It was finally time for a much overdue haircut yesterday. I don’t have a regular stylist, mostly because I am not regularly styled, but I went back to the girl who has cut my hair a few times over the past two years. She’s nice and nothing if not interesting. For example, last night she covered my head with conditioner and then announced that she was going to the restroom. Then she disappeared into the bathroom for five minutes. I felt weird about the whole thing at first, but then it sort of amused me. I’m used to a world where women (primarily at my office) pretend that we do not do anything in the bathroom except fluff our hair and examine our teeth. We do not poop, and if anyone comes into the bathroom while we are doing anything other than fluffing our hair, we universally fall silent and pretend to not exist. So having my stylist announce that she was going to the bathroom and then making it clear what she was doing by being gone for more than thirty seconds was interesting. Honestly, it was somewhat refreshingly honest and human. And I just described someone going to the bathroom as “refreshing”.
This is not the only time she has left me briefly speechless. There was the time she was talking to a neighboring stylist about their mutual friend’s herpes, at which point she included me in the conversation by sharing that she has HPV. Last night she told me that she got a DUI this past summer and chose to pass on the restricted license because she didn’t want the breathalyzer installed in her car.
These are not things I normally share with strangers.
But I like it. It fascinates me in the same way that the Total Honesty movement fascinates me; I can’t imagine doing it myself, but I imagine it would be deeply freeing to hold nothing back and share every thought and detail and feeling. Some people even think that what I say here is a version of being overly open about my life, but I think that’s more of a generational gap than a true assessment of how bluntly honest I am.
I’m rambling. I think I’ll stop and go to the restroom.*
*Strictly to fluff my newly-cut hair.