I know I've started too many essays with "I give up." I know. I know.
I k-n-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-w.
And I sincerely do apologize.
But I do give up. And it's not by choice, really. It's just kind of by default.
The whole thing began with a simple question: "Do you believe that Jesus died for your sins?"
This line of questioning only required about six minutes of the total dinner time.
But it wasn't really the question of whether my dinner companion believed. That's certainly not an appropriate topic for a first dinner. Maybe a last dinner, but certainly not a first.
No. A first dinner should focus on more elementary issues: what's your pace on trails? do you run better in heat or in cold? do you have negative or positive splits? do you still have all of your toenails?
But my dinner companion wasn't a runner. And we had already listed our favorite movies. And besides, I wasn't really asking whether he believed. I just wanted an articulate description of what he would believe if he did, in fact, believe.
It was really just a simple query as to what one actually believes when they believe that Jesus died for their sins.
Was Jesus an intentional martyr? Was Jesus just being punished? Was it an issue of sacrifice? Atonement? Politics? Setting an example?
I really wanted to know. And I pushed on - prodding and poking into his poor pre-appetizer psyche.
"What does it mean? He died for your sins? For your sins? Does that mean because of? Since? Consequently? In pursuit of? In anticipation of? In order that you may go forth in sin? What does it mean?"
He asked if I was a lawyer.
And he wasn't smiling when he asked.
Then he asked if I knew what I was going to order. And what my favorite color was. And where I had spent my summer vacation.
I thought it best to not say that I spent my summer vacation online.
It was a typical first date.
For a geek, that is.
And after that dinner, I knew what I had to do.
I had to let my inner geek run free.
Although the food was great and the wine was interesting, the date was tiring. I was tired of pretending my nerdiness was incidental. Tired of maintaining the "sometimes I slip into geekiness but mostly I'm cool" facade. Tired of flipping my hair to distract from how often I roll my eyes.
The bottom line is that I am really and truly a nerd. And just letting myself be a nerd is turning out to be much easier than hiding my nerdiness.
The thing is, in my life it's been difficult to just be a nerd.
Due to complications brought on by good hair and impressive social skills, I've just never been taken for a nerd.
I've been taken for smart, sharp and witty. I've been taken for a New Yorker. I've been taken for Julie, the Cruise Director or Seinfeld's Elaine. I've often been taken for the person in charge. And, on the occasional occasion, I've been taken for granted.
But I've rarely been taken for a geek. Despite the fact that my geek quotient is quite high.
Instead, I've just been thrown in the 'odd' box. A strange bird. A weird mix of outgoing in life but somewhat dull where hobbies and interests and reading materials and work are concerned.
I've also been characterized from time to time as 'no fun' based on my penchant for staying home and my familial connection to the computer. And perhaps my habit of choosing sofa over socializing.
And yet, there have been times in my life when I was able to revel in geekdom without limitation, restriction or second-thought. College, for instance, provided for an easily geeky existence. In college, you could say you had to study even if you really didn't have to. In college, you could opt out of Saturday night drinking by claiming to have a paper due on Monday. In college, you could sit in the library all night and actually get kudos for your discipline and your dedication.
In college, you could meet for coffee and it was okay to read the whole time.
In college, you could use problem sets as foreplay and save the kissing for study breaks.
In college, you could focus to the point of oblivion and still attract the attentions of the cutest guy in the room.
As much as I don't want to relive college or any previous time of my life, I really miss the opportunity that college provided. Not for the myth of the carefree lifestyle, but for the acceptance of reading and thinking and concentrating and basically being dull as major life activities.
But I can't recreate the college environment.
So, instead, I've cut my bangs.
And this major life decision, it turns out, is slightly larger than monumental. I believe it may have changed my life. Or perhaps just gotten me back on the track where I'm most at home.
I had always associated bangs with being un-glamourous. The cool girls didn't have bangs. The cool girls had foreheads.
But I could never carry off sexy hair. Despite having really good hair, I just couldn't wear the hairstyles of the carefree and confident. I'd long ago given up on the dream of the wide open forehead that Ali McGraw sported in Goodbye Columbus and Love Story. Given up on looking like someone forging ahead into a world of adventure and fun and high-pitched laughing.
Because I wasn't glamorous and I wasn't forging and I wasn't fun. I was just a geek with good hair.
But after losing my dearly departed soulmate to the tragedy of "major life differences" last year, I thought it might be time to try something new.
Kind of like moving to a new state and starting your life over, I figured I could just be someone different.
I didn't have to be the girl on the sofa. I could be the girl who goes out. The girl who flits about from restaurant to club to bar to dance floor.
I could be Ali McGraw.
I tried life without bangs for slightly over a year. And little by little, with each passing inch, my forehead came to life and my flitting-about quotient increased. Just like my reborn forehead, I was becoming more and more out there.
But life without bangs wasn't as easy or carefree as I thought it would be.
Despite outward appearances, I still craved the sofa and newspapers and Saturday nights spent online. I still only knew the channels for CNN, CNBC and Discovery. And I still checked the National Geographic site weekly to see what strange documentaries were being released.
Despite outward appearances, I still preferred studying to partying. Despite my new bold face, I was still a geek at heart.
And so it was that I walked into a cheap salon yesterday and paid ten bucks for a cut of my bangs. After a lifetime of cutting my own bangs, I decided my re-entry into the world of dull should be formal.
I asked the hairdresser for wisps. I explained that bangs cut straight across evoke images of third grade and school uniforms.
She did an okay job.
Not great, but okay enough.
And okay enough is alright for now because bangs are a living, breathing thing. Bangs can be changed pretty easily. Not grown out easily, but restyled and reshaped as one's mood changes.
With the snip of the scissor, I was a new person.
Actually, I was really just the old person I used to be.
I celebrated my new bangs with a fruitful trip to a favorite wireless locale. I imagined I received more attention than usual. I imagined I looked far more magnetic with the wisps of an inner life displayed on my forehead. I imagined the shape of my face had changed with the angle of my hair, now inviting deep thinkers to tell me their innermost theories and hypotheses.
Once in a while I pushed the bangs out of my face...only to feel their familiar fall back into my eyes in a mass of disarray.
And so it was ironic that bangs turned out to be a themetic tool in the movie I saw later that night.
I don't want to tell you too much about A Slipping Down Life in the hopes that you'll go to see it for yourself.
I'll just say that it rose quickly to my list of favorites. It's the second Lili Taylor movie on my favorites list. The first is Household Saints, a little known but truly beautiful and sad story of a girl who can't help herself. A Slipping Down Life is also the second movie on my list adapted from an Ann Tyler book. The first is The Accidental Tourist, a truly beautiful and sad story of a guy who can't help himself.
A Slipping Down Life is about a girl who figures out that she can't help herself. Or maybe that she can help herself. I think the movie treads somewhere along one of those lines.
See the movie and then we'll talk about it.
And in A Slipping Down Life, the girl's bangs are significant. Her bangs - and her lack of bangs - are her sign on the highway. Her bang status tell visitors to her person what they can expect to find.
"Person Who Won't Go Back On What She's Done"
"Person Who Took Steps"
At various points, Lili Taylor is asked where her bangs are. Or she's congratulated on wearing bangs. Or she's condemned for showing her forehead.
I know it sounds strange, but the movie's worth seeing to understand how one set of bangs could represent so much to so many.
I had warned my movie date that I would cry.
The movie date had all the signs of a crying date.
It had been a tough week. The movie was adapted from a script by a favorite author. Lili Taylor's performance had been hailed as masterful. The characters were tagged as intense.
I knew I'd be crying.
When we sat down and the credits rolled, the crying was clinched: the soundtrack came to the movie via Peter Himmelman, one of my favorite crooners of soulful, painful and celebratory songs.
I began my crying early in the movie, long before the snip of the scissors. It was good that I began quickly. I was totally warmed up by the time the real crying kicked in.
My movie date didn't cry.
But I think he would have if he hadn't been trying to make a good impression.
We explored the movie over Mexican-Irish food. Don't ask what that is. I'm still not quite sure. And we agreed on how the movie was good. In that brilliant way that words don't do justice to.
And later, walking out of the most confusing restaurant in the world, I asked him the ultimate question:
"So, do I look different with bangs?"
I wasn't sure what his hemming and hawing meant.
Maybe he didn't like the bangs. Maybe he hadn't noticed. Maybe he only knew whether I had sported cleavage that night.
I suffered a moment of the dread one feels when they've made a bad decision affecting their appearance. But I quickly recovered, prepared to dismiss the tastes of a guy on the basis of "what do guys know."
And then he said the words every girl loves - or hates - to hear.
"You know, I think a girl's hair is what it is. I don't think I notice if the style changes. I only know whether I like the girl."
And with that, a difficult week ended on a lovely note.
I had new bangs that restored me to the old me.
And a movie to inspire me for a while.
And a renewed belief that there will always be at least one guy out there who just likes me because he likes me...with or without a forehead.