Hairtales from the Cursed

It’s time to write about a recurring trauma in my life. (Heavy-hearted sigh) Another hair-do massacre has taken place. As I write, I am recovering from a heart-attack directly linked to the hair dressers. It’s still the first 24 hours, so I am in a fragile state. I’m hoping by tomorrow I’ll only have minor palpitations. From some luck of the draw, I have been cursed since birth with some kind of Hair-Do Curse.

But, before I tell you about today, let’s take a trip down Hair-Don’t Memory Lane. I’ll narrow it down to the Top 5. They are in chronological order. And this story is rather long so you might want to save these tales for a day when you have time to sit and read.

Hairtale 1 (Note: If you have The Curse, there are signs of it early in life.)

From birth to the age of about 12, this was my recurring hair-dresser routine: “How would you like your hair cut today?” the hair dresser asks.

“Well, I’m trying to grow it out. So, please just give it a trim,” I reply.

“Okay. No problem.” Then, scissor noises: hack hack hack. Twenty minutes later, hair-dryer noises. I glimpse in the mirror several times at the hair-ball manifesting before my eyes. I try not to watch as every curl is brushed out into a fluffy cotton-candy mass. Then there are hair-spray noises. The hair-dresser pats my afro while smiling. Then, she whirls my chair around so I am facing myself head-on in the mirror.

My mother stands behind me and asks, “Oh, don’t you just love it?”

How the hell can I say “no”? I can’t. I cannot say a word. I am concentrating too hard to keep back the tears and control my mouth which so badly wants to contort and quiver. I am ugly. I am so ugly. I hate how I look. “Get me out of here. Why did you do this to my hair? Would you want to look like this?” That’s what I want to say to the hair dresser, but I can’t because my mother just asked me to say how much I like it.

We cannot leave fast enough. My mother cannot unlock her car fast enough. I cannot hide in the back with my coat over my head fast enough. I cry the entire way home. Once we are home, my mother gets out her hair dryer and straightens my hair. She makes me feel normal again. She fixes the awful mess. This scene happens several times a year for years.

Hairtale 2 (Note: The Curse is most dangerous when in your own hands.)

At the age of about 13 years old, I decide my hair is now in my own hands, for better or for worse. It’s the 80’s and I feel very free. Girls are wearing their hair very short. Long bangs and short sides are in. There is room for mistakes (and I’ll need all the room I can get when cutting my own hair). Why not experiment? One day, I’m alone in my room listening to music and staring into my mirror. I love the scarf my new boyfriend gave me. It looks like a long dirty piece of gauze around my neck. I say to myself, “Time for a haircut.” I get the scissors. My hair is almost chin length when I straighten it with a hair dryer.

I will look good with short sides and long bangs. Snip, snip, snip. I glance in the mirror. Not bad. I think the sides could be a little shorter. Snip, snip, snip. I can see my scalp peaking beneath the short hairs on the side of my head. My heart starts racing. Do I want it this short? Yes! I look punk, it’s a new me. This is a perfect role for me. I pull my long bangs over my left eye and cut them into a point. Even better! That night at dinner, my parents take turns looking back and forth at each other.

“Did you have brain surgery, kid?” asks my father dryly. Clearly he does not like my new do.

My mother looks confused. “Did you mean to cut it that short?”

“Yes,” I say and sit-up straighter, “I like it this way.” I untie the grey rag I’m wearing and re-wrap it around my neck.

“You look like a Garbage-Patch Kid,” my sister says flatly while chewing her food.

No one seems to appreciate my new look. For weeks, I maintain this look. Time passes and we are now staying in a hotel in Denver, a Christmas vacation for the family. My sister and I have our own room. While my sister is sitting on the bed listening to Depeche Mode on her Walkman, I stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom, alone. The sides of my hair have grown-in quite a bit, time for a trim.

I get out my scissors and trim my sides dangerously close. The sides look like an uneven army buzz. There are too many holes. I need to smooth it all out. I dig through my make-up purse and find a disposable orange Bic razor. I carefully begin to shave the sides to get them nice and even.

I nick myself a little and a couple drops of blood rise to the surface of my scalp. I stand back and observe the art project in front of me. My head is shiny. I am not going for a shiny head look. I look like the freak from the Thompson Twins video. I begin to panic. I comb my bangs over the side of my head, like and old man trying to cover a bald spot. My bangs are too long. I neatly cut them to fit perfectly around my ear. It hides the baldness but looks like a wig. I try to stay calm but I can’t.

This is a disaster. My heart beats faster. “Diane!” I cry out for my sister. Maybe she can help me or at least comfort me. “Diane!”

She can’t hear me, she is singing with her music. Diane is in her own little world. I hurry out of the bathroom and walk up to her bed, “Diane!” I scream.

She flinches a little. She takes off her headset and looks at me.

“I totally fucked up my hair! I totally fucked it up!” I start crying.

“What did you do?” She stands up. I walk back to the bathroom and she follows me. We are both standing under the bright lights in our cramped hotel bathroom. I lift my make-shift hair flap and uncover the baldness.

“What the fuck, Sunny? Why did you do that?”

I stare at myself red-eyed and ugly in the mirror.

“Did you shave it with a Bic?”

“Yes”, I sob, “What am I going to do?”

“Dad is going to kill you, Sunny!” Diane was not offering any comfort whatsoever.

“No shit, Diane! Shut up! Help me, god!” I snap.

“What do you want me to do, Sunny? I can’t fix that shit. Cover it back up with your hair, they might not see it.”

I pat my hair flap back over the side and spray some Aqua Net to hold it in place. “Does it look normal?” I keep patting my hair down. “Does it look okay?”

She cocks her head. “I don’t know, Sunny. It’s pretty bad. Just don’t show them that side…”

Hairtale 3 (Note: Even family members who love you could have The Curse)

Around 18 years old, my mother decides my hair is too dark. I am no longer her golden-haired little girl. Why not add some highlights? My mother buys a DIY highlight kit at Target. It comes with a scary rubber white cap punctured with miniscule holes. She puts it on my head and pulls hairs through the tiny holes with a plastic hook. I look like a cancer victim suffering chemo. We wait for the bleach to do its magic. We take off the cap and rinse my hair. Yellow strings hang randomly around my head. My mother studies my hair, “I think we need to add more highlights around your face,” she says and smears a bunch of highly toxic white cream on my hair around my face, especially above my forehead.

Being the trusting soul I am, I busy myself with more important things like talking on the phone. After a while, my mother tells me to rinse my hair. I rinse it and look in the mirror. I have a thick white stripe down the top of my head.

“Oh, my god!” I scream, “Mom, I look like a fucking skunk! What did you do?”

My mother panics. This means she begins laughing, crying, and coughing at the same time. She can’t speak. She tries to cough up a few words, “Ohh.I’m.sorry. Maybe.it.will.look.better.when.we.dry.it.”

I am not convinced. We dry it. Do you think it looks better dry? My mother speeds back to the store and buys some brown hair dye. We dye my hair back. It is fine for several months, but then the brown begins to fade and the white stripe reappears. (At least it has considerably grown out and it looks kind of SJP Sex in the City-ish but this was pre-Sex in the City days.)

Hairtale 4 (Note: If you have The Curse, you can expect at least one standing-ovation performance.)

Fast-forward to myself at 30 years old. My husband and I are living in Brussels. My sister is about to get married. Two days before I am flying to Arizona, I decide to get caramel highlights like Jennifer Aniston. (And you all know the color I’m talking about.) Just down the street is a hair-salon. A petit pretentious male has me sit down in a sleek black swivel chair. He brings out a book with different highlight colors. “So, show me which color you like?” He opens the shiny book. There are strips of different colored hair with fancy names underneath.

“Oh, I like that one, Honey Caramel,” I point to the hair strip. It is a beautiful warm color. I imagine how great my hair will look in this golden shade.

“Perfect”, he says. He takes the book away and starts to prepare my selection in a black plastic bowl. Very hip music is playing in the salon. Very hip people work there. I am going to leave looking very hip. My hairdresser sets a little timer on the shelf behind me. I wait while the chemicals do their magic.

“Ding, ding, ding,” rings the timer. It’s time to rinse my hair. Oh, I’m so excited. He rinses and rinses and then he dries while I look in the mirror. Do you think my hair is Honey Caramel? I don’t think my hair is Honey Caramel. My hair is Burning Bush Red. He finishes drying my hair.

“All done,” he says and walks over to the cash register.

As I’m paying, something is just not right. Should I say something? I hesitate. I finish paying. And then I say it. “It looks red.”

“Red?” he shakes his head, “No, it’s copper.”

“It looks red,” I repeat. “This is not the color I chose.”

“Yes, you chose this color,” he says quite confidently.

I begin to boil inside. “No. I chose Honey Caramel. Show me the book. I’ll show you,” I say.

He looks very hesitant. “Look, Madame, this is the color you chose.”

The two of us are standing in front of the mirror looking at my hair. By now, the other hair-dressers stop what they are doing. Everyone is listening. Everyone is looking at me and my red hair. He goes over to the book shelf and brings the hair samples to me. He opens the book. It is not the same book he initially showed me.

“This isn’t the book I looked at. This book doesn’t have the color I chose.” Now I am livid and shaking. He is trying to deceive me. It is unbelievable.

He smiles wryly, “This is the only book we have,” he says while making eye contact with all the other hair dressers. This is his cue to them, “Go along with what I say.”

“No. No. There is a different book with Honey Caramel.” I shake my head. My voice is getting louder. I’m still standing in front of the mirror. Customers are looking at me. “This is red. My hair is red!” I scream.

“Madame. Please calm down. Your hair is not red,” he says, “It’s copper.”

This is when I lose it. I look at the customers. “Does this look like Honey Caramel to you?” I scream while pointing to my head. I make eye contact with each customer. They avert their glances. No one wants to acknowledge me.

“Madame. You are going to have to leave. You are making a scene.”

“This is not Honey Caramel!” I bellow, “You are lying! You’re lying! My hair is red!” I scream on the top of my lungs. My throat hurts. I am losing control. Mustering up the last of my energy I look at the customers again and say, “This man is a liar! He’s a liar! I wanted Honey Caramel hair and he made it red! Don’t come here!” I leave the salon shaking. My breath is irregular. I make it back home.

My husband doesn’t understand what is happening. I am trembling. I am pacing back in forth in our apartment. I am acting crazy. I explain to my best ability what happened at the salon. My husband is upset. He leaves our apartment in a hurry and goes to the salon. I continue pacing back and forth. My husband is back within minutes.

“I can’t get your money back, Sunny. The man refuses but if you go back, he will fix it. That’s the best I can do.”

“Go back? Go back?” I holler. “I made a fucking scene in there. I can’t ever go back there…EVER!”

“Well, I don’t know what else to do,” my husband says.

The next day, I go to a different salon. They make my color better. In fact, everyone at my sister’s wedding comments on how great my hair color was, some auburn shade that is impossible to recreate considering it was two different hair colors from two different salons. To this day, that is my worst case-scenario regarding my behavior. So, imagine the fear in my husband last night when I come home with Hair Catastrophe Number 5!


Hairtale 5 (Note: At some point, we the cursed need to accept our destiny.)

Let’s fast forward to the present. I am now a mother of two little girls. Three years ago, some woman hacked my hair into a mess of two layers, one very short, one very long. I never went to her again. I have been, ever since, re-growing my hair. Yesterday, it was pretty long and almost layer-free. I was feeling happy that my hair was finally long again. I have been going to the same hair salon for two years now without any drama.

Yesterday, my little girls wanted to get their hair cut. I needed a hair-cut too. We arrive at the salon and it is virtually empty, no waiting! The hair dressers know us very well. We know them. They know how picky I am. I never want a style, just a trim. I always leave with wet hair. I am the simplest of customers. What could go wrong? A thin young black man with a lisp and a lopsided afro is going to cut my hair. He has cut it before. But, I remind him again, “So, you know I am growing-out my hair, right?”

“Yes,” he mumbles and rolls his eyes, “Just a trim”, he adds, “You’ve told me before, if I cut one inch, it shrinks up 5 inches. I remember.”

Pleased with his response I smile and say, “Okay…”

And we are off. Snip-snip here and snip-snip there. I pay little attention. Soon he is done. “How does it feel?” he asks me.

I quickly run my fingers through my hair. Something is off. Towards my scalp it feels very thick but as I get closer to the ends, it feels dangerously thin, almost stringy. As my hair is wet and there is no way in hell I am going to let anyone dry my hair into a shameful cotton candy bliss, I pull my hair up with an elastic band and pay. We go home.

My girls are happy with their haircuts. I begin to dry mine. Something is not right. I dry it a little more. My hair is all different lengths but can be summed-up as follows: there is one short, dense and curly top layer and one long, thin and stringy bottom layer.

This can’t be! I look in the mirror. I apply some fancy hair products and try to even it out a little. The top layer shrinks and becomes very bulbous. The bottom layer hangs there like broken violin strings.

“I don’t like my hair cut.” I repeat this several times to my girls. My husband arrives late that evening. I look at him and say, “I think I got a super bad haircut.”

He slaps his thighs angrily, “Oh, God! Again? Why? Why do you get your hair cut? I don’t understand!”

“Never mind,” I say. He doesn’t get it. He thinks it’s my fault. I try and forget this massacre. Maybe in the morning it will be better. I get a great night’s sleep and when I wake-up, I go to the mirror. Strings of hair dangle in random places. A thick top layer has shrunk and formed a toupee on top of my head. I go downstairs. “Look!” I say with desperation. “Look at my fucking hair! What is this?”

My husband looks at my hair. He tugs at a few pieces. “Why is it all uneven like this? It’s all different lengths.”

“I know!” I scream. “I have to go back! I’m going to have to chop it all off! Why can’t I have long hair? Why? Is there a fucking law out there posted at every hair salon? Why is it so hard for people to just let me grow my hair long?”

“Sunny, you can't go back there acting like this. If you go, you have to be calm!” he says.

“I know! I’ll be calm!”

“It doesn’t look like it,” he says.

I hurry back upstairs after quickly swallowing a cup of coffee. I have no appetite to eat. I put my make-up on with a shaky hand. I try to breathe in and out slowly. I grab my coat and head back. “Stay calm. Stay calm” I say to myself all along the way. No scene today, that will get me nowhere.

I arrive at the hair salon. I spot the guy who cut my hair. I gesture for him to come over. I stay calm. “Hi,” I say smiling. I explain the dilemma. He leads me over to a chair. He stands behind me. He doesn’t see the problem. He doesn’t understand why I don’t like the “cottage cheese meets string cheese” look he gave me. He says he barely cut my hair. He smiles and condescendingly says I’m just not used to having my hair cut. He repeats this phrase several times. I have no response to his utterly dumb statement so I just stay quiet.

He gets his manager who knows me very well. The manager says he will cut my hair again. The other hairdresser stands alongside us. The manager wets my hair and combs through it. “You layered it too much,” he says to his colleague. “She likes a more natural look”, he adds. He begins to snip. “You want me to even this out, right?” he asks me.

“Yes, but I don’t want short hair. I have been growing it out for two years,” I say staying calm.

Ten more minutes of snipping. It’s getting short. “It’s short,” I say in a panic. He glances up at me but keeps cool. He has no choice. Obviously there has been too much damage. He finally finishes. “It’s much shorter than I wanted,” I say sadly combing my fingers through my very short locks.

“Yes, yes, I know” he agrees, “but this is the only way for your hair to recover.”

The young hair dresser comes over to me, “I’m sorry,” he looks me in the eyes. No one ever apologizes in France so this actually makes me feel better, it does. The manager tells me he is sorry. He gives me a coupon for a free haircut. Everyone says goodbye to me. I walk home thinking, “This is just my fate. I need to accept it. I shouldn’t feel so shocked.”

I walk inside our home. “So? Let’s see,” says my husband.

I walk into the room. He looks at me and smiles but says nothing. My daughters come and look. “What do you think?” I ask. My eldest gives me an apologetic smile. She thinks hard and says, “Now you have short hair like me.”

My little one says, “And like me!” My poor little girl has curly hair like me. Yesterday, I witnessed her going through the same agonizing afro-blow of shame. Unlike myself, when the hairdresser asked her if she liked her round hair-do, she replied, “I don’t like it!” She looked over at me sadly. I knew what she was feeling and it broke my heart. There she was, my little sweetie sitting so innocently with her light brown cotton candy head. “I don’t like it, Mommy”, she repeated trying not to cry.

I said the only soothing words one can say in her situation, “Do you want the lady to straighten it?” (I think my little one might also have The Curse.)

Support lines are now open. Call us for more information on support groups in your area. You are not alone.

The Drive-by Pedicure

This is a sad story. I don’t mean the year 2000 definition of “sad” like something you’d say to your friend who leaves his house wearing tube socks. “Oh, dude, that’s just sad.” I mean a truly sad story.

Most of you are already well-aware of the level of respect you can find in Marseille from my other tales or from your personal experience here. I have now experienced, on a scale of 1 – 10, Level Minus One (-1). Because the Marseille Respect Scale (MRS) does in fact reach into the negatives.

The other morning, I was walking in a neighborhood called Cours Julien. This area is as dirty as Rue des Héros, however, it is much bigger. It contains many little streets which serve as open sewage canals as well. They are semi-pedestrian zones, because the pedestrian concept is incomprehensible in Marseille. All pedestrian zones in Marseille accept several arbitrarily parked cars so that all pedestrians literally have to climb over them or scrape their bodies against a wall to get passed.

All semi-pedestrian zones also include scooters whizzing buy, loud motorcycles, dogs without leashes, a couple “gypsies” in long dirty skirts holding half-naked babies begging for money and unconscious people talking on their phones (but the latter is normal everywhere in 2012).

The only difference between Marseille and third world cities is the lack of goats and cows roaming around. But, maybe I’ll distribute a few and see how that works out.

Getting back to Cours Julien, it is also home to the homeless who sit in large groups drinking all day and peeing in the streets. It is home to loads of “Bio” (organic) restaurants, unique clothing boutiques, and used book stores. It has lots of cafés as well and draws crowds at all hours.

And just a side note, in Marseille most people who eat organic food are unemployed or actors and they in general smell and think capitalism needs to die. I know I’m generalizing and stepping over the line, but this is my time to express myself, so, too bad.

Getting back to my story, I had just finished teaching a yoga class and was feeling very calm and peaceful while walking down the semi-pedestrian street that had huge mounds of orange dog shit every couple of steps. But, I was fine with it. Acceptance is the key to life anyway, isn’t it?

I was crossing a tiny road and heard a scooter to my left. I turned my head to see how close it was, it was not very close. I had plenty of time to cross the path that was no more than three feet wide. I crossed it in less than one second and heard the scooter speeding up.

All of a sudden, he swerved to hit me and sped away. He ran over my toes. It didn’t hurt but my adrenaline was pumping and I kept my head down and kept walking, a natural instinct I have adopted here as people like to provoke each other. A woman on her cell phone who was a couple steps ahead of me turned around alarmed, “Did that scooter just hit you on purpose?” she asked.

I looked up at her and slowly answered, “Yeah. He did.” I don’t know why, but I felt like a total loser. I felt like someone who gets picked on in high school for no reason. I felt embarrassed someone had seen that happen to me.

She turned back around and cried into her phone “People here are sick! Some guy just ran over a woman on purpose!”

After she said those words, it dawned on me the cruelty and heartlessness of such an act. I suddenly filled with sadness. My toes hurt a little but I was too nervous to look down. What if they were broken or worse, not even there anymore? I slowly looked down. A thick black greasy line marked all my prettily painted red toes. I wasn’t bleeding. It didn’t hurt. I was okay. That dude was a fucking asshole. Why did he swerve to hit me like that? I wasn’t in his way. I didn’t understand. He just felt like being a dick. That made me sad. I silently made it to the metro and went home.

As I walked through my neighborhood almost back at our house, I tried to call my husband, but he didn’t answer his phone. As soon as I heard him on voice mail, I felt like crying. I started to leave my message, “Hi. It’s me. Something bad just happened to me. I’m okay. I’m fine. But, a motorcycle…ran…over…me (sob sob sob) and and I’m okay, but I’m just (sob sob sob) really sad (sob sob sob)…” And I hung up and tried to stop crying.

I don’t know if the crying was just energy being released after the motorcycle adrenaline rush. I was fine, why was I crying? I felt ridiculous. Was I wallowing in self-pity or was it all justified? Minutes later, I got home and Jeeves arrived to work on our translating project.

“Jeeves,” I said while preparing him one of my infamous Nespresso lattes with a little bit of cream and some whole milk. “I was kind of aggressed today.”

I told him my story and he replied, “You know, Sunny. When you go to the zoo, you walk by the cages and look at the animals…and you say, “Oh, look at the animals” You don’t try to understand the animals. You don’t try to change the animals. That is how I see Marseille. Why would you try and change the animals? You can’t. It’s just impossible. Don’t try to understand them. Because they are just animals.”

Jeeves was right and I was glad he said that to me. At least it made me feel better. Later that evening, I told my husband about my accident. “Was the guy trying to steal your purse?” he asked bewildered.

“No”, I replied.

“So, he just ran over you like that?”

“Yep,” I answered.

My husband shook his head. “I don’t understand people. He could’ve hurt you.”

“I know,” I said, “but he would not have cared. He tried to hit me and ran over my foot. Then he just kept on going. He’s just an angry person. It’s sad that our city is full of people like this. It’s hard knowing that we live in a city like this.”

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

“Look,” I proffered my lovely black marked toes.

He shook his head again while dragging his fingers across my foot. “Are they black because they’re bruised?”

“No, that’s from the tires.” I replied. And then I thought, “In another city, this would be an act of violence, some kind of aggression. In Marseille, it is nothing more than a drive-by pedicure…”