June 30, 1999.

Exam verdict: I know more about Canadian Foreign Policy than I had thought, yet less about Early Modern Europe. I wrote a thoroughly mediocre exam for the latter, and was further depressed by the comments on my essay. Although it was well received, I had three weeks to whip it into shape. My exam was far worse...and all the essay flaws were magnified. Oh well. Little Spider says to trust in the irony of expectation...when you fret for one outcome and get the opposite. It's an idea with symmetry, but I still wrote a rotten exam.

But it's done, it's well and truly goddamn done. You can't imagine how relieved I am. I've felt the pressure since the first day of classes. I grinned all the way home. Now all I have to worry about is failing to be a good counselor. Blech.

All in all, in was a rather packed day yesterday. I got up at 6 a.m. to study, wrote exams at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., and moved out of res at 9 p.m. In the intervening afternoon, I said good byes to St. Jack (who's acting the martyr at my departure...we've been getting along splendidly the last six weeks, and now he'll be a lot lonelier). And before that I killed the Boy's hair.

It started out so innocently. He's been thinking about clipping it to deal with the heat, and elected to trust me. And I produced the archetypal Girlfriend's Inept Haircut. See, I was hacking away at his longish hair with paper scissors and having a tremendous time - it's wonderful fun - and I got a little enthusiastic. He had wanted a one-inch length, but I'd...um...cut too close to the scalp in some places. Some noticeable places. Ah, hell...I'd inadvertently given him Vanilla Ice style horizontal bars.

Yes, he was mad. Really mad. For about five minutes he refused to talk to me: just crouched on the floor, staring mournfully at some of the longer clippings. I was pretty upset, too. Not only because I'd fucked up one of the major trust tests, but because I'd damaged a beauty that we both prized. In his infancy, my father had long curly locks, and one day his father gave him a buzz cut. My grandmother didn't speak to her husband for a week. Now I know how she felt. Only I was the one who did it.

He got over it pretty quickly, though. The weepy spectacle of my genuine remorse must have helped. Then we started to laugh as the Vanilla Ice comparisons made themselves apparent. Ten minutes later he had a Travis Bickle cut. And after that, all the hair went.

It's an interesting effect. He's always been thin: now he looks gaunt. His eyes were always arresting: now they've the intense beauty so often seen in fanatics. It's somewhere between a terminal cancer patient, a hare krishna and a neo-nazi. Sort of threatening, but at the same time oddly vulnerable...he has no more hair than a baby. His scalp glows. I really wish I hadn't done this 2 1/2 weeks before his mom's wedding. Talk about advertising your folly.

Oh well. 6 million red Chinese and all the rest of that silliness.

I'm in B-town now, away from my beloved city and the Boy. I won't see him until the 10th, and I'm kind of depressed. The shaving incident blew away a lot of accumulated tension. It's kind of a drag that I have to postpone the relationship just when it's at its easiest.

I've been reading books on the build up to World War II for the last 2 weeks, which makes me feel all the more juvenile. We'll be apart for 10 days. War brides didn't have any such certainty. I don't suppose I have it, either, there's always the 2 tonne truck smashing one of us possibility.

You know, I'm not making myself feel better.

Pool party tomorrow. Not the fun kind with mopey goths who refuse to go in the water; the distressing kind with happy relatives eating, drinking and laughing. Pish. I'll keep you posted.