Help Wanted

—————————— I don’t need an assistant—————————-

“I’m sorry,” the guy at the front desk with a lime green buzz cut said as he tapped on his screen.  “Are you sure your sister said she made the appointment for today? Or are there any other names she might have made it under?”

“You tried ‘Ally,’ ‘Alizarin,’ ‘Indigo,’ and ‘Indy’?”  I watched the colorful head nod.  “I suppose she might have accidently made it under our older sister’s name, Saffron.”

“No ‘Saffron,’”  He said as he scrolled up and down.  “No ‘Saffy,’ either.”

“Actually we call her ‘Sasa’ for short.” I explained even though I didn’t expect it to help with my current predicament.  “When Indigo started talking, she had trouble with the ‘rrrr’ and ‘nnn’ sounds according to our mother, so would say ‘Sa-sa,’ and it just stuck.”  

“There really just isn’t anything here today that looks like it could be for you.”  He said apologetically.  “Do you want to call or text your sister, and double check she made an appointment for today?  And that you have the right salon?  We aren’t the only one in town.”

“Indigo said Nicklas is great with long hair,” I checked, “and told me not to be nervous that it was called a ‘barbershop’ because it really is a salon, not that I’m completely sure of the diference.”

“Yeah, that would be here,” the guy confirmed.  “Are you sure about the day?”

“I’ll text her.”  I promised and stepped away from the desk, so the guy could get back to other business.

**I’m at the salon you told me to go to, but they can’t find the appointment** I typed and sent, then stared at the screen, hoping for a quick reply.

After a few moments of waiting, I nervously smiled at the guy at the desk.  I really wasn’t sure what to do.  I felt completely overwhelmed, of course I had been feeling completely overwhelmed in general since I had decided I wanted to leave home and asked Indigo if I could move in with her.  I looked down at my phone, willing it to tell me what I should do next.

“You can’t just keep taking Sarah off to do things.”  I heard a rather annoyed sounding man say as he walked towards the desk, I was standing next to.  “You need your own assistant.”

“I don’t need an assistant.  It’s not like all my clients need their hair washed at every appointment.”  A grumpy sounding woman, in a red cross between a shirt and a jacket with so many tattoos they were visible even though she was wearing long sleeves, complained while following him.  “I know her title is your assistant, but the shop pays her, and you share her with Tom all the time.”

“Sharing with Tom is different.  Tom has his own assistant who he shares with me on Sarah’s days off.”  The well dressed guy huffed as he reached the desk.  “AND he never asks her to leave the shop or clean up the back room by herself.”

“I don’t ask her to take me places that often.”  The woman claimed. “And you use the backroom too.  I don’t need an assistant often enough to justify it.”

“You do, you just won’t admit it.”  The guy grumbled, leaning against the desk and turning to face the woman.  “And it’s ridiculous that you are treating Sarah as a chauffeur.”  

“I can’t carry all the stuff I need on my bike.”

“You know what, instead of me checking with Mike if my schedule is light enough that I can spare Sarah this afternoon, you can borrow my car.”  The guy offered.  “So no more taking Sarah.  And I need you to stop sending her to clean up the back room.  Not only does she find it creepy, she can’t hear me when she’s back there and I need her.”

“I can’t borrow your car.”  The woman sounded oddly like she was confessing a deep secret.

“Why?”

“I can’t drive it.”  The woman sounded embarrassed.

“You drive Emma’s car.”  He said with annoyance.

“I can’t drive stick.”  She admitted reluctantly, flushing slightly.

“YOU can only drive automatic?”  The guy shifted from annoyed to amused.  

“Fuck off.”  The woman said angrily.  “It’s not that I couldn’t handle it or something, I just never got the opportunity to learn.”

“Fine.”  The guy huffed.  “I’ll check my schedule, and if it’s not too crazy, you can have Sarah.  BUT you have to put out a help wanted ad for your own assistant.”

“I don’t need an assistant.”  The woman insisted.

“Then you don’t need Sarah.”

The woman stood there, her arms crossed in front of her, obviously trying to decide her next move.  The guy turned away from the angry woman and looked like he was about to talk to the guy at the desk.  As he turned though, he obviously noticed me standing there looking at my phone.  I smiled nervously.

“Can I help you?”  He asked me in a much friendlier tone than he’d had with the angry woman.

“I was just waiting to hear back from my sister.” I sputtered out.  “She said she made me an appointment, but he couldn’t find it.  Sorry.”

“Mike?”  He turned to the guy at the desk.

“It’s not in the system.”  The guy at the desk with lime hair stated.  “I don’t know if it got lost or her sister made it for a different day or just forgot to make it, but it’s not there.”

“Can you make her a new appointment?”

“It was supposed to be with you today, you are fully booked today.  By the way there is no way you can keep on schedule today without Sarah, I didn’t schedule you enough time to shampoo your own clients.”  The lime haired guy told the well dressed man I guessed must be Nicklas.  “She said her sister made it for you because you specialize in long hair.  Angel’s got an open appointment, but…”

They both looked at me, Nicklas’ eyes starting at the top of my head and following the light brown ponytail to where it rested against my hip. 

“Yeah, don’t give her to Angel.”  Nicklas sighed, then asked me, “Do you need your hair done for an event or something, or can it wait a bit?”  

“I guess it can wait,” I said cautiously, wondering what a bit meant.  “Indigo just said I should get the ends evened out before I start applying for jobs, I have a few other things I need to finish first, though.”

“Wait,”  the angry woman suddenly perked up,  “you’re looking for a job?”

“Uh, yeah I guess.”  I sputtered.

“What days are you available to work?”  She asked.  “Are you available today?”

“I guess I’m available today, I was just supposed to get an interview outfit after this.”  I said.  “I don’t really have a schedule, just a few things I need to get done here and there.”

“Perfect, how would you like to be a general shop assistant?”

“General shop assistant?”  Nicklas raised an eyebrow at the no longer angry woman, his tone clearly amused.

“I don’t personally need an assistant,” she claimed, “but I will admit we could just use a bit more help around here.  So hey, she needs a job.  That works right?”

“She hasn’t even applied for it, you don’t know what kind of job she is looking for.”

“What kind of job are you looking for?”  The woman asked me.

“I…uh…whatever I can get.  I don’t really have any experience or job skills.”  I said nervously, “Indigo said I should try just putting in lots of applications and hopefully one will work out.”

Nicklas’ brow furrowed, the woman just nodded though.  “See, this is perfect.”

“Nicky…” Nicklas said, obviously trying to communicate something he wasn’t comfortable saying out loud, I suspected it was that he doubted I was qualified for the job, which was almost certainly true.  “You need to look at resumes and applications.”

“Oh come off it,” she said.  “You hired the homeless kid you found turning tricks on our doorstep.”

“Hey,”  the lime haired guy complained.

“My point is that it worked out great.”  The woman clarified.  “This place would be chaos without you Mike.  Heck, it was chaos before you, do you have any idea how many times Angel accidently triple booked Klaus?  Mike didn’t have a resume, and he’s great.  Just because she hasn’t submitted a resume or application doesn’t mean she can’t do the job.”

“You have to interview her.”  Nicklas insisted firmly.  “And be upfront about what working here is like, so she can decide if she really wants the job.”

“Fine, I have a long lunch anyway.”  The woman conceded.  “Mike, can you order my usual from Bamboo Palace, and whatever… uh I didn’t get your name… wants?”

“Alizarine, like the paint.” I introduced myself, feeling unsure what was going on.  “Everyone just calls me ‘Ally’ though.”

“What do you want for lunch, Ally?”

“What do they have?”  I asked, feeling a bit weird about it.

“It’s Chinese takeout, they have the usual.”  The woman just stated casually.

I bit my lip, I had known from seeing how differently most people lived from the way I had, that moments like this would happen, but I wasn’t really sure how to handle it in the moment, except just admit the truth, even if that might reveal exactly how little I was prepared for working.

“I’ve never had Chinese takeout,”  I admitted.

The woman looked at me a little curiously, like she was trying to figure out what that meant or how that had happened.  

“I’ll just get you a family style bean curd, and you can pick around anything you don’t like,”  the lime haired guy, who seemed to be named Mike, suggested.  “It’s pretty basic.”

“Thank you.”  I responded to him grateful for not trying to get me to explain.

“I’ll interview Ally in the back room,” the woman informed Nicklas and Mike.  “Just bring the food back when it arrives.”

“Don’t make her cry.” Nicklas warned her as she turned to leave, making me wonder if crying during interviews was common, even though I had never heard of it.  

“Yeah, yeah.”  The woman grumbled as she walked away.

I looked back and forth between the woman and the guys, and was a bit unsure of what I should be doing, till Mike gestured that I should follow the woman.

—————————— So many questions ——————————

The grumpy woman had paused at a small refrigerator and pulled out two green glass bottles I first thought were beer, which surprised me, but later realized it was something sort of like seltzer.  As we paused our walk to the back, she introduced herself as Nicky the co-owner of Nicklas & Nichole’s Barbershop.  Then she led me to the back room.

“This is amazing,”  I said in awe as I looked up at the sparkling chandeliers that hung from the ceiling that was covered with decorative metal tiles.  “It’s like something out of a palace.  Everything is decorated, the wall paper, all the art, and that chair looks like a throne.”

“I’m glad you like it and don’t find it creepy.”  Nicky beamed, then looked down at the floor and frowned.  “Sorry about the hair around the chair, Sarah was supposed to clean it.”

“It’s fine.”  I assured her.  “I grew up on a homestead with a ton of animals in the house.  I’ve seen much worse things on a floor than a little hair.”

“I guess you know how to sweep then.”  Nicky smiled and gestured for me to sit in one of the two red velvet chairs behind the coffee table.  “Which I have to warn you is ninety percent of the job.”

“Yes, I have done plenty of sweeping and mopping.”  I confirmed as I pulled my ponytail infront of my shoulder and took my seat, glad to see that something I had never thought of as a marketable skill was appreciated.

“Are you a student over at the university?”  Nicky asked me as she pulled over a ladder back chair that had been in the corner behind a wardrobe.

“No,”  I admitted, hoping that would be the end of questions about education.  “Indigo is, she transferred after a year at community college.”

“So you just have a highschool diploma?”  Then in a more concerned tone Nicky added, “You’re over 18, right?”

“I… uh…am over 18, but…. I ….  uh.. don’t have a diploma,”  I admitted nervously.  “I’m going to take the G.E.D. next week.  Indigo had suggested I do that before applying for jobs, but of course….”

“I didn’t wait for you to apply,”  Nicky filled in as I nodded.  “Why did you leave school?”

“I didn’t leave, I just never went in the first place.” I explained what I had worried people might not really understand.  “Mom home-schooled us.  I think she did ok.  I’ve been doing ok on the GED practice tests Indigo got me, so I should pass unless I panic and get test anxiety?”

“Do you tend to panic?”  Nicky asked with a slightly wrinkled brow.

“No,”  I said, “it was just something all the homeschoolers talked about.  They acted like it was common.”

“It’s not that common.”  Nicky simply stated.  “Ok, don’t worry about it, having a highschool diploma right now isn’t a big deal, as long as you’re an adult.  Mike started before he had his GED too.”

I sighed with relief.  Indigo and I had thought nobody would even consider me for a job without it, and here they were being fine with it and had even hired someone without one before.  I guess I smiled with relief, because Nicky smiled back.

That was when a woman around my age, just suddenly walked in. Nicky turned and looked at her, looking mildly annoyed.  

“What are you doing here?” the new woman asked.

“Conducting an interview.  I’m considering hiring Ally as my assistant.”  Nicky answered.  “What are you doing?”

“Cleaning up, like you asked me to.”  The younger woman complained with exasperation.

“Can’t it wait?”  

“Not really.”  The young woman huffed and headed towards another door at the back of the room.  “Other than this 15 minutes before Klaus and I have our lunch hours, I am really busy today.”

“Fine.” Nicky said with annoyance, then turned back to me.  “If you really mind, we can move to the office, but it’s really cramped, more of a closet than an office.”

“It’s ok.”  I said, figuring the questions were unlikely to get personal, as I watched the younger woman begin to wipe stuff down.

“Can you drive?  And do you have access to a car with enough room to fit several manikin heads? and a bag or two of equipment?”  Nicky asked me.

“I borrowed Indigo’s car today, but I plan to get my own as soon as I can afford one.”  I told her.  “I can borrow Indigo’s car sometimes, but not everyday.”

“Can you drive stick?”  Nicky asked.

“Yes.”  I said, getting the feeling Nicky really did mostly need an occasional chauffeur, though she didn’t seem to want to be driven around in a fancy car like chauffeurs in books and movies had.  

“I guess between my wife’s car, Indigo’s car, and Klaus’ car, the chances that none would be available are pretty slim.”  Nicky speculated.  “I am trying to hire myself an assistant after all, not just get a taxi service.”

I simply nodded, and smiled.

“Ok,”  Nicky said.  “So what work experience have you got?”

“I…. uh…..” I started trying to admit that I had never had a job, when I suddenly noticed the younger woman had paused cleaning and was standing just holding the broom and silently moving her mouth while looking at me.

Nicky noticed that my focus had shifted from the distraction, and looked upward behind my head.  “I can see you mouthing ‘run’ in the mirror Sarah.”

Sarah scowled, but went back to sweeping up the pile of hair around the fancy chair.  Nicky refocused back on me, I grinned nervously, hoping maybe she’d forgotten that I was supposed to be telling her about my nonexistent work history.

“So, you were…” Nicky was interrupted by a knock at the door.  “YOU CAN COME IN MIKE.”

Nicky sighed as Mike walked in carrying a couple of bags.  Frustrated though Nicky seemed to be by another interruption, she did thank Mike as he helped open bags.  He handed Nicky a pair of wooden sticks, and me a plastic fork.  Before heading for the door.

“Did you order me anything?”  Sarah asked as she dumped the hair she’d swept up into the garbage.

“I didn’t know you would be here.”  Nicky growled at her.  “Besides, isn’t it your lunch hour now?  You can go get whatever you want and leave me to conduct this interview in peace.”

“Yeah, I’m going.”  Sarah said as she dusted her hands off on her skirt.  “Don’t leave out the ponytail policy.”

“Ponytail policy?” I asked Nicky as she used the two sticks to grab a piece of food.

“I’ll go over policies and compensation in a bit,” Nicky assured me.  “We were talking about work experience before we were interrupted.”

“Oh… right…I…uh…don’t  have any.”  I waited for Nicky to just say the interview was over.

“You never had summer jobs or babysat when you were a teenager?”  Nicky asked with a wrinkled brow before she scooped a bit of rice into her mouth.

“No.  Mom always needed too much help for me to go get a job.”  I explained.  “I was a bit worried when I decided I wanted to try moving in with Indigo, that she would have trouble managing by herself, but she said she could hire someone.”

“If she is hiring someone to replace you, then it was a job  Just because you did it for your mom doesn’t change that.”  Nicky insisted.  “Please eat.”

“It’s not like she paid me.”  I explained as I lifted up the box that was filled with vegetables and what I thought was probably tofu in some kind of sauce, it reminded me a bit of the stirfry mom would make sometimes, but the sauce was much thicker.  “It was just that each year growing up I got more and more chores.  I got an allowance, but I always got an allowance, so it wasn’t a salary.”

“I’m assuming it was more than just basic house work.”  Nicky asked as she plucked a tiny ear of corn out of her cardboard box with the sticks.

“When I was little it was house work,”  I said as I tried not to accidentally spit out the half chewed chunk of broccoli in my mouth.  

I swallowed, and started going into details of how I had gradually taken on being responsible for chickens and goats.  Helping with the farm stand.  Helping mom sell tie dyed things at craft fairs.  We talked and ate, and by the time the containers were half empty, and I was rather full, I’d realized that even if Nicky didn’t hire me, I had plenty to write down on a job application as work experience.  I’d realized from questions Nicky had asked that I didn’t only have skills that were hard to transfer to a real job like milking goats, but I also knew about money, customer service, and inventory.  And though milking, collecting eggs, and dying t-shirts weren’t exactly tasks that I was going to be doing here, they proved I was willing to do dull, repetitive, or icky things and stick to schedules.

“So, let me go over the basics of shop policies and compensation, so you can decide if you want to work here.”  Nicky said as she closed her box of leftovers.  “Our base pay is just $3 above minimum, but there are opportunities for tips and commissions, though you probably won’t be getting those at first.  Once you learn to wash hair, there’s more to it than the way you wash your own hair in the shower, you will start getting tips. Ok?”

“Ok.” I said, trying to not sound surprised I was going to get more than minimum.

“The shop is closed on mondays, so you are guaranteed to have that off.  Do you mind working most weekends?”  Nicky asked me.

“That’s fine” I replied, then tried to pay attention while she talked about things I really had no idea about like health insurance and paid time off.

“So, I think we’re all settled then?”  Nicky said, starting to get up.  “I’ll go get you a time card to fill out.  Since you’ve never done that before, you can get Mike to help you with it when we get back.  Grab your leftovers and we’ll write your name on them, put them in the fridge in the office, and you can heat them up for lunch tomorrow.”

“You didn’t tell me about the ponytail policy.” I pointed out as I lifted the cardboard container with half eaten rice.

“Oh right.”  Nicky said as she headed towards the door.  “It’s just part of the dress code.  Obviously, I’m not going to hold you being out of dress code today against you, since you didn’t even know you were going to be working.  I’ll go over the details in the car so you know what to wear tomorrow.”

—————————— Turn left in 100 feet ———————————-

I was mostly focused on trying to follow the GPS’s instructions about when to exit the thruway and trying to ignore the gaggle of mankins in the backseat that stared unblinking at us, when Nicky remembered to explain the dresscode to me.

“Mostly it is the usual dress in clean, neat, professional clothing.”  Nicky said.  “We’re a bit more relaxed than some places, about things like sneakers.  It’s ok as long as they aren’t all scuffed up and fit the color scheme.  You need to dress to not clash with the color scheme, so black, gray, white, and shades of warm red are ok.  We make an exception for bluejeans if there is more than a foot of snow on the ground, but no bluejeans in good weather.  Ok so far.”

“I think I can find something I can wear tomorrow,” I responded, figuring I might need to borrow something from Indigo.

“The big thing though is that since we are a hair salon and barber shop, you need to have your hair done.”  Nicky emphasized.  “It can’t be an afterthought you just pull back into a ponytail or some messy bun.  It needs to be styled everyday.  So, no plain ponytails, buns or braids.”

“I can’t wear my hair in a ponytail?”  I asked, frowning.  “I pretty much do every single day.”

“Plain ponytail.”  Nicky emphasized.  “You just can’t have it in a plain ponytail.  If you make it look deliberate and polished, it’s fine.  Like back when I had long hair, I would put those leather cuffs around it and stuff.”  

“Leather cuffs sound heavy.”  I said mostly to myself, thinking about how heavy my plain ponytail was already, as I took the exit the GPS told me to.  “Sarah seemed to think the ponytail policy was a big deal.”

“Sarah just thinks our ponytail policy is strict because she could never make hers look halfway decent, actually even when her hair wasn’t in a ponytail it was a mess most days till I talked her into a bob.”  Nicky rolled her eyes.  “As long as you make your ponytail look deliberate, thought out, and polished it’s fine.  Like think of Ariana Grande’s ponytail.  If it’s slicked back smoothly, with no lumps or a crooked part; it doesn’t have a basic tie or scrunchy in it, it’s ok.  So like if you do a high ponytail and put a scarf around its base that would be fine.”

“That sounds even heavier than keeping it low and putting a leather cuff on it.”  I said imagining the weight pulling at my scalp.  “My regular ponytail is heavy enough.”

“Well, you can wear your hair down, if you prefer.”  Nicky assured me.  “Just make sure it looks nice.”

“That’s even worse though,” I said thinking about it, as I made the right turn the GPS told me to.  “It’s still heavy, and then it gets tangled and tugged.  I hate wearing it down.”

Nicky sat in the passenger seat, giving me a certain quizzical look, for several moments before she spoke.  “Ally, do you actually like having long hair?”

I bit my lower lip, “I mean I don’t really hate it when it’s back in a ponytail.  And I know how special it is.  And my mom went to so much trouble to protect it and take care of it when I was little.”

“So. you feel pressured to keep it?”  Nicky asked then shared, “When I was young I felt pressured to keep mine long because my grandmother said I would look like a boy without it.”

“Not really pressured, just…”  I was having trouble not just putting my feelings into words, but even understanding them myself, and found myself piecing together a memory.  “One time mom had an emergency and needed to ask a friend to watch me and my sisters for a few days.  Her friend was asking why our grandparents couldn’t just watch us, and mom explained a whole bunch of things her mom had done to her as a kid.  At a certain point, she petted down my head and said that probably the first thing her mom would do would be march us off to a salon and get all our hair cut off.”

“So she was protective.”  Nicky said.  “Do you think she was being protective of your hair, or do you think what she was really being protective of was you and your feelings?”

“My feelings I guess.”  I speculated, then was struck by another memory.  “One time, we were at a big camping thing with other homeschool families, and in the evening, one of the dads set up a sheet between a couple of trees to use as a screen and set up a projector and played a movie.  I remember it really well, because we didn’t get to see many movies and stuff, we didn’t own a TV or anything, so watching a movie was a special treat.  It was an old movie, black and white.  It was about a princess taking a vacation in Rome.”

“Roman Holiday?  Audrey Hepburn?”  Nicky asked.

“I don’t remember,”  I admitted.  “But in it she gets a haircut, and talks about it being cool and light.  And she still looked really pretty.”

“Definitely ‘Roman Holiday’.”  Nicky stated with authority.  “It’s one of my wife’s favorite movies.  My wife loves old movies.  Sorry, go on.”

“So later that night, my sisters were still by the campfire with some of the older kids, and mom was tucking me into my sleeping bag.  I asked her if I could get a haircut like the princess in the movie.”  I explained.  “So mom lay down next to me, and stroked my head.  And she looked kind of sad, and told me that I could if I really wanted to, but I needed to really think hard about it.  She told me that if I got a short haircut it would be a really really long time before it grew long again.  Then she told me about how her mom used to make her get her hair cut to her shoulders with bangs when she was a kid.  She told me that when she started highschool, her mom agreed to let her grow out her hair as long as she got only As and Bs.  But then she got a single C.  So she was dragged off to the salon.   Mom said she thought it was just going to be her usual trim, so she didn’t fight going.  But once she was in the seat and it was too late, her mom told the hairdresser to not just trim it, but to cut it off boyshort because mom was starting to get too much attention from boys.  While mom was telling me how she’d sobbed through the whole haircut, she started tearing up a little.  She said it wasn’t till years and years after she had left home that her hair was actually long.  And she just looked so sad about it.  She then told me that I could think about it while we were on the trip, and that if I still wanted a haircut when we got home, that I could ask her then and she would take me to get one, since it was my hair.”

“So what happened when you got home?”  Nicky asked.

“I didn’t want to make mom sad by asking again.”  I simply stated.  “Then I guess I just kind of forgot about it.”

“Now that you’re an adult and you can look back at that,”  Nicky suggested. “what do you think made your mom sad?”

“I guess it was just her memories, that she was thinking about how sad having her hair cut off made her,”  I realized.  “I think she was just worried I would be sad too.”

“Do you think she meant it when she said that if you asked again when you got home she would have taken you to get a haircut?”  Nicky asked me.  “Or do you think she would have tried to talk you out of it or made excuses?”

“I think she really did mean it when she said if I asked again when we got home I could get a haircut if I really wanted one.”  I answered.  “She always thought us making our own choices was important.  So as long as it wasn’t about safety or something where you really can’t let kids make mistakes, we got to decide most things and live with the results.”

The GPS interrupted, telling me to make a slight right.

“Ally,”  Nicky asked in a gentle tone.  “Do you want a haircut?”

“I was at the shop to get a haircut.”  I pointed out.

“You were there to get a trim from someone who specifically is known for taking care of long hair,”  Nicky noted.  “I’m asking if you want a real haircut.  Like up to your shoulders, or a bob, or something.”

I drove, not sure what to say.  Not sure how I felt.

“Maybe?”

**Your destination is in 100 feet on the left.** the soft robotic voice of the GPS interrupted.

———————————- Any volunteers —————————-

“Welcome to my alma mater.”  Nicky said in a light tone as I parked under a big sign that read Valley Barber Academy next to the low industrial looking building.  

“Ok,” Nicky said as we started unpacking the car.  “I need a little help setting up, but then I will just be doing demonstrations for a couple of hours, so it’s mostly going to be waiting around.  It’s going to be pretty boring, unless you want to learn about haircutting.  Did you bring a book or something?”

“I didn’t,”  I said.  “I hadn’t been planning to have time just sitting around.”

“Unfortunately, I need you to stick around,”  Nicky apologized, as she handed me a couple of manikin heads.   “You are welcome to just watch the demonstration, and I probably could use a little help every now and then swapping out manikin heads and stuff.  Though I am hoping I can get some of the attendees to just volunteer for haircuts so I can demonstrate on real heads and not just manikins.”

“Why would that be better?” I asked, mostly just curious, as I watched Nicky juggle three manikin heads into her arms as she could.  “Wouldn’t a manikin be better at just staying still, plus more cooperative.”

“Cooperative is why I use manikins for stuff like this of course.”  Nicky chuckled, as she got her armful of manikin heads balanced.  “Real people generally don’t just let you do whatever random thing you feel like to their hair.  The problem with manikins is that they don’t have natural hairlines and growth patterns.  The lack of natural hairlines is particularly an issue today, since I’m focussing on demonstrating very subtle differences on finishing the hairline.  I’d have tried to line up models ahead of time, but somehow Craig and I miscommunicated about who was doing that.  So I am really hoping a few attendees will feel like volunteering.”

“I could volunteer if it would help.”  I offered.

“It’s great that you’re eager to be helpful,”  Nicky smiled as she nudged the glass door open with her elbow and held it for me to pass her with my armful of manikin heads,  “but I’m only demonstrating very short haircuts today, not long or medium.”

“We were talking about me getting a shorter haircut anyway.”  I shrugged.

“We were talking, but I thought you would want a bob or shoulder length to take a bit of weight off.”  Nicky specified as she led me down the hall.  “I’m demonstrating feminizing classic men’s haircuts.  They are all very short.  The styles I am demonstrating have already been decided, so you can’t choose anything different.”

“Oh.”  I said, trying to figure out why the idea of that didn’t actually bother me.  It made me nervous, but also… kind of thrilled… kind of excited.  I remembered how in the movie the princess had looked nervous, but was so happy in the end.  I knew it was just a movie, but…  “I wouldn’t mind getting a short haircut.”

We entered the room that was set up with a table at the front, and a bunch of chairs facing it.  To the side of the table was a large swivel chair that seemed to be a barber chair, even though it was much simpler than the chairs at Nicklas & Nichole’s Barbershop.  Behind the table was a large white board and a large mirror on the wall next to the barber chair.

“Why did you have an appointment with Nicklas if you weren’t reluctant to lose length?”  Nicky asked as she put the manikin heads she was carrying down on the table and shrugged the large tote bag off her shoulder.

“Indigo made the appointment.”  I explained.  “Indigo just kind of assumed I would want to keep my hair as long as I could with healthy ends, and honestly, I hadn’t really thought about it, so I guess I just kind of went along with that.”

“Ok,”  Nicky said enthusiastically.  “If you really don’t mind, it will be one hell of a demonstration.  I can even do a bonus demo on trimming really long hair and how to save hair for donating.  I assume you’ve never had any chemical treatments on your hair.”

“Everything we used was organic.”  I assured Nicky.  

“Perfect,” Nicky smiled.  “I guess you’re one of my models, and at least one of these manikins escapes unscathed.  ”

————————————— Meet the mentor ————————————

Nicky and I discussed her plans both for the demonstration in general and specifically what she would do to my hair, while we unpacked the bag and set up a manikin on a stand.  She’d spent a brief moment looking at my hairline on my neck, and feeling my hair texture, then simply told me she thought the third haircut she was doing that day, “the caesar,” would fit me best out of the cuts she was demonstrating.  She’d asked about how often and how tightly I wore my hair in a ponytail while she looked at my hairline, then nodded and made an affirmative noise when I explained about hating feeling the little hairs loose.

I wasn’t really sure what a caesar cut was supposed to look like, Nicky told me it was a short crop, the defining feature being bangs that rested on the forehead closer to the hairline than the eyebrows.  I hadn’t understood what she meant by crop, but what she said about the bangs reminded me of the bangs the princess had gotten in Rome, so I just figured that she’d chosen the style because it was similar to the one from the movie.

“Hey Nicky,”  An older guy said in a friendly tone as he came into the room.

“Hi Craig,”  Nicky smiled.  “We’re almost all set up.  Oh, this is my new assistant Ally.”

“Hi,”  I squeaked, since I hadn’t expected to be part of the conversation.

“Nice to meet you.”  Craig simply acknowledged then thankfully moved on, and turned back to Nicky.  “I see you’ve got a new style,  Angel do it?”

“Of course, who else could do this.”  Nicky confirmed as she turned her head to show him the nearly bare sides.  “It’s a bit grown out.  I don’t know if you can still make out the design.”

“I can still see it, even though there’s stubble in the lines.  It’s still clear they are sunflowers.”  He commented as he examined the subtle design on Nicky’s head.  “Angel’s work is as amazing as ever.”

“You think this is amazing,” Nicky enthusiastically pulled out her phone and started tapping it.  “Check out what they did for Barbenheimer weekend!”

Nicky showed him the phone screen, then held it up for me to look at too.  I leaned forward to look at the photo of Nicky’s head from the back, the Barbie logo on the left and a mushroom cloud on the right.  It was pretty impressive how the design had been shaved in, and how shading had been created with different hair lengths.  Then she started swiping to the next picture.  

“Then Tom, our colorist, wanted in on the action, so he asked me if he could bleach and color it.“  Nicky said as she held out the photo where the design now had the Barbie logo in the iconic shade of pink, and the mushroom cloud was in an ominous gray and fiery shades of orange, yellow, and red.  “It didn’t take as long to bleach as I worried it would, and of course drew lots of attention for both of them.”

“So, when are you going to talk Angel into agreeing to do an advanced presentation?  I’ve asked them multiple times and they always say maybe next year.”

“Well, you know how shy they can be.”  Nicky shrugged.  

Craig just nodded, but then added an idea.  “Maybe you two could team up, and do a presentation on advanced line work together, from what I’ve seen, you’re not too shabby at it yourself.  You could do the speaking, which is what makes Angel nervous.”

“I’ll talk to Angel,” Nicky promised.  “If we do though, we will definitely need live models.”

“Oh, that reminds me, one of the evening students, Ella, is happy to volunteer for the ivy league, she just needs to see if she can get off work early to get here.  She’s got a grown out pixie she needed to get trimmed anyway, she was planning to ask a fellow student, but I suggested this, so it was good timing.”  Craig informed Nicky.  “And obviously, she was happy to get to attend an advanced presentation for working barbers while she’s still a part time student.”

“Perfect, that just leaves me needing to do the buzzcut and crewcut on manikins, if I don’t get volunteers from the audience.”  Nicky said as she looked at her gaggle of manikins.  

“Who have you got for the caesar?”

“Ally offered to get one of the haircuts because she says her hair is heavy and annoying.”  Nicky told Craig.

“It does look heavy.”  Craig agreed, glancing at me.  I sort of smiled shyly and gave a slight nod, as I observed how little hair Craig had to weigh him down.

“I thought the caesar was the best one to go with her face shape, and she likes babybangs.”  Nicky continued telling a nodding Craig.  “Plus it will work well with the hairline I need to do in the back.”

“You’ll look really cute with a caesar.”  Craig assured me.  “And if anyone can do it right, it’s Nicky.”

——————————————- Show time ——————————————-

When everything was set up, the attendees started trickling in.  I stood in the back, mostly just observing the clusters of people who all belonged to a group I didn’t belong to.  All working barbers here to expand their businesses.  I listened to the multiple conversations around me, they were filled with jargon I didn’t understand, discussing things like equipment and business.

“Hello everyone.”  Craig stood at the front of the room next to the table.  “Thank you for coming to this advanced training seminar.  Let me introduce our guest instructor Nicky Tamayo, Master barber, one of the owners of Nicklas & Nichole’s Barbershop, and most importantly, one of Valley’s many successful alumni.”

“Thank you Craig,”  Nicky began then started speaking about revenue, expanding client bases, and tons and tons about gender.  

I didn’t understand half of it. From the looks of confusion on some of the attendees, several others were as confused as I was by some of it.  Some of it was reasonably clear, basically some girls want to look like girls but some want to look like boys, and don’t make assumptions.  Craig, who had sat down next to me, seemed to be paying attention, so I hoped he knew what she was talking about.

“What does ‘nonbinary’ mean?” I leaned over and whispered to Craig.

“People who say they aren’t boys or girls,”  Craig whispered back, “I don’t really get it myself, but hey, as long as they are happy.”

“What about ‘ay fab’ and ‘ay mab?’”

“I have no idea.”  He simply admitted.  “Hopefully one of the attendees will ask.”

Unfortunately, none did before Nicky just moved on to talking about technical stuff, which though I was completely lost, her audience, including Craig, seemed to understand well.

“Ok,”  She finally seemed to be ready to start the demonstration.  “I’m going to be showing 4 cuts this afternoon, the buzzcut, the ivy league, the caesar, and the crewcut.  I am going to be demonstrating the ivy league and caesar on live models, and the buzz cut and crew cut on manikins unless one or two of you guys want to volunteer for either.” 

In the slight pause, one of the women in the audience kind of half raised her hand, and said,  “I’m kind of bored with mine, so you can demo the buzz cut on me.”

“Excellent,”  Nicky said enthusiastically.  “Since that’s the first one, let’s get started.  Thank you…?”

“Erika,” the woman supplied, as she got up and tucked her notebook under her arm. 

“Thank you Erika.”  Nicky continued as the woman whose hair was already very short, walked up and sat in the chair that was much simpler and plainer than the ones at the shop I had walked into that morning.  “I’m sure many of you have already experienced that this is the cut that a young lady walking in and asking to have her head shaved actually means.”

There was a general nodding of heads and murmured agreement in the audience.  Including from Craig sitting next to me.  Erika chuckled mildly with an eyeroll while nodding herself, and then brushed her short hair back.  It was a dark chocolatey brown, with just a hint of wave.  I noticed that though Erika’s hair was what I thought of as very short, it was quite a bit longer than Nicky’s.  Erika was able to brush her hand threw the hair that rested on her forehead and just hid her eyebrows, where Nicky’s stood up off her forehead, and didn’t move.

“Do you want a 1, 2, or 3?”  Nicky asked Erika.  “As a starting point before I add texture.”

“Number 2 sounds good.”  Erika just casually stated.

“Obviously, Erika knows what a number 2 looks like and isn’t going to be shocked when I buzz her down to a quarter inch, but a young lady walking in probably doesn’t, so just to start with I will usually show them something a little longer than what they asked for on the side of their head first.”  Nicky said as she picked up the red and white striped cape with the shop’s logo embroidered on it, and loosely draped it on Erika.  “Sometimes I can use the side of my head as a chart, but not always.”

Nicky continued talking about explaining lengths to girls and women who were often new to having really short hair and had little experience with it, as she wrapped a strip of paper around Erika’s neck, then fastened the cape.  Then for a bit she talked about her favorite clippers as she held them up and showed them off.  Erika sat there patiently just arranging her note book on her lap and getting her pencil out, and started jotting down notes about clipper brands.  As Nicky continued to praise her favorite clippers.  She turned them on and off a few times, snapping various blades on and off them.  She talked about why she sometimes used different ones, holding up the other ones she had out.  It all was just barely comprehensible to me, filled with jargon I didn’t know.  Some of it I got, like these are sturdier, or these are lighter, these have a longer battery life, but not most of it.

“Now some of the women coming to you, who actually will ask for a buzzcut and not calling it shaving their heads, will ask you to do it with scissors because it is a softer look.”  Nicky said as she ran a comb through Erika’s hair a couple of times, seeming to be just about ready to start.  “Which, obviously, if they are asking for it, make your client happy.   The softer look is part of what is going to make this more feminine, and doing the whole thing with scissors will certainly achieve that, but I am going to get pretty much the same effect, by how I finish the cut, and starting off with clippers is faster.  I might decide to do a whole cut with scissors if I have just been doing cut after cut with clippers and my ears could use a break.  Today though, I’m going to start this off as a very standard buzzcut with clippers, which I won’t bore you with explaining, since I’m assuming you all have each done hundreds of times already.”

As soon as she’d finished the statement, she just flicked the clippers in her hand on, placed them on Erika’s forehead right in front of where the brown hair parted.  Nicky slowly pulled them back, and Erika’s soft hair simply peeled away and slid down the sides of her head, landing on her shoulder.  As the clippers moved back the strip of hair they’d cut became visible.  

It was looking at those locks draped over Erika’s shoulder compared to the little bristles that were left behind that made me appreciate that even though I had thought of Erika’s hair at the start of this as very short, it hadn’t really been.  At the start, it had been a quite a bit longer than Nicky’s.  It suddenly struck me that maybe I should have taken Nicky’s warning that all the haircuts she was demonstrating were going to be very short more seriously.   I guess the length of Nicky’s hair should have tipped me off to what she thought of as very short, but Nicky was so unusual style wise with all the piercings and tattoos, that her hair just kind of didn’t stand out.

As I watched Nicky return the buzzing clipper to Erika’s forehead and pull them back, I started to worry that the haircut I had agreed to was going to be a lot shorter than the haircut the princess in the movie had gotten.  It was Erika’s length in the back that I thought I might like having, and Nicky was cutting all that off.  I nervously began to play with the end of my ponytail, which I had pulled over my shoulder like I always did when I sat down so it wouldn’t get trapped under me.  I watched Erika’s hair slide down, this time spilling forward and covering her notebook with her own locks.  She simply held the book out, and shook the hair off to the floor, as Nicky continued to buzz off more and more of Erika’s slightly floppy hair.

Erika looked especially silly with the top of her head buzzed down, but longer hair surrounding it on the sides.  I was definitely beginning to question my wisdom for having  volunteered to be demonstrated on too.  I hadn’t thought about looking silly halfway through a haircut in front of dozens of people.  It definitely felt too late to back out though.

The really silly look on Erika was reasonably short lived.  Nicky began reducing the hair on the sides of Erika’s head to the same short fuzz as the top.  She steered the buzzing clippers around Erika’s ears, quite swiftly.  Then she pushed Erika’s head forward and pulled the clippers up the back of Erika’s neck and into the hair above.  Soon Erika’s whole head was covered in nothing but a short fuzz.  The cut off hair that I had once thought of as very short now created a thick covering on Erika’s shoulders and lap, plus there were piles of it on the floor.  

Looking at the short fuzz I could see scalp through, and thinking of the way Nicky had simply run the clipper blades over Erika’s head, I could understand why many women would just call this shaving their heads.  I found the whole concept that there was enough hair left on Erika’s head to make it possible to style more seemed mind boggling.  

“Ok, so now is when we get to those details that can either pull this cut to decidedly masc or bring some femininity into it.”  Nicky said as she put down the quiet clippers and picked up a large brush, that she started dusting Erika off with.  “If the client wanted a more masc look, the best option would be to square off the hairline.  Now obviously, that isn’t always the best option for a client’s head shape or if they have something going on like a cow lick, so even for clients who generally want a masc look, you might decide to do a gender neutral slightly rounded off hairline or a tight taper and leave it natural just as you do when you do this cut on men and boys.  In this case, since the aim is to enhance femininity for the client, I’m going to do an extremely rounded, but also very soft finish on the hairline.  But first I’m going to soften the texture.”

Nicky picked up scissors and a comb, and started combing upward through the extremely short hair and snipping at it.  She mostly talked about the angle of the scissors as she worked, leaving me with the impression that flat against the comb was the standard way to do what she was doing, but that she was angling it differently to achieve the soft texture she kept mentioning.  Nicky occasionally changed which shears she was working with, and talked about advantages of one or the other.  Mostly, I was just amazed at how quickly the blades kept snapping closed, especially when Nicky would pause explaining and just concentrate on cutting.  A fine dusting of Erika’s dark hair fell to the cape as Nicky worked.

“Just for comparison, I will show you the more standard rounded off neckline on the right, and the softer rounder one on the left.”  Nicky announced, then gently teased Erika, “as long as you’re good, I will even them out after.”

Erika just took the joke in stride and laughed slightly.  Though I suppose even without Nicky’s promise, Erika could fix it herself later since she was a barber too, so leaving the side different was a minor threat.

Nicky picked up what looked like smaller clippers, and briefly mentioned what brand they were and why she liked them to the audience, calling them edgers.  The name seemed to be apt as she pushed them in just above Erika’s hairline to the right of her spine, creating a clean straight edge to the cut.  Nicky then pulled the edger down Erika’s neck, completely removing the tiny hairs below the edge she’d carved.   Nicky kept carving the clean edge in moving to the right straight across the bottom till she got to Erika’s ear.  Then she carved an arch from the neck up and around Erika’s ear.  Finally Nicky rounded off the corner of the edge she’d carved.

“As you can see,”  Nicky said as she dusted off the bare hairless right side of Erika’s neck, “this is fine.  I’m sure this is something you’ve done numerous time, and it is a perfectly acceptable way to finish off, but I’m going to show you something even better.”

Nicky picked up a pair of shears this time, and started snipping a line above Erika’s natural hairline with just the very tips of the shears.  As she snipped, she talked to her audience about feeling the shape for the skull as she went.  She used the blades to slice away the little hairs below the hairline she created, leaving the left side of Erika’s neck similarly bare to the right side.  

When she started dusting off the left side, the subtle difference between the left and right side became clear.  The left side didn’t meerly have a rounded off corner, the whole hairline arched elegantly around Erika’s head.  The shape echoing the round shape of the top of Erika’s head.  The edge of the hair had a certain natural feel to it, instead of the bold crisp line that the right side had.   

When Erika was all dusted off and then wipe with a damp towel, Nicky started spreading some kind of lotion on Erika’s very bare neck, and then stroked a blade down while talking about the clean look of a razor finish.  She almost got wistful as she talked about the illusion that the neck just naturally lacked hair.

“That took several more minutes to do.”  Someone from the audience pointed out after Nicky had shown off and talked about the difference between the left and right side, “I’m questioning if the subtle improvement is actually worth the time.”

Nicky began snipping away at the right side of Erika’s hairline, starting to make it match the left.  “It absolutely is.  For starters, if your client looks amazing with their new buzzcut and loves it, they are more likely to want to keep it than just view it as something they wanted to tick off their bucket list and then grow out.  So you have just won yourself a regular client who will need frequent maintenance if she feels adorable.  Do you feel adorable Erika?”

“Yes I do,” Erika chuckled.

“The other thing is a really basic hairline doesn’t necessarily require a talented barber.”  Nicky continued.  “I have a semiregular with a quarter inch buzz, and the reason she is only a semiregular is because she bought her own set of clippers and just buzzes her own head about once a week.  She is a broke graduate student working on her doctorate, she really can’t afford to come twice a month.  When she does her home trims, she just uses the bare blades of the clippers to clean up her neckline into a simple rounded off edge.  However, when she really wants to look nice for something, she comes in to get this soft scissored line with a razor finish.  Last time, it was because she was going to her girlfriends gallery opening that evening.”

I kind of just zoned out as I watched Nicky shaving the right side of Erika’s neck, and then talk about soft sideburns that didn’t end where a beard started, and continue to emphasize the value of repeat business.  I stroked my own long hair, wondering if my own neck was going to be shaved, and how I would feel about it.  I was always torn between finding having my wispy neck hair pulled tightly into my ponytail uncomfortable, and hating the way they tickled my neck if they weren’t even more than the tightness.  I began to think, having them simply shaved away sounded both nice and a bit scary, no tightness or tickling, but I was used to those, shaving was new.

As Nicky got to the end of her speech about why spending a little extra time was worth it, she started taking the cape off Erika, who was smiling as she rubbed her hand over her head and up her neck.  She’d nodded and smiled slightly as Nicky had shown her the back with a mirror, but not the way she did as she brushed her palm up the back of her head.  It was obvious that though she’d been reasonabley happy with the look of her new hairstyle, it was the tactile sensation that was really giving her bliss.   

————————- Nicky’s Next Victim ———————————-

“Hi Craig,”  Whispered a woman, who seemed to be right around my age, as she came up and stood next to Craig’s seat.  “Sorry I’m a bit late, I had trouble getting out of my day job early.  I can’t wait till I can quit it.”

“It’s ok,” Craig told her in a low voice.  “You just missed the introduction and first demonstration, but you’re here for the one you volunteered to model for, and there are 2 others you can watch.  I think Nicky is just about ready for you.”

As Craig and the woman whispered to each other, Nicky talked about her annoyance with women calling practically all short haircuts “pixies” even though only a few of them really resembled the original style popularized by actresses who were playing Peter Pan in the 20th century.  It was rather hard to try to follow the talk while there was a side conversation going on at the same time right next to me, even if it was in hushed voices.

“And it’s a lady’s cut right?”  The woman asked just a bit nervously as she ran her fingers through the blonde hair that hung just a bit in her eyes and over her ears.  “You were a bit vague about that?”

“Don’t worry, that’s the whole point of this presentation, it’s all about techniques to make styles feminine.”  Craig assured her.  “As I said last night, it will be a lady’s version of an ivy league.”

“So it’s not going to be too short?”  She clarified, sounding a little more relaxed.

“Well, that depends what you consi…..”  Craig began whispering, but didn’t get to finish.

“Ok Ella,”  Nicky’s voice called out.  “I’m ready for you.”

Ella looked nervously up, then back at Craig.  It was obvious she was torn between wanting to finish talking to Craig, but also felt the pressures of the expectation that she would go be Nicky’s model. She inhaled, straightened up, exhaled, and started walking to the front where Nicky waited.

“Thank you Ella,” Nicky said as a somewhat nervous looking Ella sat in the chair.  “I haven’t gotten a chance to look at Ella’s hairline or evaluate her hair texture yet, so we can do that together.  Now of course the process is the same as when the plan is to do a more masculine or androgynous cut, but the conclusions we will come to are slightly different.”

Nicky began combing through Ella’s smooth only slightly wavy hair, lifting it and commenting.  Nicky talked about how the bleached hair, which I hadn’t realized wasn’t Ella’s natural color, was not too badly damaged, and how it fell naturally. Nicky mentioned things like the shape of Ella’s ears and forehead as she lifted the hair this way and that, showing the audience.  Most of all, Nicky was really happy with Ella’s hairline in back.

“You can see how nice and full it is here going down the center of her neck,”  Nicky said as she pointed to the hair that extended down Ella’s spine not quite reaching her collar.  “If we were going for a more masculine look, I would be shaving that all off, but instead here I am going to just clean up around it, bringing it in at the side and really emphasizing the elegant point it comes down to.   This is something you see sometimes in a bob, when the weight line is above the hairline.  Because it is so full, I can take the taper very short here without the hair looking patchy.  The hairline again is going to play a big role in helping what is a traditionally men’s very short haircut look feminine.”  

Ella, who had looked only slightly nervous as Nicky had been talking and combing, suddenly lifted her head up in surprise and glared at Craig.  Nicky simply ignored the change in Ella’s demeanor though, and nudged her head back down, and continued.

“I’m going to be working the taper mostly visually,”  Nicky stated as she began wrapping a strip of paper around Ella’s neck.  “Which I would prefer to do scissors over comb in this case.  In my shop, I would probably take the bulk down with clippers first, but it won’t save much time or effort, so I will skip them here so it’s easier for me to take questions.”

Nicky mostly paid attention to the audience’s questions as she draped the red and white striped cape around a rather tight lipped Ella, and then began wetting Ella’s blonde hair.  Once her hair was visibly damp all over, Nicky started parting Ella’s hair down the center of her head and combing it forward.  Nicky left a few inches at the bottom just hanging down over Ella’s neck, and slipped a couple of large hair clips just behind Ella’s ears to hold the hair she’d combed forward up.

Nicky simply kept fielding questions as she combed up the hair of Ella’s neck and sliced a big chunk off.  The damp hair fell heavily, landing on Ella’s cape covered back.  Nicky just combed up another clump of locks, and chopped it off.  The second chunk of hair fell next to the previous one, then tumbled to the floor.  After Nicky repeated the process a few more times, the back of the cape and floor were covered with Ella’s hair.  

“Ok,”  Nicky announced to the audience, as she used the tips of the shears in her hand to point, “with the bulk gone, it’s much easier to see how the neckline falls and appreciate what I was talking about before about preserving and enhancing this elegant point.”

Nicky started snipping away at Ella’s hairline with the very tip of her scissors as she described convex and concave arcs.  I could see how she was indeed reinforcing shapes that had already been there, and not simply imposing an artificial hairline over the existing one.  When she had finished snipping the line it was clear that it was largely a border between the thick and full, and the sparse and wispy.  Nicky then picked up the trimmer and clipped the sparse hairs below the line from Ella’s pale neck.

The result made Ella’s neck look longer and narrower than it had with hair that had covered three quarters of its length and ended in a mostly straight line.  It was just as beautiful and elegant as Nicky had promised it would be.  Looking at it, I had an urge to trace the line with my finger tip.  I had a desire to feel what those little short hairs felt like.

Thinking about running my finger along the hairline, and watching Nicky snip at it with what looked like very pointy sharp scissors put another thought in my head.  I wondered what that felt like to Ella?  The blades were so sharp and right against her skin, I wondered if it felt like when a cat scratched.  With all that combing, there had to be a lot of hair tugging and hairs being pulled out.  I nervously looked at Craig, who was just watching and occasionally nodding at points Nicky made as she talked about what she was doing.

“How much does it hurt?”  I leaned over and whispered to Craig.

“How much does what hurt?”  Craig asked, wrinkling his forehead.

“Getting your hair cut like that.”  I clarified.  “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“No, of course not.”  Craig whispered back.  “Why would you think it would hurt?  You’ve had your hair cut before, right?”

“No,  I’ve never had a haircut.”

“Ok, not short, but you’ve had the ends trimmed?”

“No, I’ve never had any kind of haircut.”

Craig looked at me, his brows together and his lips drawn thin, then he sighed and asked.  “Does Nicky know?”

I thought about that.  I wasn’t really sure.  I’m sure she understood from our earlier conversation that we’d had in the car that she knew I had never had a short haircut, but I’m not sure she realized I had never gotten my hair trimmed or anything.  So I shrugged.

“Does it matter?”  I asked.  “Does it hurt more the first time?  Is there something she has to do the first time it’s cut.”

“No.”  Craig smiled and shook his head.  “It’s just firsts are special, and she probably would have asked you if you really wanted your first to be in front of an audience.”

“So it’s not going to hurt more, because it’s my first?”

“It shouldn’t hurt at all.”  Craig insisted.  “First time, second time, one hundredth time, haircuts don’t hurt.  Why do you think it might hurt?”

“The scissors are very pointy and there’s a lot of poking and scratching.”  I pointed out.  “Plus there is a lot of combing.”

“A good barber always holds the scissors at an angle that doesn’t risk stabbing or scratching the client. ”  Craig assured me.  “Combing isn’t supposed to hurt.  You comb your hair, does it hurt?”

“Yeah, it hurts when I comb my hair.”  I told Craig.  “It hurt even more when my big sister Sasa brushed it when I was little.”

“I think you’re really going to like having short hair.” Craig speculated.  “Combing won’t hurt anymore.”

Craig gave me a soft smile and turned his attention back to the demonstration.  I watched Nicky continue to snip away at Ella’s hair.  She was running the comb very swiftly up through the short hair at the nape of Ella’s neck, and though Ella did look a touch unhappy, she didn’t look like she was in pain.

Nicky took out the clips and released most of the hair from the back of Ella’s head, and replaced the clips holding just the front of Ella’s hair forward.  She combed the locks up into her fingers that seemed to be almost touching Ella’s head.  Nicky then snipped off most of the length, the chunks of severed hair tumbling into Nicky’s palm till Nicky shook it to the floor.  As she worked snipping off most of Ella’s already short hair, Nicky kept up a rather esoteric conversation with one of the audience members about barbers versus cosmetologists and why clients go to one or the other.

Once Nicky had snipped off most of the length, she went back to combing and snipping against the comb.  Nicky would occasionally pet up or down the short fuzz she had reduced Ella’s hair to, and talk about the look she was aiming for.  It seemed Nicky was aiming for as short as she could get it before showing scalp or making the hair stand away from Ella’s head, except a little at the very bottom of the taper.  

“Of course, your client’s hair texture is going to be the main thing that influences what that length is,”  Nicky commented.  “I’m sure you have all noticed that for most straight or wavy haired people, that is somewhere between a half inch and an inch.”

As Nicky released more of Ella’s hair from the clips to be snipped off, and talked about leaving more length on top, she spoke in fractions of inches, suggesting that most of Ella’s hair was going to be just a bit under or over an inch.  I watched as the hair that had hung over the tip of Ella’s ear obscuring the complex folds was sliced away close to Ella’s head leaving the slightly pink features standing prominently on display.  Nicky barely said a thing as she snipped the arch around Ella’s ear, stating just that she was doing it in the typical manner.  When she got to the front though, she went into great detail about echoing the shape of the neckline and emphasizing that the feminine sideburn ended naturally with no shaved beard below.  She even talked about how to create that as an illusion on clients who had unwanted facial hair.

“The front really doesn’t need any modification.”  Nicky said as she combed up the last of Emma’s uncut hair into her fingers and started snipping across.   “You just take the same things about hairline and texture into account as you would when doing this haircut on a client who wants a masculine look.”

I watched as the last of Ella’s grow out pixie tumbled over her nose, her eyes following the lock with a concerned expression.  Shortened though the hair that swooped up then across Ella’s forehead was, it was longer than any of the rest of her hair.

The talk was paused as Nicky noisily blow dried Ella’s very short hair.  It didn’t take very long.  Compared to how long it would take me to blowdry my hair when it was too cold to just let it air dry like I preferred, it was practically instantaneous.  

Nicky went back to snipping at Ella’s short hair and answering questions.  Tiny snippets of soft hair floated through the air around Ella, landing on the cape like snow.  The little snips seemed to just be slight adjustments to the very short haircut.  Nicky finally finished off Ella’s haircut in a pretty similar manner to Erika’s, first using a trimmer to remove any little hairs she claimed needed to be cleaned up, then using a razor blade on the area.  I honestly couldn’t see a difference, but I assumed there would be a tactile difference.

When Nicky showed Ella the back of her haircut, she didn’t look nearly as pleased about it as Erika had.  Nicky ignored Ella’s mood though, and simply released her with a thank you and started drawing on the whiteboard to answer a question.

“I didn’t think it would be this short.”  Ella complained under her breath as she came over to sit next to Craig, while pinching at the short hair on the back of her head.

“I told you it would be an ivy league,” Craig whispered back.  “You should know how short those are, by now.  That’s a relatively long version of the style.”

Ella just frowned as she glared at Craig slightly.

“Anyway,” he continued, “you look nice and neat, it won’t be in your eyes anymore, and it will grow back.”

———————————— Firsts are special —————————-

“Ok Ally.”  Nicky said enthusiastically when she’d finished her explanation.  “Are you ready?”

I just nodded, feeling shy about talking with such a large group listening.  I got up and nervously walked to the front where Nicky was.

“You ok?”  Nicky asked me softly.

I nodded then bent forward to whisper directly into Nicky’s ear.  “Being in front of an audience is just making me nervous.”

“You don’t need to speak or anything,” Nicky assured me, then turned back to the audience.  “I’m going to demonstrate the caesar cut on Ally.  Along with it, since she has very long virgin hair, I’m going to do a very quick trim for split ends and demonstrate collecting it for donation, with a focus on preserving as much of the length as possible.”

The audience settled in as Nicky gestured for me to sit in the chair.

“I’m going to start with Ally sitting, even though I will have her stand up when I do the trim.”  Nicky said as she wrapped a strip of paper around my neck and then swung the cape over me.  “Detangling it is going to be easier while she’s sitting.”

Sitting in the chair, as Nicky tightened the cape around my neck, I couldn’t help but feel like I had a whole flock of butterflies in my stomach.  As much as I had been curious about having short hair for years, it was damned scary too.  What were my sisters going to say?  Would mom cry again?  Was I going to look like a boy?  Or was I just going to look bad?  Most of all though, was Craig right about it not hurting?

Nicky finished fussing with the red and white cape that enveloped me.  She swung the chair so my back was to the audience, I suspect for their benefit not mine, but it did make me a bit less nervous.  Nicky then reached for one of the shears.

“Do you care if I just cut through the elastic?” Nicky asked me then joked, “You’re not going to need it after this.”

As the audience chuckled, I hoped that didn’t mean I was going to be left with hairs tickling me, though if my haircut was going to be anything like Erika and Ella’s haircuts, it wasn’t going to be a problem.

“It’s ok.” I squeaked.

I felt Nicky insert the scissors into the elastic, and then heard a slight sound, a bit like plucking a loose guitar string.  Then my hair started falling about me like a shawl.  The hair on my neck and shoulder.  The tension of the ponytail released.

That was when the painful part began, Nicky started trying to detangle the mass of hair.  To her credit, she held it and started at the bottom, but I could feel the tugs.  I scrunched up my face, ready to endure it as I had a million times before.

“Ally??”  Nicky stopped and looked concerned.  “Did that hurt?”

“It’s ok,” I said.  “No more than usual.”

“Do you have a sensitive scalp Ally?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”  I asked her.

“Ok,” Nicky announced in a very authoritative tone.  “We’re going to skip the trim and saving the length for donation.  And just cut off the bulk instead of trying to untangle this.”

“I can handle it.” I said tentatively, because I knew Nicky had been really excited about saving the hair.  “I can put up with a bit of pain.  I know you wanted to save the hair.”

“You’re not a sheep, not saving the hair isn’t a big deal.  It’s considered bad form to torture clients.”  Nicky just said, then in a joking tone added, “unless that’s something they are into.”

Only about a quarter of the audience chuckled at the joke I didn’t get either.

“Let’s just cut this all off.”  Nicky patted the hair draped over me.  “Ok?”

I just nodded, and waited.

I watched as Nicky picked up the largest set of clippers she’d brought.  She turned them on making a clunk.  She then just held all my hair up in her hand behind me, and started pressing the bare blades of the buzzing clippers into the hair just above her hand.  The clippers Nicky had described as her most powerful, whined slightly as she slowly pushed them into the thick mass.  She worked slowly but determinedly.  Hair began to swing forward, just grazing my shoulders.

When the tone of the clippers changed back to the steady hum, I turned my suddenly lighter head, and watched as Nicky dropped the two foot long mass of locks to the floor.

Ppisssshhhh

I watched the light brown strands scatter as they landed on the floor.

Nicky smiled at me, as I just turned back towards the whiteboard and waited for her.  The freshly cut ends of my hair made a very slight rustle on the fabric of the cape.

Settled back in place, Nicky used the comb to gently lift sections of hair.  She didn’t bother to try to pull the comb through them, but simply pulled the clipper blades across the teeth of the comb, Buzzzwhooop, ppsssshhh.  She removed the very slightly tangled length without any of the tugging I could only just barely stand.

I sat there, feeling both calmer and more anxious at the same time.  As Nicky worked, two things became obvious, she had no intention of dragging the comb through that tangled mass, and that I was losing massive quantities of hair.  The Clippers repeatedly buzzzzwhooped against the comb sending 4 or 5 inches of hair tumbling down with each pass.  The locks fell all over me and the floor, some collecting in my lap, or forming piles on my shoulders.  I turned my head, a little trying to get a look in the mirror beside me.  Nicky noticed and turned the chair, so I could watch as the once restrained locks that I always pulled back, now stuck out in short tufts from my head.  

When Nicky turned the greedy clippers off,  I was left with hair about the length that Ella’s had started at, just a bit choppier looking.  I turned my head slowly, feeling the weirdness of not having the ponytail dragging behind me and pulling on the back of my head.

We were definitely in the unflattering things get worse before they get better stage of the haircutting process.  My hair just looked messy and hacked off, and of course the cape that hit at a point on my neck that made it look shorter, was far from a great fashion statement.  I knew that by the end of the haircut, my hair should look neatly and professionally cut, just as Erika’s and Ella’s had, but I was nervous I wasn’t pretty enough to pull off a dramatically short style like they did.  I probably should have put a lot more thought into this before agreeing to just letting Nicky cut off years and years worth of hair.  Maybe the trim I was supposed to get from Nicklas would have been enough to lighten the weight of the ponytail.

“Ok, let’s try again.” Nicky warned.

She raised the toothy comb up to my head.  I nervously braced myself for the tugging I thought of as inevitable to begin.  The teeth of the comb dove into my shortened locks.  Nicky slowly and gently pulled the comb, and it simply glided through, meeting barely any resistance and amazingly causing no pain.

“That’s the first time that anyones ever combed my hair and it didn’t hurt,” I told her, trying not to sound too emotional, but failing.

Nicky smiled at my reflections, obviously beaming with pride, as she gently pulled the comb over my scalp again.

———————————- On Edge ———————————

“I had the opportunity to consult with Ally earlier.”  Nicky informed the audience.  “We chose the caesar style for her for a couple of reasons.  First and most importantly, she loves the look of baby bangs.  Now when talking to people who want a masc look, you would never call the bangs of the caesar ‘baby’ bangs, that really is what they are though and it’s what people who lean towards a femme look are likely to say.  The second reason we decided to go with the caesar though is that her neckline back here is quite sparse.”

Nicky lifted the short hair off my neck to show the audience.  I flushed, feeling a little embarrassed that what sounded like a flaw was being so specifically pointed out.

“The caesar works really well with a fairly high softly rounded hairline at the back, so I can just shave away all the evidence of the eroded hairline.”  Nicky continued as she used her comb to indicate the shape she was talking about.

“Isn’t it concerning that Ally has a sparse hairline?”  The overly personal feeling question came from the audience.

“It’s fairly obviously traction alopecia, not a medical issue.  Ally was a daily tight ponytail wearer, and all that pressure has caused the hairline to erode.”  Nicky informed them, and me for that matter.  “If Ally hadn’t wanted short hair anyway, we’d have been having a serious discussion about her needing to vary how she wore her hair day to day in order to alleviate the stress on her scalp in various places.  Not just the hairlines, but also up here where the ponytail’s weight rested and you can see it’s a tiny bit less dense.  I will be cutting it to camouflage that obviously.  I think we’ve caught it early enough that it’s not permanent.”

Listening to Nicky talk and pointing out spots on my scalp, I felt mildly sick to my stomach that I had unknowingly been risking giving myself a permanent bald spot.  Mom and my sisters varied how they wore their long hair.  They enjoyed trying new elaborate braids, and sometimes just leaving their hair loose, unlike me.  If I had just gotten a trim from Nicklas, would he have warned me?

“I’m confused as to why pulling the hair into an excessively tight ponytail wasn’t painful, if just combing was so painful for Ally?”  Someone from the audience asked.

“Are you up for answering that Ally?”  Nicky asked me as she continued to gently smooth out my shortened hair.

“Of course it hurt as I was pulling it back and the putting the elastic on.”  I said, then it occured to me that maybe of course wasn’t the right words, that maybe it wasn’t as obvious as it seemed to me.  “The pressure of the ponytail was mildly uncomfortable but once it was there, it was steady.  It’s sudden jerking and tugging that really bothers me.”

“Thank you Ally.”  Nicky said, then picked up the spray bottle full of water, and started wetting my hair with it.  “I will be doing this one razor cutting for texture.  When you have a style that makes sense to razor cut, take the opportunity.  The razor is just a nice break for your hands and ears, quiet, it doesn’t vibrate, and it isn’t the same repetitive motion as you do with shears.  Oh, and back to talking about tugging and jerking is a reminder to make sure the hair is good and wet and the blade you use is very very sharp, so that it just glides through the hair without tugging.”

As Nicky kept wetting my hair till I could feel the moisture seap all the way down to my scalp, she kept talking with the audience about razors.  Her favorite brand of single use blades, her feelings about single use versus sanitizing and sharpening a blade that could be used over and over for a decade.  I hadn’t thought much about the razor Nicky had used to shave Erika and Ella’s necks smooth, but I was beginning to get the feeling that the razor Nicky was using was not really like the safety razors I’d tried a few times.

Then as she started sectioning out just a bit of hair at the nape of my neck, she began talking with a barber about why not to switch back and forth between a regular straight razor and a feathering razor like cosmetologists use.  It was as she talked about getting sloppy and not always holding the blade at a safe angle, that I realized exactly how dangerous the item she was planning to be wielding all around my head was.  And Nicky was going to be wielding it, while distracted by answering questions.  But Nicky acted like it was no big deal as she fasten most of my hair forward with clips.

I felt the barest pressure on the back of my head as my hand nervously balled up into fists.  Something about the pressure made me feel like I should bow my head forward.  I felt Nicky fussing with my hair back there. but I wasn’t sure what she was doing.

“That wasn’t uncomfortable?  Was it?”  Nicky asked me.

“What wasn’t uncomfortable?”  I tried to figure out the question’

Instead of answering, Nicky just chuckled. She then held her hand out in front of me, so I could see the short tufts of damp brown hair held between her fingers.  She opened her fingers and shook the tufts that clung to them into the cape that covered my lap.

“And THAT is the value of a really sharp blade.”  Nicky announced to her audience.

——————————- A New Kind of Pretty —————————————

“Now we’ve already achieved what Ally here really wanted from short hair, which was to get rid of the weight of that ponytail,”  Nicky told the audience, as she sliced off more hair,  “but of course she wants to be both comfortable and pretty.  This is why adding feminity to these very short styles is important, Ally and other feminine girls and women shouldn’t feel like they have to choose between feeling pretty and being comfortable.  So now we focus on making the cut look pretty for her.”

Nicky kept slicing away the hair from the back of my head as she talked about shaping it with a subtle taper, and the soft way my hair was supposedly going to lay.  It was more than just a little terrifying when she slid the razor blade down my neck, warning me to be very still.  She said she was both cutting the perimeter and shaving away all the hair below at the same time.  

Of course the audience could see the taper and perimeter Nicky talked about, I just had to wait and hoped I was going to think the shape she created was actually as pretty as she did.  Though I had thought Erika looked good in a cool kind of way, I’m not sure I would have called the radical haircut pretty, it was more that Erika was pretty enough to pull it off, and Nicky had made it less harsh looking than a haircut that severe could have been.  I did think Ella’s haircut was actually pretty.  There’d been something about the way her bangs had swept across her forehead that was elegant.

When Nicky had finished shaving my neck and slicing hair from the back of my head, she started on the sides.  This time she talked mostly about ears, and how many women were self conscious of their ears, and to be careful to not over emphasize them if they stuck out, but maybe highlight them if the woman had a lot of piercings.  Nicky talked about mine rather neutrally though, in a way that left me feeling they were rather average.  Mine were unpierced though, which I was suddenly contemplating changing as I looked at them in the mirror, and compared them to Nicky’s which each had six, the bottom most earrings looked a bit like metal eyelets, making small holes I could just see through.  Of course, that didn’t count the little ring that hung from her eyebrow and the stud on the side of her nose.

I watched as Nicky sliced at the hair that surrounded my ears, saying that she was aiming to have the hair look fairly full around them, but not actually obscuring them.  She mentioned she was taking the sides a little shorter than she planned to take the top, so I still wasn’t sure how short it would look when done as she sliced away most of the length she’d left behind after cutting most of my hair off with the clippers.

I started to wonder if I should get them pierced.  Sasa came home to visit a couple of years ago, and had done it to hers.  She swore it wasn’t nearly as painful as it looked.

“As I move up onto the crown,” Nicky announced, making me wonder if there was going to be some kind of crown shaped tool I’d never heard of, or if she meant where a crown would have rested on my head, “I’m going to do twist and crop to really get lots of texture.  This cut in its most classic form, google Julius Caesar to see what I mean, is very textured, though these days it is usually cut fairly smoothly on men.  On women you want to aim for the soft texture you see on those old roman statues.

“Make sure you leave yourself a little extra length as you just cut the texture though, because you are going to want to go in and refine the shape a bit.  Mostly by taking out volume, but as I’m sure you’ve noticed, that can affect length.”  Nicky continued to narrate my haircut. 

Nicky lifted a lock on the top of my head, and started twisting it, checking with me that it wasn’t too hard.  Then she lifted the razor blade to it, touching it against the twisted hair just about an inch from my head and sliced upward.  She then casually dropped the three or four inches of hair she’d cut off, to the floor.

The damp freshly cut lock stood up slightly before Nicky knocked it down while lifting the next lock.  As I watched her cut the next one, which also briefly stood up, I finally saw how short Nicky meant when she’d said very short.  It was more the length of Ella’s haircut than Erika’s, leaving my scalp fully covered, but not much more than that.

“Now the main thing to think about on the crown is controlling volume to create the shape you want.”  Nicky explained as she sliced away more hair.  “If you were aiming for a masc look, you would want to emphasize the parietal ridge and give the head a very slightly boxy appearance.  A flat top is an extreme example of this effect of emphasizing the parietal ridge.  To make this cut more feminine, we want to deemphasize the parietal ridge instead. Obviously, how well that will work depends on the shape of your client’s skull.  Some clients have perfectly round skulls, so you just follow that shape.  If your client has a flat or pointy head, aim to make it appear rounder.”

As Nicky moved on to sharing back and forth with the audience about various  techniques they liked for achieving volume under various circumstances, I wondered what shape my head was.  I kind of wanted to reach up and feel it to find out, but Nicky was slicing away with the very sharp razor blade.  I watched in the mirror as she kept tossing twisted pieces of hair to the side as she reduced the top to a far from uniform one or two inches.  As she worked, she would keep rewetting my hair, occasionally commenting on how important it was to keep the hair wet while razor cutting.

“Now as we get to the front,” Nicky announced as she combed hair forward over my eyes, obscuring my view of the mirror, “it’s time to start thinking about the little bangs that come forward, which is the really defining trait of this haircut.  This is the one place where a bit more squared is going to feel more feminine, because on feminine cuts the bangs are often treated in a very disconnected manner, where in masc cuts they tend to be more blended in.  If you don’t curve them down into the sides, they will look more defined.”  

Nicky kept talking about face shapes and highlighting eyes, as she began the very terrifying process of cutting away the hair that hung over my face and brushed my lips.  She’d stopped twisting the hair, just pinching a thin lock gently as the blade sliced downward through slivers of strands.  After she stroked the blade through the lock about five times, Nicky dropped it into my lap.  Then she pinch up another lock that she started swiping the blade through, right in front of my eyes.  I wanted to ask if she’d ever accidently cut someone’s nose while doing this, but I was too scared to move.

When I had a small pile of locks in my lap, my left eye was fully uncovered, and  I could finally see the mirror.  Nicky was slicing away at the hair above my right eye still, but above my left were the little bangs Nicky had promised me.  The damp spikes of hair stuck to my forehead, almost reaching my eyebrows.  I was a little surprised because the way she talked about them I expected them to be higher, but maybe she was going to be cutting them more.  Maybe she thought they looked better longer, I was a little worried the feeling of the bangs tickling my forehead was going to drive me crazy the sameway loose hair on my neck did. 

 As Nicky worked across my forehead, slicing all the hair to just above my eyebrows, she talked a lot about the corners where the bangs met the side.  She talked about how the shape there could either open up the face and highlight the eyes, or be two closed and make them feel crowded, laying the comb against my face to show what she meant.  Then rather terrifyingly, she used the razor to cut the hair that lay against my face into the shape she wanted with a soft edge.  She mentioned that it was possible to point cut it, if one was out of practice with the razor, but that it was best to keep up your razor skills.

Finally, she worked her way down to my sideburns, where she talked about keeping them a natural shape that emphasized them not ending where a beard was shaved. I kind of started having the feeling that just not squaring the sideburns got one most of the way to making short hair look feminine.

“Now, I pretty much know where I want to take out  just a very small amount of volume to control the shape,” Nicky said as she lifted a bit of the short hair where the side of my head met the top, and began to flick the razor through the hair from below, “but if you aren’t sure, wait till it’s dry and go in with thinning shears.”

As Nicky flicked the tip of her blade through the hair, and tiny bits flew out towards the floor, I looked at the nearly finished haircut.  I raised my eyebrows up and down a few times, noticing the bangs rubbing against the tops of them.  I was again worried they were going to tickle like loose hair on my neck did.  I wished I could turn my head to look more at the soft sideburns, but I feared turning my head while Nicky was flicking through the hair with the razor.

Nicky finally put down the razor, roughed up my wet hair, and asked me, “So what do you think?”

“It’s cute,” I assured her, but added, “I thought the bangs would be shorter.”

Nicky chuckled, “They will shrink up as they dry.”  Then to the audience, “Ally doesn’t happen to be a barber.  I’m going to dry it with a diffuser to let the natural wavy texture shine, not specifically styling it, but letting it lay the way it wants to naturally.”

I sat just watching as Nicky gently ruffled my hair, as she’d said, not really trying to make it  do anything in particular, just letting it do what I assume it will if I just rubbed it with a towel and let it air dry.  I saw what Nicky meant as the dry bangs creeped up much higher on my forehead than they were when the dampness plastered them down.  The whole thing just took moments though, even though Nicky had kept my hair quite damp while cutting it, in practically no time the little hair I had was dry.

“Sometimes at this point,” Nicky said to the audience, as she brushed her hand through the soft pelt on my head, “I would go back in with thinning shears and adjust the volume or make it more textured.  I’m happy with the way this moves and lies though.”  Then Nicky paused, the ruffling, smoothed the hair down slightly, picked up the mirror to show me the hairline in the back, and asked me “are you happy with the shape and everything, or are the bangs still too long?”

I raised my eyebrows up and down a few times, the ends of the hair didn’t brush nearly as much against my forehead as it had before, so I assured Nicky,  “It’s good.  Thank you.”

Nicky gave me a beaming smile, put down the hand mirror, and started dusting me while answering questions from the audience.  I just sat there as she talked about my haircut, turning the chair I sat in occasionally so she could go from talking about my sideburns to my neckline or bangs.  As she talked, she absentmindedly removed the red and white striped cape, spilling a bunch of my hair on the floor.  

I reached up and started to feel it myself.  I ran my fingers over my completely smooth neck, and up to the hair I hoped was short enough it wasn’t going to tickle my neck the way my long hair used to when it was loose.  I then felt the hair above, I could just put my fingers into it without them getting stuck or anything.

“Let’s let Ally go,” Nicky said with amusement patting my shoulder, “Thank you so much.”

I got up, and walked back to my seat in the audience next to Craig.  I sat down, still petting the short hair I just couldn’t get enough of the feel of.  I stared at the giant pile of hair on the floor around the styling chair in front of the white board as Nicky drew on it and talked.  As Nicky walked around the chair towards the table with the manikin head it seemed she would be demonstrating the crewcut on, she casually kicked the mound out of her way under the chair.

“You like how it feels?”  Craig whispered to me.  “More comfortable.”

“Yes,” I confirmed with a nod.  “It’s so comfortable.”

“You had such long pretty hair though,” Ella observed.  “It’s going to take years to grow back.”

“I don’t want it to grow back.”  I simply stated with a shrug, the idea of going back to having that heavy ponytail I would have to comb seemed crazy, no matter who thought it was pretty.  Then I added feeling surprisingly confident about it.  “I think the short hair is pretty too. It’s just a new, different pretty.”

————————————— Options———————————-

“Thank you so much for being so helpful with the clean up,” Nicky said as we packed up the last few items into Nicky’s cases.  “I’m so glad I hired you.  It didn’t bother you too much sweeping up your own hair?”

“Why would it bother me?” I asked, as I looked around to see if it looked like we forgot anything.  We’d already made a couple of trips to the car with manikin heads.

“Some people get a bit emotional about their hair.”

“Oh.  Yeah, that makes sense.”  I said, thinking about how my mom would talk about hers.  “I guess we’re done then.  Do we need to talk to Craig again?”

“Just for a minute,” Nicky nodded, “I just need to say goodbye, plus he’s got a check for me.  Please grab that bag, and we’ll stop by the office.”

We walked down the hall to a door that led into an open office with 4 desks scattered around it and a couple of book shelves.  While Nicky talked to Craig, I looked down at a pile of brochures and picked one up and started thumbing through it.

“Thinking of becoming a student?” Craig asked me, as he observed that I was looking at the brochure.

“I don’t know,” I admitted a bit shyly, “If I go to community college for a year, would that be enough to transfer here?”

“All you need is a high school diploma, same as community college,” Craig told me. “But if you want to try out a few different things first, community college isn’t a bad choice.”

“Would a GED be good enough?”  I asked nervously.

“Many of our students come to us with GEDs.”  Craig informd me, then he asked Nicky, “I forget what you had.”

“I had a regular high school diploma,” she told him, then added, “but I spent a few years in the army before coming here.  It helped pay for my tuition.”

“Ok,”  I said, not sure if it was actually a path I wanted to follow, but really happy to see that I had all kinds of options I hadn’t imagined.  The whole day had been a bit of a whirl-wind.

—————————— Hands on the Wheel ———————————

As we drove back to Nicklas & Nickoles Barbershop, Nicky kept nagging me to keep my hands on the wheel.  It was hard though, my hands just kept needing to pet my newly shorn head.  I totally understood why Erika had been smiling as she’d petted the fresh buzz cut.  I found myself really curious to find out what that had felt like.  Plus, with a buzz cut, the hair wouldn’t touch my forehead and neck at all.  

I figured should not rush into a buzz cut too fast though.  Nicky had just given me this haircut, and I could tell she was proud of it.  Plus it did look really cute.  And as it was Indigo might just have a heart attack when I got home later this evening, plus there was Mom’s reaction to think about.  I had a feeling I was going to want to try a buzz cut eventually, but probably after everyone was used to this first. 

“Nicky?” I asked, “When do I need to get this cut again?”

“That same length,” Nicky casually stated, “about once a month to maintain it.  Though if you want, I am happy to shave your neck between cuts to keep it nice and smooth.  I’m assuming you like that from the way you are petting your neck.”

“Yeah, I like not having the loose hairs tickling it.”

“Well it’s a good thing you took that job offer, since regular haircuts are one of the benefits.”  Nicky told me.  “You can ask me or one of the other barbers to fix you up anytime we have an open slot.”

“What if I want to go shorter, like a buzzcut, in a couple of weeks?”  I asked.

“It’s going to take more than a couple of weeks for the thin spot where your ponytail was to recover.”  Nicky informed me.  “And that’s as short as you can go and effectively cover it.”

“Oh, I didn’t think about that,” I said as my right hand went to the spot, while my left hand reached to hit the turn signal. 

“HANDS ON THE WHEEL ALLY!” Nicky over reacted as the car gently drifted very slightly.  “I know you like the way it feels, but not while driving.”

I gave the back of my head a last pet to smooth down the ruffled hair, and reluctantly placed both hands on the wheel before pulling onto the thruway.

————————————— Employees Are NOT Toys ————————————

“I can not believe you Nicky!” Nicklas complained angrily from next to the reception desk, after he closed the jaw that had dropped open when he saw Nicky and I walk into the shop.  “You’ve had an assistant for less than a day and you already cut all her hair off!”

“Stop making a big deal out of it, Klaus.”  Nicky rolled her eyes at him, then dropped her armful of manikin heads on the reception desk. “She looks cute, doesn’t she.”

“This isn’t about whether or not she looks good.”  Nicklas insisted.  “Employees are people with feelings, you can’t just play around with them giving them makeovers like they are your dolls.”

“Hey!” Nicky complained back, “I never cut my dolls’ hair.  Doll hair doesn’t grow back.”

“Nicky collects Barbies,” Mike filled me in as he wrangled the manikin heads that rolled around on his desk.

“You’re focussing on the wrong part of that statement.”  Nicholas complained with frustration.  “I told you not to make her cry.  She came in with hair down to her butt and you used her to demonstrate a very short crop.”

“She didn’t cry.”  Nicky told him the truth he looked doubtful of.  “Ally volunteered because she didn’t like having hair to her butt.  She loves the haircut.  Tell him you love the haircut, Ally.”

“I do,” I confirmed shyly, shifting slightly trying not to drop any manikin heads.

“You ordered her to say she loves it.”  Nicklas pointed out.

“That doesn’t mean it’s not true.  Right Ally?”  Nicky looked at me and I nodded.  “Besides, she really did need to have it cut off.  She was beginning to get a thin spot from traction alopecia.”

“And you talked her into the most radical solution.”  Nicklas grumbled.

“Shaving her head would have been the most radical solution, all I did was give her a very cute haircut.  If there hadn’t been a mix up with her appointment, you’d have discussed cutting it short too.”  Nicky claimed.  “You know habits are hard to break and most clients only keep up with not defaulting back to their regular daily hairstyle for a week at most.  A short haircut is usually the best option.”

“I’d have told her all of her options and if she was ok with cutting it, I’d have given her a bob.”  Nicklas insisted.  “I would not have told her an extremely short haircut was the only thing we could do.”

“She volunteered for a haircut before I even noticed.” Nicky argued. “I didn’t tell her about it till I mentioned how it effected the haircut during the demonstration.” 

“So you embarrassed her in front of an audience instead of talking about it privately.”  Nicklas complained.

“Ally wasn’t embarrassed,”  Nicky asserted, then turned to me.  “Were you Ally?”

“Just a little bit.”  I admitted as gently as I could, since I didn’t want to lie, but also didn’t want to make my new employer feel bad.

“Just try to be nicer and more aware of the employees feelings.”  Nicklas said with a tired sigh.  “I need to get to my next client.”

“I am nice and do think about people’s feelings.”  Nicky stressed.  “Am I ever not nice Mike?”

“Eh.” Mike made a noncommittal sound and apologetic face, as he took another manikin head from me to arrange on his desk.

“I’m nice.” Nicky huffed, starting to follow Nicklas, but then remembered me.  “Mike, get Ally on the schedule and show her how to fill out her time card.”

Mike and I watched Nicky and Nicklas walk off while still bickering.

“It’s scary when mommy and daddy fight,” Mike said like it was a joke, which I guessed was a cultural reference I wasn’t familiar with.  I just stared at Mike blankly till he continued.  “Your haircut looks nice.  Do you like it?”

“Um-hm.” I smiled, nodded, and raised my hand to my bare neck again, since the last manikin head was finally on Mike’s desk.

“Did you ever hear back from your sister?”  Mike asked me.

“I completely forgot about that.”  I said.  “Let’s see.”

I pulled my phone out, looked at the screen, and opened the response from Indy.   I read the message of her assuring me she’d made me an appointment silently to myself.  At the end, I sighed then kind of chuckled.

“What does it say?”  Mike asked.

“That she wrote it on the calendar when she made the appointment,” I began, “and it was definitely for today Tuesday at 11:30.” 

“You know today is Wednesday?”  Mike checked.

“Yep.”  I nodded.

“It should have occurred to me sooner.”  Mike sighed as he tapped at his computer.  “I had a no-show for an ‘Al’ yesterday.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s ok, and it wasn’t your fault.”  Mike said.  “These things happen.  It seems to have worked out ok for you, showing up right when Nicky was ready to admit she needed an assistant.  As long as you really are happy with the much shorter haircut.”

“I really love it.”  I assured Mike, as I stroked the short hair again.  “It’s super comfortable.”

“It looks pretty too.” Mike complimented it.  “There is one thing you could do for me though.”

“Oh?”

“Tell Indigo that Klaus cut your hair like that because you showed up on the wrong day.”  Mike requested.

“Oh god that’s a good one, you are evil.” I observed while laughing hard.  “That does sound like a good and fairly harmless prank.”

“If you get video to share at the next barbeque, everyone will love it.”

“I’ll try,” then it struck me.  “There are barbeques?”

Mike smiled at me and said warmly, “Welcome to the family.”

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