Smirk

(non-fiktion)

My friend, maybe he did it for the attention, but he shaved off his eyebrows.
He said, it's capitalist.
He said, he was stopping the brows from merging and fighting.
He gave a lot of bullshit answers. No one really understood why he did such an impulsive thing; me least of all.
Everyone laughed. They painted on his face with paint, to make him look like he had eyebrows again and they all laughed. Then they painted a Hitler mustache and all laughed. He wiped off all their makeup and everyone laughed.
I didn't; just not my humor.
After school, we went shopping in Target for a half hour. Just meandering around, just losing ourselves in the aisles of consumerism, mostly empty, slow. Everyone we passed gave my eyebrowless friend a raised eyebrow, a glare, or a confused stare. He laughed, getting the kick he wanted out of it. I laughed too. It was some enormous inside joke, but hung outside like a fat neon marquee.
It was disturbing to look at him, to think about looking at him. It was because his every expression that day was eager, gleeful, happy and he didn't have little lines of hair to compliment him. He was this completely open person with his grinning, stupid laughing. His eyes weren't darkened or as covered anymore, and seeing his eyes so broad and piercing was unsettling. He didn't have a forehead, it was more like he had a fivehead.
It's weird, but I admire him for it. It took courage, on some level. It's a big fuck you to society, in one way or another.
He looks like a doll or a puppet, but not quite, because even those have more facial features than he does. He looks surreal, like something in a dream, or something a coked out artist would sketch.
We went to a Starbucks and stared out the window at some birds, people staring back in. It felt like we were in a zoo, caged in as a living display case for gawking idiots; but I felt alive and free, careless and eager; who had the freedom, society, or us?
I demanded my friend go and buy me a soda. I gave him a container of pure pennies. He spent a full ten minutes at the counter buying me my drink, as the cashier slowly got over my friend's appearance; then as he counted the pennies, then she nervously recounted them. He couldn't stop laughing when he came back to my table.
On the second day with his new style, we went bowling. Some cute female employees were flirting with me until they noticed him. Then they straightened up, shut their mouths in confusion, they gave us our shoes and didn't talk to us again. I didn't mind, it was worth the laugh.
By the end of the week, I was somewhat used to it. Not enough though, and watching him trying to express anything, anger, humor, even depression was like watching a pathetic rag doll try and imitate life. It was hard to even pity him, let alone sympathize, but I managed it. His emotions reminded me of a movie I once saw about a robot who wanted to be human. It was like this, except in reverse. I think he wanted to be a robot. Schizophrenic. Dead.
I always like it when my life becomes a little more surreal. I wish more things like this happened to me. Often life seems to bland, uninteresting. . . . hairy.
My friend wants me to shave off my eyebrows too.
The funniest thing is, I actually considered it.