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.

[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.

[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.