Hair

I truly adore my hair stylist, Rose. Four years ago she helped mold the mussed style that I currently sport. Ever since then, Rose and I hook up on a monthly basis for a little trimming of my hair. The conversations are sparkling. The haircuts are high quality. The price is amazingly cheap at $10.00. The atmosphere is fun loving. And, the other customers are straight out of Barbershop. Rose and I even have a suicide pact in case we ever drop from the ranks of the beautiful people. Shallow indeed, but salons in general are based upon flagrant vanity.

I’m not the only one addicted to Rose. Since introducing her to Sherry, Sherry now refuses to go anywhere else for haircuts, highlights, and whatnots. That’s two rave reviews from reliable sources; I’ve proved my point that Rose kicks clipper ass.

Rose’s only shortcoming is that she is one hell of a baby-making factory, she pumps out kids on an annual basis. If she wants a big family that’s fine with me, however two months of maternity leave a year is not okay. This leaves me with two consecutive haircuts where I must scramble for a qualified stylist to pinch hit for Rose while she’s off bonding with her newest offspring.

Currently, Rose is on maternity leave, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about this. Thankfully, she’ll be back cutting hair by the end of June. I don’t think Rose realizes how much stress and frustration she causes me when she leaves.

The beginning of May, I was caught off guard by Rose’s declaration of maternity leave. Not that I didn’t know this was coming, for god’s sake she had been pregnant for eight or nine months. I simply wasn’t prepared. The toughest conundrum last month was the decision between a Super-Great-Fantastic-Sams-Clips-Cuts and a real salon. Hack job -vs- professional. $10.00 -vs- $25. I’m used to the best of both worlds: cheap professionalism. When forced to choose between the two, my brain ruptured sending spinal fluid foaming out of my nostrils. Based upon my narcissistic suicide pact, I opted to shell out the extra cheddar for the guaranteed expertise of the mega-trendy salons.

Contage salon, a proud sponsor of Miss Colorado, is mere blocks away from work. I called up and made an appointment with Marcy. She did a stupendous job on my hair. Marcy snipped my hair to the perfect length and then, using a straight razor technique similar to Rose’s, preceded to add an unprecedented amount of texture. The way I figure it, for $25 the haircut better be perfect and I should get a bonus blowjob at the end. If Marcy were to slash her price by 50%, I might briefly ponder switching hairstylists. Unfortunately, the Shenry-Marcy connection lacked chemistry, and based on that fact alone I’ll still stick with Rose.

Everything up to this point is back-story, a little history to set you up for the comically tragic second haircut at Contage.

After a week of traveling the western slopes of Colorado, I was dreadfully overdue for a trim. Yesterday, I dialed up Contage. Marcy, however, was unavailable. I was panicking due to my near-hippy length hair and I request the next available time slot with whoever was possibly available. The receptionist hooked me up for a lunch-hour trim with Carol.

Carol… Oh man. She started our interaction by sizing up her competition with an inquisition about my normal stylist. I told her about Rose and our suicide pact and how Marcy turned out to be an excellent second option. Carol grilled me about what I liked most about Marcy and I raved about Marcy’s mastery of textures and straight razors. In a bid to steal me from Rose, Carol became obsessive about my hair texture. She pulled my hair up in the standard hairstylist grip, between her forefinger and middle finger. For preliminary texture she used standard scissors to cut little triangle out of the gripped hair. Next, she put the scissors down and applied the straight razor technique to the same pinch of hair. Finally, to add texture to texture, she picked up the thinning shears (you know, those scissors with notches) and cut across the newly razored hair. That is three texturising techniques on the same clump of hair. Cut, razor, shear, cut, razor, shear, Carol repeated this procedure on each cluster of gathered hair. Excessive, indeed. It took an hour for her to work her way from the back of my head to the bangs. Finally she gathered up the last clump of bangs. She cut the little notches into the pinched hair. She razored. Then she picked up the shears. Snip. A big wad of hair fell into my lap, a wad too bid for thinning shears. Carol muttered, “Shit!” I glanced at the tool in her hand and pissed my pants when I discovered her gripping scissors, not thinning shears… scissors! My fucking bangs were a quarter-inch shorter than the rest of my hair. Carol got all hysterical, repeating her claim that in 26-years of cutting hair she had never done something so thoughtless. Yeah, and a lot of good that was doing me. After a brief discussion I made the executive decision to cut a quarter-inch of the rest of my head to balance out her fuck up. So she restarted the whole painful process of cut, razor, shear, cut, razor, shear.

As Carol reworked my hair, my mind wandered into oracle mode: Drastic her error was. Foresee a price reduction I do. This made me feel a little better. I figured a $5 discount was reasonable, but my heart held out hope for a $10 discount. Fuck if I wasn’t stunned when Carol slapped me with a $30 invoice. Huh? Wha? Oh well, screw her (err, screw me).

The unfortunate aftereffect is that Contage, as a whole, is now tainted for me. Marcy is the best backup hairdresser I’ve met, but can I overcome the stigma of Carol? Judging by Rose’s baby-making schedule, I have year for the notch in my bangs to heal and the psychological scars to fade. Next year when Rose goes on maternity leave, I hope I have the fortitude to call Contage and schedule an appointment with Marcy. And, I hope to have the foresight to kick Carol’s scrawny ass while I’m there.
...and so it was written, shenry at 6/10/2003 04:16:00 PM.
...and so it was appended with .