August 12th, 2008
Seven Years’ Dumb Luck

As a living, breathing, female human being of modern-day society, you know you’ve hit the hairstylist jackpot if you can walk into a salon for a hair cut, tell them you don’t want “anything taken off the length,” and witness them nodding unflinchingly in total understanding.
I’ve had hair salon issues over the years — namely my years in New York City, where it shouldn’t be that difficult to find a fabulous stylist to stick to — ranging from their doubting that I really, truly “needed” highlights to their pretending not to be cutting off more than a fraction of a centimeter but then chopping off several inches due to their claims (after the fact!) of “breakage” that is not visible to the naked eye.
Part of it is that my hair is low maintenance. On purpose. I don’t want them to give me some style that I will never be able (or want) to maintain. I have — I demand — to be able to pull my hair back into a ponytail in a pinch now, after losing hours, days, weeks of my teens and twenties to blow-drying and straightening. I owe it to myself. I don’t look right with a “style” — it isn’t me. Styles make me look like I’m pretending.
I will let them add layers, though, for depth/dimension, and the only other exception is that ever since freshman year in college — when Marie & I were the first chicks in Pennsylvania to dye our own hair with crazy stripes of blue, purple, and green Manic Panic — I’ve dabbled in the semi-frequent highlighting of my hair. Usually I do it myself, which has resulted in the further dried-out crackage of my hands from the chemicals, and is generally a pain in the ass since you can’t see the back of your head and have to open all the windows, lest you poison the cats.
Salons over the years have often scoffed at the idea that I would want to ruin my oh-so-wonderful natural blonde hair with unnatural highlighting — to the point that on more than one occasion I’ve covertly been given too-subtle, barely visible pretend highlights that faded almost immediately — with the exception of one little joint in the West Village that I’d forgotten about, as I only visited once as a walk-in customer when I first moved to the city and was living in Chelsea in 2001.
It must have been before 9/11 because I only remained living in Chelsea for a few months longer following 9/11, and that salon is close enough to Ground Zero that I’d have remembered that lingering afterchill in the air. I’d have remembered, because getting highlights takes approximately (upwards of) four hours if the person knows what they’re doing, and the windows of this salon look out upon Seventh Ave. — right out specifically upon a chain link fence that is now covered with 9/11 remembrance tiles done by local school kids. I don’t remember anything in particular being tacked to that fence during the multiple hours I sat inhaling bleach and staring out upon it in 2001. And then the world turned on a dime, and that fence hasn’t had a moment’s downtime these past seven years.
I bring it up now because I’d forgotten what a good job this place did on my hair — how nice the staff is despite it being kind of a dump — and how insane it is to drop everything to spend five hours brushing chemicals onto a walk-in who — for all you know — has been swimming in an old-school, pre-Baquacil, chlorinated pool all her life and doesn’t even tip well. I’d forgotten until I walked into the place again last week for the first time in seven years, and was greeted with the same friendliness and silent looks of knowingness. I’d neglected to sign on as a regular patron at the time because I was new to the city and assumed there would always be better.
And because getting highlights done professionally is not cheap! When I first moved to the city, I was making (as it dawned on me last week while sitting in the chair with foil-wrapped hair, looking out at painted tiles of the American flag and eagles and towers, doing the calculations in my head) around the same salary as I am just now beginning to earn again — after being laid off from my decent-paying job in the tech field and then having to live hand-to-mouth in publishing for seven years, and you know what?
I survived. I’ve even kind of had a life! I’ve somehow stumbled around these seven years, experiencing things, living, breathing, and now? Planes flown into buildings, thousands dying, several years of the white house’s small-penis compensation wars, skulking around not altogether unhappily on a wing & a prayer and quietly collecting the corporate world’s crumbs and hoarding them away for a rainy day until — finally, at last?
I can afford professional highlights again.
From someone who nods in complete understanding when I say I don’t want anything taken off the length, and means it.

