Who
knew it was so hard to get your hair done in downtown DC? As soon as we learned we were coming to town
for a wedding in April, I set about finding a place to have my hair styled for
the event. It seemed easy enough: MapQuest allows you to search all sorts of
services near your hotel, including hair salons. I was rather hoping that either our hotel or
a surrounding one had their own salon but calls to their concierges quickly
shot down that idea.
Fortunately,
MapQuest provided two salon names within a few blocks of our hotel. I called both and surprisingly got the same
answers. Yes, they did women’s
hair. And no, they did not do blow
dries. This did not seem possible. Were they using a different term? Blow jobs?
(Hopefully not.) DC was a truly
cosmopolitan area. I reverted to my tried and true Sweden technique for overcoming language barriers: simplify and describe.
“So,”
I proceeded, “what I am looking for is someone to shampoo my hair and then take
a hair dryer and a brush and dry my hair.
Do you have this service?”
“No,”
came the reply. “We only do wet
sets.”
Wet
sets? No clue.
“Well,”
I said optimistically (they really were close to the hotel), “that might work. Could you explain exactly what that is?”
The
woman on the other end couldn’t imagine she was dealing with such an
idiot.
“We
wash your hair, we set it in rollers, we sit you under a hair dryer, we let it
dry,” she explained with some annoyance.
“Then we comb it out.”
Uh-oh. She had just described what for me would be the
Helmet Hair Coif of Death. My head would
measure two feet across when they were done, teased into a lacquered mass that
moved in a solid unit with my head and could also serve as a bullet proof
cranial shield should I walk into a situation of inner city unrest.
“So,”
I persisted, “if someone wanted their hair dried with just a nice round brush
that they brought themselves, would you consider doing that?”
“Nope.”
The
third place was already starting to be a good hike from the hotel, but still
do-able. I don’t know DC at all but if I
did, I might have realized that I was heading into the ‘hood. But yes, they said, they did do women’s hair,
and yes, they did do blow dries. I
explained that my hairstyle was very simple, just a “classic bob”. I probably should have been worried that this
was met with total silence. But they
didn’t say anything about wet sets. So I
booked an appointment for the day of the wedding. If living in Sweden taught me anything, it
was flexibility. It’s just hair, I
reminded myself, and it can ultimately be fixed. There was no cut or color involved, so it
wasn’t like I was daring them.
Our
first morning in DC, I suggested that on our way to the Smithsonian that we
might take a detour so I could check out my hair place for Saturday. We did notice immediately that one direction
from our hotel was fairly upscale and the other direction – that in which my
salon was located – deteriorated rapidly.
By the time we got to the right street, it was hard not to notice that
the buildings, which could be described as graffiti-esque, all had bars – some
several sets of iron bars – on the windows.
My “salon” was no different.
We
stood outside looking at it.
“This
is not looking promising,” I said. “But
let’s go in and see.”
“Who’s
‘we’?” said my husband. “I’m staying here.”
As
soon as I walked in – to the genuine surprise of the clientele, I might add –
it was obvious that I was booked to have my hair done at a black inner city
barber shop. But they did have a sink in
the corner where they did women’s hair.
I explained who I was and that I was hoping to see the stylist. The barber, who was very nice by the way,
explained that Sheneesha wasn’t in but he would tell her I came by.
It
was clear I needed a different place.
But even the hotel had no good recommendations that weren’t several
metro stops away. And we were going to
have limited time on Saturday with other plans before the wedding. There definitely weren’t many (any?) basic
services in the area of DC we were staying.
We’d tried to buy wine and flowers to bring to friends who were hosting
us for dinner and there were no markets, drug stores, wine shops, or anything
of the sort anywhere near us. I briefly
considered doing my own hair but those wimpy hotel hair dryers are no match for
my hair which needs at least six hours to air dry and more than an hour with an
industrial strength hair dryer, which I didn’t have. And we were going to be out late every night
and up early every day. So I started
making a list of what I should tell Sheneesha NOT to do. No products.
Nothing oily. NO TEASING. No hair spray.
The
day before the appointment, I realized I needed to change the time slightly due
to a change in our plans. So I called and when the barber answered, I
asked to speak to Sheneesha. Seconds
later, an incredibly hostile voice came on the line.
“WAH
YOU CALLIN’ MAH PHONE, BITCH?”
If
I’ve ever wanted to hang up on someone in my life, this might have been
it.
“Um,”
I said, totally taken aback, “I need to change my appointment time for
tomorrow. Um, if that would be OK.”
The
apologies were instantaneous and profuse.
She was so sorry, she said. She
thought I was a relative who was not supposed to “cawl me at mah work.” And yes, she was happy to change the time.
Given
that it was a Saturday, the place was fairly busy when I got there, with people
waiting for one of the four barber chairs. But Sheneesha,
to her credit, was waiting for me. No
mention of her calling me a canine pejorative the day before, which was
probably just as well. We discussed what
I wanted – low concept, I said: Shampoo,
blow dry, ends curled under. It was
important, I emphasized, that when we were done, my hair moved independently of
my head.
One
standard feature of salons is that they have scented shampoos, usually some
nice botanical blend. This shampoo, I’m
afraid, smelled like undiluted Pine-Sol, obviously an in-house-brewed mix. Honestly, the smell was so overwhelming I
thought I would have an asthma attack.
Which would be amazing, since I don’t have asthma. After she did the second shampoo with it, I
started to get worried that my hair was going to smell like a toxic forest incident
even after it was dry. I would have my
own Pine-Sol force field around me for the rest of the trip as people moved a
safe distance from my head. The problem,
of course, was that I wouldn’t be
able to move a safe distance from my head.
I asked Sheneesha if I could have an extra rinse. Maybe two extra rinses, just to be safe. My hair is very, um, shampoo-inhalant, I
explained.
Those
extra rinses, however, came at a price.
Sheneesha didn’t have fingernails so much as she had talons of the type
generally associated with deadly predators.
Those were some seriously long fingernails, the ends of which I would
swear were filed into razor points. The
scabs on my head will heal eventually, of course, but asking for extra rinses
definitely was a tradeoff, although she did try to respond to my requests to be
a little more gentle. Because she was shredding my scalp from my
skull.
But
on to the blow dry. I have to say that
everyone was very friendly to me, after an initial double take at seeing this
very blond person walk in. But they had
a sense of humor. When one the barber
asked one new arrival what he wanted and he pointed to me and said, “Same as
her.” I was fascinated by the cuts the
guys were getting – lots of shaved “cut outs” on the backs of their heads. It’s pretty rare that I’m the only white
person in a room and can only imagine what it is like for blacks to be the only
black person in a room full of whites. I
started to have a certain warm fuzzy feeling that I used to have in Stockholm
when I found myself in situations that I would never have the opportunity to
experience in San Diego. Like, for example,
hang around a black inner city barber shop on a Saturday morning. So I have to say, that part was genuinely
fun.
Now,
I have more hair than any three people ought to have so I’m used to having blow
dries take a while. But this took AN
HOUR AND A HALF. Once I take off my
glasses, I have no idea what a stylist is doing which always makes me nervous
if it’s a new stylist. From time to
time, I’d reach my hand up and feel that my hair was flipping up at the bottom in
the back instead of curling under. I
mentioned this to Sheneesha who shrugged, “S’what it wants to do.” Um, OK, but what I was hoping for was
someone to persuade it to do what it DOESN’T want to do. But at this point, if it’s clean and doesn’t
smell like Pine-Sol, I can live with that.
And
in the end, that’s pretty much what I got – clean hair that didn’t smell like Pine-Sol
and kind of flipped up in the back and curled under in the front. Knowing what I know now, I would have lugged
the industrial strength hair dryer and the jumbo hot rollers across the country
but what I got was an adventure, or at least an adventure-let. That’s what travel is all about. At
the wedding, my hair had a somewhat sticky feeling that I couldn’t quite figure
out since I really thought we’d agreed on no post-shampoo products. Probably just a little pine sap residue.
