Read Girls Only: The Hairdresser for Free Online

The Hairdresser
    “Sorry I’m
late!” I apologized as the door closed behind me, leaving the rain outside.
    Jen looked
up and smiled. She was sitting in her stylist chair, reading People and
drinking something from a tall Starbucks cup. They were just around the corner
and I had my own, picked up on the way. I glanced around the normally busy
salon at the empty chairs and quiet dryers.
    “We close in
fifteen minutes,” she admonished, already standing and beckoning me over. “So
what do you have in mind, Mandy? Just a cut?”
    “It’ll be
quick, I promise.” I fingered the ends of my auburn hair, looking for
split-ends. “Just a trim.”
    She patted
the chair. “Hop up.”
    I stashed my
purse under her table and slid onto the seat, smoothing my skirt and watching
in the mirror as she fastened the black drape around my neck like a reverse
Dracula’s cape. Jen ran her hand through my hair, still thick although I was
nearing thirty-five. My mother had started losing her hair at forty and I was
paranoid about compromising my best feature.
    “Half an
inch? An inch?”
    I nodded.
“Sounds about right.”
    Pleasantries
over, Jen got down to business, hustling me over to the sink to wash my hair
before the cut. This was my favorite part of going to a salon—the warm water,
the gentle scrubbing of her fingertips over my scalp, the press of her hip
against my shoulder, and the lovely view of her cleavage as she bent to rinse
the soap out.
    Yes, I had a
boyfriend—if you could call him that—but I couldn’t help my sexual
proclivities, such as they were. I’d always had a thing for pretty girls,
although I’d learned not to confess this fact too often, especially to my male
partners. They just wanted to talk about and push threesomes, and who wanted a
guy breathing over you while you were trying to enjoy yourself with a girl?
    Of course, I
didn’t tell women about it either, most of the time. In spite of what they told
their boyfriends in college, most girls weren’t really into other girls,
especially if the attention of a guy wasn’t at stake. So I just enjoyed their
company and my own little secret, later fantasizing about it in the shower or
in the middle of the night while Tom snored away next to me in bed.
    The
experience of Jen washing my hair was so pleasurable I often lost track of
whatever small talk we were making at the time, and today’s topic of
conversation was so oft-traveled, I’m afraid my mind definitely wandered down
the front of her blouse. She was complaining about her own on-again, off-again
boyfriend, a bodybuilder named Brad who worked out four hours a day and liked
mirrors more than his hairdresser girlfriend.
    “Why do we
bother with these bastards, Jen?” I met her eyes, shaking my head in disgust as
she toweled my hair dry.
    “You got
me.” She rolled her pretty blue eyes up under her thick, blonde bangs. Like
most hairdressers, she was perfectly coiffed, her hair thicker and blonder then
any Rapunzel. I could smell it when she leaned in close, fruity and sweet, and
I caught another secret scent, the musky smell of her sweat and deodorant
mixed. “Oh sweetie… what do we have here?”
    “Hm?” I
inquired, enjoying the way she dried me off like a naughty puppy after a bath too
much to really take notice of her frown.
    “A grey
hair.”
    I stared at
her, horrified, disbelieving, until she plucked it from my temple, the sharp
sting making me yelp, my eyes watering.
    “Ouch!” I
stared at the hair pressed between her finger and thumb. It was grey all right.
“You’re not supposed to pluck them! Doesn’t that make them come back even
more?”
    “That’s an
old-wives-tale.” She laughed. “Is it really your first?”
    I gulped and
nodded, to aghast to speak.
    “You should
keep it.”
    She found a
perfume card in the middle of a magazine, black with small white lettering.
Using Scotch-tape, she fastened my first grey hair to it in stark contrast.
    “Keep it?” I
scoffed