Joe Manson started losing his hair during his senior year of high school. A classic case of male pattern baldness if ever there was one. The gene ran in his family, so it's not like he didn't know it was coming. Still, when he started seeing clumps of dirty blond hair clogging the drain after an extra hot 15 minute shower in the morning, it made him feel sick to his stomach, like when his first love, Suzie Jones, broke up with him sitting in the passenger seat of his blue Chevette three weeks before his junior prom.
“I don’t want to be your girlfriend anymore. (Pause) I’m going to the prom with Kurt.”
“But I love you. (Pause) Why are you doing this?”
“Because Kurt’s a varsity wrestler. (Pause) You’re just you.”
Heartbreakers come in all different shapes and sizes. In the case of Suzie, the form was a cheerleader. Not one of the stereotypical, stunning blonde bombshells you see running around in many mindless teen movies, and not a varsity one either. She was just your average looking brunette with a perm and a pear shaped body - someone you could pass countless times and not even notice. Pompons, megaphones, splits, and blue and gold horizontally striped sweaters (tight but not slutty) have a way of making all the difference in the world, even when you’re only on the J.V. squad.
Normally a guy like Joe who wore flannel shirts and black concert T-shirts to school, with tight, faded Levi jeans and construction boots would never stand a chance of landing a girl with a modicum of visibility and status. But sometimes lady luck is on your side. Joe’s best and only real friend in high school was a bespectacled girl named Elizabeth with big dimples and ample breasts (which Joe pretended to never notice) who just happened to be dating a boy named Tim, the starting center on the varsity football team, and Suzie’s older brother. When Suzie needed a date for homecoming in October, which was only three weeks away, Elizabeth and Tim thought it would be oh so cute if she went with Joe.
With some encouragement from them and the proper assurances that Suzie was interested, Joe made out a list of things to talk about on a 3” x 5” card before placing the initial call. Surprisingly, there was an immediate connection between the two, and within minutes the 3” x 5” card which Joe held between his thumb and forefinger was insouciantly propelled with a quick, confident snap of his wrist towards his Realistic stereo that just happened to be playing side two of Rush’s “Signals” loud enough for Suzie to hear. (Joe decided to play side one - the better of the two sides - once the conversation got into a flow. Suzie only recognized one song - “Subdivisions.” She had recently seen the video a few times on MTV.) The next day Joe walked Suzie to all of her classes. At the end of the seventh period he asked her to the homecoming dance. At the end of eighth period he said what the hell and asked her out. When she said yes, Joe had his first girlfriend since Jamie Gilbert in 8th grade. Joe’s biggest fear was that Suzie would leave him after homecoming. She didn’t. In fact, three weeks after that dance they went to a baseball diamond behind a private school near where Suzie lived to make out on the infield grass.
“Do you wanna touch?” Suzie said after about ten minutes, lifting her burgundy Izod/Lacoste pullover windbreaker. Joe moved his hands under her shirt (she wasn’t wearing a bra) and he was suddenly very conscious of the fact his hands were attached to his body. Through the years he had never given his hands much thought, except when he tried to teach himself guitar. At first he approached her breasts cautiously, like he was surreptitiously trying to sample a package of Charmin toilet paper and was worried Mr. Whipple might be pe
“You have good hands,” Suzie said after the feeling-up session was over.
“Who else has been up your shirt?” Joe thought to himself. He was Catholic.
Instead of saying that, he just smiled and said “thanks.”
Incidentally, Joe’s hair was completely gone by graduation, which wasn't so bad in retrospect. Along with the fact he played chess regularly during homeroom with a student who was eventually arrested for manslaughter, it was the only thing people remembered about him.
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