My Final Hours

There was a fight over me at the desk on Friday morning! Ms Alexander, as you know, has me from nine thirty until noon every friday morning. Somehow someone at the front desk told another one of my regulars that she had a mani/pedi/facial with me at ten. I kind of saw trouble coming because I was at the desk on Thursday and saw her name on Abena's books but I knew that a. Abena wasnt going to be at school (DSHS hadnt paid for her daycare, her baby's dad had put their range rover up as a bail bond so when she traded it in at the auction for a far more practical minivan, it turned out it was owned by the bondsman, which aforementioned ni**a neglected to mention, and her stepmom didnt make the payment on the minivan that she promised to make after said ni**a cleaned out their bank account and left her without the car note money. SO the van is repo'd and she has 3 kids with no daycare and ONE week of school left...m'kay?) B. my client thought her appointment was with me, cause she had made a comment about it when she came in earlier in the week for a touch up with Sha'lana.
Anyway, she came in exactly as Mrs A was at the desk, and said "I'm here for my appt with Vivi." At which point Mrs A's already posessive hackles rose and (although i dont know exactly what she said) she brought my other client to near tears telling her that she ALWAYS sees me on fridays and that she was going to have to think again if she thought she was going to see me that day! Both of them felt the other was so indignant and rude, it was difficult to navigate. I tried to get my other client, Katherine, a middle aged black woman who just finished her BA in literature at the U and loves me because she can talk to me about chaucer and milton while Im doing her relaxer (which she gets far too often causing her hair to remain the same awkward broken off length month after month even though she wants so badly for it to grow out,) I tried to get her to get someone else to do her appt but she was so shook that she left. I think she came back and made another appt with me for next friday cause I saw her on the books later. It took me about 20 minutes to get Ms A to stop talking about the nerve of that lady to think she had me for a Friday morning, like the world prepares for her rollersets with her on a weekly basis! I love her. I gave her a haircut, which she was very nervous about even though she asked me to do it. She picked out all these picutures of really short cuts and then (even though I predicted this and so left her hair twice as long as the pics) kept turning her head and saying "dont cut me bald, now, I dont want scalp showing!" and " Ive never had my hair cut without Ms V supervising." It turned out well, a lot better with more shape. Relaxed hair just does nothing for me. Its good practice I supppse.
I also saw Romy on Friday! He came back in to pick up the remains of his kit, whatever his sick girlfriend (remember when she cursed me out in front of the school for "smirking" in her direction??!!) hadnt confiscated. He's working as a nonunion longshoreman, which is a pretty good gig, i guess. His girl only lets him talk to their daughter on every other harvest moon sunday when the wind blows from the east, even though she has remarried and moved to Florida. What a see-you-next-tuesday! He came in with an exeptionally cute friend who wanted his locks twisted, no arguments here! Call me anytime!:)
I then cut AC's hair, waxed Chloe's legs and left early to go to a baby shower for the facilities manager at Beelzebub's University Village. It was surreal. Everyone was telling birth stories. I chimed in with mine which, admittedly, isnt so warm and fuzzy. The state of neonatal care in NYC in 1976 wasn't the tender loving Disney special that it is now...I dont think the term birthing suite had been coined and the concept of a whirlpool labor tub was still quite a ways down the road, if you left the hospital with the right baby, you could consider yourself lucky. Anyway, I'm telling it and every one is like, "great baby shower story!" "Jeez, why would you tell her something like that?" Like just because I mentioned that they put my mom in the room with two people who were recovering from 1976style abortions and then the cart with my blood samples on it got stolen after they kept me from her all night and told her I screamed the whole time, that that was going to happen to this woman! Or that was going to scare/depress her to where she'd regret even getting pregnant? I guess they want to make life seem all warmandfuzzy all the time. Even though the general manager lost her first baby in its infancy and everyone knows it and said nothing about it. Denial. It aint just a river in Egypt. So I just shut up, had a root beer float, listened to why it is SO important to have a wipes warmer if you have a boy and how indispensable this touch and glow nursing nightlight is, how epidurals have come a long way because now you can feel your feet, and thought about how women in rural India go out under a tree by themselves and give birth with no pain medication and hopefully walk back to the village with a living child.
August first is my last day behind this desk. It has served me very very well. Aside from paying my bills it has afforded me several garenteed hours behind the computer without which I seriously doubt I would have garnered the discipline to write on a weekly basis. I will not miss it however and plan on never having enter data into an excel spreadsheet ever again.
I will be at Robert Leonard three days a week and at school only on fridays for the next two weeks and then, dear reader, i will have reached the magic 1650 hours that WA state mandates for its cosmetologists. I need to register to take the beauty bar. I may as well do it now even though Ill be practicing in New York and my WA licence will do me no good. I heard its a real pain in the tuchas to get liscenced in NYC, so that should be an interesting experience. I guess Im going to keep writing this little journal we've been sharing all this time. I cant imagine that things will be getting LESS interesting and now it'll be the Seattle contingency that will need to be kept in the loop. I wonder if anything could be as hilarious as this school has been. One of my clients gave me a beautiful belated birthday gift of a how to write for writers type book by Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird, and Me Talk Pretty Someday, by David Sedaris. Maybe I'll even become a better writer. At least I will reclaim my previous semi-literate state abandoned for these hairy purposes.
The fourth of July is tomorrow and while I can hardly whip myself into a patriotic frenzy, I am glad not to have a british accent or have to wear petticoats and eat tiny watercress sandwiches with the crusts cut off like all british people have to do (I saw pride and predjudice, no thanks!) Thanks American independant spirit! I give it up for not being a colony. Now if we can just justify the whole smallpox blanket thing...