"Cool" Hair

I dyed my hair recently. By recently, I mean within the past month or so and I kind of just neglected to tell anyone about it. I mean, I can't do all the things all the time. There's just so many movies that are calling my name! Netflix takes a hold on me and clings on like a gator pulling down a Floridian.

Dyeing hair is something really foreign to me. I've never really done it before and when I was younger, I just figured that it was something that disturbed teenagers did when they needed to "express" themselves. This could be categorized as that part of my life that I never got to experience, the disturbed teenager breaching the confines of my mental walls.

My hair hadn't been cut since before I got to China and I had honestly been avoiding it.  The obvious language barrier would keep me from saying exactly what I wanted done and who knows what I would come out with. Gigantic purple spikes? Bright blue mohawk? How about all the things because I have no idea what I'm doing. Lord knows I was horrified that I'd have to shave my head again. But, the heat had been getting to me, so I gave in. My roommate Jake had gotten his hair cut recently, so I looked into where.

"Oh, I'll just show you where it is."

Saturday morning, I hopped on a bus to meet Jake a stop where he took me to a salon. After a quick walk through a park, we came upon the building. The outside had two spinning barber poles (what I would have to assume was a good sign) large plate glass doors. Walking in, to my right was the reception desk with a sign reading, "Worship of Fashion" hung above it. The floors were white, as were the walls and fixtures. A rather immaculate looking place. I motioned (quite literally) that I wanted my hair cut and they ushered me over to the standard barber chair. There happened to be one employee there who spoke English and they had summoned her to deal with me.

"So, what do you want?"

What did I want? I had told myself coming in that I just needed a haircut, but part of me also wanted to put a streak of color in my hair. Nothing too extreme, just a stripe down the side. I'm aware that doing this usually proclaims that your hair is now trying to make some kind of statement. I'm not really one who tries too hard to give speeches with their hair, so I figured that if things went south, I could buzz everything off.

"Just buzz it on the sides and don't take too much off the top." This is the haircut that I have found to most flatter my weird head. It's easy to maintain while still hinting that I have a little bit of self-respect to take care of my hair. During all of this, my roommate Jake was at the front desk trying to explain everything that I wanted dyed. He came over to me with an outline of a human head.

"OK, so show them where you want to put the color."

I honestly hadn't thought out the plan this far and couldn't really give an answer. I ended up deciding to get the hair cut first, then save the dyeing for last.

"What do you want to do?" The female employee asked again in plain English.

"Well, I want it short on the sides, like...that guy." I said, pointed to one of the other salon employees.

"But his hair is permed."

"I can see that, I just want it like his hair."

"Then we're going to need to perm your hair."

"No, I just want you to shave it short on the sides."

The girl quickly conversed with the man who was currently cutting my hair and she came back to me with this message:

"He says that your hair is not like his. It won't look good."

Well that's exactly what I wanted to hear.

Eventually, we came to a compromise on the actually way to cut my hair. I tried to guide them the best I could with a few words here and there, but I let him go and hoped he'd do his best.

After all my excess locks had fallen to the floor, the man went and brought out a large book. This was apparently the bible of hair colors because upon opening, I saw the rainbow. Every which color was available and I started to doubt my original plan of a simple red. Did I really want red, or was blue better? Purple? The American flag dyed into the side of my head with a skull and crossbones made out of every color at the back!

"You probably don't want to go too bright of red, you know."

Jake was right, now was not the time to get carried away. In the end, I had them choose a middle ground between two different shades of red.

"OK."

The plunge began. The combed out my hair and procured a little basin of colorful goo that smelled like bleach. The man put on some plastic gloves and commenced to comb out my hair in the specified spot and apply the goo with his special comb. I had nothing to do but sit and smile. I mean, what does one do waiting for their hair to color? They answered this for me by handing me a Chinese fashion magazine. I will admit that I love flipping through these kinds of magazines, but I had to feint reading so as not to look completely inept. Sorry I can't read Chinese characters.

While I wait, the man left a plastic glove plastered to the top of my head. I still have no idea what normal procedures are in this type of situation, so I figured this was normal. By this time, all the other patrons of the hair salon had left, which left the me to the mercy of all the employees. One by one, they would come by, put on the plastic glove stuck to my head, and pick through my hair what I assumed was making sure all was going according to plan. At one point, I had every employees surrounding me, quickly talking to one another while pointing at my head. I felt like a patient on an operating table.

"Quick! Grab the shears!"

"Oh no! We need a comb, STAT. He's not going to make it!"

"His vitals are low. Someone grab the hair dryer!"

What was only ten or fifteen minutes felt like an eternity as hands fussed over my head. My salvation came when the female employee who spoke some English told me I could get up and have them wash my hair. After a quick rinse, I sat back down in the chair to stare at the creation on my head. It was definitely...red. Just down my head. My thoughts jumped from, "What have you done!?" to, "I think it looks pretty good." to, "Grab the buzzer, now!"

After getting my hair cut, I'm usually dissatisfied with it. While this could be operator error or simple mis-communication, I just don't think my hair looks nice after a hair cut. It always reminds me of a baby duck, with the hair sticking up every which way. This leaves me in the moral dilemma of what to tell the hairdresser. There is the part of me that wants to request some type of re-cut, but I never can. I tell myself that this will only offend them since they had already spent so much time shearing everything off to what they thought I'd want. These are the people who hold your hair in their hands--you can't offend them. I honestly think there is never anyone who is pleased with their initial haircut but we all do what I do: Opting for a large smile and tell them that it's "Great!" and then walk to the car and pull their hairs screaming, "WHY?"

They all seemed so happy, though. Each employee standing over me beaming at the work they had done as a group. Like I had been some hideous street bum and they had transformed me into the Cinderella of haircuts. They even styled my hair so that I'd have something to go home with.

"You look much cooler than when you came in." the Chinese girl said to me.

"Well, thank you very much. I think I do too." I said walking towards the door followed by each employee.

I paid at the counter and waved goodbye as each employee stood by the door watching me go. I made sure to be out of eyesight of the door to put my cap back on.