I was sitting at table in the garden of a small downtown Bistro with my best friend on a delightful warm summer evening and enjoying the stars and the peacefulness of the streets, which were steadily getting emptier as we were resting from our typical and somewhat excessive shopping spree. I commented with a sigh "Isn’t life beautiful?" and stretched my legs under the table because they were hurting form many hours of walking around.

"Yes, especially if there aren’t any men to spoil it", answered Marion cynically and sealed her statement with a long swallow of red wine. I couldn’t avoid smiling, as in our case, she was doubtlessly right. Both of us were just over thirty, quite attractive and additionally had received a good education, nevertheless we always ended up in trouble with men, at least in the matter of finding the real and great love. Regardless if I considered my own or Marion’s past, neither of us had achieved any success in the matter of finding a nice and permanent partner. Yes it seemed as if all the real nice and useful men in or age group were all married since long ago, and that only the second rate, inadequate exhibits are sneaking about on the streets.

My thoughts were interrupted suddenly when a very well dressed, but very individualistically styled woman sat down at a table next to ours. She was wearing an extremely elegant black satin dress, held up by very thin shoulder straps that just barely covered her graciously well-turned legs to the middle of her thighs. Her feet were decorated by extremely high-heeled sandals, and her head was covered with a silk scarf whose gold embroidered seam mysteriously fell on her bare shoulders like a veil.

So far, so good, I hardly would have looked at her again, hadn’t she uncovered her head shortly after she had sat down behind my friend and openly shown in public her smoothly shaven head. I couldn’t avoid staring unashamedly at her and at the same time got a strange feeling in my breast that I had never felt before and that confused me considerably. This elegant woman who dared to show her hairless head, not only possessed a tremendous amount of self-confidence, but additionally looked unquestionably terrifically feminine. Moreover, without a single hair on her well-shaped head and with a mirror smooth polished scalp! I was staring at this strange apparition almost hypnotized, pulling at the tips of my hip length black hair. Trying to imagine how such a hairless scalp would feel when suddenly I realized that the object of my shameless observation had at sometime made visual contact with me, and was now revealing me this, by giving me some friendly winks.

Embarrassedly I turned my head and engaged Marion in some inconsequential conversation, trying herewith to inconspicuously divert from this embarrassing situation. Although I made a real effort to concentrate my attention on my friend, I constantly felt the compulsion to look repeatedly over her shoulders at the bald beauty sitting at the table behind her.

After about one hour and Marion’s about two hundred sideswipes against the opposite sex, when I lighted a cigarette an dared to take another look over my unsuspecting friend’s shoulders, I discovered that the target of my observations had disappeared into the night during my short period of inattention. Rather disappointed I sunk into my chair and wondered about my strangely intense reaction, which even was perceived by my friend, because she suddenly interrupted her talk and unbelievably stared at me.

However, the next moment I realized that it was not I, but a person who appeared right behind me, and who was caressing my long and thick curly mane, who caught her full attention. "It seems that you got strongly infected by the bug today!", purred a nice deep feminine voice, confused I turned around and saw the beautiful face of the mysterious bald woman. "But don’t let your pretty head hang…" she continued with a smile, "just follow your craving and free it for the future! This positive change is long overdue." With these words, she placed a calling card on the table in front of me, and had already disappeared before I was able to react in any way.

"What did that crazy one want?" stammered Marion shockingly, while I unable to contain my curiosity glanced at the small light yellow card. "Free head and free mind, the ultimate hair freeing studio for the real feminine freedom." was written on it in austere lettering, and that whole lot of freedom made me feel really dim. "And I thought that you could feel reasonably safe in our city" whimpered my friend, shaking her head and ending her contribution to this subject with a mindless shrugging of her shoulders. Although shortly thereafter we already were talking about other things, I had the foreboding that this strange happening hadn’t finished for me. In addition, this vague foreboding would be confirmed.

Some weeks had already passed since that night, but just by thinking about what had happened, my mind was steamrolled by this strange mixture of feelings; and then I was no longer able to concentrate on my job. Moreover, the worst was, that the periods between these attacks got shorter and shorter, while the duration of my consequent confusion was increasing in an inverse proportion. Sometimes I felt like a junkie, who wasn’t able to think beyond the next shot, or like an overweight person, who during a self-imposed weight loss diet is standing with a rumbling stomach in front off the closed fridge, and is quarreling with her self-control. However, what had happened to me? What was I lacking? How could I get out of my dilemma? What had happened to me by looking at this bald woman? I still couldn’t express it clearly. My initial fears of being a lesbian could be eliminated, because my past heterosexual relations had mostly been happily pleasant; but also the absurd theory that I was craving to cut off my beautiful hair and get my head shaved smooth, seemed not much less crazy. Or was it possible that I had gotten some kind of a bug or virus that would make me get my head shaved?

Rubbish! I loved my thick mane above all, and secretly enjoyed all the jealous looks of other women whom God had not provided with such splendorous hair. Well maybe God had less to do with the thickness of my hair than my Italian ancestors did, but in the end, all of this was less important than the solution of my problem. Although the more I tried to find out the reason of my chronically unhappiness, the more helpless I felt.

When one morning I caught myself after having a shower, carefully gliding a comb through my wet hair from my brow to the neck with closed eyes and erotically imaging that it was a sharp razor blade shaving off all my hair, I really got afraid. Had I gotten mad? or was I totally overworked and just on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown? Yes, maybe a short vacation would be a good idea. At least some days of rest would help to get my confused mind in order.

As soon as I arrived at the office, I asked my boss, and got the pleasure of anticipating the idea of the long weekend for the rest of the day. Four days of ultimate relaxation without having to do anything, were before me. Because of the really excellent mood I was in, I probably wouldn’t have thought again about the confusion I had in the morning, had not one of my colleagues, who had been complaining all week long about the enormous heat, grabbed the phone hysterically and made a short, but very clear call. The almost forty-year-old brunette, whose permed curls cascaded over her shoulders, made an appointment at her salon with her regular hairdresser for an extremely short crop, she gave her straightaway instructions over the phone for a very short haircut and preferably with clippers, as she had been longing for some time for a buzzed and cool neck. "Short and painless,
but mainly effective!" were her last instructions, before she hung up with a relieved sigh and sat down with a triumphant grin.

"I don’t care what my husband thinks about it. After all it is me who has to suffer in the heat with all this hair. So it will have to come off. And how awfully unpractical such long hair is, is something I don’t have to tell you!" she commented when she noticed that I was unbelievingly staring at her. "However it may look, I hardly can await my spiky haircut, I feel like a small child expecting birthday presents!" she expressed before continuing with her work, as if the shearing of her long curls wasn’t anything out of the ordinary and of the same importance as removing make up, nail cutting or teeth brushing.

Or perhaps I was placing too high a value on my own mane.