I started to grow my hair out when I was in Austin for reasons I was not altogether aware of, somehow on a symbolic level it made sense just to let it grow and grow until I looked like Crystal Gale. Well, I am now in L.A. and my hair is the longest it has ever been in my adult life. It has reached the grand length of being somewhere between four inches past my shoulders and two inches from central breast region. In the beginning I was loving my long hair. I loved feeling my hair swinging on my back. I liked the youth inducing feel of a lions mane protecting me from looking like a soccer mom. I took a strange pleasure in putting it up in a French twist and then letting it down only to shake it free in a category five trichome tornado.
However, there is an unexpected issue that came with my new length, no matter how long I blow dry and to what Herculean efforts I use with a round brush—and I am talking working that round brush with a fierce and focused velocity—when I release the hair from the bondage of the brush it returns to its previous state of uncurled drippiness. The other day before the interview I spent almost an hour and a half on a blow dry and I don’t feel like it made the smallest bit of difference. That, my friends, is unacceptable.
Ever since that moment I have been considering adding a haircut to my hair colour appointment today and yet I am feeling attached to my hair, and I mean that beyond the obvious literal attachment. As drippy and hippy as I look I am just not ready to get it cut. I do have a plan, though.
In a couple of weeks I am going to see Nob the mighty god of hair straightening who has a Japanese hair straightening salon in Hacienda Heights. Nob trains all the salons in NY , LA and the vast regions in-between how to do the technique of Japanese Thermal Conditioning. Once Nob trains the Beverly Hills salons they go on to charge up to $1000 for the process of turning wavy, frizzy, and coarse hair into silk. The first time I went to Nob I was willing to pay any price for him to transform my hair, but all Nob charged was $300.
I think I was at his small store front salon for six hours going through many stages of chemicals and flat irons and flipping through Japanese fashion magazines and Golf Digest until I left with hair so smooth, so shiny and silky that I had hair that looked like I could be in a Pantene commercial.
When we moved to Chicago my hair grew out and I dreamed of the ease of once again just gently blow drying my hair for ten minutes or so and having perfectly soft and straight hair. But, I was nervous about going to anyone other than Nob. I have heard horror stories about this process going wrong when done by someone without Nob’s experience and I was not willing to risk it. Whenever I would come out to L.A. the timing would not work out for me to see Nob and so once again I have a mass of wavy, semi-curly, frizzy and coarse hair that no one would want to run there fingers through unless I had tamed it with a flat iron.
But, very soon I will be back in the low on frills, high on skills, all Japanese salon talking to Nob about golf ( his interest, not mine) and getting the hair of my dreams for only $350 (he has only bumped up his prices by $50 in two and a half years). My plan is once I have hair that requires no taming I will then embark on a haircut and maybe even a hairstyle–but fret not as I am just thinking of taking off a couple of inches.
Picture of long red hair is not of me. If only my hair looked so good! I got the picture here.
