“So how long has it been since you had your color done,” my new hair stylist asked me as she looked me over with her glasses on her nose.
“Oh, I dunno, is it that bad?” I wasn’t too embarrassed cause I didn’t have the money to come to the salon every 3-4 weeks like my step-grandmother.
“So what are we doing today?” she was keeping us on track.
“Well, I gotta sorta match this.” I plopped down my headshot.
“Okay, so what color do you think this is?” she asked me so very carefully.
I laughed. “I feel like I’m in first grade and you’re testing to see if I’ve learned my colors yet.”
“Well, we all have different names for things,” she sounded like my therapist, if I had the money for a therapist.
“Oh no,” I moaned.
“What’s wrong,” she asked.
“I just remembered I am on hold for a film…they haven’t gotten back to me yet and they kind of expect me to show up on set the way I looked when I auditioned.” I was suddenly nervous.
“Well then, why are you here,” she asked.
“Because I don’t want to show up on set with a bunch of gray hairs,” I was thinking out loud.
“You don’t have that many gray hairs,” she responded.
So we decided on a plan. She mixed up the formula and put it on my head and I could finally eat my lunch that I brought. After I ate, she said, “you get a hand massage.”
“I do?” I beamed, this was the best news I had heard all day. “How come?”
“As part of your service. You also get a make-up touch up too.” (I never got a make-up touch up.)
“Oh wow! That makes me want to come back here again.,” I stuck out my hand.
“But first, I’m gonna clean the dye off your face,” she rolled her stool up to me.
“Oh good, thank you.”
When she was using the hand creme, I asked, “Do you have a dog,” not because I thought she had a dog or she seemed like a dog person but because I wanted to talk about what was on my mind.
“No, she seemed surprised, “why?” she asked.
“Well, I like dogs and they typically like me, but I’ve had a really rough season lately, and I don’t know if I’m like, radiating, like, fear and nervous energy or something but this past week, twice in one hour on one day, two dogs barked ferociously at me. I wonder if I was emitting some kind of fear and nervous energy that these dogs detected…”
“Probably,” she quipped as she massaged my left hand with the salon’s branded hand creme.
“So then I saw one of the dogs and his owner again,” I was finishing up my story as she was finishing up my left hand, “and I tried to engage with the dog again and he gave me a sideways look and then started barking at me again. His owner said, ‘well this is Roger and we have to go poop.'”
“And I’m sure they did,” she quipped and started working on my right hand.
I was sleeping somewhat in her chair. She was finishing up pulling the color through my hair and she said, “I was wondering what you were thinking.”
So I told her what I was thinking, “I was thinking how I might need to take a nap in my car after this before I head back home-I don’t live that far away- but I’m so tired and have a headache so I was thinking about taking a nap in my car when I finish in here. But I thought, you know, they are cracking down on that sort of thing now, so I thought what if a policeman taps on my window and is like-“
“Ma’am, you can’t sleep here,” she interjected.
“Yeah, and I’d emerge from my reclined sleeping position with a head of Aveda hair and he’d be like, ‘ya know what, it’s okay, you’re fine,’ because you know I have Aveda hair and it’s all okay…But no, like, I hear they are really cracking down on people sleeping in their cars,” I said.
“But not like for 10 or 20 minutes, not like people like you; they are cracking down on people who are sleeping in their RV’s, like, all year round. That’s much different ” she was trying to reason with me.
“Yeah, like, my neighbors are writing this email thread cause we have a lady sleeping in her SUV on our tree-lined street and one of my neighbors is asking all of us in the email thread, ‘What do you think of that?’ And I’m like ‘Well, Live and Let Live and I’m sure it will be okay.’ But I don’t think that will go over very well, I told her, So I didn’t say that. Nor did I say to my neighbor in the email thread, ‘maybe you could mind your own business. How nice that you have never been down on your luck.’ But I didn’t say that to my neighbor either, cause I didn’t think it would go over very well.” I finished.
She was sort of stirred up, “Yeah, but except these people sometimes, not always, but a lot of times, it’s sad, but they bring mental illness and crime and do you really want that on your street because that person may tell other people your street is a good place and before ya know it…and I don’t know about you but I don’t want to walk out of my place and step right in some human excrement.” she was on a roll.
“I know,” I said, “my mother, who lives in the Midwest asked me one day when I went to visit her, ‘do you ever wear sandals-nice little sandals like me and all my friends-don’t you want to wear sandals’ my mom asked me, ‘No mom,’ I told her, ‘for you it’s just a trip to Walmart and back but for me, I don’t know where I’ll be or what I’ll see walking my streets so it’s Boots in the Spring- Boots in the Summer for me,” I said eyeing my hair stylist’s black combat boots that laced up to her knees.
“Exactly,” she was serious, “Boots in the Spring; Boots in the Summer for me too.”
I nodded as I eyed the pretty Asian hair stylist in the station next to us in her pretty flowered combat boots, and then peered over to her male Hollywood writer client next to us in his flip flops.
“Well, am I doing your hair cut, too?” my stylist asked me.
“Well how much are you?” I asked.
“$70, I’m a master stylist. I’ve been doing this for thirty four years.” she said.
“Oh no, I can’t afford that. I can’t even afford $55 but I heard that is the lowest.”
“Yeah, Allie, sweetie, you’ll be cutting her hair. It’s a cash flow issue.” she shouted over to Allie.