Hairdresser on Fire

About a month ago I called the salon which employs my hairdresser to book a haircut I badly needed. I find that the hair conversation I have with myself in the mornings leading up to my haircut being booked usually goes something like this:

Days after haircut, 96 - 'Hair looks OK.'

Days after haircut, 97 - 'Hair looks OK.'

Days after haircut, 98 - 'Hair looks OK.'

Days after haircut, 99 - 'Hair looks OK. Who says I should get it done every three months?'

Days after haircut, 100 - 'Hair looks OK. Might need a hairband - oh yeah, that's better.'

Days after haircut, 101 - 'OH GOD I NEEDED A HAIRCUT YESTERDAY!' 

You see, that's because I suddenly look like a cross between these two gentlemen:

Beethoven, trying to count

and 

Einstein, as modelled in soft toy form.

And that's usually when I pick up the phone and call Adam. My hairdresser.

Adam started cutting my hair in about August 2010. It was the first time I was getting my hair done professionally in about 2 years, as I had a neurological condition that required several surgeries in early 2009 and I had been loathed to go to a hairdresser and explain the scars. So I cut my own hair for a while, sometimes after taking sleeping tablets. This was not quite as disastrous as it sounds (I have very thick, curly hair and the texture covered a multitude of sins), but maybe that's because I'm comparing it to the time in Year 7 when I decided my eyebrows were completely ridiculous and so partly shaved them off with a razor. Of course, this wasn't good enough, so I took some of the rest of them off with a stanley knife. Yes, you read that right, and no, I didn't cut myself. I did, however, have a public speaking competition the next night, and my mother drew some in with an eyebrow pencil, which essentially converted me to the wonders of makeup.         

But I'm talking about haircuts here.

Adam is from London, with a wonderful bedside manner and a deliciously curly mop of hair and snazzy shoes. He's straight, and for some reason a straight male hairdresser is alluring. He also has excellent taste in music and is roughly the same age as me, so the call to the salon to book my haircut always wakened the slightly delicious anticipation of having someone make you feel nice for a little while. I was excited to ring the salon and book an appointment with Adam. We had lots to talk about, and I was looking forward to seeing him. He got married the same week I was in Melbourne, you see. Then the girl on the desk that day broke my heart a little.

'Oh, I'm sorry to have to say this, but Adam doesn't work here anymore.'

'Is he all right?,' I asked, slightly crushed. 'What's he up to?' (Could I have sounded anymore like a fan-girl?)

'Yeah, he's great, he's working in IT now.'

'Oh, OK,' I said brightly, as I was thrust into the hell we all dread when this happens to us. 'So....I need someone to cut my hair.'

Now I get my hair done at Toni & Guy, and one of the good things about it (apart from the cuts being decent value) is that the training program they run world wide means you're pretty sure of getting a good haircut with anyone who works there. The problem instead, as with so many other instances in life, is that I have no idea how to ask for what I want. Lyn's typically hilarious (but somewhat unhelpful) suggestion was to '[make] high-pitched, wordless noises while gesturing wildly in the direction of [my] head', so I count it as a win that I managed not to do a Beaker impression in front of my new hairdresser. Instead I mumbled something about not wanting to look like a dead, deaf composer anymore. 

The woman who eventually chopped my locks off also happens to be from the UK and is good friends with Adam, my now former hair paramour. She's quite mannered in that very British sort of way, and had fun telling me how much she likes the lifestyle here (the UK and Australia seem to have this citizen swap going on where we lose people to the other, indefinitely), but it was all slightly awkward and I left not really feeling like my best self. I was mostly just uncomfortable from all the hair that was everywhere on my body covered by skin. You know, everywhere.

I like my short cut, and think it's a vast improvement, but it does occur to me in the mirror most mornings that I now look something like this: 

Oh yeah, sexy face like that Dylan Moran. 

Then again, at the end of the day, I also look a little like the other Dylan: 

you know, from the cover of Blonde on Blonde.

'But Moz,' I hear you say, 'they're all guys. With facial hair!'

I don't want to talk about it.

I am happy with the cut, I am. Except then I realised the person I really look like now is my mother. And that's a hundred times worse.

I'm off to deal with my facial hair. With a stanley knife, I'm kind of broke.