Hair Cuts

I am one of those people who will wake up one day and know my hair is too long. Like, one moment it's fine, and then next, I need a haircut. Right. Now.

And this happened to me recently. I called the hair cut place by my house, and they told me to come in in an hour and a half. Winning.

So, I showed up, and my stylist walks out of the back of the store like she balancing on a tightrope. She's not moving any of her torso, her arms are acting as counter balance, albeit by her hips, and she has an intense look of concentration. Her shirt's all stained, and I realize, she's drunk. Like, it's not mid morning yet, but she is hammered.

At this point though, I don't care. I cannot live another second without getting a haircut. I will buzz it myself if need be, and hopefully need doesn't be. I sit in the chair, and she begins to pull my hair back into a pony tail. Her movements are so slow and intentional, that I start to feel like the entire world but me is slowed down. My brain is moving way faster than anything happening around me. I am regretting my decision, but the idea of walking out of this place without taking care of the hair that is driving me insane is not an option. I've come this far, and much like reading a horrible book, I vow to see it through. (What a toxic character trait that is.)

The hairstylist asks me the same question three times, Do I want the sides cut? The answer is no, three times. She lapses into silence.

I am worried she is about to completely destroy my hair, but hair grows back. And while I work in the kind of job one usually cannot just show up to with a wild haircut (although once a friend did get herself a mohawk and I figured she would get reamed, and in the end no one said an f'ing thing), I know that if she truly mangles my hair everything will be okay. On the list of bad things happening in 2025, a drunk woman giving me a suspect haircut is not even on the list.

I think back to in college, when I was a freshman. I was in a new town, a new phase of life, and doing even little things like scheduling my own haircut with someone other than the person who cut my hair from the time I was a baby to when I left home, was a new experience.

So in college, I found a place near my school. It was late afternoon on a snowy day, and I went in, told the woman what I wanted, and got in the chair. She started speaking in super rapid Spanish to the stylist cutting the hair of the woman next to me. While my Spanish was passible, what struck me was not what she was saying, she was speaking way too fast for me to catch on, but rather, that she was mad.

The longer the haircut went on, the louder and more passionate she got, and the more painful the haircut became. She was combing the back of my head so hard that later, when I went home, I saw in the mirror she had left red scratches where the comb tines gouged into my skin.

But at the time, I didn't want to be rude to her, so I simply sat there while she bled the back of my head and neck with a comb. And then, she cut off all my hair. Not like she'd Bic'd my head, but when she and her friend realized what she'd done, they went silent. She had cut off pretty much all my hair, minus a little on top.

The other stylist said something, and my stylist began to nod and she started telling me, in English, that I looked beautiful with short hair.

At that point, I could feel blood dripping onto my collar, and she was slathering so much gel in my hair, it could have doubled as a hard hat.

When I got back to campus, everyone congratulated me for finally coming out of the closet.

This is could be an essay about how woman are conditioned to just sit down and take whatever abuse you throw at them, and then thank you for it afterwards (I did tip the woman because I had been taught to), but this is not that essay.

Instead, nearly twenty-years later, on a sunny Saturday, two thousand miles from that epic college haircut, while listening to my hairstylist's heavy breathing as she failed to put my hair into a pony tail four times, I thought this is almost like getting a very gentle skull massage.

So, I just let her do her job. She did not talk until the end, when I heard her breathing slow, and I knew she was done. She turned me to look at my hair in the mirror and...

It looked great. Having spent the time in the chair swiveled away from the mirror, I figured because she didn't want me following her progress, I was truly stunned at how good it looked. Not only did I get the hair cut back to a manageable length, but I liked it.

This little essay isn't about conditioning women. It's about how the hero we need is rarely the person we would take as our first pick. That lady, despite the odds, saved my sanity, and made me look good. #hero