I am 33 years old. I dress like a college refugee. But I am clean. My eyes do not yet wander around in my head and when my neighbors see me talking, they see that it is another person I am talking to. Though I am different, I am tame. My most distinctive feature is my hair. It is short and pocked with grey. There is so much grey that I have what looks like flattened cat's ears at my temples. It has been like that for a long time. My daughter is 7 years old. She is tall. Others think she is 9. Like me, her most distinguishing feature is her hair. It is natural. She wears hers short. I am not responsible for its upkeep, so it is often ill-combed. The new kinks are tight as a bull's eye. My daughter, too, has a touch of the cat. The older hair is startled. It is a dull but deep brown ending in fur balls. But it is clean. My neighbor lives below me. He likes Whitney Houston. A lot. I did but now I don't. I went downstairs to talk to him about that. He opened the door. My hands started talking before I did. Down down, they said, please keep it down. in. Come he says. Oh I'm so sorry. Just call me anytime it gets too loud. Just let me know. By the way, y'know, your daughter's beautiful. I am annoyed. Yesterday I saw him flirting. He was flirting with my guileless neighbor. She is beautiful, too. And 12. He is an ugly man. I am loath to call anyone ugly for I know that beauty is in the eye of the oppressor. But his head is too large for his body. It is the head of his birth, the head that bent the bones in his poor mother's hips and began her many days of uncharitable pain. There is a vein like the Mississippi running down his brow. It empties at his eyes but nothing comes out. I look at the rest of him. He has made himself a body to wear with this head. His shoulders are broad from time on the Nautilus. His chest is hairless as only black men's chests can be, and his arms are strong. My neighbor's waist is small, feminine, cinched by a leather belt. The legs masquerade under ballooned pants that collect at his ankles and skirt his narrow feet. The clothes aren't cheap. His skin is smooth, his hair, lush. But he is ugly. in, come he says stepping backwards. His apartment is like mine. We are headed for the bedroom. I say to myself, It's 8 in the morning. He may be ugly, but he's not crazy. He shows me the guilty speakers. We talk of acoustics. His closets are open. They are full of beautiful clothes. He talks and he talks and he talks about school, which he has left. He talks about his crazy mother and father who moved out of their house one day while he was in class. He takes down something from a shelf. Look at this, he says. He has an aluminum jar in his hand. Murphy's Hair Oil.