There was a time when I swore by self-administered, at-home hair color. This time was called “when I was broke and didn’t quite know how hair color worked.” This segment of my life overlapped with my first year after college, when I lived in Chicago and earned a pittance while working as a paralegal in the grayest office ever. It was an office so bland and drab and gray that I wondered if the partners had taken the set of Office Space and spent a small fortune moving it from a soundstage to Chicago. I had been drawn to the lovely city on the lake because my sister Laurel was living there and it had (and has) a bustling comedy community. My dreams of improv comedy brilliance were dashed by an exhausting work schedule that left me without enough energy to do much more than eat dinner and fall asleep after work.
In most offices, the employees who occupy the lower-level jobs band together and become a friendly team. They are brothers-in-arms pitted against the wholly out-of-touch and usually moronic higher-ups who make business decisions with no idea how anything will actually trickle down to the client or customer level. At almost every job I’ve ever had, I’ve made fast friends and gotten along swimmingly with all of my coworkers. During high school summer vacations, I’d serve as the token white girl in a Boston law firm’s mailroom, where I quickly became buddies with everyone. We’d crack jokes, listen to dancehall reggae music by Beenie Man played far too loudly (not my choice), and keep our eyes open for free leftover food in the conference rooms. During the academic year in high school, I worked as a sandwich maker at Bruegger’s Bagels in downtown Weston (blink and you’ll miss “downtown” Weston). Again, I was pals with everybody—managers, fellow sandwich makers, and even the troll-like guys who were there just to cook the bagels in a giant cauldron. At that job, I initiated a fun game called “the Hottie Tally” wherein we would keep a record of how many hot guys came in each day. Our record was a mere three—not much talent in downtown Weston’s foot traffic, sadly. I’ve fit in at every job I’ve had except one: at that damn law firm job in Chicago.
I was a paralegal, which was just a way of saying “administrative assistant” that made you feel like you hadn’t just wasted four years studying English literature at a liberal arts college. The salary for this job was about half of what it cost to attend my college for one year. So after paying rent and a few bills, I was perpetually broke. Like a stray cat (minus the strut), I was living on hard-boiled eggs and cans of tuna. The paralegal gig paid horribly, and even worse, my coworkers seemed to hate me, thanks to one girl at the firm. Kristy had been the “cute blonde” at the office until I arrived and unwittingly dethroned her. My apologies. I have great hair and tolerable features: I was born this way.40 Kristy wasn’t doing much to earn the title of “cute blonde,” but as the only blonde at the firm she was, by default, the cute one, I suppose. This same logic can be used to declare Latvia the most developed and stable of the Baltic states. It’s still not saying much.
Nonetheless, blonde “cutie” Kristy definitely would have benefitted from a root boost spray (sprayed on while the hair was still wet, of course), a bit of gel (to coat the shaft and build body), and a good blow-dry. But I wasn’t about to share my gems of hair brilliance with her. Not after how she treated me.
Kristy took it upon herself to organize paralegal outings to a nearby bar after work on Fridays. This would happen with enough regularity that it didn’t take long before I realized that I was being left out by her, perhaps deliberately and very frequently. I hate to pull out the pithy “don’t hate me because I’m beautiful” line, but seriously, gurl, don’t hate. On me. Because of my dope weave. I’d like to give you some tips if you’d stop blatantly excluding me and pretending that you don’t care about me. The opposite of love isn’t hate, Kristy; it’s disinterest.
Fortunately, I had one ally at the office: Dmitry, the Russian paralegal who collected kitsch. Dmitry’s cube was filled with ripped-out magazine pictures of Liza Minnelli and David Gest’s wedding (specifically the photo in which they are flanked by Michael Jackson and Elizabeth Taylor), posters of kittens, macramé crafts, and other such oddities. The no-nonsense black woman from Chicago’s South Side who served as our office assistant was completely bewildered by Dmitry’s cube, but I loved it. His cube cracked me up, he cracked me up, and he had my back. Thank God I had him because, thanks to Kristy’s manipulations, I wasn’t exactly winning the company popularity contest. Almost every day, Dmitry and I would eat lunch together in the conference room and troubleshoot the latest office gossip. Dmitry had moved back in with his parents (to the suburbs north of Chicago) after college, so he’d spend lunchtime munching on his traditional Russian food prepared by his mother. I’d chow on my lunch, which consisted of a tuna salad sandwich (brought from home because I was broke), Doritos (also brought from home because it’s cheaper to divide up a big bag of Doritos than it is to buy small individual bags), and water (one of the few things the law firm supplied—a community bubbler). That exact meal was my lunch every day for six months. I was probably walking around with a wicked case of mercury poisoning. We’d discuss our fellow paralegals, the Goth kid who ran the file closet/photocopy room, the bizarre assortment of lawyers and their eccentricities, and what we’d done the night or weekend before. Dmitry would tell me stories of suburban family life—eating dinner with his Russian-born parents and younger brother, watching TV, borrowing the car. My conversational contributions would be updates about my nights and weekends: visiting the gay gym in my neighborhood (the Body Shop) where I would be wholly ignored by buff men, eating dinner alone in my apartment, or drinking at Wrigleyville bars with my two friends Ginny and Kate.
As if earning a barely livable wage wasn’t prize enough, I was assigned to work for one of the lawyers who was a Jekyll-and-Hyde-type woman with a JD from a subpar law school. I can tolerate working for an asshole as long as I know what to expect. That’s fine by me. But if I hear the click of your shoes and I don’t know whether you’re coming to ask me “what the fuck” I was thinking when I failed to make a third photocopy of a client’s passport even though we still have the original inside the file folder41 or to inquire about my family reunion in Idaho (despite the fact that I’m not from Idaho and I clearly told you that I was going away for a weekend with my family in Boston), then I’m going to hate you. Just be consistent with my fragile sensibilities, would ya? Much like a child who is learning how to trust and other such shiz from Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, I just need consistency, dammit.
Thanks to my attorney assignment, I spent many hours at work in the bathroom crying and many hours after work at Pippin’s (a bar with peanut shells covering the floor and eight-dollar pitchers). I was too broke to afford much hair upkeep, save for a basic trim at Supercuts every so often. Those were the days where I’d wait for a haircut in a long line of men (who needed a foolproof buzz cut), then receive my haircut within eyeshot of said men. They’d watch the hairdresser spray my hair wet (no shampoo), then cut it straight across. The glamorous life!
The haircut situation was degrading, and there was no way I could afford any sort of salon hair color. I could hardly afford to ride the bus, much less drop a hundred dollars or more on a nice set of partial foils. My sister (who was my roommate at the time, though our living arrangement was more like “ships in the night”) told me about an Aveda training salon that was only a few blocks over from our apartment. You could make a reservation, show up at the Aveda training salon obscenely early on a Saturday morning, and get your hair done for free by a hairdresser in cosmetology school. You only had to pay the tip—fantastic! I promptly made a reservation, and on the appointed Saturday morning I used free transportation (my legs!) to get to the Aveda training salon, which was housed in a near-abandoned mall. Finally I’d have a day of relaxation and self-improvement, and it would be free of charge, too! I was elated.
“Selena Ko-pock?” a young wannabe colorist shouted in the crowded waiting room.
“That’s me!” I popped up and followed her to her client chair,
where she sat me down and we talked. I explained what I wanted: blonde, blonde, blonde. Take me there however we have to get there—just take me there. Take the scenic route, take the long way home,42 whatever you gotta do—I just need some fresh blonde on my dome. Summer had arrived, and I had decided that some nice highlights were just what I needed to pull out of this Chicagoland depression. It’s that simple, right? A job that hardly pays a living wage and feelings of inescapable loneliness and alienation might persist, but blonde highlights will turn this boat around! I was quite chatty with the young colorist, and I thought we were connecting over a shared vision: a blonder, happier Selena.
The colorist washed my hair (which in retrospect makes zero sense if you are going to color a person’s hair, but perhaps washing hair was standard operating procedure for the first step at the training salon—after all, you never quite know who is walking through that door for free services or how often she showers) and then began brushing it out. As she was brushing my hair, she began frowning. What was wrong? Why was she staring at my hair and frowning? Did she hate the cut and color? So did I! You’re preaching to the choir, my new beauty school friend!
“Your hair isn’t in very good shape,” the colorist informed me.
“Yeah . . . I’m kinda not surprised. I haven’t really had money to take care of it or get much done.”
“I’m going to get my instructor—hold on,” she said and disappeared. My chair was positioned with a view out the window of the basement-level training salon and into the ventilation shaft of the building. The building’s center shaft was quite big and must have been built to be a central courtyard, but it hadn’t been completed. The ground was cement and the would-be courtyard was empty and shadowy. I just stared and wondered what would happen now. Could they refuse to color me? Is that what hell feels like?
“Hi there.” The instructor introduced herself curtly and stood next to the colorist-in-training as they looked at a chunk of wet hair on the back my head.
“See what I mean? It’s stretching. She wants to go blonde, but this stretching worries me,” the young colorist explained to her teacher. I felt like a show dog with a defect. The judges were talking about it right in front of me, as though I couldn’t hear or respond (unlike show dogs, I know).
“Is something wrong?” I inquired, reminding them that I had both ears and a mouth (and that I don’t sniff butts, dog style).
“Yes, your hair is quite damaged,” the instructor explained. “You see how it’s pulling a bit? Stretching here, you see? When hair is damaged, it stretches when it’s wet, see?” She showed me pieces on the side of my head that did seem to be stretching a bit. “It would be unwise to dye hair if it’s damaged like this,” she continued, but I had stopped listening. I wanted to scream, “Just dye my friggin’ hair, would you? I got up so early for this, and one of the only pleasures that I have in life is sleeping late because it’s free. My hair can handle it—trust me. My hair is tougher than it looks. When I was a kid, I got perm after perm after perm because of Jennifer Grey’s awesome hair in Dirty Dancing, and my hair never fell out, even after all those stinky chemicals. My hair can handle it, trust me. Just sweet Lord, please make me blonder. I need this.”
“OK . . . well, if you won’t dye my hair, I’ll just walk down the street and buy an at-home dye kit,” I said. I’m nothing if not reactionary and honest.
“I wouldn’t do that,” the teacher advised me.
“Well, I’m going to.” I unbuttoned the Aveda training center smock and reached for my purse. “Ummm . . . thanks?” I wasn’t about to give a tip to a girl who had washed my hair and then refused to do anything more, so I simply walked upstairs and out to the street with a wet, half-brushed head of hair.
What the fuck? I thought as I walked. Almost immediately, hot tears began flowing down my face. I just want blonde hair! I don’t care if it’s damaged! Just give me what I want! I got up so damn early for this! I was muttering to myself as I walked by a Caribou Coffee shop. Since I hadn’t given the colorist a tip, I had some cash on me, and a flavored coffee was just what I needed. Unkempt, wet hair be damned! The coffee soothed my soul, and then I walked back to my neighborhood. I walked past the tanning salon where I had befriended the owners—a chatty gay couple who took a shine to me when they discovered that my birthday is only a day off from the birthday of their beloved Barbra Streisand (and yes, they gave away free tans to everyone on April 24 to celebrate Babs’s birthday). I trudged over to the Walgreens on the corner of North Broadway and West Belmont, where I purchased an at-home highlighting kit. Then I walked back to my apartment, past Pleasure Island (a sex toy store), Reckless Records (a hepcat record store), the theater where Puppetry of the Penis was playing, and a sushi restaurant that I could never afford to visit. I took my building’s stinky, antiquated elevator up to the fourth floor and walked into my perpetually empty apartment.
I locked myself in my bathroom and took matters in to my own (rubber-gloved) hands. Screw those jerks from the Aveda training salon. I was going to reach my dream of being blonder, even if I had to do it in my own bathroom. A bathroom that boasted two sinks but a layer of grime that no amount of bleach would eliminate. After a certain number of tenants precede you, there’s just no getting that tub clean. I started in on the steps outlined by the home blonde highlighting kit. I tried painting thin streaks of bleach onto small bunches of hair and then placing them down on my head, but the bleached sections of hair began bleeding onto other hair. Finally, my patience wore thin, and I couldn’t be bothered to carefully paint each thin section of hair. It’s impossibile to do quality highlights at home without those aluminum sheets (foils) that professional colorists use to isolate small sections. I noted this and decided to just go for broke with thick, bold highlights. It’s summertime! I thought. Bold highlights will mimic the natural effects of the sun and give me a sunnier disposition!
Alas, the sun doesn’t lighten hair in tiger-stripe-like swaths of brassy color just above your ears. And it didn’t take long for my Jekyll-and-Hyde lawyer to notice the color change.
“Oh, did you get your hair done?” she inquired at work that Monday as she handed me a stack of files to process and prepare so that she could sign the letterhead cover letter and then bill the client another $450 an hour.
“How nice of you to notice. Well, yes, I do indeed have some fresh ‘highlights,’ if you will (will you?), on my dope weave (and I use the word ‘weave’ facetiously as my hair is actually all my own and I think that weaves on white women are quite suspect), but no, I didn’t ‘get it done’ per se. I didn’t go into a hair salon and enjoy a glass of complimentary champagne (though the imagined drink probably wouldn’t technically come from the Champagne region of France, so it wouldn’t technically be ‘champagne’ so much as bubbly white wine), a scalp massage (though I would love one of those as I fear that I am becoming aphephobic, that is afraid of touch, from lack of human contact), and a pricey cut and color. No, the wages that you are currently paying me do not permit such luxuries. I earn practically nothing for enduring your abuse at the grayest law firm of all time. So in short (perhaps it’s too late for that, Jekyll-and-Hyde lawyer), yes, I did color my hair, but I didn’t ‘get my hair done’ because that would imply that I earn a living wage.” That’s what I wanted to say. What did I really say?
“Yeah—I did. Thanks.” And I put my brassy, striped head down to add 0.25 hours to the bill tally for another client.
But I knew it was bad. Suzanne came to Chicago to visit me (bless her heart), and even she seemed startled by my brassy tiger stripes. You know it’s bad when a fellow blonde addict thinks that perhaps your blonde wasn’t the best idea. Blondes are like the original five members of Guns N’ Roses in their legendary song “Mr. Brownstone” with the lyrics “I used to do a little, but a little wouldn’t do it, so a little got more and more. I just keep trying to get a little better, said a little better than before.” It’s always just one more bottle of peroxide, one mo
re at-home highlighting kit—blonde perfection is just one more process away. Blondes are like people who become addicted to plastic surgery. They need just one more surgery to fix this one thing, then they’ll stop—promise! And perhaps blonde nirvana truly is just around the corner, but please leave that transformation in the hands of trained professionals. Take it from a girl who suffered through a summer living near Detroit Tigers fans and joking that the tiger stripes on my blonde head were a tribute to the baseball team. At least Dmitry got a laugh at that over lunch.
CHAPTER 9
RULE: Heed True Blonde Confessions
Every blonde has been there: You’re struck by a bolt of inspiration and you simply must change your hair color and it must be done right away. What could go wrong? you think as you embark on an odyssey that will cost you many hours and lots of money, and eventually answer that very question. A lot—a whole lot can go wrong. A few of my blonde friends were willing to share their tress tales of woe.
Suzanne T. (platinum perfection, my lifelong bestie and partner in crime)
What’s your worst hair disaster?
Where do I begin? . . . As far as isolated incidences, it’s a toss-up between when I was given an adult bowl cut43 (in 2000 as a junior in college) after being told I would look like Cameron Diaz and the time when I went essentially brunette. The lowlights got a touch out of hand that winter, and I never felt like myself. As far as everyday disasters, nothing is worse than humidity or having an amazing hair day when you have nowhere to go (shallow, I know).
The New Rules for Blondes Page 8