My hairdresser, we’ll call her Whitney (because that is her name) was studiously studying what happens when she does my hair and then it receives no care and no consideration and no touch up cut for 5 months.
“Um, let’s start to work on some of this shag.”
“Go for it.”
Whitney is an adorable cross between the babysitter I always wanted and the big sister I always wanted–mainly because she really knows how to do hair.
She has many large tattoos on the places I can see and I imagine many more on the places I cannot. She also has a heart on her arm and today I finally asked her why:
“Well, you know, heart on my sleeve.” I had so hoped this was the answer.
I love this girl.
She is however talking to me from another planet as she goes on and on about what might be ‘fun’ in terms of my hair options. How I could ‘try this’ or ‘do that’ and be-fun.
“See, this even smells like vanilla!” She lets me stick my nose next to her hand to verify. Vanilla is fun.
I don’t have the heart to tell her that ‘low maintenance’ which I explained was my ‘style’ really meant ‘no maintenance’ but maybe she knows because somewhere in the middle of the cut she starts talking about product options if I am not even going to wash.. .(I want to ask her if that means ‘ever’ but she if off to the next product that will make me look like I just got out of bed—in a good way—‘tousled.’ I do often look like I just got out of bed, so I am definitely not buying that one. I can just check that one right off.)
I would love to be a desperate housewife of my town, USA . Seriously, I would love to have a butt that looks like all I do all day long is make sure my butt looks like this. (Here is where I am supposed to say something about how I love the life I have. I do, but the butt thing—that I would also really enjoy.) However, I do not.
My very big ‘fun’ today is getting this haircut and then getting to do a bunch of errands alone—without anyone complaining or asking to buy something. Ideally in this moment, I’d like to just read a magazine in the salon and not even talk and pretend I am a butt woman. But Whitney is very sweet and funny and I enjoy myself while she offers another in a long line of products I will not buy—this one is called (wait for it) ‘Young Again.”
She is giving me a little flip on the ends my newly cut hair. “See,” she explains. “This is great if you are going out at night.” I don’t have the heart to tell her that this is it. This haircut is my ‘out at night’ equivalent. And, if she is lucky (and this part I mean) it will one day be hers too.
But wait till they see me in the Post Office, I really do smell like vanilla.
