hair's a little story I got to tell

In addition to vacation days, the Cube Farm grants us three days of "personal time" every year, which is a wonderful thing indeed...except for the fact that they don't roll over, so if you reach December and have any PT left, you'll receive an e-mail from your department secretary, telling you how many PT days (or hours) you have left and reminding you to use it or lose it.

Well, I was under the impression that I had used all of my PT, but no, I had four hours left. I decided to take two hours on Thursday and two hours next Friday (and Brokeback Mountain better be playing around here by then, goddammit), and when 2PM rolled around---a mere hour after I'd come back from lunch!---I bolted from my chair and escaped to my car.

Okay, so two hours all to myself...what to do, what to do? I mentally went over my to-do list. Go shopping for a nice dress for the Christmas trip? Nah, not in the mood for shopping. Get my eyebrows waxed? Nah, not in the mood for having hardened wax, hairs, and two layers of skin ripped from my forehead. That left getting my hair cut, which I hadn't done since early August. It didn't look too bad, but I had some serious split ends, so I figured I might as well get those snipped off.

So I drove over to Supercuts and plopped down in the stylist's chair. "Just dust the ends, please," I said nonchalantly.

She ran her hands through my hair, and then she regarded my reflection in the mirror and pressed her rhinestone-encrusted nails together. "Can I make a suggestion?"

Oh boy, here we go.

See, I've always had thick hair, and stylists just LOVE to fuck with it. When I was about eight years old, I allowed a hapless stylist at Eddie Lou's Hair Hut to cut my hair shorter than I'd originally wanted, and I can still remember her horrified expression when I looked in the mirror and burst into hysterical sobs. Then there was the time someone gave me a pixie cut, which---for you boys and women under the age of 30---is when they cut your bangs like the top part of a heart, ostensibly making you look adorable. Nope, it made me look like a reject who spent hours hunched in the corner in a puddle of her own urine, eating paste and laughing at dust motes. And of course I can't forget the time a beautician wreaked havoc on both me AND my mom, giving us bizarre updos that made us look like startled poodles.

Thrice bitten...uh...six times shy.

But no harm in hearing her suggestion, so I said "Sure."

"Well, your hair is kind of brassy, and then it's like darker in spots."

Gee, thanks, sweet talker. I mean, this is true, but still not something I wanted to hear.

"So I'd love to give you some color and a couple of highlights, which would cover that up and add flair."

Yes, she said flair.

I was about to refuse when I remembered something that had happened just that morning: I'd brushed my hair and, to my abject horror, found not one but TWO long white hairs stuck in my brush. As much as I'd like to believe Oldie Olderson crept into my cubicle while I was in the shitter and used my hairbrush, I knew the truth. Those hairs were mine.

They needed to dye.

"Okay," I said.

Twenty minutes passed by as the dye soaked into my scalp...twenty minutes to ponder the potential consequences. What if she accidentally dyed my hair green? What if it ALL FELL OUT?

When the timer went off, she shampooed my hair and then she did some bizarre alchemy with tin foil and a paintbrush. "Do you want BLOND blond highlights?"

"No!" I yelped. My friend/coworker L is the sweetest person on the face of the earth, and I hate to say anything even remotely negative about her, but she has very bad, skunky highlights that don't work with her coloring at all. True, she's a bit darker than me, but we're close enough that I could tell it wouldn't work any better on my hair.

When she'd finished, I got to bake under the hairdryer, and then I got my hair shampooed yet again and was led to the chair.

"I have some ideas for how to cut it too," she said, and then she demonstrated with elaborate gestures.

"Fine," I said with resignation, closing my eyes and relegating myself to my fate.

I'm going to look like the ass end of a dingo.

But when she finished and handed me my glasses, I looked in the mirror and for the first time, I looked more like my mom than Daddy-O. (Not that there's anything wrong with Daddy-O, but what's handsome on a man doesn't necessarily work on a woman.) I had lovely caramelly highlights and, for the first time in forever, I had bangs.

Not bad.

Still, I knew I wouldn't feel right until I got a (semi-) unbiased opinion from my heterosexual lifemate. I drove home, walked into the apartment, and yelled, "Hey, K, I got something to show you."

"What?" she called, just as I walked up the stairs and into her room.

"OH MY GOD HOW CUTE!" she squealed.

Okay, excellent. Now let's hope that G likes it too, and let's hope that I don't start looking like the aforementioned ass end of a dingo. I spent my formative years reading and playing Colecovision, not futzing around with makeup and hairdos, so it's going to pretty much have to style itself.