Originally posted 10.26.2005

Last night, sorely in need of a trim, I put my head once again in the hands of my capable hair lady, Holly, who consistently pulls off a feat no other New York hairdresser has managed to accomplish: cut my hair without making me cry.

Once upon a time, I put great faith in the transformative promise of a good cut. As a child, I loved having my hair cut, the raggedy ends held up in a comb and trimmed even, then released to flop wetly against my cheek. Loved watching other people’s haircuts, too, sitting rapt while the stylist deftly manipulated some lady’s willful curls into a smooth pageboy. After a particularly important cut I received in 8th grade (the one that took me from girl-next-door with braces to girl-next-door with hip, slightly edgy for La Crosse, haircut), I started to view all women as falling into two groups: those whose hair worked, and those whose lives would be changed if they would just give up on that pathetic, stringy, lank collection of dead cells parted down the middle and clasped back in cheap barrettes doing absolutely nothing for their long faces except to make them look even more horsey and sallow.

Hard to believe that was me. The last time I gave anyone with scissors permission to do anything they wanted (and meant it) was, oh, letsee here, 1992? And I think it was more along the lines of, ‘this perm didn’t work. Let’s cut it off and start over.’ And earlier than that, in the spring of 1989, I went from waist-length to chin-length without a whimper. With a smile, even.

But now, when I slide into a new chair, face the hairdresser in the mirror, and say, ‘if I were to give you carte blanche with those shears, what would you do?’ and they inevitably tilted their heads and squint and place their hands, palms down, about two inches below my shoulders and say, ‘first we’d bring it up to here and then, hmm, maybe some piece-y bits around the face…’. Nope. You lost me at ‘up to here.’

It’s ridiculous, this stuff. It gets trapped in subway doors (really), car windows (yes indeed) and my fly (don’t ask). It clogs drains. Some days it veers dangerously into Bradyland; others, Laura Ingallsworld. Also, I’m troubled by the suspicion that without it I’d be invisible. Sexless. To wit: it doesn’t matter what else I’m wearing (glasses, saddle shoes, sweatpants), if the hair is down, I’ll solicit male attention whether I want it or not. The reverse is also true: stilettos with fishnets, red lipstick, a top that borders on bondage wear…and a chignon. Nothing. Not even eye contact. The bums don’t even ask me for change. So at some level I’d like to defy convention and slice it off. See what happens. See if the rest of me carries any weight at all.

But I’m a little too far gone for that. About two years ago a sweet friend bought me an expensive cut in a chic midtown salon. For what seemed an eternity this handsome man with an impenetrable accent fussed and straightened and snipped and adjusted…. And at the end my hair was shiny. It was swingy. It was…shorter on one side. After the adjustment at least three inches (seven months’ growth, people) were gone. I did manage to get to the subway before crying. At least credit me that.

So now I’ve got Holly. She’s Indian and she knows long hair. I went to her two years ago for eyebrow threading (yes, I need it; I’ll show you a picture of my brother if you want to know why). She’s kind of bossy and declarative and rather possessive (‘You pluck your eyebrows? Not any more. They belong to me now you do not touch them’), which is oddly welcome in this life where it seems like I’m responsible for making up the rules for almost everything I do.

Often, when she’s done trimming or coloring my hair, she’ll play with it. But unlike Suzy, my favorite hairdresser from the Madison days, who used me as a model to try out complicated, long-hair styles she saw at trade shows (“this one was used in ‘The Titanic’”), Holly makes me feel like a younger cousin sitting, perhaps, at the kitchen table, picking at a plate of broken papadam.

She likes braids, specifically, and while she usually gives me one more-or-less sophisticated plait ending in a ringlet, last night she twisted the mess into two, starting at the temple. It was cute, sort of—I looked like a 10-year-old schoolgirl with laugh lines. As she arranged the braids over my shoulders, she caught my eye in the mirror and grinned. “I think we have come to a very com-for-ta-ble place in our relationship,” she said, in her delightfully clear and rapid accent. Dry-eyed, I nodded. I couldn’t agree with her more.