'My Jesus Hair', by Lev Raphael

“Hair is an accessory,” my gruff-voiced and very butch stylist told me more than once when I wanted to keep it short. “You’re not thinking about your hair the way you should be.” She could be bossy at times, but she did get me thinking.

I had favored short hair because as a writer I did frequent book tours and worrying about how my hair looked before a reading was not something I needed, especially since I’d been an awkward flat-footed boy with bad teeth and had worked for years to ease my body shame.

But Stylist Pam was so insistent, she convinced me to let it grow out, even though it might have some unflattering stages. She promised to keep me looking good nonetheless.

I was naturally sort of auburn-haired, but occasionally had let her put in blond highlights and since we were changing things up so dramatically, I went full blond with lowlights. In a year’s time my hair was almost at my shoulders and I felt more masculine than ever. Long hair was definitely not hip then with gay or straight men, but I enjoyed the lion’s mane that complimented an auburn beard I wasn’t messing with.

I felt hot. And when my husband and I were in Europe where all the men our age and younger were buzz cut or bald, I seemed to be getting cruised more than ever before. It was very flattering.

Back home is where Jesus surprisingly entered the picture. Or the classic, blond, light-eyed Western image of Jesus, who was most likely short and dark-skinned. Me, I was six feet tall, on the slim side, and Scandinavian-looking, but add all of that to my new hair and a strange world opened up to me.

Checking in at a Delta counter at La Guardia Airport for a flight back to Michigan, I felt the agent staring at me. As she handed me my boarding pass, she asked if anyone had ever said I looked like Jesus. I was feeling frisky, so I leaned forward and whispered, “I am Jesus.” She gasped. “I’m a good Catholic girl—don’t say that!”

My Australian acupuncturist was laughing one morning when she greeted me in her waiting room. “A woman who just left said she saw a vision when driving the other day. She said Jesus was in the car behind her. I asked if she lived in your town and she did. So I said, ‘Oh, that’s just Lev.’”

While working out at the gym months later, I was passed by a burly man holding his little son’s hand and the wide-eyed boy asked very loudly, “Daddy, isn’t that Jesus?” It happened less often if I pulled my hair back in a ponytail, but even then I’d get the question that the Delta agent had asked me more than I could ever have imagined.

I eventually went back to shorter—though not short—hair. It wasn’t the questions as much as the time I could save not wondering which product to use when, and spending time drying it. Then there was my husband, who complained about my hair getting in the way in bed, even if it was tied back. “And I feel like your hair is watching me,” he said.

I got that because it did feel like I had a new pet of some kind, given how much attention I had to pay to my hair. And I’d had dogs stare at me in bed before.

People who’d admired my Jesus hair started asking me why I’d had it cut. My answer was simple: “I got tired of being followed around by those twelve guys.”

The son of Holocaust survivors, Lev Raphael is a pioneer in writing fiction about America's Second Generation. Many of his early stories on this theme were collected in his award-winning book Dancing on Tisha B'Av, while the best of those and newer ones appear in his second collection Secret Anniversaries of the Heart.

Raphael is the author of 25 other books, including the novels Winter Eyes and The German Money, and three memoirs, Journeys & Arrivals, Writing a Jewish Life, and My Germany. The Washington Post has compared The German Money to John le Carré, Phillip Roth, and Kafka. Raphael's Michigan mysteries have been praised by The New York Times and many other newspapers and magazines, while his fiction has been widely anthologized in the U.S. and Britain.

The above story is a reprint from the Avalon Literary Review.