Hair we go

I'm going to get my haircut today. I've needed to get a haircut for a couple of weeks now but for some reason I'm having a lot of anxiety around it. It was so much easier when I was keeping my head clean shaven. But, I'm determined to have hair on my head, for a while anyway.
I've never been into my hair. Most of my life, I've hated it. When I was 6 I started begging my mom to let me cut my hair. Short. Like a boys. Of course, my parents refused, my mom insisting it would be a mistake and I would be ugly with short hair but when I was 8, I finally convinced my mom to take me to get a hair cut. My first ever. My hair, at this point, would swish against the waistband of the skirts I was forced to wear and usually, I wore it in two thick braids that would flank my head and heavy, like anchors keeping me tied to being a girl.
One Saturday we drove into town and walked into a salon with awful floresent lighting and the nauseating smell of ammonia and cheap shampoo. There were only ladies in that salon, which irritated me. I had imagined I'd walk into a barbershop with wood panelling, maybe a mounted deer head over the door of the bathroom and the familiar sound of a twanging steel guitar on the radio. The barber would chuckle and greet me, pull me up into the worn, brown leather chair and chop all my hair off. It would be like that scene in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy walks out of a world comprised of shades of gray and into a world of Technicolor dreams, only my dreams were made of Little League and Boy Scouts.
The reality was, I was here, with my mom, in a shop that was geared towards ladies in their late 30's and older. Much older. Blue hair older. I wanted to leave but my mom insisted we stay because I had made such a big deal about it, so now I was getting my hair cut, like it or not.
I slid onto the chair, made of vinyl that was slightly cracking. I knew this woman in front of me wouldn't give me the Tom Sawyer haircut of my dreams. "I want it really short," I told her as she draped an apron over my chest, the tips of her fingernails with chipping red polish scratching my neck as she tied the strings in place. She laughed. "Oh, honey, we don't want you to look like a boy now do we?"
I fought back tears as she began dismantling the braids my mom wove with my hair that morning. I kept my eyes closed the whole time and tried to focus on the sound of the scissors opening and closing but could hear my mom whispering instructions to the lady. When I opened my eyes, I saw a mountain of black hair that had fallen to my feet and it seemed like she was cutting off so much, I began to get hopeful. Maybe this lady would be my magical fairy godmother, with huge silver sheers for a wand, maybe she will actually listen to me and I'll get to walk out of here with hair I can finally be proud of. Maybe.
"All done, honey!" She announced proudly. "You sure had a lot of hair, it was almost a shame to cut it all off like that!"
I looked up as she swiveled the chair toward the mirror. Oh. My. God. This woman BUTCHERED my hair. She didn't give me that hair cut I wanted at all! Now, on top of my head, was what can only be described as a curly mullet. That's right, this woman gave me a curly mullet two weeks before the new school year was supposed to start. If I had a picture, I'd show you. Today, a curly mullet is ironic, almost trendy in that hipster sort of way but as an 8 year old kid in Kansas who was in their second month of wearing glasses, this was tragic.
I immediately started crying and looked up at my mom.
"See what I told you?" She said harshly. "You should learn to listen to your mother."
Looking back I wonder if she instructed the beautician to give me such a horrible haircut so I would be so horrified by it that I would never cut my hair again, i.e. never go for the boy hair cut I longed for.
After this, my parents again refused to let me cut my hair. Everytime I'd bring it up, my mom would remind me of the Disasterous Haircut Incident of 1987. So, from then on, I just let my hair keep growing and growing. When it would start to journey past my waistband, my mom would trim a few inches herself. I was not rebellious enough to take the scissors and chop it all of in the bathroom, man I wish I was that kind of kid though.
In high school, I basically looked like Slash from Guns N Roses, refusing to take care of my long, curly hair and usually wearing a bandana (headband style, not skull cap style) around my head to keep it from getting into my eyes. My mom hated this but didn't say much after I told her "You won't let me cut it but you can't make me take care of it." In her eyes, the alternative, a short hair cut, was much worse than the mess my long hair became.
When I moved out of my parents house to go to college in Minneapolis, I didn't chop all my hair off right away. It was actually the last thing my mom said to me before I got on the plane at the Kansas City airport. "Don't go cutting your hair off, ok? Promise me?" She seemed so desperate, I promised her I wouldn't, even though I knew it was a lie. But for some reason, I didn't do it immediately, like I always thought I would. I was away from home in this ginormous city and being gay all over the place, feeling more and more distant from my parents and from the life I knew as a kid and even though I had been planning my escape since I was 4 years old, a part of me was scared to "grow up." Cutting my hair all off, doing what I'd always wanted to do, would mean that I was completely independent from my parents.
It took me about 6 months before I finally made an appointment with someone to cut my hair off. I went to this amazing older butch dyke that my friend Teri recommended. I knew she would know what to do. Her shop was very cool, kind of dark with shiny oak counters and black leather barber chairs. She had a buzzcut, a ton of tattoos and was listening to Ani DiFranco when I walked in. Hella gay.
I watched as she made the first cut, removing a large section of thick, curly hair from the right side of my head. The umbilical chord had finally been cut. As she was clearcutting the black forest on top of my head, I told her how I'd always wanted to have short hair and of the Disasterous Haircut Incident of 1987. She laughed knowingly. I can't even quantify the excitement I felt when she started using the clippers. That buzzing in my ear was like when you have a song stuck in your head, but you can't remember the name of it and then one day you hear it on the radio and you're like "YES! Finally!" It was like that. When she was done, she turned me toward the mirror. "What do you think?"
I reached my left hand up and touched the back of my clean shaven neck and let my fingers run through the small waves that were on top of my head that had replaced the long locks I'd resented my whole life. "I think my mom is going to hate it.... its perfect!"
Thanks to my genetics, I did not have the disheveled boy haircut that I'd always dreamed about, but it was short and very masculine, which was what I wanted.
Now, with my new haircut, the short cut I'd always wanted, I looked soooooo gay. And my gayness was suddenly visible to the rest of the world. It was exciting to my 19 year old self, all I had to do to let everyone know that I was gay was walk out the door. A little scary, but definitely more exciting. I suddenly had this confidence I never had before, noticed how I was walking differently, swaggering even. All this from a haircut? Man, I should have done this YEARS ago, I thought to myself one morning as I massaged some pomade into my scalp.
Needless to say, my mom was NOT happy. I told her by sending her a picture. She called me crying, reminding me of my promise at the airport 6 months earlier. "You knew I would do this, come on," I told her, unapologetic about my new 'do.
I pretty much had that haircut for a couple of years. When I moved to Portland, I began cutting my hair into a mohawk, which I had for several years until I finally began just keeping it clean shaven. Which was easy. But after a while, had become boring.
So now I have (for lack of a better description) basically a "faux hawk" going on. That term kind of makes me want to gag, but that's probably the best way to describe it. I don't know exactly what I'm going for but I know I want the tail at the end of the "hawk" part to grow out. I was so irritated the last time I went to get a hair cut and I specifically told the stylist NOT to cut the tail off and he did anyway. Argh. Since I've been growing my hair, he's the only stylist I've gone to but the last couple of times, I wasn't too happy about the work that he did. He's a friend of mine and I didn't say anything because its not like he could put it back on. I haven't gotten my hair cut since, which leads us back to today. What if I go to someone else, get my hair cut and then see my friend? Will it be awkward? Will we have to process? What if this new hair stylist cuts off my tail? I was talking to Evan about this and he said that the last time he went in for a hair cut, he specifically told the person not to cut the end of his hair off and the only reason it didn't happen is because Jodi was there and saved his tail from being added to the pile of hair on the floor. Do I need to bring a bodyguard for my tail? Why am I freaking out about this?
Well, I've made the decision. I'm going to try Bishops on Alberta. I mean, I am on a budget here. Wish me luck.