Splitting Hairs

Tomorrow I'm getting a hair cut.  I mean that literally.  Like a bargain basement sweater that falls apart with a tug of a loose thread, I'm afraid that cutting  even a single strand will cause a catastrophic collapse of my entire wispy pompadour. 

Truth is, I have a bad case of follicle envy.  I can't watch Grey's Anatomy because Patrick Dempsey has the hair I should have won in the DNA lottery

Let's take a little forensic excursion through my hair cutting history.  In my town there were two barbers -- Wally and Jake.  Wally was the slightly rotund, kindly barber who specialized in the "Butch."  Basically, you came out of Wally's looking like a Marine recruit. 

As an special  touch, he would add a little wax to the widow's peak and brush it up -- so not only was I bald -- I had a shallac-infused hair fence to complete the travesty.  Wally always gave you a single piece of Bazooka  Gum when your haircut was done.  So now I had bad teeth to match the bad haircut.

 In contrast, there was Jake's Clip Joint.  Jake's was the kind of place where you'd find well-thumbed copies of Carburetor Monthly and customers who looked like they just got off the set of a James Dean movie.  At Jakes, no real names were used, just nicknames or prison monikers. 

The next phase of my hair styling journey was going to an actual "stylist."   I went to what is called in the trade "the volume salons."  Like  my hero Jim Lileks has phrased so elegantly  "the sign WALK INS  WELCOME says to me, INCAPABLE OF GENERATING REPEAT BUSINESS."  This is the kind of place where the ink hasn't dried on the stylist's diploma.  . 

Their answer to my bad hair is using a ozone-depleting spray like a crop duster.  Then, they lock in the gravity defying "poof" by blowing it dry with an acetylene torch.  I usually walk out of these salons looking like a evangelist. 

The last phase of my hirsute (how often do you get to use that word?) journey was going to the Vidal Sassoon.Salon. This was the promise land. The world of the $200 hair cut. This was a place so needlessly hip, you're sipping merlot and eating bon bons before you even ask for your stylist.

My stylist was right out of central casting.  He called me "honey" with the added phrase "what are we going to do with you?"  Every word was followed by a wonderfully lamboyant gesture.  It was like the love child of Christopher Lowell and Edward Sissorhands. Five gossip filled hours later, I walked out of there with a haircut that looked exactly like the one Wally used to give me.  $200 plus tip and no bubble gum.

Wish me luck.  This time, I'm going for dread locks.