeted me at his apartment door with huge black bug-eye glasses, the lenses riddled with pinpoint-sized holes. He instantly took them off and shoved them at my face.

“Try them,” he said.

“What is this, a pair of 3-D glasses?” I asked.

“They exercise my eyes,” he said. “Someday I won’t have to wear glasses at all.”

What strange preludes to sexual ecstasy.

There were exceptions, of course. Like the time he invited me to dinner with a playful tease. “I have a theme for tonight.”

“A theme?”

“A mango theme.”

The first and second courses? Mango slices followed by mango ice cream served in the curve of my belly, not a bowl.

Most nights began like the night I picked him up from his work at a health food store. There he stood, waiting for me in the parking lot. My headlights flashed on something white stuck to his face. A mask? Surgical, not costume.

“Why are you wearing a mask?” I gasped, not wanting to laugh.

“You have a problem with masks?”

“My mother used to wear masks sometimes while she was dusting.”

“So?”

“So I have an attitude about masks.”

How could I be so sexually attuned to a man who felt the need for surgical masks? No doubt he was a tender soul, buffeted by pollen and winds. He rode his bike everywhere, looking like a refugee with many bags. In case many things happened. He lived intentionally under the radar. No driver’s license. Only his roommate’s name showed up on the apartment lease. But who wouldn’t notice such a man on a bike?

Granted, he had full soft lips and short, choppy reddish-blonde hair. But the more I saw him, the more he resembled an elderly Chinese apothecary. He always seemed to be concocting potions, brewing me teas, slipping me nutritional supplements—vitamins, silver colloidal, alfalfa. He later admitted that the cinnamon he sprinkled in my foot bathwater possessed qualities to “encourage” my skin to feel safe while inviting in his touch.

The changing expression of my health fascinated him. When I crunched on something unexpectedly hard in my spinach and tahini sandwich, he flinched and slapped his knee. “That’s it. Your jaw’s out.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, I only know a few things,” he shrugged, fanning his palms at me once again.

His presence startled and charmed me. “I zingy-dooed you,” he’d say after an afternoon of enveloping bliss. Or: “That caused a gleeful weep,” when I expressed a burst of affection.

But night after night, I grew increasingly weary of having to pass through this heavy Medieval door first, this door laden with knobs and latches and surgically-masked heads cracking necks. Every time I saw him, I caught my breath. What was I doing? Sexual communion of this kind could only be inspired by soul mates. He definitely was not my soul mate. He must know that, too. Besides, I was supposed to be on a relationship sabbatical. After two marriages and a seven-year partnership, it was time. Time for me to discover why I left everybody I’d ever been in love with. Who was I looking for, anyway?

Not Tony. That was for sure.

“I am amorously joyful,” Tony chattered over the phone. “You know what I’m doing right now? I’m making toast for the movie.”

Toast? Why sneak toast to a movie? Unless it was for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. “I’ve only made toast for two people in my life,” he continued. “You and Marie. You must be in my favor.” Marie was his ex-wife. I absolutely had to stop this train wreck and I knew just the place to do it.

We sat on his living room rug Indian style, facing each other, knees touching. Yes, he agreed, a little too quickly for my liking, we should just be friends. Yes, it made sense. He’d just been to his naturopath. “My mineral levels are down,” he said. Some other vital levels had plummeted, too. “I know what it is.” He shook his head. “Too. Much. Sex.” We lay down next to each other on the floor from the weight of it all, the tragedy of our sexual compatibility.

“Why are your lips pursed?” he asked, pushing my hair from my face.

“I want to be more physical,” I said. “It’s just not a good idea.”

“You’re right,” he said gently. “I’m just trying to stay neutral.”

Then he kissed the inside of my arm. “That kiss wasn’t neutral,” he added, looking up at me. “Neither was that one,” he said after kissing my shoulder. “None of the other kisses I’m going to give you will be neutral, either. I will now talk to you in a loving manner using your name.”

When you really thought about it, what harm could come of a largely sexual affair punctuated by creative word arrangements? Physical and creative stimulation were important nutrients to a rich life. Surely, when we reached our recommended daily requirements, we’d get out of bed once and for all—which, it turned out, was just four months later.

No longer “trapped in bliss,” as we’d lightly complained when we could never arrive anywhere on time, we put on some clothes and rejoined our lives. The last time I saw Tony he did not speak to me in a loving manner using my name. Instead, he called me despicable. For months, I only heard from him through the occasional anonymous manila envelope in the mail filled with a preachy article or two on love.

Within five years, he grew increasingly ethereal to me, an imaginary adulthood friend I’d played with once rather than a real human being. In time, he took his rightful place in the Hall of Guys. The Plate Guy. The Healer Guy. He was the Sex Guy. Then one afternoon, right in front of my eyes, he became real again. He grew legs, a maskless face, longer hair, a fuller body. He was the first person to walk into my first book-signing. His nervous grin beamed me to my bones. My body flashed on mango ice cream. I couldn’t concentrate for that sudden warm and icy thrill. He didn’t say much. He didn’t buy my book. Instead, he slipped his card near my book display, then quietly palmed it back into his pocket. He spent the rest of the afternoon silently squatting next to the table where I was sitting, one hand clinging to my chair leg.

****

Openings to personal essays must invite readers into the world the writer is creating and at the same time, serve to make them believe that they are in good hands for a coming adventure.

The first two paragraphs of Jan Henrikson’s essay do just that:

“Head. Size 8,” Tony said gravely as I stepped through the door of his apartment. He waved a tiny slip of paper in my face. “In case you ever want to buy me a hat.”

Why would I want to buy this odd little man a hat? Things were getting way out of control.

Although I have little idea about what I am in for, I am intrigued and certain that I want to read on. Jan has extended her invitation to the reader with this short dialog and the speaker’s reaction to it, and I step right through the door with them, never hesitant about wanting to read on. I want to find out about Tony, who he is, why the speaker is there. I want to know what is out of control. The tight dialog and the inside reaction of the speaker hold the promise that I’ll have a front row seat as the essay continues. I get the sense that there will be scenes that offer me the experience first hand. I am not being told about the experience, I am in it with the speaker from the beginning moment.

After we learn more about the speaker’s meeting with Tony, we also learn the surprising reason the speaker has come to his apartment. And then we learn the surprising reason that reason has changed the next time she comes. We keep learning the surprising reasons there are more next times. All the while, we are viewing Tony through the speaker’s continually surprised eyes and her increasingly aroused sensuality. To have us experience Tony’s surprising use of language, the speaker gives us a page of dialog that shows us what the author experienced when Tony spoke to her. And she supplies more and more details about Tony’s appearance, actions and ways of conducting his life as she goes more deeply into her need to state her life task at the moment–to figure out why she’d left any man she had ever been in love with.

Finally, the speaker asks herself, “When you really think about it, what harm could come of a largely sexual affair punctuated by creative word arrangements?” The two would certainly end their liaison when they had enough physical and creative stimulation, she believes. This is the moment in the essay where I realize that I am not going to learn what condition Tony may have. That is not the subject of this essay. I am instead going to see him without labels, other than as the exceptionally quirky individual the speaker had sex with and whose touch she enjoyed. I find this very pleasurable and I remain keenly interested as the speaker shares her personal experience, moving to a strong conclusion, though it is as puzzling as Tony and his way of being.

When Tony is described as slipping his card to the speaker at her bookstore signing table and them palming it back into his pocket, I am reminded of the opening when Tony hands the speaker a framed photograph of himself. All good endings loop back to beginnings to make us realize we have been on a ride that is placing us back where we began, but changed. I have had the experience of being with Tony now, when at the beginning I hardly knew him or knew why I would come to know him. When he remains the whole afternoon squatting next to the speaker’s table with one hand clinging to the chair leg, I feel like I believe the speaker must have felt–not that their encounters and connections were “despicable” as Tony came to call them, but actually important to Tony, that is was now possible for him to hold it in the past even as he held onto the present at the table.

Endings are as important as openings. In personal essays, they often use images from life to portray what is puzzling and difficult to explain, and in that way, essays often indicate small movement forward, something otherwise easily overlooked. This kind of ending is usually more revitalizing than tying everything up neatly.

Endings must satisfy the reader even if there is no satisfactory ending for the speaker. Tony’s surprise visit to the book signing, his actions there and the speaker’s continued calm and direct way of describing them satisfy me as reader. This was a mysterious encounter from the start–an unusual agreement, an unusual series of meetings. The ending image of Tony giving his card, palming it back, squatting and clinging to the table shows that when others affirm the bonds we make with them even if they must be temporary, something important, like new breath, escapes into this world. Jan’s essay provides me the happy opportunity of witnessing one of these occasions.