Hairy Relationships

When we were first married, my husband would occasionally get his hair cut at the same place I did, but he soon stopped because he found that I leave behind me a sordid trail of broken hair relationships. He complained that it was uncomfortable when hair stylists would ask, “whatever happened to your wife?”

I think my history started early, when in high school an Iranian man cut my hair at the mall and later called my mother to ask if he could date me. This came as a total surprise to me, it was not invited by any of my behavior, and I think he was about 30ish and balding at the time. Needless to say, my mother did not let me return. Not that I wanted to.

I thought I had a good relationship with another stylist, who had a reputation for being good with short hair and created cute punk styles for a girl I admired in college. Shortly after I began to go to him, he opened his own salon, and in a few years he was whispering in my ear every time he cut my hair about how bored he was with doing hair. I saw the warning signs and began to look for a way out. But I think what eventually drove me away for good was his habitual questioning, “What’s the point?”

Everything I talked about, everything I told him I did -- whether it was art or gardening or whatever, he would ask, “What’s the point?” I think it was because he had totally re-framed himself in his mind as a “business man” instead of just a “hair stylist,” and to him everything had become business. Maybe there’s a lesson for me as an artist here, I DID NOT want my hair cut by a business man, I wanted it cut by an artist.

Besides, I don’t see how anyone can ever be happy when they are always going around saying “What’s the point?” Maybe this was the real root of his dissatisfaction with life.

I don’t know why anyone would want to be a hair stylist. I think it would be an overwhelming responsibility to hold in my hands the mental well-being and fragile self-confidence of a client. But maybe some don’t see it that way.

One woman I picked up with after peeking in her salon one dark winter night. It was a fabulous faux-painted affair, with beaded velvet curtains, and an antique barber’s chair with big brown vinyl sides and lots chrome. I thought I would endure anything to sit in that chair.

Endure I did, because I found a studio does not an artist make. After some okay cuts, interspersed with a few uneven ones, I finally had one of the worst experiences in my hair history.

As she started to cut my hair, I asked her how it was going. Innocent enough question, but what I hadn’t expected was that she had recently been arrested. Her teen-age son had thrown a graduation party at her house, and he and his friends had snuck a keg of beer into the garage. While he was serving tons of his underage classmates, the neighbors called the cops. When the police arrived, all the kids jumped over the fence and ran away, leaving her the only person in the house, so she spent the night in jail.

All the while she’s telling me this story, she’s getting angrier and angrier, and my hair is getting shorter and shorter, not to mention a few patchy bald spots. When I got home, all my dear husband said was, “Well, I guess you’re not going back to her, are you?”

I’ve had lots of minor relationships too, one recently with a woman who also taught at Jazzercise back when I was doing that. But I got tired of the emotional stories about the rest of the Jazzercise staff – it’s interesting how every sub-culture has it’s own seedy, political underbelly.

I started writing this history, because yesterday I got my hair cut again. Now I’m seeing a guy who just opened his own salon in October, and I call him the hair philosopher (not to his face though) because he’s always talking to me about the philosophy of doing what he calls “great hair.” I found him by letting my fingers do the walking. Last summer when he was still working at a big salon with lots of stylists, I got their number out of the Yellow Pages, and asked the receptionist who she thought did the best short hair.

Great plan -- it worked! He does very good hair, and even talks to me about what he’d like to do with my hair next winter. I’m flattered anyone would be thinking about the long-term future well-being of my hair.

As he colored my hair yesterday, I complained to him how quickly my gray roots grow out. He told me that I was eating too healthy, that I needed to get a better handle on the strung-out-artist role. We talked about why his favorite radio station plays Led Zeppelin when it rains, art quilts, average hair versus “great hair,” and why too many hair products now come in silver bottles. The hair was flying as he chopped away, but in a good way.

After two relaxing hours, during which I also got started reading my new book The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, we parted. I gave him a big check, and he told me to go home and get some sewing done. I felt good all the rest of the day. I guess what I most like about him is he’s so happy doing what he does. All relationships should be like this.