girlfriends swore it was blue. but i saw it differently. to me, it was more ultramarine. sapphire, even. richer in substance and yet unidentifiable. what it was was unique. i never dated a guy with blue facial hair before. he was the foldback engineer for some downtown venue. claimed he was from out of town and new to the city and didn’t intend to get involved so quick. it’s definitely out of character, he said, tucked back into the booth of the only greasy spoon still open in that part of noho. something about his sad smile and knowing downward glance: he was counting every inch between here and wherever he came from, marking every step that carried him to this singular plate of runny eggs. don’t laugh, but i loved him. i loved him even then. we’d met outside a nine jams concert. he said he knew the A1 from back in the day and offered me a hand-rolled spliff with custom-made rolling papers inscribed with his initials: bb.

so that’s what i called him: bb.

we did shots of fireball after the closer, got good and sweaty, and then after our burnt toast and breakfast sandwiches, i took him to my flat in kip’s bay—not something i normally do, but i also didn’t want to hop the m train all the way out to ridgewood. naked in bed, his head buried beneath my legs, he said i smelled like orange zest and almonds. well i never heard anything so beautiful, and i cried the second time i came. bb was good to go again, but we instead made plans to hang out at his pad in a week.

in the meantime, everyone decided to pile on my life choices. becca said it wasn’t appropriate to pick up townies outside def metal shows. alanna thought the blue goatee was the worst kind of hipster perversion. and melia outright scolded me: you should at least know his name.

i know all i need to know, i insisted as i bloody maryed myself back to life. his name is bb. besides, names don’t mean anything anymore.

the following saturday i wore my most epic pair of green come-fuck-me pumps and boarded the m train. bb was there at seneca avenue, and he held my arm as he walked me down the staircase. when we got to his place—a tiny one bedroom flat above a lamp store—he told me to snag a seat on the pullout while he moseyed into the kitchen to crack open the wine. the aesthetic was minimalist: blank white walls. a new yorker calendar posted by the front door. the books slumming on his shelves bore japanese names i didn’t recognize. a month’s worth of the times slid down the coffee table. the record collection thrilled (admittedly), but he’d all of them tucked away in old milk crates strewn about the room. how do you ever find something if you want to listen to it? i pried.

i can just feel where it is, he claimed, his voice coming in under the pop of the cork. good memory, i replied. 

yeah, i guess that’s sort of my problem. he trailed off before suddenly appearing with a collins glass of cheap shiraz. sorry, but i don’t own any bordeaux glasses yet.

are you kidding? i usually drink this shit out of plastic bags. a glass is very high and tight, very carnegie hill. i laughed and fell back on the pullout. so where are all the personal photos? family? friends? suicidal exes? bb smiled with his stained-red teeth and shook his head. i guess i’m just one of those feckless millennials. i don’t have a lot of “real” photos.

silently, he turned the needle on to charlie parker at massey hall and then pulled a shoebox out from under the coffee table. we smoked the hash inside it and listened to bird do bebop, our bodies slowly lacing themselves into the white knit throw stretched over the pullout. head-to-head, we stared up at the blankness of the ceiling and forgot our names and the places we’d come from. in that moment, the past was irrelevant. i didn’t need it, not to anchor my behavior or define my values or explain myself. i abandoned it, threw it out the window, drank every drop of it from my glass.

then suddenly bb sat up, can i show you something? he asked. 

sure, whatever you want, doll. 

he hesitated, not sure, not confident, though whether in me or himself, i couldn’t make out. he stood and retreated into the bedroom, returning with a wooden lockbox. i sat up, trying not to spill. taking the keyring off his belt, he disentangled a tiny little key and inserted it into the box. as he opened it, my heart froze.

inside were locks of hair. maybe half a dozen of them, pinned meticulously to the bottom of the box. each lock had a hair pin and small placard with its owner’s name written by hand in blue ink: michelle. francesca. angela. oumar. carter. rachel.

what is this? i asked. they’re my mementos. tokens of those who’ve come and those who’ve gone. he looked longingly into the box, and i felt suddenly as though i were driving late at night past woodlawn cemetery. the hash wasn’t gelling with the vibe, and the music suddenly cacophonized into a screech. i rose quickly, and knocked the shoebox off the table. wait, where are you going?

i’m sorry, i can’t do this right now.

what? what do you mean? look, i’m sorry. i didn’t mean to scare you. i just wanted to show you this. show you...show you the places i’ve been.

yeah yeah yeah, i said, and i’m totally down, it’s just i don’t know, the wine isn’t really settling right with the weed and i think i think i’m not feeling well. i think i should go.

okay, um, do you want me to walk you to the train?

no no no don’t worry about it, i’ll just call myself a cab. i ran out his front door, green come-fuck-me pumps in hand. i don’t know if it was the wine or what, man, but i think i stood there at the door for a solid ten minutes. maybe i was waiting, waiting for him to come find me, waiting for myself to knock on the door, waiting for something to become clear. but eventually the music died, and i knew the party was over.

in a cab back to the island, i took the time to swear at bb. i didn’t need to know all that, see all that, he didn’t need to be so open about it all, at least not yet, there was time, there was time to dig deep, to excavate old wounds. when i tell the story to beccaalanna&melia, they shake their heads: told you so, they say. blue beards are for weirdos.

yeah, i say. i was lucky to get out of there. and then, without hardly thinking: i left nothing, i said. i left nothing behind.