Hair Rollers Quotes

It was black-black, so thick it drank two containers of relaxer at the salon, so full it took hours under the hooded dryer, and, when finally released from pink plastic rollers, sprang free and full, flowing down her back like a celebration. Her father called it a crown of glory.

Often they wore their hair in pin curls and a turban, getting their hair ready for—what? This still is an American custom. You see women everywhere in pink hair rollers. It’s some sort of philosophical or fashion statement. Maybe there will be something better, later.

What did Saturday's used to taste like? Like eggs and fried ham and the bitter smell of hair in heavy rollers. Like long quiet hours and making up after a fight. Like ointment and bruising. Like waiting, especially, for something - anything - to happen.

His mouth comes down on mine, harder now, more demanding, a raw, hungry need in him rising to the surface. “You belong to me,” he growls. “Say it.” “Yes. Yes, I belong to you.” His mouth finds mine again, demanding, taking, drawing me under his spell. “Say it again,” he demands, nipping my lip, squeezing my breast and nipple, and sending a ripple of pleasure straight to my sex. “I belong to you,” I pant. He lifts me off the ground with the possessive curve of his hand around my backside, angling my hips to thrust harder, deeper. “Again,” he orders, driving into me, his cock hitting the farthest point of me and blasting against sensitive nerve endings. “Oh … ah … I … I belong to you.” His mouth dips low, his hair tickling my neck, his teeth scraping my shoulders at the same moment he pounds into me and the world spins around me, leaving nothing but pleasure and need and more need. I am suddenly hot only where he touches, and freezing where I yearn to be touched. Lifting my leg, I shackle his hip, ravenous beyond measure, climbing to the edge of bliss, reaching for it at the same time I’m trying desperately to hold back. Chris is merciless, wickedly wild, grinding and rocking, pumping. “I love you, Sara,” he confesses hoarsely, taking my mouth, swallowing the shallow, hot breath I release, and punishing me with a hard thrust that snaps the last of the lightly held control I possess. Possessing me. A fire explodes low in my belly and spirals downward, seizing my muscles, and I begin to spasm around his shaft, trembling with the force of my release. With a low growl, his muscles ripple beneath my touch and his cock pulses, his hot semen spilling inside me. We moan together, lost in the climax of a roller-coaster ride of pain and pleasure, spanning days apart, and finally collapse in a heap and just lie there. Slowly, I let my leg ease from his hip to the ground, and Chris rolls me to my side to face him. Still inside me, he holds me close, pulling the jacket up around my back, trailing fingers over my jaw. “And I belong to you.

Noah didn’t walk, he stalked and I loved the mischievous glint in his eye when he stalked me. He placed his hands on my hips and nuzzled my hair. “I love the way you smell.” I swallowed and tried to reign in the mutant pterodactyls having a roller derby in my stomach as I dared to think about a future for the two of us. The moment Aires’ car rumbled beneath me, I’d known that I needed Noah in my life. Aires’ death had left a gaping hole in my heart. I thought all I needed was that car to run. Wrong. A car would never fill the emptiness, but love could. “I hope your future includes me. I mean, someone has to continue to kick your butt in pool.” Noah laughed as he snagged his fingers around my belt loops and dragged me closer. “I was letting you win.” “Please.” His eyes had about fallen out of his head when I’d sunk a couple of balls off the break. “You were losing. Badly.” I wondered if he also reveled in the warmth of being this close again. “Then I guess I’ll have to keep you around. For good. You’ll be useful during a hustle.” He lowered his forehead to mine and his brown eyes, which had been laughing seconds ago, darkened as he got serious. “I have a lot I want to say to you. A lot I want to apologize for.” “Me, too.” And I touched his cheek again, this time letting my fingers take their time. Noah wanted me, for good. “But can we hash it all out some other time? I’m sort of talked out and I’ve still gotta go see my dad. Do you think we can just take it on faith right now that I want you, you want me, and we’ll figure out the happy ending part later?” His lips curved into a sexy smile and I became lost in him. “I love you, Echo Emerson.” I whispered the words as he brought his lips to mine. “Forever.

When John took those naked pictures, the most popular singer was a girl with a tiny stick body and a large deferential head, who sang in a delicious lilt of white lace and promises and longing to be close. When she shut herself up in her closet and starved herself to death, people were shocked. But starvation was in her voice all along. That was the poignancy of it. A sweet voice locked in a dark place, but focused entirely on the tiny strip of light coming under the door. I drop the rag in the bucket and smoke some more, ashing into the sink,. A tiny piece of the movie from the naked time plays on my eyeball: A psychotic killer is blowing up amusement parks. At the head of the crowd clamoring to ride the roller coaster is a slim, lovely man with long blond hair and floppy clothes and big, beautiful eyes fixed on a tiny strip of light that only he can see.

She roller-set Lizette’s hair before she went out on her “money dates” (You’re for sale—just fucking say it…).

If you love them in the morning with their eyes full of crust; if you love them at night with their hair full of rollers, chances are, you're in love.

Every now and then, as he sucked up the daily load of cat hair, he thought wistfully of a Roomba, but Buster would try to kill it and carry it off to his lair. The big Maine Coon probably outweighed a Roomba.

With my big 80s hair, my cut off jean shorts, and my roller skates, I’m going to look sexy on my way to work in the snow this winter. And I just got sled dogs, though I plan on pulling them without putting them on the sled first.

THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT All persons entering a heart do so at their own risk. Management can and will be held responsible for any loss, love, theft, ambition or personal injury. Please take care of your belongings. Please take care of the way you look at me. No roller skating, kissing, smoking, fingers through hair, 3 am phone calls, stained letters, littering, unfeeling feelings, a smell left on a pillow, doors slammed, lyrics whispered, or loitering. Thank you.

The moment we walk into the suite, Tommy descends on us. “The Queen’s on the line. On Skype, Your Grace.” Anxiety rings in his voice like the ping of a tapped crystal glass. “She’s been waiting. She does’na like to be kept waiting.” I nod briskly. “Have David bring me a scotch.” “Oh, me too!” Henry pipes up. “He’ll have coffee,” I tell Tommy. And I think Henry sticks his tongue out at me behind my back. I head into the library and he follows, seeming marginally closer to sober—at least he’s walking straight and unassisted now. I sit behind the desk and open the laptop. On the screen, my grandmother looks back at me, wearing a pale pink robe, hair in rollers and a hairnet, gray eyes piercing, her expression as friendly as the grim reaper’s. This should be fun. “Nicholas.” She greets me without emotion. “Grandmother,” I return, just as flat. “Granny!” Henry calls, like a child, coming around the desk into view. Then he proceeds to hug the computer and kiss the screen. “Mwah! Mwah!” “Henry, oh, Hen—” My grandmother swats the air with her hands, like he’s actually there kissing her. And I do my damnedest not to laugh at them. “Mwah!” “Henry! Remember yourself! My gracious!” “Mmmmmwah!” He perches, grinning like a fool, on the arm of my chair, forcing me to shift over. “I’m sorry, Grandmother—it’s just so good to see you

As Mary said that, Lyra felt something strange happen to her body. She found a stirring at the roots of her hair: she found herself breathing faster. She had never been on a roller-coaster, or anything like one, but if she had, she would have recognised the sensations in her breast: they were exciting and frightening at the same time, and she had not the slightest idea why. The sensation continued, and deepened, and changed, as more parts of her body found themselves affected too. She felt as if she had been handed the key to a great house she hadn't known was there, a house that was somehow inside her, and as she turned the key, deep in the darkness of the building she felt other doors opening too, and lights coming on. She sat trembling, hugging her knees, hardly daring to breathe, as Mary went on...

The widow of Michael Reardon was a full‐breasted woman in her late thirties. She had dark hair and green eyes, and an Irish nose spattered with a clichéful of freckles. She had a face for merry‐go‐rounds and roller coaster rides, a face that could split in laughter and girlish glee when water was splashed on her at the seashore. She was a girl who could get drunk sniffing the vermouth cork before it was passed over a martini. She was a girl who went to church on Sundays, a girl who’d belonged to the Newman Club when she was younger, a girl who was a virgin two days after Mike

IFEMELU HAD GROWN UP in the shadow of her mother’s hair. It was black-black, so thick it drank two containers of relaxer at the salon, so full it took hours under the hooded dryer, and, when finally released from pink plastic rollers, sprang free and full, flowing down her back like a celebration.

Picking me up, Frank carries me like they do in the movies to the back of the loft, pushing aside a gauzy scrim on rollers to reveal a king-size bed with Gothic-looking wooden posts jutting out from each corner. This is not the innocent white-sun-dappled bed of my dorm room fantasy. The sheets and duvet are a manly gray, and those posts recall certain scenes in Dracula and Wuthering Heights. Placing me on top of it, he pulls of his sweatshirt, revealing his pale, hairless chest. His disheveled hair hangs limply above his shoulders. He looks a little Klaus Kinski-ish- in need of blood, yet sexy, vulnerable, yet ready to please.

Once we realised it was just Jodi’s mum wearing hair rollers and a moisturising face mask everyone stopped screaming, except for Maisie. That’s when Jodi’s mum said, “Oh darling, I’m so sorry. I must look a fright!” But Maisie wouldn’t stop screaming or believe that it was Jodi’s mum even when she rubbed the face mask off. That’s when Jodi said, “Er, Mum, what did you put in that face mask? Your face looks a bit weird.” And it DID look weird. It was red and bumpy and her eyelids were starting to get all bulgy. Then Jodi’s mum said, “Just what the lady on the TV said to put in. It’s a vegetable facemask. Why? Does it smell funny?” And I said that it DID smell a bit but that wasn’t the reason Maisie was screaming. But Jodi’s mum didn’t understand what was going on until Jodi took her over to the mirror. And that’s when we couldn’t hear Maisie screaming any more because Jodi’s mum screamed louder than I have probably ever heard anyone scream

He wouldn’t have understood. He wouldn’t have been able to understand in the least the desire, the pure quintessential need of my readers for escape, a thing I myself understood only too well. Life had been hard on them and they had not fought back, they’d collapsed like soufflés in a high wind. Escape wasn’t a luxury for them, it was a necessity. They had to get it somehow. And when they were too tired to invent escapes of their own, mine were available for them at the corner drugstore, neatly packaged like the other painkillers. They could be taken in capsule form, quickly and discreetly, during those moments when the hair-dryer was stiffening the curls around their plastic rollers or the bath oil in the bath was turning their skins to pink velvet, leaving a ring in the tub to be removed later with Ajax Cleanser, which would make their hands smell like a hospital and cause their husbands to remark that they were about as sexy as a dishcloth. Then they would mourn their lack of beauty, their departing youth.… I knew all about escape, I was brought up on it.

When Straight Women Flirt …With Me She sits on my lesbian lap both of us too much wine arm around my shoulder hair carelessly tossed from her face her full weight light upon me sweet sweat rising in the noisy night her laugh laps up the smoke her lean close her breathing flirts with mine small confessions of girlhood slumber parties spill out and into my ear long unspoken memories of pairing up with other girls to practice kissing she tosses excitement of kitten innocence in my face roller skate caresses first tastes of delicious shudder first caress and innocence innocence innocence only in a sense implication of guilt guilt guilt the unsaid in her sentence she tosses excitement her breathing breathless breathing breath breast breasts breasts breasts oh flirt with my around my shoulder lean close close close both of us taste too much too much to touch ankles thighs fingers ribs eyes ears toes her arm my shoulder my shoulder her arm alarm disarm dare me dare me dare me no harm my shoulder her arm my shoulder hold her fold her I never told her my small confession: I don’t practice kissing

There was no way I wasn’t going. I was going to leave this stupid town and its stupid rocky soil where nothing grew and where children were buried; its stupid churches and hypocritical Holy Rollers; its stupid schools and the principal who, I thought, had kicked my best friend out of school; its poverty and its poverty of imagination; its low expectations; its girls who were expected to wear makeup and curl their hair and marry so young and produce an endless supply of babies; its stupid selective mourning, this stupid town that cared more about people who died than those who lived and struggled and couldn’t find their way.

You. In a dress.'' That's what I wanted him to say. He didn't end up saying it, but I said it to myself many times as I greeted my reflection in the buildings going up Broadway. My high heels rocked me like roller skates, my hair that I had spent time blow-drying was whipped up, I was suddenly vulnerable to the weather, to uneven sidewalks. I nodded to the iron wedge of the Flatiron like a prestigious acquaintance. The dress was half a paycheck. A short, black silk tunic. I was still confused about the power of clothes - nobody had taught me how to dress myself. When I tried it on and looked in the mirror, I was meeting myself decades from now, when I had grown unconquerable. All in a dress. I nearly returned it twice. I saw myself in the dark-green glass of a closed bank. I turned to my reflection: You. In a dress.

Are you chuckling yet? Because then along came you. A big, broad meat eater with brash blond hair and ruddy skin that burns at the beach. A bundle of appetites. A full, boisterous guffaw; a man who tells knock know jokes. Hot dogs - not even East 86th Street bratwurst but mealy, greasy big guts that terrifying pink. Baseball. Gimme caps. Puns and blockbuster movies, raw tap water and six-packs. A fearless, trusting consumer who only reads labels to make sure there are plenty of additives. A fan of the open road with a passion for his pickup who thinks bicycles are for nerds. Fucks hard and talks dirty; a private though unapologetic taste for porn. Mysteries, thrillers, and science fiction; a subscription to National Geographic. Barbecues on the Fourth of July and intentions, in the fullness of time, to take up golf. Delights in crappy snack foods of ever description: Burgles. Curlies. Cheesies. Squigglies - you're laughing - but I don't eat them - anything that looks less like food than packing material and at least six degrees of separation from the farm. Bruce Springsteen, the early albums, cranked up high with the truck window down and your hair flying. Sings along, off-key - how is it possible that I should be endeared by such a tin ear?Beach Boys. Elvis - never lose your roots, did you, loved plain old rock and roll. Bombast. Though not impossibly stodgy; I remember, you took a shine to Pearl Jam, which was exactly when Kevin went off them...(sorry). It just had to be noisy; you hadn't any time for my Elgar, my Leo Kottke, though you made an exception for Aaron Copeland. You wiped your eyes brusquely at Tanglewood, as if to clear gnats, hoping I didn't notice that "Quiet City" made you cry. And ordinary, obvious pleasure: the Bronx Zoo and the botanical gardens, the Coney Island roller coaster, the Staten Island ferry, the Empire State Building. You were the only New Yorker I'd ever met who'd actually taken the ferry to the Statue of Liberty. You dragged me along once, and we were the only tourists on the boat who spoke English. Representational art - Edward Hopper. And my lord, Franklin, a Republican. A belief in a strong defense but otherwise small government and low taxes. Physically, too, you were such a surprise - yourself a strong defense. There were times you were worried that I thought you too heavy, I made so much of your size, though you weighed in a t a pretty standard 165, 170, always battling those five pounds' worth of cheddar widgets that would settle over your belt. But to me you were enormous. So sturdy and solid, so wide, so thick, none of that delicate wristy business of my imaginings. Built like an oak tree, against which I could pitch my pillow and read; mornings, I could curl into the crook of your branches. How luck we are, when we've spared what we think we want! How weary I might have grown of all those silly pots and fussy diets, and how I detest the whine of sitar music!

Motor-scooter riders with big beards and girl friends who bounce on the back of the scooters and wear their hair long in front of their faces as well as behind, drunks who follow the advice of the Hat Council and are always turned out in hats, but not hats the Council would approve. Mr. Lacey, the locksmith,, shups up his shop for a while and goes to exchange time of day with Mr. Slube at the cigar store. Mr. Koochagian, the tailor, waters luxuriant jungle of plants in his window, gives them a critical look from the outside, accepts compliments on them from two passers-by, fingers the leaves on the plane tree in front of our house with a thoughtful gardener's appraisal, and crosses the street for a bite at the Ideal where he can keep an eye on customers and wigwag across the message that he is coming. The baby carriages come out, and clusters of everyone from toddlers with dolls to teenagers with homework gather at the stoops. When I get home from work, the ballet is reaching its cresendo. This is the time roller skates and stilts and tricycles and games in the lee of the stoop with bottletops and plastic cowboys, this is the time of bundles and packages, zigzagging from the drug store to the fruit stand and back over to the butcher's; this is the time when teenagers, all dressed up, are pausing to ask if their slips shows or their collars look right; this is the time when beautiful girls get out of MG's; this is the time when the fire engines go through; this is the time when anybody you know on Hudson street will go by. As the darkness thickens and Mr. Halpert moors the laundry cart to the cellar door again, the ballet goes under lights, eddying back nad forth but intensifying at the bright spotlight pools of Joe's sidewalk pizza, the bars, the delicatessen, the restaurant and the drug store. The night workers stop now at the delicatessen, to pick up salami and a container of milk. Things have settled down for the evening but the street and its ballet have not come to a stop. I know the deep night ballet and its seasons best from waking long after midnight to tend a baby and, sitting in the dark, seeing the shadows and hearing sounds of the sidewalk. Mostly it is a sound like infinitely patterning snatches of party conversation, and, about three in the morning, singing, very good singing. Sometimes their is a sharpness and anger or sad, sad weeping, or a flurry of search for a string of beads broken. One night a young man came roaring along, bellowing terrible language at two girls whom he had apparently picked up and who were disappointing him. Doors opened, a wary semicircle formed around him, not too close, until police came. Out came the heads, too, along the Hudsons street, offering opinion, "Drunk...Crazy...A wild kid from the suburbs" Deep in the night, I am almost unaware of how many people are on the street unless someone calls the together. Like the bagpipe. Who the piper is and why he favored our street I have no idea.

So,” Marlboro Man began over dinner one night. “How many kids do you want to have?” I almost choked on my medium-rare T-bone, the one he’d grilled for me so expertly with his own two hands. “Oh my word,” I replied, swallowing hard. I didn’t feel so hungry anymore. “I don’t know…how many kids do you want to have?” “Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a mischievous grin. “Six or so. Maybe seven.” I felt downright nauseated. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, my body preparing me for the dreaded morning sickness that, I didn’t know at the time, awaited me. Six or seven kids? Righty-oh, Marlboro Man. Righty…no. “Ha-ha ha-ha ha. Ha.” I laughed, tossing my long hair over my shoulder and acting like he’d made a big joke. “Yeah, right! Ha-ha. Six kids…can you imagine?” Ha-ha. Ha. Ha.” The laughter was part humor, part nervousness, part terror. We’d never had a serious discussion about children before. “Why?” He looked a little more serious this time. “How many kids do you think we should have?” I smeared my mashed potatoes around on my plate and felt my ovaries leap inside my body. This was not a positive development. Stop that! I ordered, silently. Settle down! Go back to sleep! I blinked and took a swig of the wine Marlboro Man had bought me earlier in the day. “Let’s see…,” I answered, drumming my fingernails on the table. “How ’bout one? Or maybe…one and a half?” I sucked in my stomach--another defensive move in an attempt to deny what I didn’t realize at the time was an inevitable, and jiggly, future. “One?” he replied. “Aw, that’s not nearly enough of a work crew for me. I’ll need a lot more help than that!” Then he chuckled, standing up to clear our plates as I sat there in a daze, having no idea whether or not he was kidding. It was the strangest conversation I’d ever had. I felt like the roller coaster had just pulled away from the gate, and the entire amusement park was pitch-black. I had no idea what was in front of me; I was entering a foreign land. My ovaries, on the other hand, were doing backflips, as if they’d been wandering, parched, in a barren wasteland and finally, miraculously, happened upon a roaring waterfall. And that waterfall was about six feet tall, with gray hair and bulging biceps. They never knew they could experience such hope.

Why are you treating me like this? What did I do?” “Nothing!” “So this is what you do then? You make girls feel like they’re special for a few days, then treat them like they’re nothing?” He turned on me right before he got to his room, “You’re really gonna put this on me? One minute you’re kissing me, the next you’re talking to your boyfriend and telling him you love him!” “What did you want me to do, not answer it?” “It doesn’t even matter Harper,” He laughed humorlessly, “drop it.” “It does to me! I’m so tired of this roller coaster with you. I never know which Chase I’m going to meet up with that day. Is it going to be the cold or the funny and caring Chase? Will it be the one that’s with four girls in one night, or the one that tells me how beautiful I am, does amazingly sweet things for me and notices stuff about me that no one else does?” Okay so Brandon noticed, but that wouldn’t help my argument right now. He just continued to glare at me. “You’re all over the place, I don’t know how to act around you, I don’t know what you want!” “I want you! All I’ve ever wanted is you.” “Then why are you trying to hurt me again?” “Because it’s easier that way.” His voice was soft now, and I could see the pain in his eyes, “You’re with Brandon. Do you know what it’s like watching you with him? Wanting you so bad, but knowing he’s who you should be with?” “But what if I want you?” “Harper, don’t.” “I’m so in love with Brandon, but I can’t help what I feel for you, and I know you know what I’m talking about. Whatever this is between us … it’s been there since we met. It’s like I can’t get enough of you, but all you do is push me away. It’s all you’ve ever done!” “Because I’m not what you need Harper!” I stepped closer towards him, “Then why did you kiss me Chase? You knew it would change everything, and it did. So tell me, why did you do it?” He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a frustrated breath, “I needed to.” He closed the distance between us, “You’re all I can think about and it drives me crazy! I would have given anything for that kiss, and I knew I wouldn’t get that chance again, so I had to. I had to know if you felt something too.” I threw out my hands in exasperation, “Was that not obvious? Is it not obvious that I’m in love with you?” His

Her suede jacket was unbuttoned to reveal a pair of grimy breasts, but her hair was elaborately wound into a mass of rollers, as if she were preparing parts of her body for some formal gala to which the rest of herself had not been invited.

eye combination my mother always made a fuss about. Maybe that’s why my skin crawled every time someone commented on how attractive a couple we were. It was more a reflection on me than us. He lifts his hand and moves my hair off my forehead. The gesture is intimate, but I’m too stunned to stop him. He brushes his thumb over the scar on my temple. “I was worried about you. You wouldn’t let me see you in the hospital. Or after?” A sigh escapes before I can school my features into something a little more… regretful. “Well, I was embarrassed.” That’s a lie. I just didn’t want to face whatever the fuck emotional roller coaster I was riding the last six months. Seriously. My life went from normal to shit in a split second. Adding Jack—and the life that I thought I had, the one that seemed to go up in a puff of smoke when I woke up in the hospital—would’ve been more pain than I was ready to accept. “Violet!” I step away from Jack, ignoring his wounded expression, and turn to my other friends. Half the dance team is here, and they all crowd around me. Someone pulls at my coffee-stained blouse, and another swoops in to clean the floor where my cup dropped. I had forgotten, in my Jack-shock. “Lucky it wasn’t hot.” Willow nudges me. “Luck and I aren’t on speaking terms.” She visited faithfully every day while I was stuck in the hospital. Kept me sane, kept me looped in to the gossip. She’s the only one who knows what I went through, and I’m keeping it that way. I’m not in the habit of airing my dirty laundry—or my newfound nightmares. I’ve been plagued by bright lights, crunching metal, and snapping bones. She rolls her eyes at my luck comment. “You need to change. We’re taking you out.” Oh boy. My first instinct is to say no, but honestly? I could use a bit of normalcy. My therapist—the talk one, not the physical one—said something about getting back into a routine. Well, for the last two years, I’ve gone out with my girls on Friday nights. There’s nothing more normal than that. I’m actually looking forward to it. She leads the way to the bedroom I haven’t been in since… before. She steps aside and lets me do the honors. Opening the door is like cracking into a time capsule. Fucking devastating. Willow stands behind me, her hand on my shoulder, as I stare around at the remnants of the person I used to be. If I wasn’t aware of how different I was after six months away, I am now. Mentally, physically. There are still clothes that I left on the floor. My chair is pulled out and covered in clothes. There’s a pile of books that I had planned to conquer over the summer in the center of the desk. My bed is made. “I kept the door open

used to say that falling in love’s like a roller-coaster, at first it’s exciting, thrilling. But in the end, all you wind up with is bugs in your teeth, ratty hair, and a queasy stomach.

Given all the crazy getups I’d seen Gertie wearing since I met her, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see her squeezed into her old Roller Derby outfit, but I was. Her white hair stuck out from under her old helmet. Her too-tight goggles made the skin around her cheeks puff out, reminding me of a cartoon I had once seen starring a goldfish wearing glasses. Giant padding protected her skinny knees and elbows. An ancient pair of skates that had been tied together with their laces rested over one shoulder, causing her to lean to the right when she walked.

A tent was set up as a make shift changing room for the models to do their preparation. Hair and make-up were done within this 12' x 12' fabric enclosure which sprouted electrical cords for hair dryers and electric rollers, necessities for “bouffant” hairdos. I was mesmerized while watching different colored eye shadows, face powders and lipsticks painted onto the females. Seeing glamorous pictures in a glossy magazine was one thing but witnessing first-hand how it was applied was quite another. The hours of preparation that went into preparation for each model included in a photograph stunned me.

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Shara met me at the airport in London, dressed in her old familiar blue woolen overcoat that I loved so much. She was bouncing like a little girl with excitement. Everest was nothing compared to seeing her. I was skinny, long-haired, and wearing some very suspect flowery Nepalese trousers. I short, I looked a mess, but I was so happy. I had been warned by Henry at base camp not to rush into anything “silly” when I saw Shara again. He had told me it was a classic mountaineers’ error to propose as soon as you get home. High altitude apparently clouds people’s good judgment, he had said. In the end, I waited twelve months. But during this time I knew that this was the girl I wanted to marry. We had so much fun together that year. I persuaded Shara, almost daily, to skip off work early from her publishing job (she needed little persuading, mind), and we would go on endless, fun adventures. I remember taking her roller-skating through a park in central London and going too fast down a hill. I ended up headfirst in the lake, fully clothed. She thought it funny. Another time, I lost a wheel while roller-skating down a steep busy London street. (Cursed skates!) I found myself screeching along at breakneck speed on only one skate. She thought that one scary. We drank tea, had afternoon snoozes, and drove around in “Dolly,” my old London black cab that I had bought for a song. Shara was the only girl I knew who would be willing to sit with me for hours on the motorway--broken down--waiting for roadside recovery to tow me to yet another garage to fix Dolly. Again. We were (are!) in love. I put a wooden board and mattress in the backseat so I could sleep in the taxi, and Charlie Mackesy painted funny cartoons inside. (Ironically, these are now the most valuable part of Dolly, which sits majestically outside our home.) Our boys love playing in Dolly nowadays. Shara says I should get rid of her, as the taxi is rusting away, but Dolly was the car that I will forever associate with our early days together. How could I send her to the scrapyard? In fact, this spring, we are going to paint Dolly in the colors of the rainbow, put decent seat belts in the backseat, and go on a road trip as a family. Heaven. We must never stop doing these sorts of things. They are what brought us together, and what will keep us having fun. Spontaneity has to be exercised every day, or we lose it. Shara, lovingly, rolls her eyes.

sounded like another language entirely. I felt relieved, momentarily, to be a relatively worldly Lubavitcher, even if I didn’t entirely fit in with the Crown Heights crowd. — Much to my disappointment, Miri was rarely to be seen. Most days she left the apartment around ten in a giddy rush and returned in the early evening with armloads of shopping bags, only to leave again for dinner with her friends. But one morning, when Leah was otherwise engaged, I was finally recruited for shomeres service. We were going to Ratfolvi’s, in Flatbush, to pick up the sheitel that Miri would be required to wear as a married woman. Pulling up to a residential building, we let ourselves into Mrs. Ratfolvi’s wig shop/apartment and sat down in the reception area, where four or five women were chatting away on a damask sofa and chairs. While we waited our turn, I examined the rows of wigs on display: there were various shades of brunette, blonde, and ginger; short, teased bouffants and glamorous, shoulder-length falls; wigs encased in rollers and wigs that were fully styled, needing nothing more than a final shpritz of hair spray. They were set upon Styrofoam heads complete with turned-up noses, high cheekbones, and luscious lips that looked like they could come alive at any moment. I longed to get my hands on a brush and a pair of scissors so that I could create my own visions of tonsorial loveliness. I did this from time to time to my dolls, to my mother’s great irritation, and here was a whole wall of victims. When Miri’s name was called, she plunked herself into the salon chair and pulled the silk scarf off her ponytail. I stood as close as I could without getting in the way. From conversations that I’d overheard between my mother and her sisters, I knew that Mrs. Ratfolvi was considered “the best,” and I was eager to watch her at work. The “rat” in her name had led me to expect someone old and unattractive, but she was actually a nicely put-together middle-aged woman. The receptionist brought over a plastic case about the size of a chubby toddler. In one expert motion, Mrs. Ratfolvi clicked it open, withdrew the fully styled wig on its Styrofoam head

I guess that’s how normal people feel most of the time. They live in the space between black and white, and their ups and downs are various shades of gray, not the extreme highs and lows I’ve always thought of as normal. I think that’s one of the major differences between us and them, between addicts and Normies. Somewhere along the line we got stuck on this roller coaster that only knows how to go to the highest up and the lowest low. We get high so we can feel invincible and perfect, but the feeling never lasts. Gravity always wins, and we fall fast, to a place lower and darker than many people will probably ever know. And the crazy thing is that this is just normal for us. We cycle through these extremes all the time, and it’s become as natural as breathing. Exhausting, but natural. We’ve forgotten what it looks like in the middle, but I’m guessing it looks something like this—sitting in a quiet room trying to do homework and wondering what’s for dinner. Simple. Nothing too exciting. Part of me feels relieved, but part of me also feels bored, like I have no idea what to do with myself, and I’m having a hard time sitting still in this chair. Part of me wants to get up and scream and tear my hair out, and part of me wants to lie down and curl up into a ball and fall asleep. And it’s making me anxious.

Nora had the look of Hilda Ogden but with the thickest Dublin accent I’d ever heard. She was the kind of person who’d seen it all. Standing with one arm folded and a cigarette held in a limp hand, she looked as though nothing would surprise her. I envied people like that. If there was a nuclear explosion right now with bricks and mortar falling around our ears, Nora would probably still be stood there with her cigarette, rollers in her hair, wondering who’d made that racket and then getting on with frying some eggs for tea.

The blonde over there with perfectly straight hair? Maybe her alarm went off while you were still in dreamland, so she had an extra hour before work to get it just right. (Or maybe she went to Drybar at 7 a.m.?!) The brunette with the big bouncy curls? There’s a chance she slept in rollers last night—if she slept at all. The woman with the pink textured bob and the perfect bed head? Well, she just woke up like that (but she does do a deep conditioning treatment twice a week and has to touch up her color at least once a month).

The place was as dim as a church. Roller coasters of tarnished brass and swelling seas of en­ crusted red velvet spread out in pe ersions of opu­ lence before him. Gold thread traced rococo patterns in the purple felt walls. The theater's logo - a cupid with a clutch of arrows in one hand and a severed head in the other - was sewn in embossed pink at regular intervals across the walls and carpets. Vicious, greasy teenagers prowled the lobby, pumped up on cheap violence, gore, and clinically depicted scenes of sexual denigration and mutilation. They loitered, coiled like springs anticipating release. They'd later spill out into the primordial chaos of the streets in an orgy of drive-bys, carjackings, murders and rapes, unleashed on the world like a marauding legion of rampaging demons escaped from a sewage hole lead­ ing up from hell, squirting hot hormonal juice out their pores, laboring and defiling the polluted night, Los Angeles laying there with its legs spread wide with tinsel tangled in its hair, bleeding from its gash like a freshly gang-raped transvestite weeping on the piss-soaked concrete floor of the L.A. County Jail.

Child rearing sometimes works like women’s hair rollers. When women roll their hair, they get the desired curls. If only they applied such method on raising their children! In life you get the shape of what you want when you mould them according to the shape of what you design.

California! That was in America! America, like we saw on TV! America, where beautiful, light-haired women roller-skated on the beach, and they drank milkshakes, and ate burgers and french fries, and went shopping and got these big, beautiful cardboard bags

Julian realized he was grinning - truly grinning, the way he rarely had since he was a child. He couldn't help it. Buried in everyone's soul, he thought as they spun forward through the night, must be the yearning desire to fly. And not the way mundanes did, trapped inside a metal tube. Like this, exploding up through clouds as soft as down, the wind caressing your skin. He glanced over at Emma. She was leaning down over her horse's mane, long legs curved around its sides, her brilliant hair flying like a banner. Behind her rode Christina, who had her hands in the air and was shrieking with happiness. "Emma!" she shouted. "Emma, look, no hands!" Emma glanced back and laughed aloud. Mark, who rode Windspear with an air of familiarity, Kieran clinging to his belt with one head, was not as amused. "Use your hands!" he yelled. "Christina! It's not a roller coaster!" "Nephilim are insane!" shouted Kieran, pushing his wildly blowing hair out of his face. Christina just laughed, and Emma looked at her with a wide smile,her eyes glowing like the stars overhead, which had turned to the silver-white stars of the mundane world.

Who counts in this world and how much? Who does the deciding? Who has "potential" (that is, value) and who does not? On the patio, thunder rumbled in the distance and Ronan squirmed against my chest, complaining a bit. What did matter was love, given freely and without agenda or expectation. I loved Ronan, this unique person, this human being, without thought to what it might lead to for me, what it might say about me, or what it made others think about me. It didn't matter if people thought the situation was tragic or the saddest this in the world, or they thought I'd gone wild with grief or become a mean and manic bitch. So what? This was my son, my baby, my 'handful of earth', sitting on my lap, cooing and squawking into an approaching thunderstorm under a dropped and thickening sky, the wind whipping through his hair as if her were on a roller coaster, feeling the fresh change in the air. Oh, I loved him. But that love would not chain him. There was nothing expected of or for him. In that love he was free. A love that was settled and calm, with no more thinking to do. A love that left people speechless, confused, delirious with misunderstanding.

The drinking became a little more of a problem when I went to university. My parents had never been particularly present while I was growing up, so one might presume if I was going to go off the rails, why not do it at home, but I saved it for when I went away. I was enough of a disappointment to my father. I didn’t need to give him yet another excuse to help me understand I was not the daughter he wanted. My mother had left her native America when she fell in love with my dad while working for a year as an au pair in Gerrards Cross. She seemed happy when I was very young, then spent most of my teenage years in what I have always thought must have been, albeit undiagnosed a deep, and possibly clinical, depression. I can understand why. What I couldn’t understand is how she ever ended up with my father in the first place. He was handsome, and I suppose he must have been charming when they were young, but he was so damned difficult, I used to think, even when I was young, that we’d all be much happier if they got a divorce. I would sit with friends who would be in floods of tears because their mother had just found out their father had been having an affair, or their parents had decided they hated each other, or whatever the myriad of reasons are that drive people apart, and these friends would be crying at the terrible fear of their families breaking up, and all I could think was: I wish my parents would get divorced. It seemed to me that if ever there were two people on the planet who should not have been together, it was my parents. My mother is laid-back, funny, kind. She’s comfortable in her skin and has the easy laugh you expect from all Americans. She was brought up in New York, but her parents died very young, after which she went to live with her Aunt Judith. I never knew Aunt Judith, but everything about those days sounds idyllic, especially her summers in Nantucket. You look at pictures of my mum from those days and she was in flowing, hippie-ish clothes, always smiling. She had long, silky hair, and she looked happy and free. In sharp contrast to the pictures of her with my dad, even in those early days, when they were newlyweds, supposedly the happiest time of a relationship. He insisted she wear buttoned-up suits, or twinsets and pearls. Her hair was elaborately coiffed. I remember the heated rollers she kept in the bathroom, twisting her hair up every morning, spraying it into tight submission, slicking lipstick on her lips, her feet sliding into Roger Vivier pumps. If my father was away, she left her hair long and loose, wrapping a scarf around her head. She’d wear long gypsy skirts with espadrilles or sandals. I loved her like that most of all. I used to think it was her clothing that changed her personality,

If you kiss a man and he runs a mile, he’s no good. Life is full of times you have to turn toward the storm, and life brings many storms. Sick children, parents dying, cancer, just the challenge of building a life together and not driving each other completely nuts. You need a man who’ll turn in to the storm with you when it comes, doesn’t she, Clare?” said Claire, as she pulled Fleur’s hair into rollers.