this little head of mine

     People don't trust a small head. It's worrisome.
     Sometimes a worried person doesn't even know it's over the small head - he's got the sweats, he's looking at the guy with the small head, and he's getting more nervous by the second... In another moment or two there will be a fight, bloodshed, and nobody will know what it was about.
     I see people looking at me, casually, on the subway, in the library, they want to smile - I've got a kindly face, an honest aura, a nice behind - and they do, for a moment. And then it begins. It's the bald head; it makes the smallness that much more obvious, that much more worrisome; they squint, shift some newly noticed uncomfortable weight, shoo a fly that isn't there, and then squint again. I can feel the tension building, the mistrust. I want to say it, tell them what it is - "My head - it's small - it's got your worried, that's all!"
     But I can't do that. There are laws about self-incrimination, disturbing the peace. Small-headed bald people know this.
     And a guy can get used to this kind of thing. I did. Got used to it, over the years: I learned how to dodge and step, point and block, fake-out, and when push comes to shove, pretend I have fleas.
     Now that I'm all set I find that the Fates are not happy with bestowing the simple small, balding head on some of us. They wait a while, about forty years, and then they trade in your nice neat nose for a door-knocker, the thing just starts growing - no matter how much you refrain from sticking fingers and other objects up there, no matter when you quit pulling on the thing out of anger at the world, no matter how gently you blow your sneezer - it become distinct, then pendulous,and then one day it hangs a sign on itself with a notice of vacancy - room to let.
     The eyes then, at the failure of the nose, begin to weaken, falter, sag and give up while the brow above gets heavy and thick, the hair upon it becomes vegetative over the new offense. The cheeks then loose all interest in maintaining their healthy elasticity, and the mouth just gives up all together and the whole head pushes up toward the ears for advice, and the ears respond only by growing larger, flap-like, and redden with embarrassment.
     This then is the plight of the small headed, balding, middle aged man. It may be pretty funny, but it is not pretty. When you next feel like you are worried, and then angry, and for no reason at all want to punch a harmless looking fellow in the nose - think of this.
     Thank you.

what I got

This story will be available in "Baldie Stories 1", through Kindle.

waiting

     He said he was waiting for a break and she told him he was waiting in the wrong spot, and he said he knew it because he’d been waiting a long time but didn’t know where else to wait. She tried to comfort him, cupped his head with one hand, tried to run her fingers through his hair but the stuff didn’t budge, he’d jammed it all up with volumizers and stiffeners and other budge-breaking products.
     Only the day before she, Dread, had the child, Dawn, hanging from those same fingers by her hair over the side of the paddle-boat - bait for an unconventional proposition, a real life-or-death bargain – in the lake in the park in the town of Loss.
     “Momma,” Dawn cried, two toe-deep in the grey still water.
     “Momma,” she whimpered, spilling tears, concentric circles, small desperate spins of warm air touched with juniper, winding sheets.
     “You better do it! You better! I’ll make you!” Dread threatened pond-side, to the smudge against the clouds, the blinking puddle that didn’t even have the guts to whimper back. For one moment he clutched up to his own hair, a small gesture, more of an erasure, a dimming signal into the grey air that failed between them.

     This, while the man with the inky rug stood blocking the entrance to the subway car with his sparkling new kicks, threatened a young woman drenched in sweat and sorrow as she tried to pass with a baby on her back and another in the stroller…
     while the Boss took his stretch from counting what he made on a lie and planned how to spend it with his mistress who had given her love to a spineless man who loved his wife but couldn’t argue anymore, couldn’t argue anymore, not anymore, while Dawn hung top-down, one last minute, from that long golden hair.

     The woman stood on the platform and watched the angry man shouting from behind the window of the moving train, the crease in his new kicks mimicking the crease of hatred in his face, the sorrow and loss she felt – a stranger herself to this all, alone, no one to hate, no one to hassle, no one to lie to, no one hurt; just the little one on her back, and the little one in the stroller. She pushed up the soft nest of hair upon her head and she waited there, waited and waited and waited.