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We met when we were 14 years old. He was a rocker and I loved him. As we grew older he took his music very seriously. His band were good but not fantastic. They’d never be Metallica.

My rocker, Dougie, had the most beautiful long long hair. It fell down his back to well below his waist. It was dark, straight and seriously sexy. I loved it. He loved it. I’d watch him onstage, flicking it and driving the girls mad. But he was mine.

Something had always bothered him. His father had gone bald at an early age. Dougie didn’t like this. After the birth of out first child we came to an agreement. It was his doing.

“If I ever start to go bald, if it starts to look really stupid”, he had told me, “I want you to cut it all off”.

I had protested. Was he mad?

But he was serious.

“I don’t want to know, don’t talk to me about it. Just do it. Cut it short, shave my head, I don’t care. Just do it”.

Reluctantly I had promised. It would be years away anyway and by then he may have changed his mind.

And so time passed. Every couple of months I’d trim his long tresses, getting rid of split ends, with the kitchen scissors. If I took more than an inch, he’d yelp as if in pain. It was our joke.

Then the day came when I realised that day of the arrangement was drawing closer. He was sitting in front on me, on the floor, playing with his play station. And I saw his scalp through his hair. I had known he was thinning for a long time but I had said nothing. ‘Was it time?’, I asked myself. But I already knew the answer.

“Time for a trim, my love?”, I said gently as I left the room. “Ok”, I heard him say. ‘A serious trim’ I thought to myself as I went upstairs to get the hairdressing scissors I had bought. They were sharp. I was determined to make this as painless as possible and as quick as possible.

A few minutes later I was sitting on the floor behind him, combing his beautiful long, long hair. I confess I played with it and I could not believe what I was about to do.

Gently I pulled a long lock of hair out from his head and held it in my hand. I placed the scissors near his head and snipped it off. I was horrified. The cut hair was in my hand and he was still playing his game. Had he felt nothing?

I put the hair on the floor and I took another long lock. As the scissors cut it from his head, the shearing noise echoed around the room. He played his game.

I continued. I went around his head, strand by strand chopping and hacking all of his hair off. As the last piece came away in my hand I looked at the carnage on the floor beside me. There was a mass of cut hair. I looked at his head. He was cruelly shorn. He played his game.

I could not believe that my rocker guy had short hair. All that beautiful long hair was gone. And I was the one who had cut it all off.

Shaking, I stood up.

“I don’t want to see it”, he said.

I gathered all the hair from the floor and left the room. I returned with a cold beer in my hand. For him. I sat behind him and kissed the back of his neck.

“It’s kind of sexy”, I lied… I rubbed my hands through his short hair and kissed him some more. Then I realised we were both crying.

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