do do that do do that you do so well

It’s a Thursday night and I am reclined on a plush chair at my hairdressers, getting my hair washed. It’s comfy and I am tired so I close my eyes for a while. The ceiling’s not very interesting anyway. I loathe coming to have my haircut – it’s been six months since my last visit. It costs a lot of money and I don’t like having strangers touch me, they’re germy.
There is the usual bustling about but this time it feels different. It sounds more like I am crashed out on a sofa at a party, with the last of the hangers-on still hanging on. The conversations are spasmodic and quiet. There are occasional footsteps up and the room, like someone who has the drunken wanders at a party, sticky-beaking about someone else’s home looking for something but not knowing what. Just moving about because that’s what alcohol can make you want to do sometimes.
This is nice. Usually I loathe having my hair washed; for me it’s on a par with putting petrol in the car or touching handrails in the trams and trains. Don’t you just hate public tactility – touching all the objects that other grotty people have touched? I think this is the most comfortable I have ever felt having my hair washed and I would be quite happy for it to continue.
But I have to move from the washing and sit about looking in a mirror, despairing about the way I look, wondering if my thighs look that chunky in real life or if it’s just my imagination. This is another thing that I loathe about having my hair done, having to look at myself in the mirror. I believe my outside has never quite been a true reflection of my inside – tonight I feel great but look like shit. In my mind I have pale porcelain skin, flawless and enviable. In the worthless opinion of the mirror my skin is a rag-bag of colours, pitted and scored like a cliff face.
Please put my hair back around my face Paul!
But he is oblivious to my unspoken pleas, working his mouth into contortions, furrowed brow overhanging his dark eyes that hawk incessantly about the room watching everything that’s going on. Paul’s not going to put my hair back down just yet so I stop watching me and watch the two young men across the room – one wields clippers, the other sits vulnerable in a chair. So begins the methodical movements of shearing, from front to back, starting with a centre strip and working down the sides of his skull, one side then the other. It is beautiful and sensual to watch; I stare unashamedly and the man being shorn stares back at me. I don’t drop my gaze as I usually would but just watch for my own enjoyment. Even when Paul moves around to my side and blocks the mirror I can still catch glimpses of the process through the triangular shape in the crook of his arm.
Snip cut drag pull pin. I watch the shearing until I forget to; when I realise the delicious feeling I had inside me is fading I look back, but the boys have gone. So I have to search for something else delicious to think about.
Doesn’t take long for me to decide to think about Paul. Paul is back from his Bali holiday, handsome and tanned in his Latino fashion. I watch him work away at my hair, fascinated by his facial contortions, the focus in his dark eyes. His business partner Marko works on the other side of the room. Like meercats on sentry duty their heads snap this way and that, keeping a lookout for any staff who may be loafing. They constantly exchange glances – in the gap between them collides their silent conversation, the coloured words tumble about the void before falling to the floor like discarded tresses. I am warmed-up inside and comforted by this; it’s pretty watching all the yellow, orange, red and green words float about the place, knowing there’s a pretty good chance no-one else can see them. My shoulders drop and I am relaxed in my private world.
Snip cut drag pull pin. As my hair is long I have to stand up so Paul can cut the full length; when I am again seated Paul wields the hair straightener.

I hate the hair straightener.
Paul loves straightening my hair.

Every time I come here Paul wants to straighten my hair and I let him, except for once when he curled and waved it so it bounced upon my shoulders and I felt sexy.
But here comes the straightener, snap drag, snap drag. It’s like a crocodile snapping at chicken on a string; I hate it when he grabs next to my ears SNAP!! With every pull downwards the steam rises and I wonder about the damage this must be doing to my hair. By the end of this process I look like a wonky-faced Egyptian; or perhaps two-dimensional, like Mona Lisa just had her face clapped flat between the pages of a big book. SNAP!! I think flat-packed Ikea hair just don’t suit me.
I pay (JESUS WEPT HOW MUCH!?) and head out into the dark raining night towards the train station, with no-one to admire the result of my spending so much money. But I feel a lot better, indeed, sexy. My straightened, organised hair sways and slaps about my face like Venetian blinds at an open window on a windy day and it’s a kinda nice feeling. I decide to go out to show off – albeit only to Coles for some cheese – but it’s preferable to going straight home. And I have to loiter about the streets from whence I came looking in the gutters – I lost my good black sewing thread on the way to the appointment, it fell out of the plastic bag that had my sewing in it. But there’s no trace of it, despite me thinking like a cotton spool and where I would roll to if I was a black spool rolling about in the dark?
Nup. The God of Haberdashery has taken it back. But it gives me a story so I’ll write that one for you next.

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