The Perm States

Well its finally happened. I am sitting in my bed, typing. There is the small matter of getting used to the super touchy laptop mouse that my thumbs gravitate to, unknowingly moving the cursor to the middle of a word on the line above, goddammit. But, it is a small price to pay for the luxury of at-home technology. Again, thanks Dad.
Last week in school was blurry. I got a facial from Ms V that was very nice, I will admit it was hard for me to relax with my class standing around watching me, but relaxing wasn’t really the point. The point was to really feel how its done since we will be taking our facial practicals at the end of this quarter and then doing them on the floor for the next two. Although there is a prescribed sequence of massage moves that I will be hard pressed to get exactly right, I feel confident that, in the end, I will end up giving a pretty decent facial. I have strong hands, decent manual dexterity, good steady rhythm and lots of empathy. I only wish I felt the same confidence in all of my classmates, quite the opposite, though, in point of fact, quite the opposite. Just watching Amy take Tim’s mud mask off was an anxiety producing experience. Amy has actually changed a pivotal part of my understanding of the human species, which I suspect will unequivocally alter my interactions with people from now on. I don’t know if it was to their credit or detriment, but somehow my parents raised me to believe without question that no one person was smarter than another. I really genuinely believed that, until I met Amy. Knowing her has helped me to really understand (and hopefully become compassionate) to those people whose gifts do not include a sharp or even fully functional mind. I had previously felt like people were either slow and incompetant on purpose or just lazy and could really shape up if they wanted to. No, I now know that not all human beings have the same intellectual capacity. I know that saying things like this has come to be regarded as an insult but the fact of the matter is, it’s sometimes the simplest explanation that holds the truth. Idiot and moron were medically accurate terms at one time but fell out of vogue when we became concerned with not hurting people’s feelings. When I look in her eyes that there is almost no glimmer of recognition, even just of the language, the word order. It’s like looking into the glassy eye of a goldfish. Ms V asked for someone to take off the clarifying mask that she had put on Tim while she started someone else’s facial. I had already taken off someone’s mask and I always volunteer so I was trying not to jump up even though when Ms V made the request everyone just proceeded to sit there and look back at her as though they were new refugees to this country from some reigion of the world untouched by English. I whisper hissed at Amywho was dozing off in one of the facial chairs, “Go take it off!” She looked at me emptily and I pointed at Tim and told her to get a wet towel and take his mask off, Please! She obediently got up, got one of the BLAZING hot steam towels out of the heater and placed it over his entire face, mouth and nose included. So of course he couldn’t breathe (mind you we had all watched Ms V do this very thing three or four times already, we all saw her wave the towel to cool it, then make it into a sort of U shape that curves up around the bottom of the chin over the temples and cheeks to the forehead…) I whispered “He can’t breathe like that Amy, you have to uncover his mouth and nose. She said something to me which I assumed was “what do you mean?” or ‘How?” but since she speaks completely inaudibly I got up and went to the bathroom rather than speak in an off color fashion in front of the class. Now, I will admit that I have to engage special tolerance and patience with southeast Asian women a lot of the time, just due to the pervasive and drastic differences between the culture of the far east and that of the 12 tribes, (Amy is an ethnic Chinese who grew up in Cambodia) but she takes it to a whole new level. I saw the same feeling of disbelief and horror in Bintu’s face once when Bintu was talking to her over lunch about something, I couldn’t hear what of course, and had her mouth just full of food and kept taking bites and chewing and talking. Bintu said something like “don’t talk to me like that while you’re eating.” Amy, staring blankly, asking what, and chewing bovinely, just couldn’t even understand what she was asking her not to do. Once Bintu and I were both washing our clients’ hair at the shampoo bowls, she was watching Amy with her client, Bintu said “ Poor lady, she’s talking a lot and she’s not going to hear anything back.” I’m telling you, that girl has a way of putting things. I decided I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Amy on some horrible reality show as one of those miserable and stupid women who fight to the death over some schlub they love endlessly when they think he’s a kajillionaire but when he turns out to be a half ton semi owner/operator with an ex wife and a downs syndrome kid, they cry themselves to sleep, say all kind of inconceivably shallow and karmically unredeemable things on camera and leave him.
In other news…I gave my mom a haircut which came out fabulously. Ms C. came through at the end and gave her some finishing touches with a couple great techniques which we have never learned…lame. Thanks Pivot Point (our curricular system.) Then I got an SOS client (we give free haircuts to people living in area shelters) who was wonderful. He was a born Jewish wiccan who started his own company and waited on faith one too many months for it to get off the ground. He (and this is exactly how he put it) became disenfranchised and homeless and is now needing a new hair look so that he can go out and look for a job. We got along famously. He was a tremendously interesting person, we discussed religion, the nature of Jewish intellectual curiousity, what is success and how do we know when we have achieved it, and the psychological nature of parental approval. All the while I was taking him from his long grown out ponytail with very thinning front to a choppy uniform layer with longer pieces combed forward in a messy way to disguise a prominent forehead. He looked a damn lot better when he left than when he came in. And he told Ms V that the philosophy alone was worth the price of the haircut. Of course the cut was free…but I don’t think that’s what he meant J.
I was in dispensary on Thursday so that sucked…meting out product, formulating color and sanitizing implements all day. Weak. Especially since my friend Andy came in for a haircut. I had to let someone else do him, which was a shame since I would loved to visit with him a little. He once gave a friend of ours (we worked together at a fave watering hole for jaded seattle natives, the alibi room) who was having her batchelorette party the most amazing and hilarious lap dance at the Cha Cha lounge. It was underneath a velvet painting of a bullfighter, that enhanced the experience quite a bit. He had on one of those pearl button shirts that make that great snap-snap-snap-snap ripping sound and add a very stripperish effect. It was really great, and he wasn’t even at the party as I remember it, just charged into the room like a real surprise stripper, shoved apart the two tables we had pushed together and tore his shirt open. I wish I could remember what song was playing…I was three sheets to the wind. Good times.
Tuesday I gave Naomi a head of fingerwaves and colored one of the 1st ¼ students’ hair. Cute. Medium golden brown from blondie highlighted sorority hair, now it adds a nice contrast with her skin.
Oh, the great clips for hair Trojan horse… so “great clips for hair” salon sent three people in to school to recruit and inform all of us what a great thing it is to work at a nationwide chain of salons that no one nation wide with any style would be caught DEAD in. So what did I do? Well what could I do except volunteer my hair to be a cut model. In retrospect, I don’t know what I was thinking… you never let anyone who advertises on KCPQ cut your hair. Anyway it was this terrible fag in tight belted crotchy black pants and a striped button down with numerous and prominent facial piercings who did cosmetology school for high school and has been doing hair ever since. He also said he had taught at all the Gene Juarez locations but Ms Belle and Ms Kendra, who as you may recall both came from GJ looked shocked when I told them that and swore that they had never seen him before in their combined 20 sum-odd years at GJ. There were also two women with him who looked like they were cut out of Women’s Day in 1985 and glued on to 2004. Again, I don’t know what I was thinking. So I told the fl(I have hit the mouse and moved the cursor up like three or four times trying to type flaming)aming Great Clipper that I liked the style I had and was trying to grow out the extreme layered cut I had had that had seemed to consistently morph into a mullet of sorts. He said he wouldn’t be changing the style or the length but just razoring it a little bit to show us some technique and take out bulk. That sounded reasonable. Long story short, in a haircut like mine you have to be sure that the “bulk” you’re removing isn’t attached to the length. It was in my case, and since he was following no particular system to get through my hair he ended up cutting the right side into a chin length bob by taking out the few long pieces that connected it to the back and leaving the left side smooth and long. Another last minute and unconsulted stroke of brilliance on homo’s part was to create what he called an “artificial cowlick” on the left side of my bangs (which for those of you who haven’t seen me are very straight and flat) to balance out the natural one that I have on the right side. Jesus that’s a stupid idea!!!!! I mean, I spend five minutes every day blowdrying out the one on the right, why would you make one on the other side for me to deal with? Besides you can’t make a cowlick, he just ended up making a few annoying short pieces that blow up when its windy. Enough said, that’s what I get. All the while he was singing the praises and counting the blessings bestowed on you when you make the intelligent decision to work at a “select services” salon like great clips. Select service means they only do haircuts and perms. If you’re going to select any one service to be your bread and butter, is it going to be a perm? I think its kind of the same principle as how everyone between LA and DC voted for Bush and even though there are only like ten people per square mile in each state, they still outnumber us and make majority rule; if perm states are hunter green and non perm states are orange, the countries least populous states would all be hunter green and the coasts would be orange, and us orange urbanites will never cease to be shocked that “they” get to decide what determines a select service. I wonder if they perm in Canada… Whatever. I have an emergency appointment with Becca at 8 am on Tuesday. She is gonna kill me when she sees it. Oh well, I guess that’s why everyone leaves beauty school with short hair. Try to be compassionate when you see me with a high and tight on Wednesday.