Snip

I've bloody done it again. I've lost another hairdresser.

I do seem to go through them pretty quickly but this one I'm a bit sad about.

Okay, so, if I think about it she wasn't quite as good as the one who owned a shop right below my old apartment. He was great - I've still yet to have a blow-dry that equalled his. But could he shut the fuck up? He could not. Reading magazines over my shoulder to comment queenily on EVERTHING, long, long stories about events involving people I'd never met, random characters who wandered in and out of these ridiculous plots. Outrageous. Friends know or could guess how I feel about this kind of chit chat: for me half the pleasure of having my hair cut is the pleasure of indulgence, including silence. So he had to go.

This latest one didn't have head massages to touch the dudes at Toni and Guy. Holy shit - what are the feeding those little emo waifs to give them fingers of steel? I don't know, maybe it's something in the water. Anyway I had no complaints with the haircut either - efficient and pretty. And they gave me champagne. But once you've burst into tears two minutes into a haircut and poured out recent awful events there's only one way to go: out of there. So Toni and Guy were out, en masse.

Half the reason the loss of this latest one saddens me so is that she was none of the above: she knew how to cut hair in complete silence, bless her. No questions. No commentary. yes, there was a woman who knew how to ignore and be ignored. Aw shit I'm, getting all sniffly just thinking about it.

Only problem is that she either hates me or she's a really shitty hairdresser.

Those two options are the only solutions to the question of why my hair currently looks like I've spent six months inside in a wind tunnel. Seriously, I appear to have lost a three hour fight with a racoon. The whole thing measures two feet wide.

"I think I'll keep the natural wave in it," I said. "There's no need to straighten it."

"Right," she said. "I can play up the wave a bit if you like."

"Um, sure." That's me.

Fifteen minutes later I have tears in my eyes from having a)been burnt by some kind of curling iron device b)the sight of my reflection in the mirror c)having had my entire head of hair pulled out strand by strand, or so I assume based on my scalp sensations. Either I've misjudged this whole 'we're both happy with silence' thing and she thinks I'm a biatch or she's getting her styling tips from Pretty in Pink. Either way... sorry lady, it's not going to work out. But it's been one hell of a ride.