Spike

Went to get my hair cut today at the El Cheapo haircut shop, and was pleasantly surprised by the awesome chick who ended up getting assigned to cut my hair. You know how those places work -- you walk in and put your name on the list, then you sit there and read awful magazine articles about "Fashion Do's and Don't's" and "Top Ten Turn-Ons" until some over-bleached bimbo calls your name, sits you down, and commences to commit atrocities on your hair. The end result is I usually walk out of the place shrugging and thinking, "What do you want for a ten-buck haircut?" and, "it'll grow out."

Some of them actually try to give me bangs.

This time, the gods had pity on me. I was actually just about to walk out of there because I had been waiting for over a half-hour, and the fumes from the perfume samples in those magazines were making me ill, and I already did not like the look of the one "stylist" who was working -- long, multiply bleached and extended hair with mountains of gunk in it, and her conversation was bordering on the provincially-racist from what I could overhear, when in walked this awesome, vaguely goth chick about my age (early thirties).

Her hair was cut in a severe, straight bob, dyed bright pink. She wore a spike and leather choker, heavy eye make-up, and an Evil Dead T-shirt.

I started praying right then for her to call my name.

A few minutes later, she did, and I strutted over to her chair with much rejoicing. I could just tell this was going to work out.

She asked me, in actually a pretty surly tone of voice, what she could do for me today, and I gave her my usual instructions, which are almost universally ignored by the people who have cut my hair over the last few years. (I had an outstanding haircutter in Syracuse, the kind who is always stoned, bald, with a waxed handlebar mustache, waaaaay gaaaaay, and who takes over an hour to get the wacky three-pronged hairline at the nape of my neck just so. I was spoiled, I knew it, and I've been pining for him ever since.)

Very very short on the sides and back. Kinda spiky on top. I usually go for a number three clipper. Maybe texturize the front to make it more fun.

Usually, I get a response like this: A three??? Well, we'll just start with something longer and work our way down, shall we? I mean, you don't want to look like a boy.

Um, actually? I know what I like. And I have round curvy hips and big juicy boobs, so nobody is ever going to confuse me with a boy. I'm way cuter than a boy.

My Evil Dead goddess, however, just nodded curtly, took out the clippers, and started in on me.

Oh, rapture. Oh, bliss.

She gave a half-hearted attempt at your usual haircutter chitchat (So, you live around here?) and I told her flat out that yes, I do, but you really don't have to sweet-talk me, I'm cool with silence if you are...

And she beamed at me in the mirror.

That totally broke the ice, and we bitched for a while about the oppressive social conformity around these parts, how much fun it is to tweak people's assumptions, and where we like to go drinking in Boston. She said something about how she doesn't really like people that much, and I told her about my year as a semi-hermit reclusive freelance editor who never left the house.

So she goes, "I love misanthropes!"

Best. Sentence. Ever.

So yeah. It's wicked short on the sides and back, and kinda spiky on the top. Also texturized in the front. She tried to talk me into the pink dye, but I demurred.

But yeah, I'm thinking about it.