European agents this morning and I can’t be late.”
For Alex, some of this vigorous hair growth is a welcome reprieve from the gradual balding he was experiencing in middle age. He realizes that his suddenly having such a healthy head of hair, thick and luxuriant, cannot possibly be only good news, but still he is quite pleased to have regained (as opposed to Rogained) his hair.
In fact, the physical changes do not bother or frighten Alex nearly so much as the psychological changes he is going through—and these he keeps to himself. His moods range from rage to utter tranquillity, and on both ends of this continuum he experiences an intensity of feeling as never before. Before the visit to Dr. Kis, most, if not all, of his emotions were mixed. Even the blackest sorrow had somewhere within it dark blue shimmers of hope; even the greatest joys held within them consciousness of joy’s inevitable ebbing. His emotions were like hot-air balloons, and each of them carried the ballast of memory and knowledge. But now the ballast is gone and everything he feels is total, and practically overwhelming. He is not ever merely hungry—he is ravenous. He is not annoyed—he is in a seething rage. He is not feeling romantic—he is overcome with lust.
Soon, Alex is shaving morning and evening and clipping his fingernails every day. If he neglects his toenails, the nail on the big toe will saw through his sock—even when he clips them, in a month he goes through fifteen pairs of socks, until he no longer bothers to buy them from Brooks Brothers, although it had always given him a sense of continuity to purchase men’s hosiery from the same store, the same counter, and perhaps even from the same stooped salesman as his father and his father before him had purchased theirs. Now Alex is buying socks in bulk from a discount clothing shop on Third Avenue specializing in seconds and discontinued styles, where he shops to the accompaniment of unspeakably loud hip-hop pouring down from the store’s gigantic speakers, music that seems to him neither hip nor conducive to hopping, and that, with its throbbing rhythm tracks and furious-sounding vocals, is murder on his sensitive ears.
But he keeps his problems to himself, keeps them not only from the world at large but, as much as he can, from Leslie as well. He has always been the steady one. He has always been the one who kept track of their finances and their social engagements. In every way, Alex is the marriage’s designated driver.
There is not a strand of new hair that appears on Leslie’s body that does not horrify her. Women look forward to the rich glow that pregnancy gives their hair, but not if it is growing up their bellies or on the backs of their hands. As the weeks pass, Leslie comes to look upon her body as a country at war, a nation that was losing province after province to the invading hordes of unwanted hair. Leslie’s morning toilette had always been a crisp, efficient fifteen minutes—a burst of shower, a dash of eyeliner, a little swirl of blush, and a quick anointment of her pulse points with perfume. Now she needs an hour or two to ready herself to face the world, and when she finally emerges from the bathroom, swathed in concealing scarves, her eyes show the colors of the flag.
Alex decides he will broach the subject of hair with Jim Johnson, who, despite having entered the firm in such a dishonorable way, has been doing a good job at Bailey, Twisden, Kaufman, and Chang. It is two weeks after the issue of Leslie’s sudden furriness was raised—it has taken this long for Alex to put aside his desire for social distance from the unbecoming and irritating Jim Johnson—and when Alex makes the long walk through his firm’s glass-and-mahogany corridors to Johnson’s glorified cubicle, in a wing of the firm’s offices that Alex has barely visited before, he is informed by a woman named Betty Varrick, a legal assistant (and secretary) shared by five of the
For Alex, some of this vigorous hair growth is a welcome reprieve from the gradual balding he was experiencing in middle age. He realizes that his suddenly having such a healthy head of hair, thick and luxuriant, cannot possibly be only good news, but still he is quite pleased to have regained (as opposed to Rogained) his hair.
In fact, the physical changes do not bother or frighten Alex nearly so much as the psychological changes he is going through—and these he keeps to himself. His moods range from rage to utter tranquillity, and on both ends of this continuum he experiences an intensity of feeling as never before. Before the visit to Dr. Kis, most, if not all, of his emotions were mixed. Even the blackest sorrow had somewhere within it dark blue shimmers of hope; even the greatest joys held within them consciousness of joy’s inevitable ebbing. His emotions were like hot-air balloons, and each of them carried the ballast of memory and knowledge. But now the ballast is gone and everything he feels is total, and practically overwhelming. He is not ever merely hungry—he is ravenous. He is not annoyed—he is in a seething rage. He is not feeling romantic—he is overcome with lust.
Soon, Alex is shaving morning and evening and clipping his fingernails every day. If he neglects his toenails, the nail on the big toe will saw through his sock—even when he clips them, in a month he goes through fifteen pairs of socks, until he no longer bothers to buy them from Brooks Brothers, although it had always given him a sense of continuity to purchase men’s hosiery from the same store, the same counter, and perhaps even from the same stooped salesman as his father and his father before him had purchased theirs. Now Alex is buying socks in bulk from a discount clothing shop on Third Avenue specializing in seconds and discontinued styles, where he shops to the accompaniment of unspeakably loud hip-hop pouring down from the store’s gigantic speakers, music that seems to him neither hip nor conducive to hopping, and that, with its throbbing rhythm tracks and furious-sounding vocals, is murder on his sensitive ears.
But he keeps his problems to himself, keeps them not only from the world at large but, as much as he can, from Leslie as well. He has always been the steady one. He has always been the one who kept track of their finances and their social engagements. In every way, Alex is the marriage’s designated driver.
There is not a strand of new hair that appears on Leslie’s body that does not horrify her. Women look forward to the rich glow that pregnancy gives their hair, but not if it is growing up their bellies or on the backs of their hands. As the weeks pass, Leslie comes to look upon her body as a country at war, a nation that was losing province after province to the invading hordes of unwanted hair. Leslie’s morning toilette had always been a crisp, efficient fifteen minutes—a burst of shower, a dash of eyeliner, a little swirl of blush, and a quick anointment of her pulse points with perfume. Now she needs an hour or two to ready herself to face the world, and when she finally emerges from the bathroom, swathed in concealing scarves, her eyes show the colors of the flag.
Alex decides he will broach the subject of hair with Jim Johnson, who, despite having entered the firm in such a dishonorable way, has been doing a good job at Bailey, Twisden, Kaufman, and Chang. It is two weeks after the issue of Leslie’s sudden furriness was raised—it has taken this long for Alex to put aside his desire for social distance from the unbecoming and irritating Jim Johnson—and when Alex makes the long walk through his firm’s glass-and-mahogany corridors to Johnson’s glorified cubicle, in a wing of the firm’s offices that Alex has barely visited before, he is informed by a woman named Betty Varrick, a legal assistant (and secretary) shared by five of the
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