Anger, Assumptions and Androgyny

It was my second time to that salon.

Upon arrival, my eyes met with an astonishing character. Disturbingly astonishing. From vague recollection, I saw him around the last time I came, but never up this close. It was a permanent impression.

He immediately detected my presence and rose to receive my advent with a promotional offering of services.

Herein lies the dilemma. The stupidest thing is, I didn’t know how the hell to address him, or her in that sense. But I guess, for the sake of convenience and ethics here, let us just utilise the paradigm of "he".

On the other hand, my eyes were completely fixated at his elaborate…phenotype.

His face was pallid with thick layers of mascara, with a tinge of reddish-beige sprinkled at the top of his cheeks. A glistening crystal rested blissfully upon his right earlobe. His eyelashes seemed to reach towards mine, and his lips were two distinct creases of bright red. His hair danced in curls from his head all the way to just below his shoulders, and the most formidable perfume penetrated my olfactory defenses like spear and rice-paper. I could have sworn he looked almost identical to Michael Jackson.

He spoke with the most bizarre Mandarin accent, and as such I couldn’t hear nuts. But that wasn’t the only reason. My reserve buckets of attention, all that were left from the busy day, were completely stolen by the pitch of his voice. I thought there were birds in the shop.

So I starting conversing in English, but as soon as I realized we weren’t getting anywhere, I approached another hairstylist near the counter, whom I contrived to be, erm, evidently more perpendicular to the ground. I soon found out that my previous hairstylist was on leave, so he proposed I come back on Wednesday if I had specifically wanted her to get the job done. But since I was already there, I might as well just get it done, so I said to him, “Anyone will do.”

That may have been the stupidest thing I’d ever have said in my entire life. Word of advice, don’t use ANYONE ANYHOW.

Mr. Happy then came over to guide me to a seat. And I was like “Oh @#$%.”

Well, what could I have done? So I put my bag down, got my ass on the chair, donned the prevent-hair-from-falling-onto-your-skin-and-clothes-rubber-cloth-cover-sheet thingy, told him how I wanted my hair to be done, and he started working on it.

We had an amazing conversation of four lines.

“你今年几岁？”

Cool, I understood him.

“十六。”

“哦，刚放学是吗？”

“Er, 对。”

Ok, so maybe it wasn’t going to be so bad after all. As soon as he finished snipping the back, I remembered something I forgot to tell him.

“Er, (long pause because I didn’t know whether to call him Uncle, Sir, or 小姐), 你可不可以把我旁边的头发剪得touch 不到耳朵吗？” I gestured. (Pardon my bilinguistic ineptitude)

There was a short pause.

“我还没有剪好！等一下你要我剪多短我就给你剪多短！” He lashed.

I couldn’t tell if my face was cringing, my glasses were on the table. There was a deafening silence. After 3 seconds, I retracted my right arm, he resumed cutting.

At the corner of my eye I could see his expression. He was DAMN PISSED. His lips continuously muttered vague whispers of “我还没有剪好”. Quite differing from what was repetitive in my mind at that moment. Two phrases. “Siao!! What the hell!?” and “My hair’s screwed.” My fears were met. His hand motion increased in speed, and so did the razor activity of his scissors. The deadly combination of flesh and steel circled the side of my head in a blur, even when it was right next to my ear, and I felt my hair growing thinner, and thinner, and thinner, and EVEN thinner. I was completely at his mercy.

That’s it; he was taking it out on my hair. At that moment a very random thought entered my mind. Hairstylists would make really efficient terrorists in future when nanobombs are invented. But I shoved that notion away; I had more important things to worry about.

He tilted my head with a crude stroke, snipped some more, another tilt, another snip. Even so, this didn’t seem to appease his wrath; his hysterical lip movements hadn’t ceased. I thought his perfume was going to crush my throat as he continued his athletic endeavour to scare the shit out of me.

When he was done, I didn’t dare look myself in the mirror. Then, the squall turned to a gentle breeze.

“来，把你的眼镜戴上。我帮你style你的hair.” What’s that supposed to mean to me, someone else has a similar level of linguistic incompetence? Absolutely not, it was the comfort of casual colloquy.

I put my specs on. First impression: Eh it’s not bad!

He continued to apply some gel, simultaneously telling me about the different kind of techniques I could use, the different hair products I could use, all with deepest affability. Or maybe it was because of the contrast I perceived. Then he lifted the covers, and two dark blue handprints on my pants greeted me with a cooling, deriding sensation. I almost laughed aloud. I wonder if I’ll go back there again.

And that’s anger, assumption and androgyny for you. Here’s what I look like now haha. Not bad right!?

Hey hey, my brows are asking,
"Look above us, what do you think?"

By the way, after paying the bill, he gave me his namecard. It said "Michael".