The Neighbors

This was the last week of third quarter. As usual, we did virtually nothing for thirty hours. Last week was outrageously busy with clients as everyone wants to get their hair done for the holidays. On Thursday, I think it was, I spent from ten til three doing this one woman’s hair. She came in for a relaxer, semi permanent color and a trim. It s a careful business doing color directly after a relaxer, danger of a chemical haircut lurks behind every corner. Not to mention that she had been using henna on her hair, and the metallic salts in most store bought hennas will melt your hair in a heartbeat if you use the wrong type of developer. Her relaxer came out very well, if you like that kind of thing, nice and straight. She had coarse hair that was about 60% grey, she had been doing her own color for a long time and it certainly looked that way, very nice woman, very bad looking hair. She had red, grey, black, bleach blonde; you name it. And very very dry hair. So I had the challenge of trying to cover her grey and trying to blend in all these other colors without using permanent color. Veysmeir. I used a 4 ½ NG (you have to use NG for grey coverage with the Joico color line,) let the roots process for about twice the time as the overprocessed rest of the hairshaft. I was a little worried because I haven’t done any grey coverage on a real person and she wanted it red, but I wanted it a little darker to try to blend in the weird black patches and cover the henna. It looked really nice, not a miracle mind you, you could still see that she had different shades, but it was a lot better and much more blended. Then I flat ironed it and trimmed it up a couple inches to take care of her pretty severe breakage. I used a technique that Ms V taught me when I was cutting Baby T’s hair, a good one for black women who have a lot of split ends and breakage but don’t want to lose much length. She looked great when she left, and she was really excited about it. She was going to go see Black Nativity the next night, I wonder how she liked it.
I am watching The Pen episode of Seinfeld right now with the running commentary from Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, my mom got me seasons 1-3 for Chanukkah. I’ve always said that as much as I love Seinfeld, its sometimes so uncomfortably close to home that I can barely watch it I feel so anxious. This episode is a perfect example. Unbeleivable. Its got to be one of the best episodes ever, but when arguments over that kind of minutia happen in your own family with the increasingly louder back and forth banter that Seinfeld called ping pong dialogue in his commentary, its considerably less funny, and rather frighteningly neurotic. An example: My mother won’t let us speak above a whisper in the house after ten for fear of keeping the neighbors awake, actually I think she is more worried about them overhearing what we’re talking about. She was always nervous about it (even though the husband owns a popular local music store and they throw raucous all night parties with Karaoke and wealthy older men drunkenly reliving their glory days through air guitar and Jack Daniels on the rocks while their wives overeat and talk about kid’s soccer practices and how little time they have for themselves) but once they called her, or maybe the mother character even leaned out the window while my mom was talking on the phone and said “ we can hear everything you’re saying!” To which I would have replied something like “ Really? You owe me twenty bucks,” “ try earplugs,” “Move to the Yukon if you don’t want neighbors,” “Get a life,” or even a good old fashioned “fuck off and die,” but which sent my mom into a neurotic downward spiral which has ended up prohibiting her from answering the phone in her own bedroom even years later, and causing more arguments between me, who just cant accept the fact that she cares what those bastards think so I just insist on talking even louder, my sister who also cares what stupid thoughtless people hear us say and, even more so, cares that it bothers Mom so she humors her (which I think just exacerbates the problem by allowing her to feel that that sort of neurotic behaviour is acceptable) and my mom who’s personality is shaped by deep concern for not offending or even inconveniencing anyone, ever, no matter their insignificance in her life. Once, in the car in the QFC lot (miles from the house!!) we were talking about when the neighbor mom came by and told us to cut the grass so the “weed seeds” would stop blowing into her yard and my mom hurriedly shushed me, as if they might be shopping at QFC just then too and could over hear us. I had a meltdown and opened the car door and screamed their last name at the top of my lungs. God forbid I should shut the hell up just to make my mom happy; I’m working on it. Anyway, our discussions about these petty and meaningless interactions have that same exact feeling as Jerry’s banter with his parents as to whether or not it was socially acceptable for him to accept the astronaut pen, and what people were going to say about him taking the pen, even though it was offered and his parents responsibility for allowing him to take the pen. My stomach is in knots just thinking about it. Seinfeld says in his commentary that its like Yiddish theatre being played out in life. It amazes me how powerful culture is that we can grow up isolated from it, never see it demonstrated, and still end up playing out the same types of interactions.
My mom and sister and I went to look at a house for sale once, my mom likes to look at houses, and the owner, whom I’m pretty certain was Jewish, spent about twenty minutes with us, during which I felt like we were having a great time, checking out the house etc, at the end of which he said “Good God, you people are giving me a pounding headache! Its like being at my mom’s house times three, I’d hate to sit down to dinner with the three of you.” I was shocked, as I always think of us as so likeable that anyone who meets us is immediately enchanted by our camaraderie, a kind of to-know-us-is-to-immediately-love-us kind of family, but when I reviewed the scenario there hadn’t been one second of silence since we walked in the house and for every opinion, two shrilly conflicted. Not too charming. It occurs to me that might also not be the best way for him to sell that house, but to each their own.
In similar news, I did the hair of this Upper West Side older Jewish lady named Estelle who everyone at school thought was out of her mind. I on the other hand felt like I already knew her. She isn’t crazy at all its just she knows exactly what she wants down to the hair, and isn’t afraid to ask for it, and she thinks her hair is a creature unlike any other and must have an experienced technician to understand its mechanics. Which, in Seattle, seems at the very least eccentric, if not nuts, but in New York is almost everyone. She had short, older mom hair, a fairly simple combination form. Ms V helped me, it needed to be a little longer to cover a couple of thin spots in the back that she couldn’t really see. I did a pretty good job I must say and she loved it, she told me not to go anywhere expensive when I graduate because she wants to follow me. I thought she was great. Kind of like the mom from that early morning Jewish wedding I did this Summer. Later Dawn, the one who hates me :), told me that if she got Estelle again, she had already planned to cuss her out and tell her that she shouldn’t have students cut her hair if she was going to be such a crazy perfectionist about it, she said she was going to refuse to do her hair since it was her last week before graduation and she could afford to make a big stink about it. Just goes to show how big a difference knowing someone’s context can make.
I cut Andy Reinecke’s hair, of lapdance infamy. He’s adorable and has dashing Richard Gere-y silver hair. I didn’t do the greatest job as he had me laughing so hard the whole time talking about his anger management foibles. On the way in to get his haircut that day, some G’d down black guy cut him off and thought Andy would be intimidated. Apparantly he picked the wrong cracker, ‘cause Andy parked and made his way through traffic to try and get into the dude’s car! Homes looked terrified and busily locked his doors so Andy couldn’t get in. Andy was all “Oh, you’re scared? But you’ve got your bandana on, I thought you were down!!?? Don’t touch my car mothaf**ka! I have your license plate!” I asked him if he had thought about therapy, he claims to have “chilled out a lot.” He’s in the wine distribution biz, which, hear tell, is pretty cutthroat and Mafioso. I think he may have found his calling. Probably not so good for his blood pressure, but very good for engendering hilarious stories, I’m telling you.
This week I got my hair flat ironed to where it looks like a tigi ad, I thought I had straight hair until I saw this. Very weird. Everyone likes it but I think it makes my hair look thin and accentuates the Great Clip Cut. Oh well, nice to know the possibilities one’s hair holds.
Thursday I did one of the first quarter students’ hair. She is a beautiful young woman of mixed ethnicity who has hip length locks that she has been growing for six years. I think she was sent from god so that I would have some ones locks to do and practice cool stuff on in school, a blessed break from the endless relaxers and flatirons. I did her color. It was a hell of a lot of work but ended up looking really cool I bleached a bunch of them, then toned half of them with 10A to take out some of the warmth, and did the rest with 6RR for a bright copper look. Then I did the two triangles over her ears a caramel brown color, the back is her natural black with some of the tips that had old bleach on them colored with the 6RR. It looks beautiful. Totally calico. I braided them up after I twisted them and they looked like Indian corn. I taught Magic (one of the fifth quarter students) how to twist locks, which was nice since she taught me so much, wraps, relaxers etc. I really like Magic but things have been a little tense between us since some really amazing circumstances forced us into conversations more intimate than our relationship was built to bear. Almost two weeks ago, I “just happened” to be working the front desk when Magic and Naeemah came in talking shit about how she had just seen her man drive by and he hadn’t stopped to say hello. She called him up and was trying to get him to stop by and drop off “something” for her at school. He was saying he didn’t want to come in, he was busy etc, she told him all he would have to do was call, her girl Vivi was at the front desk and I would call her over the PA and tell her she had someone waiting for her outside. He refused. She got off the phone talking about “Damn DJs! Niggas at a record store and won’t come through.” I said; “ Oh, your man is a DJ? Where does he play at?” She said “Well he use to have Fridays at the Mediterranean, but it got moved up to The Fall.” When she said that my heart fell through the soles of my shoes since I knew already it was the boyfriend of one of my best friends. I asked his name, even though I already knew. It was him of course. I asked, I thought very nonchalantly, how long they had been together. A year. Half the time he and my friend, we’ll call her Athena, have been together. I weakly said, so when she found out I knew him it wouldn’t be like I never mentioned it, “Oh. Did you know I do his hair?” She didn’t of course and I could tell she felt a little awkward that I had been doing his hair and he never told her. Of course she was about to find out that there were a lot of things he never told her. I was a greener shade of pale by this time and excused myself shakily from the desk, walked into the breakroom and asked Bintu if she could come and talk to me upstairs for a min. I told her what had just transpired, and asked if she thought I should tell Magic or what the hell I should do. We decided I had to say something, but I was going to wait until I figured out the right way. Of course the second I stepped back into the room she was like “why did you ask how long Me and “DJ Douchebag”* been together?” to which I simply said “I have to tell you something.” The whole experience was unreal. And its not like she blames me per se but she knows that Athena and I are friends and so probably wonders where my loyalties lie. I just want his cheating bastard ass to be lonely and miserable, that’s pretty much my priority, beyond that, they both deserve way better. He is still trying to play them both, but I don’t talk about it too much with either of them, it’s a tender area for me, as I’ve been kicked in that spot more than once before. I don’t have a lot of patience with it. Anyway, Thursday was her last day so it was nice that she and I got to have that little chill, uncharged time together before she left.
Today, Friday, we cleaned the school, packed up our things, had a little auction where we could buy beauty supply odds and ends in exchange for the flimsy dollar store gold coins that the instructors give out to us as rewards for things like doing a great job, dealing with a tough client, basically going above and beyond the call of duty. On the one hand that sort of reward system harkens back to kindygarden, but on the other hand I got some bendy permrods, a tiny diameter curling iron, some fastdry nailpolish spray like they use in the nailshops (God only knows what is in that stuff, probably Hanford leftovers, but its god’s gift to the perennially rushed,) and some clips, all for free so I guess the coins get mixed blessing status. Friday also brought goodbye to the fifth quarter students who are graduating and to those of us third quarters who won’t be returning. Unfortunately, that includes my # 1 roll partner, Bintu. She is 6 months pregnant and hasn’t been able to finish a press and curl without puking for the last four months. She will be back in the summer but by that time god willing, I’ll be finished. It sucks, I don’t know what Ill do without her. Of course we still say we’re going to hang out, but its never the same, and the times I really need her are in school when I just need one intelligent glance to make up for the prevailing fisheye. In surprise news, those leaving also include Ruby, of Ruby and Nathan, who has decided to defect and join forces with enemy beauty school Greenwood Academy of Hair. I will miss her, for all her poor decision making and boy craziness, and even though she openly admits to habitually not washing her face at night she really is a nice girl and getting to be a pretty talented stylist. Plus those of us few who are left are really going to be hurting on the floor handling all the clients without fifth quarter and second quarter not on the floor yet (not to mention when those bizarre and nutty second quarter folks do come out on the clinic, we’ll all long for the days when we had to do it all by ourselves.)
Bottom line? Two quarters left. That’s about six and a half months. Less if I can manage to drag myself to some makeup hours. Happy holidays, may your days be merry and bright, and may all your haircuts turn out right (I know, I’ve got 3 weeks off, I’ll get some rest, buh bye.)



* real name withheld to protect victim’s identity