Ed hasn't cut his winter hair yet.

2:11 PM 4/5/11

If anyone hasn't figured this out by now, long-haired guys are my thing, along with guys with beards, extremely skinny guys, and illegal teenage boys.

Long hair transforms an invisible guy into something that is a pleasure to look at. He can be ugly, he can be fat, he can have every possible thing going wrong for him, but if he grows long hair and a beard, I will find some pleasure in looking at him. He can even be bald and have only a small ring of hair left around the back, but if he grows out that little bit of hair and his beard, I will be happy to look at him.

Well, there is a guy who I used to work with at Weis. He stopped by at McDonald's last night to order something, and I saw him. I've been having a drug reaction and I'm friendlier than usual, so I let out this surprised 'hey!' when I saw him.

He has his wintertime hair growth. Every year during the winter he doesn't bother to cut his hair. He is very skinny and blond, with wavy hair. He has the narrow shrunken face and small jaw described by Weston Price. I sometimes felt attracted to him, and sometimes didn't. And there was a very sharp, clear dividing line between the times when I did and the times when I didn't. (I'm not sure of his personality type, but for whatever reason, I didn't feel a passionate or intense emotional connection with him, and I didn't feel fascination. I just felt a comfortable friendship.)

Every year, when it starts getting warm outside, his routine is to cut off all the winter hair that he has been growing. He suddenly goes from being somewhere in the range of 'very hot/medium hot' to 'completely invisible.' When his winter hair is long, I gaze at him pleasantly and adoringly. My eyes remain longer upon him. Suddenly, one day, all the hair is gone. I no longer look at him. Looking upon him is painful torture, an unpleasant and frustrating experience.

Last night, when he showed up, we were slow, and there was not much to do, so I went up to the front counter and chatted with him while he waited for his food. I asked him how his life was going and asked him about school. He's in school to study filmmaking. He told me about his portfolio and about 'webisodes' he was making with some other people, and mentioned 'Dead Like Me,' which I've never seen, saying that his movies were similar to that somehow, and he complained that he was $20,000 in debt and that he didn't want to drop out of school when he was that far in debt and not be able to get a job in his field.

He was talking to me and I saw that his winter hair was long enough to touch his shoulders, and it was curling around the side of his neck, around his collar. He also has a little bit of a beard and mustache, but still shaves his cheeks. He was adjusting his Weis hat and he lifted it up off his head, and he smoothed his hair back with his hand. A long string of wavy blond hair fell across his face, and I'm just gazing at him. I'm not sure what words he was saying at that moment, but his mouth was moving. He put his hat back on, and eventually his food was ready, and we said goodbye, nice to see you, and he left.

As soon as I turned away, I saw that a whole group of girls was hiding around the corner of the doorway into the office, all of them looking at me accusingly. 'What?' I said. 'IS THAT YOUR BOYFRIEND?' one of them whispers. 'No, no! We used to work together at Weis,' I said. They started laughing and giggling and teasing me, loudly enough that I'm sure he could hear them as he was sitting out in the lobby eating his food.

I've informed everyone there, in various conversations, that I'm attracted to long-haired guys, so they would have noticed. They would have seen the way I was staring at him and they would have noticed how unusual it is for me to leave my work station and walk up to the front counter to talk to a customer. So I laughed along with them for a few minutes, and then I went back to work.