I’ve broken up with my hairdresser only he doesn’t know it because I don’t know quite how to deliver the news. Do I call and say, Hey Charles, remember how last spring you went on vacation, like you have the second week of March for each of the last seventeen years? Well, Charles, at exactly that time this year, my hair had a growth spurt and my bangs began to fall into my eyes. And my mascara, it started to turn the tips of my bangs black, and my bangs started to put black marks on my forehead. So I’m sure you understand, Charles, I had to do something, and quick. I’d heard good things about this guy, Alex, the owner of Salon Mosaic, so I called there and asked if he could fit me in for a trim.
Now yes, Charles, I know, Charles, that any one of the thirty- three other stylists at BANGZ could have lopped off a little length in your absence. But the truth is, there was this big buzz about Alex, and I was a curious to see what he might be like. So I took a chance and dialed Mosaic, and it was my good fortune that Alex himself answered the phone. “I need an emergency bang trim,” I begged. “My regular hairdresser’s away. I know you have a two month wait list for new clients, but I simply can’t wait.”
“If you can’t wait, you can’t wait, sweetheart,” Alex said. “Come right over.”
Butterflies knocked heads in my stomach as I drove toward Mosaic. It wouldn’t be you, Charles, in your black boots, who was standing at eye level with me snipping the ends off my bangs, making sure they just grazed my eyebrows. What would Alex do, fringe them, I fretted, or cut them too short like you did that one time I broke my leg and had to stay seated? Maybe Alex would have bad breath or a bad back. With you I always knew what I’d go home with, a neatened up version of myself.
But life gets stagnant without risk, doesn’t it, Charles? We’ve agreed on this many times while you’ve applied color to my dark roots. It’s why you race your Harley. It’s why I ski double diamonds. How did two people like us not make a change to my hair for seventeen years?
Anyway, Charles, Alex had a pretty good read on me before I even got to Mosaic. He had the receptionist greet me with a cup of chamomile tea. Soon as I took a few sips, Enrique, a youngish bronzed guy came out to get me and handed me a warm, lavender scented robe. And, yes, Charles, I know Charles, at BANGZ I’d refused the robes when you got them; we’d done just fine without them for so many years. But this was a new place, so I went with the flow, and when I came out of the changing room smelling all pretty, Enrique offered to massage the stress out of my shoulders and neck.
“Oh, no thanks, I’m just having my bangs--” trimmed, I began to say, but Alex overheard and cut me off.
“The time is yours, but the treatment’s on us,” he said. His eyes sparkled as he spoke. “I’m going to be a minute anyway. Close your eyes, breathe, and let go.”
I was surprised at how quickly I surrendered.
When I finally sat down in Alex’s chair, he spent a good five minutes massaging my scalp and combing his fingers through my hair. “Gosh, this is soft. Gosh this is pretty,” he kept chanting. “The color, the color really works with your complexion.”
“Thanks,” I said. “My stylist’s expertise is color. I’m here for my bangs.”
“Right,” Alex said. He lifted the hair from my eyes with his comb. “You weren’t kidding,” he said, “Your mascara really is doing double duty.”
Alex asked me to toss my head back a few times, so he could see the way my hair moved. After a minute he took a step back. “Look, I know we’ve just met,” he said, “ you don’t have to answer this if you’re uncomfortable, but do you feel at all weighed down, like your creativity’s stifled?”
“Doesn’t everyone feel that way sometimes?”
Alex shook his head. “Do me a favor. Can I put a few layers into your hair after I trim your bangs?”
“Would that be expensive?”
“The cut will be on me this time,” Alex said. “I’ll just charge you for the trim.”
“Isn’t my hair too fine for layers?”
“You hair is fine, but it’s not too fine,” he said. “Let’s give it a try; I want to give you a chance to feel the flow.”
Flow, Charles. Do you know what flow is? I think you’d like the concept. Flow is unhindered steady movement, eloquent expression, falling loosely and gracefully. If we had thought of it, Charles, I think we would have agreed to sacrifice a little fullness in my hair so we could experience flow.
Anyway, Charles, Alex was right about the layers; my hair has so much more life when I bother to use a round brush and blow it out. And when I put it in its usual pony tail, it curves, like the bottom of an S; instead of reaching for the floor; it reaches back toward me.
Now, before I left Mosaic that first time, Charles, I asked Alex if he would do anything different with the color. “Your color’s great,” he said, “but I might play with it a little, add a few lowlights to give it dimension, or a few highlights to compliment your personality.”
So Charles, when the time came for me to touch up my roots, and you know how my roots are, they’re fine one day and black as a zebra stripe the next, I called BANGZ and explained that I couldn’t wait, that I had to look good for a big business meeting, that I needed my roots done now. And do you know what that snooty woman with the too-good-for-you accent at the front desk said; she said you were booked, no exceptions. So, what could I do, Charles, I called Alex and asked him if he could to do my roots.
Soon as I got to Mosaic, Alex asked if I’d consider letting him paint on some highlights while the roots cured. “Just a few here,” he said at my cheekbone level, “and a few here,” pointing to my bangs, “to bring out the blue in your eyes.” I told him to go for it, even though I knew it would be expensive. And when he finished, I still did look like me, only now there was something extra working for me that no one else could see. And Charles, buddy, at 45, I need the help, I’m not the twenty-eight year old you met once upon a time ago.
And so Charles, it’s because of these new discoveries I’m making with Alex, that I haven’t been back to see you. Months have slipped by and I’ve walked around feeling like a traitor, hardly showing my face anywhere near BANGZ. I know I should quit avoiding you, that I owe it to you to stop in and tell you it’s over between us. But then I’ve considered how you might respond- you’d probably stomp your black boot on the pickled wood floor and tell me that the reason we never did anything new was because we already had it perfect. You might also say that if I had insisted on doing layers and highlights and wasting my money and my time, only to come out looking pretty much the same, you’d have obliged me. But where would that take us, Charles? You’d be the hairdresser scorned and I’d be the scorner. If you went against your artistic beliefs, you’d feel like a drone from CheapCuts instead of a senior stylist at a Sebastian Premiere Salon. And me, Charles, I’d feel like I confessed adulteress, like a woman who sought out greener pastures, liked what she found, and came home, out of guilt, to live in mediocrity. I shouldn’t be that woman Charles, and you, you shouldn’t be that man. Instead we should say that we did hair together very well, for very many years. But that as time went on, we lost sight not of ourselves but of whom we could be. Really, Charles, we’re each better off without the other.
Now, I’m sorry to say, Charles, that I am a coward and I probably will never tell you any of this. What would either of us gain anyway? I’d still have a new hairdresser and you’d still miss me. So, I guess I’ll just have to keep avoiding Church Street during your scheduled hours. I’ll have to keep limiting my lunches at Raymond’s and Cianci to Sundays and Mondays. I’ll have to keep disguising my voice when I call BANGZ to confirm that you’re busy when I want to run into Beans for a cup of coffee.
Of course, I could send you one of those cards that says, Just Moved. Then if you saw me, you’d think I’m in town visiting friends. But that wouldn’t work because Richard upstairs still cuts my husband’s hair, and that would start rumors about me having problems in my marriage. God, then if you ran into me, you’d probably offer me a sympathy blow out.
The only other thing I can think of is to ask my friend Liz, whose highlights you do, (did you know she’s a therapist?) to tell you that my relationship with you was highly codependent (from my end, of course) and that to get to a healthier place she recommended that I no longer see you. If Liz did this, then I could walk around town freely, even wave hello when I saw you. And you, you could point to me and smile and say, “That’s some whacko woman whose hair I used to do.”
***
Virginia Backaitis writes fiction, flash fiction, and personal essays. Her work has been published in both print and web-based literary journals. She regularly writes cover stories for the @Work section of the New York Post. She earns her living as an Executive Recruiter.
Virginia also hosts a number of blogs and welcomes contributions to one of them: www.DualsAndDuetsOnWork.com. Her primary e-mail is Virginia@BrilliantLeap.com.
