It has been more than a year since my last haircut.
On impulse yesterday, I walked into a discount hair chain salon and was unable to gracefully extricate myself when it became apparent the person who was about to take a scissor to my hair was a boy of approximately 20 years of age who looked remarkably like a lizard.
He had shaved his own hair so that only a three-inch tuft of hand-length jet black hair remained. He apparently wanted a more expansive canvas for the very dark and frightening ink designs which covered every square inch of skin. There were no less than 40 facial piercings, but it was the angry row of open hoops through the septum that commanded my gaze. I could barely look away.
And then he spoke. His words came slowly with painful pauses, as though he was speaking in monotone staccato through general anesthesia. I was torn between wanting to run and the sudden desire to ask him if he felt safe.
Overcoming both urges, I followed him to his station like a lamb to the slaughter. Lizard-boy moved the same way he spoke, like a slug. He was barely in motion, but the distal tips of his earlobes which had been stretched by gauges to the diameter of angel-hair pasta somehow caught the air and rippled like a flag in the breeze.
I suspected sedation. A lot of it.
The boy sprayed about a gallon of fluid on my hair and somehow managed to cut three inches from the bottom of my neglected locks in spite of the water now dripping freely from my head. It was all over quickly and I was dismissed from the chair with the unclipping of my apron and one final sluggish word from the artist. “Gnarly.”
I gave my stylist a big tip, mostly because I was so happy to leave. It took about an hour for my hair to dry and I’m now kicking myself for having preconceived notions. Maybe I missed an opportunity. I was externally pleasant but I was full of paralyzing opinions.
The trim actually looks much better.
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