I owe a friend an apology and a haircut

In 2019, in a restaurant on Church Street, I told a close friend that his haircut was bad.

It was not bad. It was, in fact, fine. I had had a difficult week. I was sad about something else, something I was not yet able to say out loud, and the sadness arrived, dressed up as an opinion about a haircut, the way sadness sometimes does.

He laughed it off. He always laughs things off. He laughed off, also, the next four years, during which I did not bring it up, because to bring it up was, somehow, harder than to have done it.

He has not asked for an apology. He will not ask for one. He is the kind of person whose generosity protects the people who have wronged him from having to acknowledge the wronging, and that protection has, over the years, become its own kind of small ledger between us.

I owe him an apology. I owe him a haircut. I owe him, also, an honest conversation about what was actually going on in 2019. I have not yet been able to give him any of the three.