The first thing I noticed as I entered our house was how quiet it was inside. I closed and locked the front door and put my bags down in the hall. As is my habit, I checked my hair quickly in the hall mirror. The blonde curls tumbled freely down my back. My hair, thick and shiny and reaching nearly to my waist, is definitely my best feature. I went into the study looking for my husband John. There was no one there but the PC was on and the AOL logon screen was blinking silently. I noticed that the screen name was LadyG, the account I have for my personal and private use. I was certain that I hadn’t left it logged in when I had gone shopping earlier. I quickly typed in my password and logged on. My heart quickened when I saw that I had mail. As I had hoped, it was from my cyber-lover, LngHairLvr. We’d been having a torrid online affair for the last six months. It started innocently enough in a chat room but quickly escalated to something deep and real. We moved onto private rooms, exchanged photos and then phone calls. After much soul searching, we decided to meet and consummate our relationship. This message confirmed the details of our rendezvous. The message had been read.

I had never cheated on John before and as far as I know, he had never strayed either. We were very close and open with other and both knew each other’s logons and passwords. We had always respected each other’s privacy in the past and I wondered if I had acted in some way to make John think that something was afoot. I logged off of the PC and went off in search of my husband to see what damage had been wrought to our ten-year marriage.

I found him in the basement sprawled in the antique barber chair that sat in the middle of the room. This was usually a good sign and my mood lightened a bit. We had spent many hours in the basement with me in that chair. John lovingly brushing my long blonde hair was always a prelude to some hot lovemaking. It was my long hair that first attracted John’s attention. He couldn’t take his eyes off of it and we have both enjoyed his love of it during our time together. I lost a little of my good feelings when I saw the almost empty bottle of tequila in his hand. John is usually the most level-headed of people. He doesn’t drink often but when he does, he sometimes gets truculent. He never drinks tequila. I must have hurt him badly.

Mustering all of my courage, I entered the room. ‘Hi, John," I said. He looked up bleary-eyed from tequila or tears, I couldn’t tell but said nothing. In the hand without the bottle was a stack of printed emails. Six months’ worth of hot missives from the man I had planned on meeting in two weeks. He got up out of the chair and dropped the bottle and messages. Still not saying a word, he grabbed me by the arm and pushed me into the chair. He picked up the brush he had used hundreds of times and began dragging it through my thick curls. He was rougher than usual, I winced a little but held my tongue. It was painful but endurable and if this was the worst I had to go through, I thought that we’d work it out. After he had brushed for a while and I had started to relax a bit he gathered my hair into a thick ponytail. This didn’t cause any alarm at first, John often braided my hair after brushing it. I got a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach when John didn’t braid it but suddenly pulled it taut. He looked at me in the mirror with an anguished expression on his face.

"Why Anita? What did you ever lack in our marriage?" he said. "And of all things, your hair! How could you share our special bond with another man?" He reached behind him and when he turned back he held a pair of long, sharp shears.

"John, please, no!" I screamed. "Let’s talk, you don’t want to do this!"

"You’re right, I don’t," he said. "But I’ll never be able to look at it without thinking of this. If you have any hope for our marriage, you’ll have to understand."

He opened the blades of the scissors around my tail and slid them up as high as he could. I was still thinking that he couldn’t possibly be serious when he closed the shears on my lovely hair. The SCRUNCH that the scissors made as they hacked through my hair was the loudest, most sickening sound I had ever heard. He hacked and hacked his way through my hair. After what seemed like an eternity the blades closed with a final SNAP and I felt the pull on my head suddenly cease. He placed my long hair in my lap. He roughly grabbed the hair over my right ear. Several snips later my right ear was exposed. He moved around the chair to my left. Snip, snip, snip! I felt the cool basement air on my left ear. He moved in front of the chair and roughly combed the long hair left on top of my head down over my face. I could see nothing through my thick curls. He slid the scissors in at eye level and then moved them up to my hairline.

"John, please," I said, but to no avail. He chopped my hair mercilessly and the blonde curtain slid into my lap and spilled onto the floor. I stared at the hair in disbelief. He put down the scissors and I sighed, figuring the worst was over. I was wrong.

John moved back behind the chair. He twisted the fingers of one hand into what was left of my hair. As he forced my head forward and down I noticed his other hand held the clippers that I used to trim his hair. I also noticed that there was no guard on the clippers. I screamed and tried to get out of the chair but John was strong and held me tight. I tried pleading but that didn’t help either. John placed the clippers at my nape and turned them on. The SNAP, BZZZZZZZZZZZ was loud in the basement. He left them there a minute and I began to hope that he had changed his mind. No such luck. He slowly pushed them up the back of my head. Their hum deepened when they met my hair but they easily sheared away my lovely blonde locks, my pride & joy. Up the back and over the top, again and again. The clippers warmed and then got hot. John was relentless, pausing only to clear my hair from the hungry blades. I sat unmoving as my curls tumbled down all around me, some sticking to the tears that had wet my face. When John was finished there was nothing left but stubble.

He left the room after telling me to stay in the chair and not to move. He came back downstairs with our camera. He picked up the hair that had fallen to the floor and piled it on my lap and shoulders. I was covered with the long blonde curls that had recently been on my head. John snapped several shots of my ravaged hair and started to leave. He stopped before going upstairs and smiled for the first time that evening. He looked at me and said, "I have more in store for you but right now I’ve got some pictures to scan and an email to write." He bounced up the stairs to let LngHairLvr get a good look at the new me.