Story fragment idea

[pegkerr]

Playing (i.e.; don't think I would write this; just toying with the idea):

"The Bone Comb."

A woman receives a comb made of bone (a legacy from an eccentric aunt who never married? found in a junk shop?) Attached to it is an elegantly handwritten note: "Do not use unless you are prepared to live with the consequences."

She uses the comb and is startled to discover that her hair starts falling out. Soon she is completely bald. She is angry at first, but then thinks about the note. Some assume she is going through chemotherapy. Some think she has alopecia. She tries going bald to work. Her husband's reaction? Does he reject her? She embraces the baldness, buys a tough-girl leather jacket. The leather jacket makes her feel like a completely different person; she experiments with going places she would never have thought to have gone before. More consequences follow this. She starts treating her identity as more malleable than she has ever done before.

Where does this story go? Does she encounter her inner artist, becoming a photographer, just as her eccentric aunt was a potter?

Comments

[mark356.livejournal.com]

She starts treating her identity as more malleable than she has ever done before.

That is where the story goes; the moment she realizes that is the end of the story.

[mark356.livejournal.com]

Expanding on this reply a little: I think she may well discover her inner artist, but I think it wouldn't be appropriate to write about that in the story. What you have here is a short story idea, not a novel idea, and the interesting thing is just the possibilities that it brings up. It would be ok to hint at some of the things she might do, but you'd be stretching it a bit to try to actually write them out. I absolutely love a good short story that writes out just enough to make you wonder but not too much.

I also agree with papersky, that she should pass on the comb at the end-- that would be a lovely way to bring the story full circle. If you don't do that, then I think I'd actually rather that she lose her hair without benefit of the comb-- that she just wakes up one morning without hair. I kind of like that idea, actually; it implies that rather than everything going according to some neat nice rules (as it would if she lost her hair due to a comb), that the universe is just a weird place anyway.

Btw, I hope you don't mind if I play with this idea?

[delirieuse.livejournal.com]

I really like this, up to the point of the malleable identity. Beyond that, your thoughts of the artistry, I'm just not convinced, somehow. Perhaps it's because it's just an outline, but I would like to see more exploration of her fluidity, and her challenging of societal outcomes. Preferably with the bone comb tied in as a repeating motif; does she put it on a piece of string and hang it around her neck? Etc.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

It should end with her passing the comb on to someone else who needs it, someone she knows or sees to be stuck -- I'm thinking someone in a committee with her or something like that. Because at that point she realises she was empowered by the loss of the hair.

And perhaps the words should be engraved on the comb? Carved? Like the way Northern People carve whalebone?

Also, have you read Maureen McHugh's blog about when she was having chemob and her hair fell out, and what wigs were like? Because that seems directly relevant.

I think this could be a terrific story.

[aome.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm fascinated, anyway. Who do we become, when freed of our outer shell, and the presumptions that go with it?

(I actually felt a bit like this after I graduated from high school and attended a college where no one knew me; I bought a tie-dye shirt, which I had wanted for ages, and hadn't felt free to wear in high school, as it didn't match the quiet, straight-laced persona they knew there.)

[misia.livejournal.com]

It makes me want to know whose bone the comb was made of.

I wonder if she wouldn't, upon embracing her baldness, discover that being bald gives her a sort of built-in entryway into being other people. Wigs, headscarves, sunglasses, etc... change one's appearance sufficiently that most people will be convinced that it's a different person altogether. I'd like to think that she becomes an artist of hot-swappable identities!

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I'd love to read it. How does her husband react? How do other men react? Other women? Does she deal with kids? How long does it take for the children to adjust?

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

I'm seeing this as more of a grim fairy tale - she adapts to the hair loss by changing personas, and as such finds eventually that her husband or boyfriend and/or children suddenly can't relate to her any more, they leave her, she ends up alone, finds out why the aunt was alone all these years.

But does it end happily, with a new guy, finding out her husband was all wrong for her and left her for his secretary which he would have done eventually, or does it end with her wandering into the sea, like in The Awakening, punishment for not keeping to her place and following instructions like a good girl, giving in to curiosity? Like Eve biting the apple, Pandora opening the box, Bluebeard's wife making the wrong decision about the key and the door.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

I think in order for that to work, her husband has to have married her for her hair.

Maybe she should start losing other things after that. Hair is so superficial. Maybe she loses personality traits?

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

I disagree, you missed my point - her hair is just a symbol. She feels different without her hair, and so her personality changes. Her personality change is what drives him away.

[ivyblossom.livejournal.com]

Hmm. What if her personality changes and she walks away from HIM?

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

A different morality play, but equally as possible!

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

Actually, this sounds not entirely unlike Bohumil Hrabal's rather good novella 'Postriziny', or 'Cutting it Short', which is about a girl in the 1920s who chops her magnificent Art Nouveau curls short into a shining bob.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

The whole story's been done before, really - woman receives forbidden object, uses against instructions, suffers dire consequences, yadda yadda yadda. In this case it happens to be hair loss, which, OK, you can buy a wig and live with it, unless there's more story to tell :-D

[pandarus.livejournal.com]

My mother lost all her hair (although, after a course of treatment it has since come back - white, now, rather than red, but at least it's there) and a few years ago, out of the blue, I lost maybe 2/3 of mine (although it's now back to being pretty much normal, if not as astonishingly thick as it was when I was younger), and fwiw I think that it's surprising how much of a sense of self is shaped by something as trivial-seeming as one's hair. Going from normal to bald overnight - I think that 'superficial' doesn't do justice to the visceral impact that hair loss has.

It's an interesting idea for a story, imho.

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I can tell you about my experience. I shaved my head about five years ago. I had wanted to do it for a long time. I needed to do something radical, to change me, to change my luck. A lot had gone wrong in my life that year, including a close friend dying suddenly.

I was amazed how differently people related to me. At work, I was cautiously asked if I was undergoing chemo. Several people didn't recognize me. I didn't know how much I was my hair, how much people used it as a feature to identify me. Shaving my head changed my identity.

It also freed up a lot of time. No more brushing and combing and braiding; my hair had been halfway down my back, and I braided it every day.

[kijjohnson.livejournal.com]

I like this. It can say a lot. Go for it. A short story is easier, I'm finding.