Once Upon a Hairdresser
Read by the Author !!
A little over a year ago, we pulled up stakes on Long Island and moved up to western Massachusetts. Mostly. I kept my hairdresser, my periodontist, and several things about the place I both loved and was leaving behind. In my mind I’d still be able to get my hair done at my favorite salon. A day, monthly and I’d throw in some friend time and sushi… It all made sense in my head.
It’s harder for me to find that day now, as my roots form and I am blessed with a long line of visitors, all trying to understand what would make us shake up our lives like a snow globe. Once they arrive at our lovely sleepy exburb of nowhere, they get it. Or they don’t.
Maybe, nine hours to get my hair done because I’m scared of change isn’t worth it. There I said it. I want to go New York to enjoy the passion project I’m working on, and head back home for most everything else. My friend was right when she said it was just like me to be more scared to let go of a hairdresser than an entire friend network, infrastructure, home and way of life, but my hair is an intimate thing.
Mine is a crazy jumble of curls with little rhyme nor reason to it. My mother had my aunt cut it close so she didn’t have to deal with the screaming while she pulled a mercilessly small toothed comb through it. With my coke bottle bifocals and that shearing, the look I’d managed to achieve was sad puppy.
As a teenager I did my best to develop agency over it. I wanted the left side to curl more and the back to curl less, but it was useless. This ground covering of wild scalp has a mind of her own.
I went both prematurely gray in my twenties and genetically, hormonally “thin” in my thirties.
When the barometer does something, or the humidity drops, it’s phenomenal. Otherwise it’s the cotton like head of a dandelion, ready to pollinate on the breeze.
My first salon in Brooklyn, which had the nerve to call itself Pino’s Coiffure on Avenue M, was within walking distance from my apartment. An older dandy of a gentleman, Pino conducted an assembly line of bouffant blue hairs, shamelessly flirting while sitting them beneath carburetor sized hair dryers, rollers wrapped in cheap plastic caps. Everyone else got a 1980s mullet. Mine showcased my unusually large ears, leaving me to resemble a construction worker after a long day in a hard hat, at least until it grew in a few weeks.
In my later teens I gave up my au naturale righteousness, dyed my hair and never looked back. I can’t remember the woman’s name, but her mother gave me homemade Italian cookies on my way down to her basement, which was set up like an easy bake oven version of a salon--pink walls, metallic leather chair with chrome trim and a freestanding slop sink.
In Los Angeles I went to the second floor of a studio on Melrose and I finally found a stylist who wasn’t looking to keratin me into baldness, even though I would have if she asked. Why didn’t she ask? In the end she wasn’t able to stop the inevitable pyramid my hair formed twenty something days in. What she did offer me was a better product than the baby shampoo my mother bought in bulk from Job Lot. A huge step forward if I ever took one.
When we moved to Long Island, my husband went to someone with a coupon. I had two small children and 100 extra pounds. Scared of everything, there was no part of me prepared to feel good. I sat in the chair of this nice woman for ten years because she was steady and didn’t challenge me with too many questions, like what’s a wacky woman like you doing in a place like this? Every month, I knew what to expect. I appreciated that.
I had the basics down. If I combed it after it was already dry, it morphed into an electrocuted porcupine. I accepted that it rejected most of the moisture it needed upon first application, an extended metaphor for my psyche if ever there was one.
But when my hair went from a strict mahogany to a thinning purplish hued one, she didn’t try anything different and didn’t seem to notice. I was on my own. It was time for a change.
A whole person heavier, control of my eating was a pipe dream so I clung to something requiring less voluntary sacrifice, like herding the bubble bath worth of growing curls on my head.
And then I found a man who took perfect care of my hair. When I was still fighting the tides, he was helping me straighten and when my beautiful, wonderful, amazingly brilliant niece showed me how she felt about her curls, I finally learned to embrace mine and he did a lovely job with that too.
It was a soft landing for over ten years where I learned to appreciate the chaos on my head. His salon is beautiful, everyone is wonderful. They even offer me a cappuccino while my color is in, just the way I like it. It has been a joy to watch him mentor a string of people into their own chairs.
I’ve told myself I can’t find anyone who understands the quadrants of diasporic locks and how to tame them as well as he can, let alone pick a color that makes my eyes pop without making my complexion sallow, plus have intellectual and edifying conversation. Finding him was like a needle in a haystack--especially when I wasn’t keen on looking. There he was. And now I’ve moved.
I tried someone new and did my best not to cry. I don’t think she did a bad job, but I’m not sure yet. Actually, she did a fine job, I realized looking into the mirror. My hair looks nice. It’s not gray anyway.
Then I sniffled and cried just a little. Mostly because, as my friend pointed out this morning, it’s one of the final things I’m giving up from a life I spent a huge chunk of time enjoying. Maybe I do like this new hair.
I’ll go back and visit. Because when you find the right one, who makes you feel better navigating the world, it’s less about the complimentary scalp massage and more about installing a kind of armor, if only until the next shampoo.