VANITY

I have been toying with the idea of chopping off my hair again. I miss the hair off my neck and the short hair that needs little more than a tuck behind my ears to be handled. I enjoy the romantic swirl of long hair but not the day-to-day reality and, ultimately, I am a girl built for comfort, not glamour. Not to mention, short hair just feels like me. Long hair has always felt too girly-girl for me and while I have grown to love being a woman, I'm not a frilly woman.

With this in the forefront of my mind, I went to the latest in a long string of salons to get my hair cut. After much arguing, I finally got the hair stylist to cut my hair like the photo I showed him. Apparently, no woman in her right mind would cut off all the hair I had. After all, I have the sacred, long, blond hair.

I, however, have never made claims to being in my "right mind."

And so, once again I returned to the land of short hair. By god, I missed it. It's long and tousled in the front and short and stacked in the back. Getting rid of my roots was another matter and I'll sum up the double bleaching, six-conditioner-free shampooings complete with the standard nail-scratching "relaxing" Chinese head massage and single dyeing incident by saying that the sores on my scalp are still weeping and clotting in my hair. Merely because my girls back home sent me a vat of cholesterol, I've managed not to lose my hair. It's safe to say that if my hair and scalp should survive this assault, I am rather happy with the results, despite the less-than-stellar shade of blond and lack of layers in my hair.

However, the fact of the matter is that in the back of my mind, I finally man-ed up and went to the hairdressers because I knew I'd be seeing that lovely French man with the lovely girlfriend at a wedding today and because Bill might be coming back to Xi'An at the start of September. Though I had signed off on him and am certainly not holding my breath, my Brazilian Angel is desperate to get Bill and I together. She thinks we'd be perfect and she really wants to make me happy. It is a kind gesture. She has even gone so far as to assure me that he was unable to see me because he did not stop in Xi'An this last time.

Nevertheless, I am amused by my own vanity. I cut my hair not because I wanted to look like "me" for me but because I wanted to look like me for the men I find infinitely attractive. Because I am not exempt from the human condition, I find myself reasoning to the edge, dallying about the edge ad nauseum and then flinging myself off the precipice without a second thought only at the (mere) mention of lust. I have admitted before to having an addict's problem with men and, frankly, it remains to this day.

Case in point: I spent the day watching the beautiful wedding of two of my closer friends in Xi'An and the highlight of the afternoon was the quiet joke shared between my French friend and myself. Such an addict I am.

When my French friend and his lovely girlfriend entered the banquet, she- being a truly lovely woman- waved emphatically to me and he nodded his casual nod towards me. There was no other indication of his recognition than the polite acknowledgment that I existed. I figured our delightful evening had just been one in a long string of lovely encounters for him and he would barely remember me.

After the banquet, I went over to their table under the guise of introducing some friends and much to my great pleasure, my French friend cracked a joke (aimed at no one but me) about something that happened the last time we met and then looked at me with those same eyes. I am such a sucker for that specific glance from a quiet, observant man.

And it got me thinking about the benchmark of that look; my first love. He and I had been talking online this morning before I had to head out to the wedding. He mentioned in passing how he's not happy with his body at the moment and so he doesn't really think about whether or not he's attractive because he's decided he's not. Upon reading that comment, I actually found myself laughing out loud. It is so odd, the things we pin our vanity to.

There are no words to encapsulate how utterly absurd the notion that he is not lust worthy is. Frankly, structurally speaking, my first love is a very handsome, masculine man. He is not some teenager tarted-up to sell magazines but rather a real man in the "Greek statue" sense of things. He is one of the easiest, most casually handsome things I have ever seen. In the era of pretty, effeminate, non-threatening boys selling whatever product with their lost little lamb qualities, my first love is a solid man. He is not pretty in any way. He is fully masculine in the traditional sense and every inch of him can only be described as handsome. His profile is striking, his eyes are penetrating and his eyes carry that incalculable quality of centered concentration that makes woman all atwitter. Most men watch a woman to see if she is entertained. Most men look (at me, at least) to gauge their own appropriateness in a situation, not to see her. She is little more than yet one more way to see themselves reflected back much like an assets statement or a flashy car.

However, in that gaze my first love articulated for me so many years ago lies the statement of patience and a level of commitment to stick through my nervous shyness and wait for me to gain my nerve so that I might bloom into all the colors I am fully capable of. It is a gaze to see me, not him. I can be a grand dame of epic proportions and often am in order to overcome my shyness but it's not who I am at home, much less in bed. It is that gaze that penetrates my peacock showiness and declares itself steady and curious enough to stick around and find out what I'm like at home. In that gaze, I feel comfortable enough to inhabit all my facets; grand dame to shy bookworm. It allows me to be seen as "versatile" and not "deceptive."

That gaze is my benchmark for all men. My first love spoiled me with it as a young woman and frankly, I look to be spoiled like that again. Money, things, stuff; I can get. I don't need someone to bring me things. I need someone to look at me like that. Given the diversity of my dating life, my friends are usually at a loss to explain what it is that my men have had in common but the fact is that it is that gaze that has been the common denominator. It is precisely that unwaivering ability to observe and remain focused that leaves a girl stripped and breathless. In that unwavering gaze, a girl realizes all the reason god made her a woman. A girl realizes her own perfect, specific beauty and the dust of insecurity is shaken off in the grip of that sort of gaze. To me, there is no lust without that gaze and without lust, you merely have friendship.

It is that gaze that I compare all others to. If a man cannot focus on me with that exquisite detail, I am utterly disinterested. It is tedious and boring to be with a man who cannot make you feel like the only thing to have ever existed, much less a man who would need the Cliff notes to my incongruous nature. It is the men who can look at a woman like that, focus on her and leave her utterly unhinged that make life interesting.

My French friend has the ability to look at me like that down pat and it's dangerous for me. First of all, I really like his girlfriend. She is a good woman and truly lovely. Secondly, I don't want to be a mistress. I'm no good at playing second fiddle. Frankly, I'm too spoiled to be very good at being first, much less second.

However, there is that gaze and I am a slave to it. In that incalculable, ephemeral state- that chemistry between two people- I am utterly lost. All he need to is ask and I am his for the taking. My safety lies not in my ability to reason but in his lack of articulated desire. Ration and reason strip themselves from me along with insecurity in that gaze. And, to be totally honest, since I've made the decision to join the nunnery, the long-term ramifications of my romantic life seem inconsequential so there is no longer a nagging voice in the back of my mind. I don't care about whether or not we'd have a future. I don't care how he'd fit into my life or how we'd "make things work." I just want to have time alone with him when it's convenient for me and then get on with my life.

And so I did the only reasonable thing in a no-win situation; I dug in deeper. I promptly gave them my contact information and said that we needed to hang out.

Ah, the vanity of my libido.