By Rebecca Tuch

                 Three weeks ago, Michael Cohen thrust his balled hand, wrist and forearm through a plate glass window inside the backyard door. The shards of glass tore through his skin in lines that were so straight and precise they had a near mathematical beauty. When the next-door neighbor crossed through the connected backyards, he found Michael standing and just staring at his slashed arm, at the blood that hurried from his body in such a beautiful red. The neighbor assumed that Michael was simply in shock. The neighbor assumed that Michael had shut the door too hard, and that the glass had broken, accidentally.

            The ordeal left a few white scars, like telephone wires intersecting the hairs on his arm. But he hardly ever thinks about all this. For Michael, the incident was just one in a string of bloody things that seem to keep happening. At fifteen years old, Michael has discovered that the universe operates in cause and effect, and violence can be so satisfying, pain such good evidence of Newtonian physics with its equal but opposite reactions.

            On a cold night in January Michael walks out of the Seventh Avenue train station in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Most of his friends are still out in Tompkins Square Park, huddled around a couple forties of beer, wrinkling the paper bags with their ice cold hands. Tonight, Michael noticed that the paper bag was mottled with small dots of blood, drying quickly in the frosty air. Two of his friends had returned from a knife fight down on Fourth Street and Avenue B. They hadn’t expected a knife fight, but had protected themselves with a couple stray bottles along the curb. When the fight ended, the friends returned safely, out of breath, and with some extra forty ounces of Colt 45, the cheap crap that they all drink.

            But Michael had had to leave early tonight. It’s a school night and tomorrow he has a test in Calculus. This in itself isn’t worth going home for, but he’s failing Calculus, along with English, Biology and American History. Something’s gotta’ give. A little less time in the East Village parks perhaps, a little more time at home.

            He hates home. At the last moment, he turns toward his father’s house, instead of his mother’s. Not sure why; he hates them both the same. But his father’s is closer. He hasn’t seen his father in awhile. Or maybe he’s just in a hating mood, and hating his father is easier. His mother can’t help herself--she’s worried, frantic and self-absorbed. But his father is smart, funny and athletic. And at everything his father has set out to do, he’s failed, and thus he’s given up. This fact has left a vacuum in Michael’s list of Men to Admire. Knowing that vacuum is there, seeing it every time he speaks with his nerdy, do-nothing, armchair-intellectual father, Michael feels hate boil inside his stomach, and he wants to smash his hand through a plate glass window all over again.

            On the corner of his father’s street, Michael turns and winces against the sharp, icy wind. Fucking January, he thinks. He remembers his little sister’s birthday, thinks vaguely about buying her something, then watches the white plume of breath escape his frozen lips. He hasn’t seen his sister in weeks, though she lives at home too. Well, that must be why then, because she lives at home, and as much as Michael can, he lives on the streets, with his friends. He remembers being bored last week, and how he and his friends mugged a couple private school kids. They got a few walkmen and fifty dollars.

            His father’s house is a three-story yellow brick building, the bottom level rented out to an eccentric rabbi with B.O. A couple times this rabbi tried to talk to Michael, to have him dredge up the irritating memory of his bar mitzvah and to make friendly and smiley small talk in the way that rabbis will, tugging their beards and showing all their teeth. Michael was polite to the rabbi, and even said he would try to go to synagogue next week, though he knew he was lying and even more, Judaism was dead to him. The words, God is Dead played briefly on Michael’s lips before the rabbi bid him “Shalom,” and walked away, smiling.

            Inside, Michael can hear the staticky buzz of the television upstairs. This depresses him so much that he considers turning and walking right back outside. His father always watches TV, from the moment he comes home from school to the moment he goes to bed. It’s embarrassing and shameful, a man of his father’s knowledge and fierce intellect turned into a soft pussy night after night in front of that damn TV. Michael vows, as he constantly does, to never turn into his father.

            His father has become soft in so many ways, Michael thinks. He can’t help wincing as he looks around the dim living room. The space has been entirely re-decorated by his dad’s new wife, Monica. She’s hung up hideous paintings of flowers and pineapples, brought home a squishy floral couch that dominates an entire side or the room. She got new, soft chairs for her fat, lazy ass, a new tablecloth with still more flowers all over it, new cabinets, new rugs. Ten thousand photographs of cats, all over the mantel. Michael’s dad used to keep his books on that mantel.

            Monica brought along her sixteen-year-old son and her fat orange cat. Now everything smells constantly of cat pee and parmesan cheese. Monica and Michael’s dad tried once to get her son and Michael together. Michael took him to a movie. But Monica’s son was a dolt. He was aloof and ignorant and boring. He didn’t laugh at any of Michael’s jokes, didn’t talk about anything interesting, didn’t even thank him for buying the tickets. Michael took him to the park to meet his friends, and the kid just sat on a bench like the movie was still going on, like everything in the world was designed just to entertain him.

            Michael realizes only now how much he can’t stand being here. His father’s house is far worse than his mother’s. At his mother’s, at least he has the freedom to be who he wants to be. Here, he doesn’t even have his own bedroom anymore. Monica’s son sleeps in that room. The other room is for Michael’s sister. He thinks one more time about leaving, going to his mom’s place. She’d be happy to see him, she’d be alone, it would be simple.

            But then his father’s bedroom door opens and his father’s shadow stretches tall and angular across the stairwell. “Monica?” he calls. “Is that you?”

            Michael steps up the first couple stairs, into the light so his father can see him.

            “Michael! Hey, buddy. I didn’t expect you to be coming over.”

            Michael’s father’s hair is curly and unkempt. Behind his boxy glasses, his eyes are watery green. His father could be any sad, old Jewish man on the subway, the kind that doesn’t speak to anyone, just hides behind his newspaper or book.

            “Hi, Dad. Yeah, sorry I didn’t call you.”

            “No, that’s okay. How’s it going?”

            “Fine.”

            “Are you hungry?”

            “No.”

            “You’re not hungry?”

            “No, Dad.”

            His father’s eyes roam around the stairway for a moment, while Michael starts to pick at the wooden banister.

            “Well,” his father says. “Are you sleeping over tonight, buddy? There are plenty of blankets and pillows in the downstairs closet for you. I would have set it up, but you never tell me when you’re coming over. I just assume you’re staying at Mom’s.”

            “It’s fine, Dad.”

            “Okay, well Monica’s still at work, she should be coming home later. If you get hungry--”

            “Dad! I’m not hungry!”

            “Sorry, sweetie, I…”

            Michael lets go of the banister and starts clenching his fist, driving his nails into his palm.

            “It’s fine, Dad. It’s just that I already ate.”

            “Okay. Well, I’m going to sleep pretty soon. But you know you can make yourself at home here, buddy. And let me know if you need anything, ‘kay?”

            “Thanks.”

            “No problem, Michael…I’m so glad you’re here…You know you can come over whenever you like.”

            “Yup,” Michael says.

            His father nods once, decisively, then smiles and looks at Michael for a few extra seconds. Then he turns and shuts his bedroom door. Michael continues up the stairs and goes into the bathroom, locks the door behind him. He peels off his black cotton gloves and drops them on the towel rack. He unzips his black flight jacket and throws it on the rim of the bathtub. He empties his bladder, then steps on the toilet flusher with the heel of his boot. His are black, 18-hole combat boots, original Doc Martens, steel toe. To get himself into a certain mood, Michael tucks his jeans into the tops of his boots and tightens the laces around his shins.

            A certain idea has been playing in his mind all week. One of those things that he knows he wants to do, but doesn’t know when. He’s known he has to do it, but hasn’t been sure how. But tonight, he knows.

            He opens the medicine cabinet and pulls out his father’s electric razor.

            Without plugging it in, he holds the razor to his hairline, feeling the cold metal against his skin. He blinks at his reflection in the mirror and in an instant is able to see himself without that brown mess of hair, just a bald white head. He would play the bass guitar in his band and the yellow stage light at CBGB’s would bounce off his scalp. Sweat would drip across the bald white skin as his fingers would slide from chord to chord. The bottles in the back of the club would break and the girls with their studded bracelets and green hair would shriek for him and he would lift his hand up and give the crowd one bright middle finger before picking up the final rift.

            He would be wearing the band’s T-shirt--a black eagle flying underneath a flapping American flag, the words Brutal Force stenciled with thin black lines. And inside the eagle’s mouth, a thick black swastika, the band’s logo. With his shaved head it’s all complete, the boots, the navy flight jacket, the black gloves and that shirt that Michael himself helped to design. He can see all this, standing here in his father’s bathroom and he can even hear the thud of his own bass guitar pumping beside his heart. It’s the closest thing to happiness he’s felt since coming into this cat-piss house.

            So, he realizes, it’s a good thing, a damn good thing that he’s come to his dad’s place tonight. Because here is where the razor is. The very razor his father uses to shave his pansy face before going to his pansy job every morning. Maybe Michael knew that already, in a not-so-conscious way, when he turned at the train station. Maybe he understood that it was time, finally, to shave his fucking head.

            He plugs the razor in and sets it near his right temple, while staring himself down in the mirror, his brown eyes narrowing into slits. He flicks the switch, then both hears and feels the razor hum to life. It vibrates inside his hand. It’s like a dick, hard and sure of itself, shaking with pure excitement. As he slides it back along his scalp, it leaves its first thick trail. It reminds him of shoveling snow. It reminds him of CBGB’s. His chest is warm, his heart pumping as the first chunks of soft brown hair start falling into the white porcelain sink.

            He can’t even help it, he’s smiling. He doesn’t want to smile, but his whole body is warming, humming along with the electric razor. He can see the look on his father’s face, the fear inside his father’s watery eyes. Fuck fear, Michael thinks, shaving away more and more of his hair. Everything soft and wavy and unmanageable must go. He can see the girls at CBGB’s, their pierced tits, their shiny teeth, their sweet alcohol breath against his ear. They will touch his bald head. They will be afraid of his bald head.

            A short time later, he has to stop. Not because he is done, but because the razor won’t go any further. It’s still buzzing, but it won’t move along his scalp. He turns it off, looks at the circular blade, picks some small black hairs from its teeth, but when he turns it on again, nothing happens.

            There is hair everywhere. On his fingers, along his right cheek, inside his ears. Small hairs inside the sink, clogging the drain. There is also blood. He is bleeding. Michael tilts his head forward and sees the open cuts, the drops of blood coming down his scalp in slow, rolling lines.

            “Fuck,” Michael says to his reflection.

            Only half his head is shaved. The other half is his regular soft hair. And the shaved half isn’t even shaved all the way, not like a true Skin, but kind of dusty-looking, like a floor that needs to be swept. He puts his hand on his head, smears the blood across his scalp, then swats the hand away, irritated, not knowing what to do. He sees an entire audience at CBGB’s, laughing at him, holding their stomachs they’re laughing so hard.

            “Fucking fuck,” he says.

            He washes his hands, runs his half-bald, half-hairy head under the tap, then looks again at his reflection. He is a clown. He stands with his boots firm on the white tile floor. He hates himself. He hates his reflection and hates his father most of all. His father should have stopped him from getting into this mess in the first place. If his father was a real man, if he stood up to Monica for once or got himself a better job instead of teaching high school English to kids that don’t give a fuck, if he stopped watching so much TV and knew how to buy the right kinds of razors that real men buy, this would never have happened.

            Facing his own reflection, Michael sees his half-shaven, watery-eyed, big-nosed ugly self. He is pathetic like his father, he thinks. He can’t do anything right. He’s obviously not invincible like Superman, but is Jewish and clumsy and awkward, just like those quiet men on the train who just take shit from everyone, getting pushed around at rush hour, always wearing black and living inside their fear. As Michael stands there, he starts to feel like the bathroom walls are getting closer and tighter, like the white tiles are peeling down in order to bury him.

            With the razor off again, Michael can hear his father moving around next door. He knows what he has to do. He doesn’t want to do it. He’d rather break the mirror in front of him or go back outside into icy January and scream. But those are not real options; he knows this.

            Cringing, pulling his shoulders up to his ears, Michael walks to his father’s bedroom. He takes a deep breath and consciously adjusts his face to a look of helpless surrender. He shakes out his shoulders, then knocks on his father’s door.

            “Come in,” his father says.

            Michael just waits there. Even in his need, he can’t get around to opening the door, seeing that TV and that bedroom and all the evidence of his father’s life.

            “Michael?” his father says through the door.

            “Yeah,” Michael says, standing there, not moving.

            When the door swings open, Michael’s father looks at him and almost instantly, his face loses all its color. His jaw drops and he begins blinking at the sight of his son. His father looks afraid, then confused, then angry. His eyes skid all over Michael’s body, like they’re trying to find purchase on something that makes sense.

            “Michael.”

            “I--”

            “What the hell have you been doing!”

            “I--”

            “What is this?” His father reaches out and runs his large, long fingers over Michael’s’ scalp. “What the hell were you doing?”

            “I was trying to shave it and--”

            “Why?”

            “Because…” Michael finds himself at a loss for words. He hadn’t expected so many questions. “Because…it’s…”

            “Are you trying to look like a Skinhead?”

            “No, I--” Michael stops, annoyed at himself for denying his own truth. Yes, he does want to look like a Skinhead. He is a Skinhead. Fuck you, Dad. “Yeah,” he adds quickly, lowering his voice, squaring his shoulders. “This is how I want to look.”

            “Why?” His father asks again, his voice cracking this time, breaking the word into two syllables.

            “Because,” Michael repeats. Then he adds, “It’s my head.”

                “It’s not your head,” his father says. “It’s my head.”

            Michael doesn’t know what to say.

            “Oh my god, Michael, you’re bleeding.”

            “I know.”

            “What were you thinking, Michael? You’re a Jewish boy. What would you say to Grandma if she saw you like that? Oy, Michael. How could you do this to yourself? Oh, Michael.”

            “Stop saying my name like that,” Michael says, his voice rising.

            “Stop saying your name? Oh, Michael--”

            “Dad! Stop!” He feels his jaw clench, and his body lurches forward, the way it did last week before he started pounding it into that kid in the park, the way it did a couple weeks ago when he jammed his fist through the back door window.

            “I can’t believe this,” his father says. “I hardly ever see you and then all of sudden you come over here and you want to be a Skinhead. Does Mom know about this? What does she say? Michael, my sweetie--”

            “Don’t call me sweetie, Dad.”

            “But you’re--”

            “I’m fifteen. If you don’t like this, I won’t come here anymore. How’s that?”

            His father is quiet then, like he hasn’t even heard the question, or the threat. He puts his hands on Michael’s scalp and they just rest there. His palms are flat and warm. One hand rests on the shaved half, the other on the hairy part. It seems as though his father is comparing both sides, weighing them.

            “Okay, Dad,” Michael finally says. “That’s enough.”

            “Did you use scissors at least?” his father asks, letting his hands fall away.

            Scissors, Michael thinks. Of course. But he shrugs like he can’t be bothered.

            “Sheesh, Michael. Whose idea was this? Is this what all your friends are doing? Eddie and Chris, all those kids?” His breath is short and rapid then as he moves around Michael, finally settling his hands back on his head. His fingertips begin to tap, like the feet of ten tiny dancers, touching the raw scalp, brushing off stray hairs with his nails.

            Then his father becomes deathly quiet. He doesn’t grunt of sigh or even breathe quickly. He just stands there. He pulls away his hands. They don’t go back to Michael’s head, and Michael finds himself actually wishing they would. Instead, he hears the sifting of his father’s toes on the rug, the cracking of his father’s bad knee. He watches as his father walks to the mantel, picks up a photograph and stares at it.

            It could be any photograph. Michael cranes his neck a little, trying to see what his father is looking at. But he refuses to ask what picture it is. In his own mind, Michael conjures up an image of himself and his sister at Central Park, years ago, laughing and climbing the brick mountains in the playground. This must be what his father is looking at. But Michael knows it could be any picture. It could be a photograph of Monica’s cat. It could be a postcard from Michael’s grandparents, sent from Israel, years ago.

The TV is on mute, and though Michael has about a zillion things left to say, he can’t quite say anything at all. After long, silent examination, Donald sets the photo back down and walks over to his bed. He plops down and says nothing.

Michael runs his own fingers over his hair. He picks at the bits of dried blood, twirling his fingertips around in circles. He hadn’t expected this from his father, this…sadness.   

Donald just leans on the edge of his bed, breathing like it hurts to take in air. Michael takes one step into the room, then stops. Just enough so that he can see his father take off his glasses and begin to rub his eyes.

He hasn’t seen his father this shaken in a long time. He really hasn’t been coming over at all anymore. He’s forgotten so many things about his father, the way he rubs his eyes and temples when he’s upset, the way he removes his glasses to clean them when he doesn’t know what to say next. 

He now has the sense that he is interrupting something, that maybe his father would prefer to be alone. But he remembers the feeling of being hugged by his father, swallowed up in a cloud of Old Spice and Tide, the tiny buttons of his father’s shirt brushing against his cheek.

Dad? Michael thinks. He hears the word over and over in his mind. Dad? Dad? Dad?

“Dad!” Michael startles himself. Though it was a question in his mind, when he spoke the word, it was forceful, demanding.  

Donald looks up. “Okay,” he says and rises slowly to his feet. “I’ll help you.”