A hair-owing experience

When Roomie Deux told me about her hair chick at the Paul Mitchell School in Sherman Oaks, I was skeptical yet intrigued. As a woman who pays $200 to $250 on her hair stylist in Brentwood, the thought of paying closer to $80 was appealing.

“Did she need the instructor to help her a lot?” I asked.

“Nope, not at all,” Roomie Deux said.

“Did she seem confident? She’s not questioning herself all the time, is she?”

“Nope.”

“And you really like her? She doesn’t seem like an idiot?”

“No, Jo, she’s not an idiot.”

“Sold.”
So we made the arrangements. The girl, Liz, was due over to our place last night to cut and color both of our hair. I was up first, the guinea pig.

When Liz arrived, the first thing I noticed about her was how young she was. Baby face and her body hadn’t yet developed hips. I eyed her bag of hair tools suspiciously.

“Need help with that?”
“Uh, no…” she said, glancing from my narrowed eyes to her bag and back again.

She forgot hair foils. I sat there and made conversation with her as she cut foil from what stock I had in my pantry. I laid down a free surfboard-shaped towel I received at the Del Mar race tracks this past summer near the kitchen table and then placed a chair on top. My palms were sweaty. I felt as though I was prepping for my execution. Liz mixed color in my cereal bowls (my cereal bowls!) and I giggled nervously, making some lame comment about how the color looked like paint tubes. Who says that?

“Okay, I’m ready. Sit down.”

Who was this hussy to order me around? Suddenly, I felt the situation was getting hostile.

“I’m going to do color all over.”

“All over, huh? Do you really need to—“

“All over. Color all over,” Liz repeated.

“Yes.” I said. She was holding a brush with bleach on it, like a gun to my head. I couldn’t argue.

She was swift with the hair color. I cringed every time she pulled a chunk of hair and brushed it, prepping it. I imagined giant tiger stripes, purple tresses. Orange chunks. When she finished she told me to sit tight for a while.

“You know, my hair, it takes to color really fast,” I said.

“Just sit there for a while.”

“Okay.”

15 minutes later my roomie came home. I sat there as Liz checked my foils.

“Wow, your hair is getting way blonde!”

“Way blonde? Like white blonde? I don’t want to be white blonde!”

“Just sit there.”

“Okay.”

Pause.

“Roomie Deux? There’s a bottle of open wine on top of the bar.”

“Are you…saying you want me to pour you a glass of wine, Joanna?” Roomie Deux asked.

“Yes. Please pour me a big glass.”

Eventually I was allowed to take the color out of my hair. I couldn’t tell through all of the chemicals and junk and liquid what it looked like but Liz exclaimed over it as though it were fabulous. She applied something-or-another to my hair and told me to sit near here so my hair “doesn’t turn purple.” I poured another glass of wine and tried not to squirm.

Eventually, I was able to take out the something-or-another. Liz cut my hair and compared to the color experience, the hair cut was a breeze. I was three glasses of wine in deep then and couldn’t have cared less if she gave me a military-style buzz cut.

“Are you going to give me layers?”

“We talked about that already. Don’t you remember?”

“Yeah." Pause. "Wait...No. I don't.” Sip.

She blow-dried my hair straight and shiny and smooth. I had no mirror in front of me and I figured the damage was done. No sense in going crazy on Lizzy-Hair-Doo-Doo at this point.

“It looks so pretty!” Liz said.

“Good! Great!” Did I sound nervous? I sounded nervous. Roomie Deux shot me a warning look.

“It looks like peanut butter!” Liz said. Sweet Jesus. I didn’t want my hair to look like a jar of Skippy!

At the end, it doesn’t look bad. It looks okay. It looks good.

But it doesn’t look good enough for me to go through that again. I’ll be calling up my friendly old expensive lesbian hair lady in Brentwood in about a month. She’ll have no idea how happy I will be to see her.