Delilah's Diary #1: A Sexy Journey (3 page)

I took my new netbook and sat down in a Starbucks to compose the preceding entry, sipping on a venti Chai tea latte. I might have cried as I began the words, just a few angry tears, but by the time I finished up to the asterisks a few paragraphs up, I was calm and ripping through the words at a furious pace.

I'm sitting there now, on my second Chai latte, not thinking about what's coming out of my fingers. People pass around me, chatter in twos and threes, read books and do homework and stare out the window listening to music. I'm surrounded by people but completely alone.

I don't mind the solitude. Back home...back
there
, there is no solitude. I was either at work or at home with Harry, or shopping, or visiting with Leah, or something. I was never alone, never able to sit and think and do whatever I wanted just
because
.

What do I want?

I want to live. I want to experience new things. I want to see Rome, and Athens, and Venice, and Paris, and London, and Tokyo, and Turks and Cacaos. I want to feel a man's kiss, feel his hands doing
things
to me. I want to feel sex, and love. I want to feel desired. I want to feel alone in a foreign country. I want to feel brave, and yes, even afraid.

Until I caught Harry cheating on me, everything was the same: peaceful, boring, and predictable. I'd eventually have a kid with Harry, and I'd probably give up my position as an editor and my career in general to raise the child, and Harry and I would have sex on Saturdays and Sundays and I might never have known any different.

And then I spilled my coffee on myself. My life was thrown out the window, and my entire personality put into question.

I've never felt so alive before. I can do
anything.

Holy shit, I'm terrified.

I woke up this morning ready for change. I looked up salons in the area and made an appointment for a cut-and-color later in the day. I'd brought all my clothes with me, but going through them, I realized they were all smart, savvy, no-nonsense business outfits, or comfy clothes. Nothing sexy, nothing fun. Nothing edgy.

I had breakfast and made plans. First step, new clothes. Hip, fun, sexy clothes. Next, find a lawyer and send Harry the divorce papers. I wasn't leaving Chicago until it was done. Then, buy an airplane ticket to somewhere far and exotic. Rome came to mind, once more.

Shopping for an all-new wardrobe turned out to be a lot more painful and difficult than I'd imagined. Things didn't fit, or didn't look right, or I couldn't figure what to pair it with or I just didn't think I could pull it off.

I stood in a changing room in a slinky red dress that cupped my curves and pushed up my breasts and showed off my legs...and I couldn't bring myself to leave the changing room with it on.

I asked myself, in no uncertain terms, what the hell my problem was.

Self-esteem. Harry had never been the type to compliment me, or tell me I looked beautiful. Sure, if I tried on a dress and asked him what he thought, he'd give me a stock response:

"Sure baby, looks great," he'd say, barely glancing up from his cell phone. "Makes your ass look nice."

And that was it. He'd grope me in the dark, before bed, and kiss me, a brief peck, on the way out the door, but nothing else. And he was
always
on his phone. He'd sleep with it under his pillow, stuff in his pocket when he was done sending a text or email. He would leave the room for sudden phone calls, send text messages surreptitiously. Now I realize how suspicious it all was, how clear. Then, I just shoved the fear away as paranoia.

But he didn't love me. Didn't want me. Why?

I wasn't beautiful. Wasn't desirable. He wanted a middle-aged, overweight, veiny, lumpy, floppy pastor's wife more than me. Sure, I was a little on the heavier, curvier side, but I'd thought I was at least better looking than Helen
fucking
Warner.

Apparently not.

I left the second store in a row without buying anything and retreated to my comfort: blueberry muffins and Chai tea. I went back to Starbucks and got a latte and a muffin and had long sorry-fest until my appointment with the stylist, which I no longer felt like going through with. I forced myself to go anyway.

The stylist was an older woman, maybe fifty, fit and sleek and modern and all things cosmopolitan and lovely.

"What are we doing today, honey?" She asked me, fluffing her fingers through my long, thick brown locks.

I shrugged. "I don't know. A change, I guess."

She caught the depressed wistfulness in my voice. She paused with her fingers in my hair and met my gaze in the mirror. "Honey, I don't know you, but I know depressed when I see it, and can I just say that depressed is the worst time to get a haircut? Especially with hair like yours. You've been growing this your whole life, clearly. One moment of desperation, and it's gone. You can't get it back." She gave me a firm but kind smile. "I'm willing to do what you tell me, but I just don't want you to regret it."

I shook my head. "It's not that. It's a hell of a lot more than one moment of depression. My entire life is...changing. I'm changing."

I found myself once again pouring out my sob story to a complete stranger. I told her everything, and the dear woman—whose name turned out to be Julia—just nodded and listened and handed me a box of tissues. When I finished, she patted me on the shoulder.

"Honey, are you serious about really starting over?" She combed her fingers through my hair, a comforting motion. "No looking back, no changing your mind?"

I nodded, wiped my eyes and my nose. "I'll never go back there as long as I live. Not for my family, not for anything. I need to start over. I
have
to."

She smiled again. "Well then, if you're sure, I can start with your hair. I can think of a dozen things to do with a beautiful head of hair like yours."

I shrugged. "I don't know what I want. I've never done more than trim it. I've never thought about what I might look like with it cut." I thought back to my bout of self-pity in the dressing room. "I just...I want to feel new, and...beautiful."

Julia wiped a knuckle across her eye. "Oh, honey. Why do we let men do this to us? You
are
beautiful. I know it's hard to see it when they pull shit like this, but you can't give that bastard the power over your feelings. You are a strong, lovely woman, and I'll make you into someone new. I promise, you won't recognize yourself when I'm through with you."

I nodded, and summoned a smile. "Can you help me learn to dress like you, too?" I was joking, but only halfway.

Julia tilted her head. "You really are starting over, aren't you?"

"I stuffed everything I own into a suitcase. But then I realized those clothes are all the old me. Career and wife me. I wanted to buy some sexy new clothes, but..." I shrugged, going for nonchalant and failing, tearing up again. "I just don't know how. I've never been that girl."

"You don't just need a haircut, honey, you need a makeover. A total redo."

I nodded. "That's the plan, but I don't know where to start, except for this haircut."

Julia gave me an odd look. "Are you willing to trust me?"

I shrugged again—I seemed to be doing that a lot, suddenly. "Sure. I mean, I was willing to let you cut my hair off, so why not?"

She didn't answer, but pulled a cell phone from a drawer of her station and typed furiously on it.

"What are you doing," I asked.

"Calling in the cavalry," was Julia's cryptic response.

"That big of a job, huh?"

Julia rolled her eyes at me. "Honey, makeovers are always big jobs, and a true makeover requires a team. I'm just assembling mine. Still trust me?"

I nodded, my heart in my throat. I wasn't ready, but I never really would be.

The "cavalry" turned out to be two gay men, a couple, I assumed but wasn't positive. Their names were José and George, and they were both ridiculously handsome, in a polished, sophisticated, slightly effeminate way. José was Hispanic, maybe thirty, with sleek black hair, diamond earrings and a gold necklace showing between an unbuttoned silk shirt, wearing tight leather pants and custom leather shoes, rings on every finger, and piercing gray eyes. George was older, closer to forty or fifty, his head carefully shaved, a neatly-trimmed goatee framing a soft mouth, wearing a trim gray pinstripe suit with a faded designer T-shirt, pale blue eyes and long, slender fingers.

Julia gave them a Cliff's Notes version of what I'd told her, sparing me from having to repeat it, thankfully. José and George clucked their tongues and shook their heads.

George said, "Oh, sweetie. Men are such
dicks
, sometimes."

I agreed, and tried not to laugh at their sweet, genuine, affectedness. It was a contradiction in terms, it seemed to me, but true. They were at once completely genuine, but their mannerisms seemed almost put on, as if they wanted
everyone
to know they were gay, and how proud of it they were. I'd never felt my sheltered, small-town upbringing so poignantly until that moment. I felt judgmental and petty, trying to understand them, and failing. I couldn't figure out how to handle them, if I should treat them like men, or women, or both, or neither...they seemed to be a complex amalgam of both genders, somehow, and it made my head spin.

I stopped trying to figure them out when they started discussing tactics, as they called it. I couldn't keep pace. They were speaking their own language, talking about layering and matching the angles of my face and skin tone and eye color and...I just gave up and closed my eyes and enjoyed the sensation of hands in my hair.

I let them take me to a sink and wash my hair, the hot water relaxing my scalp and my frayed nerves. They toweled me as dry as my three foot-long hair would go, and sat me down back in front of Julia's station.

"Are you ready, sweetie?" José asked.

I shrugged and nodded, a confused motion. José just laughed. He handed a pair of scissors to Julia and stepped aside with a flourish. Julia put the scissors to my hair, then stopped.

"Have you considered donating your hair?" She asked.

"I don't know. I didn't even know you could do that."

"Locks of Love would be able to make a great wig out of long, gorgeous hair like yours."

I shrugged yet again. "Sure, why not? If it's coming off anyway."

A few quick snips, and suddenly my entire upper body felt ten pounds lighter. I sobbed like a baby. José and George dabbed my face with Kleenex and told me how brave I was and how much I would love myself when they were done, and to just trust them.

"Sweetie, you are simply loveliness incarnate," George said. "And you deserve to see yourself that way."

I melted, and wished he was straight so I could kiss him.

I sat facing away from the mirror, with Julia's sure hands snipping and fluffing and snipping, until I was sure I would be bald when she was done, and then she did something with a foul-smelling concoction all over my hair and left me to sit and chat with José while she and George stepped outside for a smoke.

I told George everything. I wasn't sure why I kept pouring out my life's story to perfect strangers, but they all seemed interested and genuinely kind, and I couldn't stop myself. No one had ever really listened to me before, I realized.

"What you need," George said, "is an adventure. You need to go far away, and meet a man, and let him sweep you off your feet. Don't fall in love, though. Just let him make sweet love to you until you can't breathe. And then go somewhere else, and do it all over again."

José came in at that moment. "Don't confuse the poor dear," he said. "What she needs is a good fucking."

I blushed from my hairline to my toes.

" José, you rascal," George scolded, "can't you see you're upsetting her? She's not ready for that yet."

"I'm not upset," I said. "I'm just...not used to that kind of thing."

"Well that much is obvious." Geoge patted my knee, and then helped me stand up, escorting me to the sink once more. "Just take it one day, one step at a time. Trust your instincts, that's the first thing."

My hair was washed again, and dried, and then Julia spent a few minutes styling it before they brushed my shoulders off and unsnapped the apron.

"Close your eyes," George instructed.

I squeezed them shut, felt hands remove the apron from my shoulders and brush a few more bits of hair away.

"Are you ready to see the new Delilah Flores?" George asked. I nodded. "Well then, open your eyes."

I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. As promised, I didn't recognize myself. My hair had been waist length, wavy, plain brown, and not-quite glossy. Now it was pixie-short, above my ears, and bright, bottle-red, somewhere between crimson and maroon. It turned my features from seeming pretty enough but plain into...exotic and striking. My cerulean eyes stood out even more, and my porcelain skin seemed even whiter, even fairer.

My breath caught, and my eyes burned, even though I'd cried more tears than I'd thought one person could in one day.

"Well, sweetie? What do you think?" George asked.

I laughed and hiccupped. "I think I need a hug." I ran my fingers through my hair, a now alien sensation. "It's wonderful. I don't know what to say, what to think. It's...incredible. I don't know who I am."

"You're the new you," José said.

George gave him a disgusted look. "That has got to be one of the most idiotic things you've ever said, José."

I stood up and hugged José. "No, it's not. It makes perfect sense."

I found myself held close by all three of them, and the feeling of being embraced was enough to choke me up even more.

We broke apart, and Julia pushed me to the door. "Now go on. You have more makeover to do and I have appointments to keep." I pulled my wallet from my purse, but Julia stopped me. "No, honey. This one's on the house."

She handed me a business card. "This is my cousin. He's one of the top divorce attorneys in the city. I'll set up a meeting for you. He'll give you a good rate. Don't back down, okay?"

"Thanks, Julia." I hugged her again and followed José and George out the door.