Evidence

Nineteen years.

I have outlived Charadi Colin by nineteen years.  I can barely remember what she looks like, but here she is – my bald head.

Charadi had had a crush on someone else.  I was in that guy’s driveway when I heard she had leukemia.  And yeah, I hated that guy’s guts for the briefest of instants.  But the hate wasn’t very real, and he’s married to a nice woman I took to a dance once.  So it goes.

I shaved my head for the first time in high school, while Charadi was still alive.  I wish I could tell you what that even meant.  Since then, I’ve done it occasionally, and especially as a New Year’s present to myself.  I generally don’t tell people why I do it – it’s not something that pisses off the squares anymore.

It was weird to do it back in the day, though.  It was easy for me to sell the gesture as a measure of solidarity – Charadi was still alive at that point.  Chemo.  The truth was something a bit more pathetic – I hated my hair anyway, and making an ass of myself was easier to do than admit that I was harboring a monster crush on the woman.

I’m going to stick with “woman,” though she died before she turned 18.  She looked her death in the eye.  Adult.

I couldn’t do her the favor of growing up, though.  I just showed up with flowers occasionally, like an asshole.  I was out of town when she died.  I never told her anything. Nothing serious.  Nothing important.

Her dad had a Cerwin Vega stereo system.  She liked the Cars, because her dad did.  She liked Nirvana, because that’s our time, and she died before Pearl Jam really got going with Ten.  I like to tell myself she would have liked Foo Fighters better, because I do.

But how can I know that?  I can’t.  I can’t tell you her taste in music would have improved. That she wouldn’t have gone on to date a string of bastards, because there is no other kind of interesting man. I can’t tell you that she would have lived better than I have, if our places were switched.

But the other women I’ve loved since then will have to let a little bit of cheating go: Maybe just before I shaved my head for the first time, I had engineered a team visit.  The sunken den was a day room for her.  The other boys had headed back outside.  I was saying something stupid.

She took her head rag off. I don’t remember whether it was just for me or not – it’d make a better story that way.

I reached out and touched her head. Actually felt it. Not a wussy fingertip brush, not like I was palming a ball. I don’t remember the words, but I told her it didn’t matter. I told her she was beautiful anyway.

I needed to say more. I could not say more.

And that’s the first moment of intimacy I remember.  I had kissed girls prior to that, but that was my first moment of feeling the true terror of being alive. I didn’t want her to die. I wanted a relationship that didn’t exist, and couldn’t. Everything I wanted was wrong, or uncool to talk about, or terrifying to admit.

And here is the Evidence. The True Religion Moment. The the awesome, beautiful, tragic bitch of a moment that creates faithful and atheists alike. People have these moments, they curse God or don’t, and it’s supposed to make them decide what they believe.  I have lived in this space, in some sense, forever after.

Because the truth is, I still don’t know if keeping my mouth shut – not burdening her with my feelings – was the right call. I have lived my life since then regretting my choice, though. Making calls – sometimes, pretty bad ones – specifically to spite this one. I will die, though, not really knowing whether I was right not to tell her.

It sure would be convenient if God had a checklist for all of us. A specific divine plan. Charadi – dead early, on to her reward, check. Justin bumbles on a few more decades. Gets to have his little flaming turd of a life. If she’s watching, she’s okay about it. She doesn’t get mad that I mess up my life every chance I get, but still manage to stumble into a happily marriage. Which does not include her, outside of my never getting piercings and shaving my head.

It would be less comforting, but just as convenient, if God didn’t exist at all.  Stuff just happens. She’s dead, I’m not. All the hurt, abandoned, murdered women I’ve seen since then don’t need to remind me of her. I’m just messing with myself.

My experience is somewhat more nuanced than that. The God vote is still out, and there’s no bringing that election to a close – not if we want to be honest with ourselves.

I suspect there is a God, but that He just isn’t in the habit of handing out ice cream sundaes. And any covenant we have with God – with ourselves, with the universe, however you want – isn’t about comfort. It’s about God punching us in the mouth and saying, “you’re welcome”. The beating is a gift, because the alternative is oblivion. Job and Ecclesiastes don’t go away just because you don’t get them.

I will try to keep getting happier, because I am alive, and I have not yet proven I deserve to be. So that’s what I’ll do. Prove it to her. To those I love. And one day, maybe, to myself.