Reading: Frank McCourt, 'Tis

Viewing: Droves of old women getting identical hairdos.

Moving: from chair to chair. Also some arm-wrestling to get my hair washed. Oof.

Learning: I want more than ever to be one of those cool old women like Abigail Tillerman or Tasha Tudor who keeps her hair long all her life, plaited in a silver braid straight down her back.

31 December 1999: New Year's Eve

I had a book. I had a bottle of water. DMB had warned me that these women would beat you up if they thought you were jumping the shampoo line. I was all set.

At noon, KBH, DMB, A-----, and I entered Norman's of New York, Fountains Plaza, at the northeast corner of Military and Old Boynton Road, and I felt like Eddie Murphy when Dan Ackroyd explains how the commodities floor works. Four hair appointments and three nail appointments--we should expect to be there for the afternoon.

We' also made a stop for my make-up because I, bright girl that I am, had omitted to bring any. The list of what I'd forgot to bring:

• Video camera (which RDC has to return anyway)
• Backless strapless bra
• Short lavender silk dress that I thought would be suitable for the wedding until I realized how formal we were going
• Make-up
• The earrings I was married in
• My own shampoo and conditioner
• Spare razors in case JJC (who has hepatitis) used mine
• Earplugs

I found a nail polish I thought would match my dress perfectly in a color called Marble. I found mascara, eyeliner, and a lip pencil in a darker color than I would have thought of, because DMB thought it would suit me. I didn't have a nail appointment because I have no nails. My cuticles are past help, I don't have enough white for a tipped manicure (which I like and I don't care how unfashionable it is), and no manicure could last on me anyway.

But now I was through the door. I was glad I'm not allergic to perfumes or asthmatic. A different scent, liberally applied, for every client. Hairspray. And conversation.

I really didn't mind the lines, misanthropic as I sound. I had my book. I chatted with a couple of the women around me. I watched almost everyone get the same haircut--short and with lots of schtuff in it to mask the thinning. They were all too old for the mommie perm, I guessed. I myself am probably going to lose a lot of hair myself, because of genetics, keeping it long, and karma, so I should shut up.

I have never skied in Europe (or, the sarcastic might add, America) but I hear that Euros have no respect for lines. Or even queues. U.S. ski lift lines are mostly orderly and people know how to take turns. (However, our ski food sucks and theirs rocks.) Anyway, these women had to be ex-European skiers. There's a line to wait in to get your hair washed, and no one wanted to sit down and lose her place, and no one wanted to move when someone else was called, and clerks called people from the head of the line into two separate directions leading other queuers to think people were cutting, and I would have happily sat and played Musical Chairs as people ahead of me were called, but I cannot sit while old women are standing. So I was part of the problem, I guess.

I've never gone to a salon where anyone but your stylist washes your hair, so I didn't know if I should go hover at my stylist's station or if she would call me out of the chairs at the front of the store. Given the pace of the work and the frenzy of the clientele, I elected to be a vulture. Soon enough she was ready for me and I sat down and she took the towel off my head and whistled as my hair came down. It's not superlong, barely to the middle of my back, but I was nervous there would be too much for her to work with.

DMB had shown me the photographs of her work and frankly I didn't like any of them. There were a couple of intriguing ones in which most of the hair hangs but a braid ess-curves through the free-fall. I liked the technique, but my hair wouldn't behave with so little restraint and besides I wanted my hair up. Up, no center part, braided off the neck, with wisps. Other than those specs, I was ready to let her have her way with me. "Lean forward," she told me, and I did, and I felt her beginning to braid from the middle of the nape. Hmm.
"How about starting it under my ear and working around in a circle?" That would use up more hair and finish back at my ear, whereas if she braided straight up my scalp I had no idea what she could have done with all the hair she'd have left by the time she got to my forehead.
"Hmm," she considered. "Let's try that."

She saved out some locks around my face and around the nape, rolled them up, and went to work. It didn't even take her very long. Considering what an odd angle she'd had to work from, I was hugely impressed that the tail she held in her hand was plaited nearly to the tips and didn't have big chunks sticking out. Lots of hairspray. We debated what to do with the tail and she coiled it about midway from ear to crown. A couple of hairpins and the braid was done. Then she curled my wisps, and I ogled.

The hair she drew away from my forehead she'd curved a little, so I didn't have straight lines radiating up from my face. The curls softened the overall effect and were feminine. The coiled braid lay flat against my head and didn't bulge like a bun. The flowers she stuck in asymmetrically, which was a fine idea. Then lots of people ogled, stylists, hair-washers (mine wanted to see how I turned out), and clients. The stylist in the next chair, Wendy, wanted me to go another stylist in a different section and claim that Wendy had done this. That led to ogling in that section. With me in my shorts overalls, I looked great.

Time for the big night. RDC and I plan to make a wedding page, or series, but there's one photograph I have to include here. And I don't care if the dress was too much for an at-home wedding. At home it was, but it was an evening wedding and New Year's Eve to boot. I'd wear this dress to go to the movies.

At this point I'd forgotten jewelry twice.

Once was while packing in Colorado--I was going to bring the silver-and-pearl (and rhinestone) earrings I was married in. For my wedding, I was going to wear borrowed pearl studs because that's all I had that was appropriate, but in a shopping trip with my sister three days before the big day, I found pearls--fake, neither natural nor cultured like the studs, but with a dangle to them, in silver, with sparklies.

DMB had offered that I could rootle through her earrings before resorting to hunting for new ones, and she had a pair of simple stud-with-oval-pendant ones that I liked and a pair of much sparklier ones with gold and rhinestones. I was persuaded from the plain ones to the sparkly ones because my dress was so simple. Plus the sparkly pair had a matching necklace.

The second time I forgot was just here for a minute. It was upstairs, not in Colorado, and so easier to fetch.

I ironed JJC's boyfriend's outfit in exchange for her doing my makeup. Actually what happened was that she walked into the bathroom when I was doing gruesome things to myself with eyeliner. I'm clumsy as well as inexperienced and I had a streak in the middle of my eyelid. While she fixed me, she mentioned how incapable she is of ironing. So we traded skills. Actually, I contributed only my labor because I don't know if there's any skill in ironing. Particularly when the clothes aren't natural fibers.

I wouldn't've had any eyeshadow but JJC persuaded me to a bit of powder. It did open my eye sockets, but the contrast between it and my regular skin is embarrassing here. Mascara, eyeliner, lipstick. Otherwise that's just my face, which I wish to clarify because JJC commented on my skin being flawless <preen>.

When I went upstairs for the jewelry, I zipped DMB and fastened her necklace and she mine. Then we were ready to go.

DMB looked gorgeous but she was a bride and all brides are beautiful. I myself felt more lovely than I did at my wedding, and considering how spongy I'd been feeling and how slothful I'd been acting, I was extremely pleased.

Actually I felt like Stevie. Remember that episode of "Moonlighting" when a man hired David and Maddie to find him a wife? They each sought a woman separately since neither had faith in the other's taste. Maddie found the gourmet cook who spoke three languages. David instructed the men in the office to make a pinhole in a sheet of paper and reflect the image on another sheet of paper, as you do viewing an eclipse, to spare the eyes. They all whipped out their Ray-Bans and in walked Stevie.

I felt like an eclipse.

It didn't take a lot of effort (on my part) to get to look like this--someone else washed my hair, another someone else dried and styled it, yet another did my makeup, and a fourth fastened my necklace. All I had to do was polish my nails, buckle up the bra, insert myself into the dress without ruining my hair, poke earrings through my lobes, and I was done. All the getting ready was fun, but only because it was a novelty. Devoting that much time to my appearance regularly would be a waste of time. And maintaining the look through the evening was tough because of the corset-like bra around my waist, because I had black shit ebbing into the corners of my eyes, and because no lipstick yet invented stays on my lips. I can't imagine looking like this regularly: regularly would mean I couldn't dress up, couldn't built sandcastles (the polish came off Sunday at the beach), would have black shit in my eyes, and would have to learn to braid my hair like that. I like my regular self enough.

But I looove this photograph. She's a brick...house.

On to the wedding.