I feel like I’m pretty chill about my hair – I don’t do it in the mornings, just wear a beanie until it calms down, I let make my friends cut it so I don’t have to pay to have it cut, I often cut it myself, and sometimes I let it grow for months just because I’m lazy and don’t care – so getting it done by a trainee hairdresser for seven dollars seemed like a fine idea, especially considering how easy the hair cut was: cut all the hair.
The cut itself looks fine, now that I’ve fixed it myself, but getting it done tested my patience.
So a couple of days ago I walked into a hairdressing school, chose the dykiest looking stylist (if you want a gay haircut you need a gay to do it) and made an appointment for yesterday. Yesterday the receptionist called me (at eight thirty! as IF I’m awake at eight thirty ever!) to say that Shannon the pink haired one I asked for wouldn’t be coming in, and I told her OK whatever, can I just get someone else? She said sure.
Then I started to worry. Quite a few of the women in there had big blonde hair and fake nails, and letting them near my hair seemed like asking for trouble. I hoped I at least got a YOUNG, big blonde haired, fake nailed stylist.
When I turned up and the bitter receptionist handed me over to Brad – a young gay guy with black and blond hair and a tattoo on his wrist – I thought I’d lucked out.
Turned out he was just as bitter as the receptionit, and even more useless.
I didn’t expect perfection – I knew that a student wasn’t going to have the ease of conversation and the comforting compliments of a qualified hairdresser, nor the technical skills – but I did expect him to try. Which he didn’t.
I smiled and handed Brad the Hairdesser a picture of what I wanted. He said ‘Oh… that’s REALLY short, are you sure?’ and I said ‘Yes,’ feeling a little uncomfortable. He seemed to need to be reassured so he asked ‘Exactly like that?’
I told him I brought that photo in because that was what I wanted and he said ‘OK then. Follow me,’ and ordered me into a chair by a sink where he proceeded to burn my scalp for awhile before asking if it was ‘too warm.’
Then he let me dry my own hair, walked briskly back to his station while I scrambled to keep up, and said ‘Wait here a second, I just have to go find out if I should do this with clippers or scissors.’
That was the moment I lost all faith in him. I mean, he could at least have NOT TOLD me he didn’t know how to cut hair at all. Shit.
He came back after asking the useless receptionist, announced ‘She said I should do it with scissors,’ and started cutting.
I’m going to put a picture here of what I wanted, so that you all can better understand why I found it so frustrating that it took Brad the Hairdresser over an hour to accomplish:
Yeah seriously. I walked in at twelve, didn’t wait at all, and walked out at 1:05.
Twenty minutes tops, I thought. Shit I could have done that. To myself. In the dark. While people kicked me.
It’s just not all that hard.
Really though the haircut was only seven dollars, and I could have forgiven him if he hadn’t been such a shit person. The whole hour I tried to engage him in conversation because I was bored out of my skull and trying to take my mind off the burning sensation he’d created on the back of my head with that frickin comb, but he was having none of it.
I tried I’m From Melbourne, I Grew Up on an Island, I Lived in Vancouver for a Few Months, I’ve Been to New York City, I’ve Been to New orleans, I’m Dcared I Will Have the Same Haircut as My Brothers (lol?) and The First Time I Cut My Hair Short I Was Shaking. He didn’t bite. So I tried How Long Have You Been Cutting Hair For? Do You Like It? Are You from Kirksville? Where Are You Going When You Graduate? What Does Your Tattoo Mean? It’s Quiet Yoday, and Why’d You Get Into Hairdressing, Brad? but to no avail.
I can see how if you were a very very bitter queer who had the misfortune of growing up in Kirksville, or perhaps a robot, those topics might not scream TALK ABOUT ME. But if you’re a hairdresser and you’re so useless that you’re going to make me sit for an hour instead of getting some clippers and sending me on my way ten minutes later, you better fucking talk to me. More than that, you’d better come up with some of your own damn talking points before I just fall into a coma and die of lack of mental stimulation.
‘Well at least her hair looks good, Doc.’
He spent the hour amusing himself by chewing very strongly scented mint gum very loudly very in my ear, by letting my hair dry, then cutting it and brushing it down into my face and my eyes instead of back over onto the floor – actually making me sneeze and cough – and by cutting his own freaking hands. Yeah. Seriously.
But my two favourite parts were
a) When he said ‘I’ll be back,’ walked to the other end of the room to get some angry looking blonde woman, walked back pulling a face like he fucked up and looking at me, and then failed to tell me what was going on at all. She poked at my head quite roughly for about thirty seconds until I asked, quite rationally I thought, what was going on. She looked at me stunned for a second when I did – like it had never occurred to her I might be capable of speech – and snapped ‘Obviously I’m checking your haircut.
But she never asked if it was how I thought it should be.
And b) When he took a cloth – the same cloth he’d been wiping my neck with the whole time – and first brushed the (copious amounts of) hair off the plastic cover thing I was wearing, then off of my shoulders and neck, then – without shaking it – my face. Roughly too, with one hand on the back of my head to hold it still like it was one of the plastic ones, not mine. Like I wasn’t a customer or a person, I was a project
‘STOP THAT.’ I pushed him away from me. There is a big difference between being rude and incompetent, and crossing physical boundaries like that.
‘Oh.’ He said, ‘Want me to put anything in your hair? Mousse? Hairspray? Gel?’
‘No. Seriously. It’s fine.’
Good lord, mousse? Hairspray? GEL? That’s the grossest thing I have ever heard. The only thing anyone should ever ever ever put in hair this short is wax or mess-up. Ohhhhhh my head would have been so CRUSTY!
Finally he was done.
Hairdressers in the states usually get tips. I don’t know if they expect tips at the school but I seriously hope they do, because I seriously didn’t give him one. It was tempting to stiff them altogether but I just don’t have that much assholery in me.
Anyway, I’m actually not mad about the whole thing. I’m sure I sound like I am, but I’m not. I think it’s funnsy now that it’s over, and, if you ignore the mental anguish, it’s not too bad a haircut considering I only paid seven dollars for it.
I assume I’ll get photos of my head up soon, once I decide if I like it or if I look like a felon.
