Tuesday 12 November 2013

METH AND HIGHLIGHTS


My close friends often remark that I am a magnet for the peculiar situation; I am not sure if I simply find myself stumbling upon these odd occurrences by chance, or if my writer sensibilities are on the lookout, but I have a fair amount of stories (as any past reader of my blog can attest) to share that air on the side of bizarre and hysterical (in my mind anyway). Be it from the chiropractor that falls asleep whilst he is ‘fixing’ my neck to getting stuck in the English countryside in a silver suit and having to hitch a ride to a train station from a trucker at 5 a.m. Let's just say that I’ve lived a colorful existence.

Today was no exception really. It started as any other day when one is in the midst of a move, hopped up on caffeine and filled with the adrenaline of knowing you have to shove most of your life in boxes and traipse it across town in a truck. As my birthday is also fast approaching, I decided that what better way to take a break from packing boxes than to head out with my sister (who happens to be in town for a bit) and get beautified, so to speak. Being rather low maintenance when it comes to my appearance and beauty regime, as soon as my birthday approaches (like many women my age) I often decide I look old and figure a haircut or facial will somehow make me look 29. It never does on a profound level of course, but spa treatments of any kind always seem to soften the blow of ageing.

So off we go to the Aveda salon (I figured it was a trustworthy and a more natural brand, two key words when one is wanting a change) and I decide that as I’m with my sister who has colored her hair more times than Cyndi Lauper, I’m going to shove my trepidations aside and get some highlights done along with a haircut. (The only coloring I’ve ever done to my hair is from a box when I was about 13, so this was very new territory for me). A lovely energetic colorist named Husseyn (as in Sadam he exclaimed, which I should’ve taken as a sign) was terribly excited to welcome me to the color club, as he spouted all the right lingo about giving me a ‘fresh and fabulous’ look for my impending birthday. Alright, sounded good so far.

And at first, he and I were getting on like a house on fire. He was from Turkey, young, fabulous, served a great cup of licorice tea; all things you want your hair stylist to be. My sister meanwhile was sitting to my left getting her hair colored and was talking to her hair person. As I know nothing about the coloring process aside from the fact that it smells awful and Husseyn said we were going to treat me with lowlights, or highlights, or something that sounded tame in comparison to some whole head dye job, I watched as he flew around the salon at mach speed with trays and foils and bowls of goo. I have to say, after packing all-day and feeling exhausted, I greatly admired his energy.

Then as luck would have it, or mine anyway, things suddenly took a turn for the odd. Husseyn started speeding up (way UP) and dropping things. He then would stop talking in mid sentence and stare out into the void, as his once ebullient face started to look a bit odd. Next thing I know, Husseyn is alternating between looking like a stroke victim trying to chew his lips off and someone who has been at a rave too long. He started making funny mouth movements and closing his eyes, nodding off, then twitch awake and contort in some altogether frightening way (I was of course trying to figure out if he was on hardcore drugs or it was some form of Tourette’s). At this point, he was still foiling my hair (or whatever the heck it's called) and depending on where he was at in his ‘moment’ my hair was either getting matted down aggressively with color and shoved in foil or he would muss it up with his hand that was now twitching uncontrollably or inadvertently stab me with the hair clips. When I finally turned to look at him  in the face and ask if he was okay, he had his eyes closed with his fingers in his mouth. It was then I knew I was in serious (hair) trouble.

Those that know me well know that for someone with such a big mouth, I can go ridiculously polite to the point of being mute. So of course, instead of saying, “what the hell did you put in your licorice tea Husseyn?!” I motion to my sister that something is clearly amiss with my hairdresser and I’m FREAKing out. The other thing that you should know about she and I, is that we can quickly burst into hysterical laughter, which does not bode well when one is trying to be furtive about something. So I begin to tell her in French in between fits of giggles, that I think my hairdresser is on something. Of course, as my French is very rusty, I don’t know the phrase for, “my hair dresser is twitching like a maniac and I think he’s going to burn my hair off cause he took too much methamphetamines in the bathroom.” She takes one look at him in mid contortion and tries her best to remain calm, as she can see I’m freaking out. So after we’d run out of ways to describe what the hell could be going on in French, we start talking about the situation in very bad code, replacing Husseyn with the King and what (the hell!) is going on at his nursery that day. Under normal circumstances, I’d worry we sounded utterly nuts (um, do you think the King has had too much...SUGAR?), but as Husseyn was on his own freaking planet, I wasn’t too worried. So after establishing that we both clearly thought this man was a liability and I may end up bald, my sister scurried to tell management that their star colorist was morphing into David Guetta on crack.

At this point, Husseyn had left me to absorb my ‘color’ or whatever the hell was happening under my foil and he went off to massage some woman’s head, which was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. He’d completely lose himself mid rub and throw his head back and make his weird face contortions as he tried to chew his jaw off. By this point, the manager had taken note and realized that there was seriously something to our complaint. And of course, instead of making a scene and accusing the colorist of sabotage, I just couldn’t stop laughing. So like any good polite reformed Catholic with a guilt complex, I let Nutjob’s colleague shampoo my hair (she at this point was even apologizing profusely), told the manager all was good (especially as he said it was all free; um YEAH) and ran from the salon with wet, un cut hair. Before I left, the manager of course begged me to return the next day for a proper cut with a sober stylist. 

See, never a dull day round these parts. I'm thinking next time, I may stick to the color in a box thing and a simple manicure. 



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