Sometimes you search all your life for that Perfect One; it seems that you are destined to spend your life seeking but never finding. I had almost given up trying, after having many short relationships with a variety of people but then, in the Autumn of my life, against all odds, I found Kevin. Kevin set me free. He freed me from blow dryers, he freed me from hot rollers, he freed me from helmet hair. He is the hairdresser I always wanted but never found. Till now.
"Start with a good haircut", all the magazines and TV shows say. Yeah, right. They don't tell you how to find one, short of spending $14,000 to fly to New York and getting an appointment, if any are available before June 17, 2024, with the Hairdresser du Jour. If you pass the stare test and are admitted to the inner sanctum, he is likely to take a fist full of your hair, roll his eyes and turn you over to the assistant to his assistant who will slice and dice and send you out the door looking like a cockatoo. In molt.
My first hairdresser was my mom, Esther Scissorhands. She decided she needed to cut my bangs. They weren't quite even. They were a little short on the left. No, now it's the right. Now, the left, now the right. Cut, repeat, cut, repeat. By the time she gave up I had a tiny fringe sticking out from my hairline closely resembling the bristles on a toothbrush. When that finally grew out she did it again. And you wondered what was the trauma that shaped my young life to this weird skew.
Here is a handy hint: If you feel you must cut the bangs of a child, take Scotch tape, position it at the bottom of where you want to cut, then cut along the top edge of the tape. The line will be straight and the hair will fall off in one piece, stuck to the tape, not the child's face.
Through the years I have had lots of haircuts/styles. How did I wear thee? Let me count the ways: the Artichoke, the Beehive, the French Twist, the Wedge, the Page Boy, the Flip, the Shag, the Feather, the Farrah, Too Short, Too Long. I've used juice cans (yes, empty ones, smart alec!) to get big curls and the ironing board and iron to get straight hair, but was saved from the Mullet since my brother once said "Your ears make you look like a taxi going down the street with both doors open".
Best of all, there was the Toni Home Permanent. My mom or her friend took hours twisting my hair onto pink plastic permanent rods that looked like tiny medieval torture instruments, then a noxious liquid was poured over my head and left to dry for, I don't know, a day and a half. Even after the ordeal was over the acrid smell would linger. My mom said "Just sit in the back at church so nobody can smell you.", thus the origin of the term "Back Seat Baptist." That was easy because nobody wanted to sit next to me. My friends waved from across the room and said "Oh, you got a perm." For some reason their noses were wrinkled but they didn't come any closer. And, oh, yes. I looked like I had stuck my finger in a light socket and my hair was trying to fight it's way off my head. Think Albert Einstein with spiral curls.
When I began working and could afford to go to a real hairdresser I went all the way. I had a Standing Appointment. This meant that every Wednesday after work I went to the salon, had my hair washed and set on bristly curlers, then I sat under a big hooded hair dryer where I shared intimate secrets with the other Standings in the shop WITH A VOICE LIKE THIS until the hairdresser deemed my hair dry enough to tease to the volume of a hot air balloon. From Wednesday night till the next Wednesday morning I slept with a silk headscarf tied under my chin. Had there been a hurricane evacuation, I was ready to go. This was supposed to keep my curls in place along with a can and a half of hairspray every morning.
Over the years hairstyles became a tiny bit more relaxed. We saved a lot of money on hairspray and I mostly did my hair myself. It still had to be cut occasionally, though, and I continued my lifelong search for A Good Haircut. When styles changed, I went from hood dryers to blow dryers, from bristle rollers to hot rollers, from salon to salon seeking the Holy Grail of haircuts. Sometimes it was a little scary, like when I went into a new salon in Oklahoma City and every hairdresser at every station was sporting some version of a Mohawk, or a spike. Blue was the dominant color, and we're not talking that little old lady blue rinse. "Please," I begged. I'm fortyish. I'm a mom. Take pity on me." Somebody in there remembered how to do mom hair and I escaped relatively unscathed.
By the time we moved to Tulsa I had almost given up. And then one day I went to Reasor's for groceries. I saw a lady with great looking hair. I stalked her through the produce department to the dairy to the frozen foods, gathering up my courage to approach her. Finally, I casually parked my grocery cart in front of hers penning her up against the pizza freezer and popped the question. "Do you mind telling me where you get your hair done?"
"Kevin", she said. "The Cutting Room. It's at 81st and Memorial. I think you would like him." And a dream became reality.
Once a month for eight years Kevin has been the other man in my life . I have found out he is so much more than a hairdresser. He's not just a stylist, he is a Renaissance Man. He has walked me through renovations on my house, he knows tiling, painting, gardening, sheet rock, plumbing and more than once offered to come help me get through the mess I had gotten myself into in my DIY remodeling. He knows where all the good buys in town are and who the good doctors and carpenters are. Most of the them are his clients along with judges, lawyers and little old ladies like me. When it looked like I might have chemo treatments that would make my hair fall out he reached out to me. He said "If that happens, I will come to you wherever you are and I will be the one to shave your head. You won't go through that without me." That is not just a hairdresser, it is a true friend.
So Jody cut my hair a couple of weeks ago. They had called from his salon and told me Kevin had had a serious medical emergency. I is in the hospital. I took her a picture of the way Kevin cuts it and begged her to try to do the same thing. She did a pretty good job and said she just followed the lines that Kevin had cut. I'm hoping Kevin will be back to work by the next time I go but I don't know. I'll wait for him, though, I waited all these years, I can wait a little longer.
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