Body Experiences

by Lori

I hate the kind of stuff which can replicate itself, for it is full of energy, like the earthworm, and always suggestive of the filthy vitality concealed in my body, which I dare not admit under the pressure of…. something I don't know. However, this kind of energetic and flourishing substances are buried in my body, right in my hair and fingernails.

When I was a little girl, people around me admired my hair, which was as smooth as satin gloves. Those whom I called "Little Sisters" made use of my hair to weave their lost dreams because they were forbidden to wear long hair. They mourned their lost hair by teasing with my hair, transmuting it into various styles. Their hands scattered magic powder on my hair; castles, dreams, and forests emerged under their prodigious workmanship. Their approach to my hair was very tender in spite of some inevitable pain; nevertheless, it was some kind of sweet pain--I could imagine myself walking on a glamorous carpet, enjoying the unspeakable sensation when the wind dragged my hair and rumpled my face.

It seemed that every person in the world was concerned about my hair except me. In fact, I loathed my hair; it was more energetic than me, envied by everyone. It was my hair that lived in the world, not me; I was reduced to a prop to bring out my brilliant hair. I soon learned that as long as I refused to clean it, it would give off a smell which could easily erupt into open hostilities towards me. Then I adopted another scheme to attack my hair--I carefully felt through every strand of hair on my head and on finding the surface of any strand of hair rugged, I will pluck it from my head. By means of this, I detained the growth of my hair. I really dreaded that it would live in the world in place of me, though what I felt was nothing more than the exaggeration of an adolescent girl's phobia towards the change lurking in her body.

After entering junior high school, I cut my hair short in order to meet the demands of the school regulation. It may have relieved my obsession with my hair, but in its place emerged a meticulous concern over my fingernails. Nobody thought them long, save me. I hated their ugly-looking, amazing speed of growth, but most of all, the greasy dirt behind their immaculate gloss. I made it a rule to bite my fingernails everyday. I bit my fingernails so short that some drops of blood were always oozing out. I licked at the blood and the dirt behind my fingernails with the kind of feelings mixing detestion and curiosity. Frightened at the sight of my own blood, I avoided shortening my fingernails by biting them. Instead I used scissors to cut them short--so short that people around me always thought I was a much disturbed girl. Nevertheless, they always regarded it as a temporary phenomenon during adolescence.

Now I am a college student, and still feel the latent threat conveyed through my hair and my fingernails. There seems to be no end to the combat raging in my body.

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