someone touched my hair at a wedding again, lol

"[He] placed his entire palm on my skull and started kneading."

Dariia, Adobe Stock

It’s been a while since a white man touched my hair at someone’s wedding, but I’m absolutely thrilled to report the nearly 10-year streak is over. 

My younger self could have never dreamed of still being the victim of such a wandering hand in my late-mid-30s. And yet there I was, minding my business, drinking my wine, micro dosing disassociation, when the to-be-groom placed his entire palm on my skull and started kneading. 

My partner and I had driven up to a small town in Ontario for a wedding on his Canadian side, and I was surrounded by Welsh people I couldn’t understand (one set of his cousins), and Canadian people I could mostly understand, but also I wouldn’t admit if I couldn’t anyway (another set of cousins). We arrived a day before the wedding, eagerly checked into the Sleep Inn across from a motorway across from a Tim Horton’s, freshened up, and got ready to go to the bride and groom’s house for a casual, pre-wedding party. I popped in my contacts because I wanted to let these people that I had never met know I possessed the potential to be hot, then walked over with my partner and his Welsh cousin’s Welsh husband, who I pretended to understand for the next 15 minutes.  

Once we were at the party, my partner’s parents reminded me that they had purchased two bottles of wine for me. They are very kind and very considerate and they do their best to keep me hydrated. A red solo cup was procured, and my Gruner Vetliner poured. I met a bunch of people I had heard of but often confused, and someone else I feel like my partner never mentioned but honestly maybe I just wasn’t paying attention: The Groom. He was bald and he had a braided ponytail beard situation, and he chugged his beer and chain smoked his cigarettes and I was all, “Nice to meet you!” because that is the kind of thing you say at these kinds of things, whether it’s nice—or mid, or fine, or bad—or not. 

At some point, I had an aside with myself, and I whispered—genuinely whispered—that I might be cold but couldn’t decide if I was cold enough to care or not, and a random older man who I had caught staring directly at me offered me a tartan stole situation, insisting I wrap it around my shoulders. I didn’t feel like I was cold enough to justify robbing a random older man’s shawl, but he kept insisting, so I eventually threw it over my biker jacket. I asked my partner who the man was later, and he told me he had no idea. Soon after, he went to dig up the second bottle of wine from his parents’ rented SUV. I was left standing at a table next to The Groom, and my partner’s sister, and my partner’s sister’s finacée, and also I think my partner’s parents. 

So there I was, nervous because my social battery was waning—and also because I was surrounded by white people whose potential for hypothetical racism I couldn’t yet gauge—tipping back my solo cup every few seconds to make sure there was nothing left in there. There never was. I drifted in and out of the conversation, not really listening, when I felt the thud of a palm on the back of my head. I turned to the right, thinking it was the affectionate touch of the person who helps pay my rent, but I didn’t see him. I turned left and was met with The Groom: his mouth wide and grinning. “I just had to,” he said. “I’ve never touched a Black person’s head!”

I wouldn’t be able to tell you if mere seconds passed or actual minutes, but I stared at The Groom blankly for a while. I always freeze in these situations, because my brain is computing, and I’m thinking something like, This can’t actually be happening, right? I’ve misunderstood something. This isn’t real? Oh, no it is. Is it? Wait, no definitely it is. I was silent, but so was everyone else, and then after that, The Groom asked if what he had just done was weird. And I, a wordsmith, replied: “Yeah. That was weird.” 

And before I could utter any more piercing rebuttals, my partner appeared, whisked me away to the other side of the lawn, and started refilling my red cup.