Hair We Go Again

On my way home from my trip to Florence, hair dried to my scalp unbecomingly, I stopped by the salon of David and Francesco to make an appointment for a cut. The sweet young woman who usually washes my hair and gives me the world’s best scalp massage, gaped at me in horror as she quickly scheduled an appointment for “Emy” for the following morning. It’s not that my hair was particularly long, mind you, but it had lost any semblance of shape and was becoming unruly around the face. Besides, after the seduction fiasco in Firenze, when else will I get a gorgeous Italian man to run his fingers through my hair?

I arrived at the salon at the appointed hour, having made four stress-related trips to the bathroom before hand, and was pointed to a chair by David’s father, Francesco. Francesco, carrying his sheaf of official looking papers, walked the salon like a maestro leading a symphony, directing both staff and clients with an inclined head here or a pointed finger there. This salon is customer service oriented, as demonstrated by the deferent staff removing and hanging your jacket and helping you back into it at the conclusion of your visit. I was directed to a chair and told David would be with me shortly; he was applying highlights to a client’s hair in the team approach used at this salon. I sat down and noticed the man who has done my color and cut before and he greeted me with a smile and, “Ciao”, obviously recognizing me from past visits. I was sorry to not have been scheduled with him because I now trust him, but it makes sense for me to see David as he is the only who speaks English. In due time, I was summoned to the sink where a handsome young man washed my hair and gave me the world’s second best head massage before leading me to a station to await David.

At David’s approach I confessed, “Ho paura”, I’m scared. He explained he didn’t want to take too much hair off the back and sides because it was still quite short from the Scalping in Strasbourg, but a bit more off the top to give it volume and lift. I agreed to the plan and he whisked around me, snipping in such a subtle way that I was amazed to look down and see just how much hair he’d removed. I also failed to notice him cutting the hair out around my ears until it was a done deal. Perhaps I was lulled by his fingers playing gently with my hair or maybe I was distracted by how handsome he is…I just don’t know. At any rate, when he began to cut the top I told him it was too short, and he took a deep, patient breath, and began to explain, yet again, how he was going to cut a little more hair on the top to encourage lift.

A young woman with colorful hair, who is apparently in training, set herself up at the station to the right of me and began to roll curlers into the long hair of a mannequin. All was well until she inadvertently knocked the roller-encrusted head off its stand and it bounced once and rolled under the station next to me. I nearly cackled, but upon seeing her horrified expression and hearing her make an excuse to David, who didn’t even acknowledge the incident, I decided not to call attention to it.

In due time my haircut was finished and David fussed endlessly over it, twirling and curling it with a tiny, round brush until he’d beat it into submission. Upon finishing, he told me that it would be the right length the next cut, but was still a bit short in some places and needed time to grow. As I eased up from the chair I noticed how sore my leg muscles were. Apparently I had kept them tensed in the “fight or flight” defensive pose assumed by animals drinking at the crocodile infested waters of the Nile, and woman who’ve had bad haircuts in France. If called upon, those legs could have lifted me out of that chair and into a martial arts split kick move which could knock the shears out of David’s hand to the left and Roller Head off its stand to the right, in a single fluid motion. Haaaiyahhh!