mostly-hawk

Well, she outdid herself once again.  I was so excited for my appointment with Nicci.  My hair color had faded enough that the people who know me well were asking when I was going to get it done again – and strangers were back to treating me like crap more often than not.  Two days ago I had another what I like to call “drive-by assault” in the parking lot at my job.  I was standing outside having a cigarette break and this homeless man with a grocery cart walked through.  He apparently thought it was well in his right to make fun of me and comment on my facial hair.  He was actually rather hostile.  Fortunately, I was not alone and therefore the incident was over sooner rather than later.

 At any rate, it was time…

She was running late when I arrived.  She had to take a friend to the hospital and was rather distracted with that drama for a while.  This didn’t stop her from getting to work on my hair though.

She mixed up two bowls of color right away are started painting them onto my head.  I couldn’t tell what either color was as she didn’t exactly show me and they don’t turn out looking like they look in the bowl anyhow.  It looked like one was a green tint of some sort and the other one appeared to be a light blue or purple of sorts.  I remembered the color from last summer suddenly…  That was a fierce one too.

She added layer after layer of aluminum foil…  I didn’t understand what she was doing.  She would lift up a layer of hair and add one of the colors all along the scalp for about and inch or inch and a half.  Then she would add the other color on the last inch or more of that section of hair.  I didn’t understand why that was happening.  I could not picture what she was doing.

She painted on one color all along the lower half of my head.  This was the same color that ended up on the tips as well.

She rinsed my hair.  I had to sit under the dryer for a bit until it was time to start the next phase.  I hadn’t seen it yet and was excited to do so.  However, when I got back in the chair, it looked different but there wasn’t any real color.  And she immediately started out again.  I lost track of whether or not there were two new bowls of color or just one.  By then, we were chatting about our lives and I sort of stopped paying attention to her process.  This time though the color in the bowl was bright.  It was sort of pink but sort of not.  I was excited to see it though.

Once she finished up, she had me go to the sink again to wash my hair.  I was finally going to see it.  Once again, it is tricky to describe.  But it was fierce and fun to have the initial unveiling if you will when I got back to her station.  It was time for the cut.  She took her time and was rather detailed with the scissors here and there.  She had mentioned the last time she cut my hair that she was going to let it grow out a bit.  It took me a while after that cut to realize by “growing out” that she meant the stripe of “mohawk action” as she had cut the sides short still.  I have had a fo-hawk (how do you spell that?) of sorts for quite a while now.  But I still had hair on the sides of my head.  She cut away for quite some time and then I thought she was done.  However, she stood there looking at my head and running her fingers through it a bit and I could tell she had something on her mind and wasn’t exactly happy with the situation.  I finally broke the silence and just said she could do whatever she was thinking.  She was hesitant for a second and then went at my head again.  She was seriously trimming and cutting down the sides.  I was left with what I will call a “mostly-hawk”.  I wouldn’t consider it a total mohawk because I classify that as having one’s head mostly shaved along the sides.

So the color, the final masterpiece this time… imagine the cut first.  I would say I have about three inches of “hawk” happening up there – all along the front, top and down the back.  The sides of my hair are very short and the color is intensely dark.  I asked Nicci if it was brown or black as I couldn’t tell.  “Technically it is a brown, but it is dark enough that it appears black” was her answer.  So the overall look of the color is a dark, deep shade of brownish blackish color.  Now imagine the three-inch stripe all up and proud – in a fabulous, bright, fierce shade of some sort of pink, magenta, fuchsia something or other.  Again, it looks different at every angle to some degree.  But then imagine that the tips, say the last inch or so of the “hawk” is the same dark color as the base.  So the pink is there and bright and amazing but it is melded in with wisps of the dark color.  It is truly difficult to describe.

It will be interesting to see if the pattern of people treating me better when I have brightly colored hair continues given that my cut is a bit more intense.  I have a feeling people will jump to judge the mostly-hawk rather than purely being distracted by the fabulous color.

I don’t really care though.  I love it.  It is fun to look at in the mirror.  It is fun to play with and style.  It is fun…

 

Anticipation

I have an appointment with Nicci tomorrow to get my hair colored again.  I have no idea what she has in mind this time but she informed me after my last hair cut that she already knew then what color was next.  I am down to lighter pink/blondish highlights at this point.  People have a hard time believing me when I say that I let Nicci do whatever she wants to do and decide the color etc for me.  But it is certainly a lot of fun trusting her enough to allow that and then to see what creativity follows.  I have been asked several times recently when I am coloring it again and what the color will be.  I remind people that it is a surprise to me as well and then ask them to guess.  So far, purple is by far the leading guess with a close second being blue.  I personally think she is going to do something funky with more than one color this time.  We’ll see…