Counting the Days...About 75

It has indeed come to that. At about 1 am I sat in bed, thinking of any and every reason not to go to school, when an unheard of impulse struck me and I scrolled to the calendar display on my cell phone and counted the days I have left in beauty school. About 75. Give or take because I dont exactly know how many hours I will have to make up. It sounds like nothing and feels like an eternity.
Last week had some pretty hilarious moments. The second quarter student, Milan, whose hair I had cut before, asked me to cut it again. She wanted it shorter and punkier. We had a consultation at my station and Camille joined us, listened to what she wanted and remarked several times that she wished she were doing the cut. I almost offered to let her then but didnt, I wanted to do it cause it sounded like a neat design line and I dont get to do a lot of choppy razor cuts. Her vision was a very shattered and choppy chin length bob. The catch was we had to do the cut in the back room since it wasnt a student service day. Remember that? So, we go to the back. I cut the basic form of the cut, put in the right length and started to go into it to break up the lines and put in all the short peices that she described. Camille is sitting on the table behind me, and she said agian "God I wish I were doing that!" Which to me infers that there is something she would be doing better. Well, I want to learn! So I says, why? what would you be doing differently? She got up and started describing what she would be doing. It sounded good, so I asked her to show me. She started off showing me, and kept working around her head doing this choppy technique. I dont quite know how it happened, but she just kept cutting and cutting and "removing weight" (sound familiar? GREAT CLIPS PERHAPS?) until I realized that the bob line i had put in was pretty much gone. At that time she offered me the razor back but I wouldnt have even known how to finish the cut so I said, no you go ahead. Actually after that I left the room to go clean my station because it was almost five. Apparantly Milan finally had to tell Camille to please stop cutting and leave it. Camille was thrilled with it until she realized how upset Milan was. It was cute, and it even looked good on her but, it was not AT ALL what she wanted or asked for. It was very short, not at all a bob, and choppy to the point of being very uneven. Several lessons here. Mine were: if someone asks YOU to cut their hair, YOU do it. No matter how confident someone else seems or how unsure you are of that technique. The fact is the person trusted you to do it, and it is your responsibility. Camille's lessons (which I explained to her from the other side of the 21 and up section of the Machiavelli bar that night where we went to interview one of her friends for our Salon interview assignments) were: You MUST listen the whole time during consultations, not formulate your own vision and tune out the rest of what someone is saying. It doesnt matter how cute a style might be, if it isnt what the person wanted, they arent going to be happy. Milan's lesson...sit closer to a mirror when getting a beauty school haircut, you never know.
Now, what made this whole experience even more insane was that, as I mentioned, we were in the back classroom. That meant that the rest of the second quarter students were back there doing stuff on each other and on their mannequins. This tiny little vato girl named Marisol, was doing this large, eastside white girl's makeup. She broke out this frosted light purpley blue lipstick that she always wears and started to put it on her. The girl was like "Um, I dont think thats my color." Every day when I see the child, who wears heavy black eyeliner, purple eyemakeup and has a purple cellophane over her butt length black hair, weighs probably about 85 pounds and is so cute that none of that wackness seems to dampen her cuteness, I think to myself "thats the color your lips turn when you die." Now, why at 28 I couldnt just keep my fucking mouth shut, I dont know, but as I was cutting Milan's hair, I heard myself say, nay, turn around and say, "That's the color your lips turn when you die." She looked at me like she wanted my lips to turn purple right there as the result of my heart instantly freezing in my chest. I felt bad, poor thing hates me now. Oh well. She'll get over it. It is the color your lips turn when you die anyway, maybe itll make her reconsider when she goes to lay in a new supply.
So I think I mentioned the crackhead/meth addict contingency in the 2nd quarter class. Its made up of a couple highschool kids (Marisol and her white sidekick who has a very weird sense of humor and a boyfriend with nothing better to do than sit in the waiting area and wait for her to get out of school)then there are a bunch of black women of all ages from 55 to 19 all of whom collectively have the worst attitudes I have ever seen. Individually they are funny and unique but when they are all together they are volitile, overly sensitive, and profoundly negative. Every little thing that isnt done the rright way or is irksome in any way, which as we know happens pretty frequently around there, is taken to task as if they are the first class to ever go through it and their own self respect rests on the policies being changed for them. So annoying. And so bad for their own success, They take on so much stress over things that are totally inconsequential and dont have a damn thing to do with them. We wonder why heart disease and high blood pressure have their highest incedences in Black women?
Then there are two older white people in the class who have clearly been struggling with hard drugs with varying degrees of success for many years. I think I mentioned Dale, the one who wore the cuff tee shirt and made the comment about Mama Cass dying giving head in the CPR workshop. Gabe said Dale came in the bathroom sniffing and snuffing and blowing his nose. Gabe, already knowing the answer, asked if he had a cold. said, "No, I just did way too much crack this weekend. I have got to get off that stuff." In all seriousness. He says things so outrageous in their content or just in their idiocy that you are SURE he is joking but then you look at him and there isnt a whit of humor in his expression. The other person is a woman whose mode of dress is that of a stylish housewife in 1986, probably one who loved fleetwood mac and felt that the scrunch boot and stirrup pant was a timeless classic. You know, a lot of jewel tones. Her head is always cocked and her long hair is pulled into a ponytail and kept from her face with a...HEADBAND! She moves in that kind of jerky twitchy way that longtime meth heads and crack users or very severe alcoholics walk. She is a really special case. So while Im doing Milan's hair, Dale is trying to put Evelyn's hair into a french twist. The only updo they really teach you which they had spent a couple of full days learning. He was grabbing all her hair into this ball on the back of her head and torquing it underneath itself all the while saying out loud "you take all the hair like this and kinda twist it up, shove it under, then take pins and stick them in like this.." then he started taking pins and randomly, forcefully shoving them into the side of the hairball mass he had created on the back of her head. I was SURE he was kidding, to the point where it hadnt crossed my mind that he wasnt. Until I said "Very funny Dale, yeah thats just how you do it." He looked at me with pure confusion, and Milan looked up at me, from her face I could tell that Dale wasnt kidding and that this was something that they all had to endure all the time. I was shocked. Ms V came over to Evelyn and told Dale to watch her. She must have done the twist for him, I didnt see. I only saw that she asked him to bring in some holding spritz and he brought in oil sheen spray. I told him to go back and get the hairspray and spray it from far back. Im sure he sprayed it about an inch from her head. As she was leaving the room Ms V grabbed me and whispered "I told them (the faculty) that Im not teaching skin to this class next quarter. Id rather retire." Amazing. After 20 years of literally saintly patience. They are incredible. Writing about them really falls short, its a seeing is beleiving situation. I encourage all of you for whom its an option to come in and see for yourselves. You wont be sorry. I did Ms A's hair in her funny rollerset. Tracks and all. She loved me, and I her. Then I did Ms. E's Pedi and Rollerset. She has natural hair and so you have to use a lot of tension on the rollers but it comes out really nice. I think I understood the rollerset combout for the first time. Youre not rolling them to be curls, you comb out all the curls. There is a little wave but really its all for height and straightness. The bubble. At Ariel's show at the Sorrento, which was great, I was looking around and I had done most of the people's hair at the place. Angela's twists, Nina's bangs, Ariel, Mom, Michelle... not alex though who, as further jew proof, seems to be letting the hair at his temples grow unchecked. stayed up way too late washing and braiding Trey's hair, which hadnt been touched since the last time I did it. I went to the chapel with Mark Gibbs, lincoln and Mark's friend Val, a tiny,busty columbian girl who came here w/ him from Miami. I drank a cucumber martini. It was good. I got a letter from the DOL that said that they were unable to issue me a new liscence cause my social security number didnt match. I didnt even flich. Who knows when Ill be able to take care of that. Frannie says Im a leaf in the wind and I need to chant to make a cause so all this stupid stuff stops happening to me. Namyoho Renge Kyo? I dont know, I jsut remember it from the Whats Love Got to Do With It? Tina Turner movie with Angela Basset...it seemed to help her a lot...I dont see myself chanting. There are enough buddhist jews out there. JewBu's as my mom calls them. Somethings gotta give though...maybe Ill give it a try.