On the bus, I saw a woman with hair bigger than her head. I had always assumed that women with hair bigger than their heads had to use a bicycle pump or compressed air to get it that way; however, her head didn't bob up and down as one would have expected had it been so inflated, so I decided that I must have been mistaken.
Big hairdos were once the fashion; the woman undoubtedly thought she was being trendy when she first had her hair done that way. But, why had she kept it that way for so long? Misplaced optimism? To hide her face (which I thought was very pretty, by the way, although she may not have)? Nostalgia for a past that wasn't as glorious as she would have liked to remember? Or, was her hairdo a defiant freeze-frame of the moment she stopped caring what people like me thought of her looks?
Her favourite book: Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind (although the bookcase in her bedroom boasted a near complete collection of vintage Harlequin Romances). Her favourite film: An Officer and a Gentleman (she cried all seven times she saw it). Her favourite television show: Moonlighting (even though she didn't get a lot of the jokes). Her favourite singer: Karen Carpenter. Her favourite song: used to be Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman," but somewhere along the line became Frank Sinatra's version of "Strangers in the Night."
Her lifestyle was geared to romance, you see, even if her temperament was quickly souring on the prospect. She was in her 30s, and becoming more aware of her ticking biological clock with every sweep of the second hand. Whether her increasing anxiousness about her unmarried condition ("Isn't there a pill I can take for this condition?" I imagine her quipping) was biological, psychological or social didn't seem to matter much any more.
In short, she dreamed of Tom Selleck at night, but would have settled for Don Knotts in the harsh light of day.
The name of the woman with hair bigger than her head was probably Wilma, although it may have been Irma, or even Elspeth. Tom Selleck called her Veronique. In a more innocent time, she would have been a supermarket cashier or waitress. In reality, she was a minor functionary in a government office the purpose of which she could only guess at. She made three quarters of what white male janitors made. This was considered social progress.
She lived in a small apartment with a bedroom and a combination kitchen, den, whatever other space she needed. Scattered around the apartment were various fashion magazines, sea horses (which, at one time, the woman avidly collected, although they were slowly sinking into neglect) and souvenirs from less than satisfying vacations in Mexico, Miami and other resort/tourist traps. Her fridge was full of Lean Cuisine frozen dinners, diet soft drinks and yogurt; more a wish for physical perfection than part of an actual plan.
Oh, and there was the litter box in the corner. She had an orange and grey tabby she called Tom. It had been neutered before it found her; the woman would not have had the heart to do the dirty deed herself. She had a tendency to snuggle up in her bed with the cat while watching movies on pay-TV, frequently sharing wisdom with it gleaned from whatever tabloid she had read while waiting in line at the supermarket to buy her Lean Cuisines, diet soft drinks and yogurt.
The woman was probably not politically active. At university (BA from the University of Toronto, French Literature Major with no inclination to continue studying but happy to have had the educational experience) she got caught up in the tail end of Trudeaumania, but that was half a lifetime ago. Now, the most committed position she would take was that Mila Mulroney was a snazzy dresser.
She did believe in capital punishment, although, because she had never known anybody who was the victim of a violent crime, her position was more a question of etiquette than morality. "How does one address a convicted murderer out on a day pass?" she mused. She had known many men she would have happily administered the death penalty to, but let's not dwell on that.
On Friday nights, the woman went out with the "girls" from her office for dinner, drinks and a variety of emotional catharses. Sometimes, if one of the women was having a particularly bad week, or they didn't get enough misery from each other in a single night, or if they just didn't have anything better to do, they met again on Saturday night. Lately, the woman with hair bigger than her head had noticed, they seemed to be meeting an awful lot on Saturday nights. The woman was starting to suspect that men weren't interested in approaching a group of women who were commiserating with each other (mostly about men), but she has yet to put this inchoate fear into words.
I wanted to ask the woman with hair bigger than her head if this was an accurate portrait of her life in the big city in the 80s, but she got off at the next stop.
