I Cut my Hair to Reveal Myself

The Canadian Blog Contributor, Before.

I hadn't had my hair cut or coloured in awhile.

So I finally went to see John at Axis Salon in Sinclair Center because i heard he did a wicked blond and sat in the chair and declaring exuberantly "make me platinum!''To which he promptly replied in not quite so many words 'Hell no girl! Your hair will fall out, this fucking red will never ever lift. I can make the roots blond but unless you wanna cut it all off..."

He proceeded to shear the red hair down to my nipples into a pixie cut,  revealing my virgin and fledgling, dirty blond locks.

I'm not really sure what made me do it. Maybe it was because my hair dresser was sexy and if he said it was gonna look good, who was i to question it? Maybe i wanted to get rid of my colour damaged hair that was begging to make me look more like Raggedy Andy then a sexy Andrea. Maybe I did because I think Eddie Sedgwick and Jean Seberg are cool ass chicks. I dunno, I went in wanting a change begging the question "when did the break up happen.?"

The Canadian Blog Contributor, After.

Yes. I'm single. For the first time in four year, i have don't have a boyfriend and it's been difficult, I'm not gonna lie. I realized that I've always been the type of girl that needs the reassurance of having a doting man in my life. And in his absence i have had to let myself out of the mind set that even if nobody loves me, i still have worth and i still count. I've done it all, revisited past relationships, made out drunkenly with strangers in dark clubs and even tried to make male friends into lovers. Just as I have hidden coyly behind my come-hither hair, i have hidden in the company of men, denying myself the catharsis of knowing myself.

Samson and Delilah, ca. 1610
Peter Paul Rubens

As my hair fell around me I began to panic. He was cutting away my femininity, my beauty, my identity. I went in with a gorgeous main that flew attractively around a dance floor and fell softly on the pillows of lovers, and left with a short hair seen on mode girls, butch lesbians and business women. I had violent flashbacks to the last time i had my hair cut short, when i was a  ,

me, age two, 1989

geeky three year old kid with coke-bottle glasses, a time when i was often mistaken for a little boy. And I though "Damn, I'll never have another boyfriend." I sat slumped and  defeated like Samson, my great tool of adornment and of the power of attraction, gone to me for now.

But as i left the salon, back to my natural colour that had been hidden for as long as i could remember, my ears and the nape of my neck turning red from the bite of the winter air, I had the most incredible sense of freedom. For the first time in years i was alone, no man and little hair. Free from hair ties and the blow dryer. No one to hold, but also no one to hold me back.

Not so pretty in black.

 "What's the point of wearing lipstick if you are not going share it with some other lips?"

Scarlett Johansson Sporting Black lips for the 2010 Cosmetic Campaign for Dolce and Gabbana

That's what I said to my friend while I was applying my new black lipstick from Make up forever.

The Buchanan's whisky bottle was in the middle of the table, we were getting ready to go out. She wore her new black chamois, which were giving her the usual bad time that a new pair of shoes give the first day you wear them. We were determinated to get drunk that night. We had two different reasons for that, but both had a common denominator: Man.  That was also the reason why we needed to find someone to dance with, and why not? to kiss too. A casual kissing session which gives us the topic to talk about the morning after, while we are wearing pyjamas and making coffee.

I wore an oversized black tshirt as a dress, with black mate tights and my black doc martens boots. I straightened my two-colored hair and wore my vintage black hat. The kind of hat that ladies used to wear in my country during the fifties, whenever they went to the bullfights.
I love wearing hats in this bored city, it's easy to find me, nobody is wearing a hat, but the mariachi musicians.

Erin Wasson sporting Docs

And it's even weirder to find a girl in a club wearing her docs.
After three glasses of whisky, we left home and took a cab down to the club.

As soon as I got in I saw my victim. Young cute guy with the best hair in town I've seen since I got back.
I stoped, and stared at him from far. He took me back in time, when I first met my old young love. He had his hair like that. So, for a moment I thought that he was him, a stupid and romantic thought from a desperate person who wears a mourning black, even on her lips.
My girlfriends and I went directly to the dance floor and ordered some drinks to our favorite waiter.

Two beers after, the cute hair walked infront of me... I grabbed his arm and said: "I like you, I saw you when I came in, and I like you". He said: "I like you too, I guess it was pretty evident that we stared at each other when you crossed the door". Yes, indeed, it was evident, and also awkward.

He asked me what do I do for living, and of course I didn't want to say "mmmmh I write". First of all because I don't think he would understand the implications of being a writer and what was a writer doing in that club, which is everything but a writers place; and also because I don't make my living writing, I'm alive because I write. Anyways, I said "what's the point of knowing what we do? We're only going to be together for a night".
He had a weird look when I said that. So, to break the unconmfortable moment I asked him where was he going before I stopped him. "To the washroom, but suddenly I don't feel like going". We laugh.
Those were our last words, he got closer to me, like trying to kiss me. I moved my face to one side, preventing a black mess. He didn't care, grabbed my face from my chin, and gave me a good reason to smile.
I opened my eyes, and all my black lipstick was on his lips, none in mine. "Perhaps you wanna go to the washroom now, and see your reflection on the mirror", "Perhaps not" he said and kissed me again.
We kissed, and kissed, and kissed again. We kissed until he said "I need to go, my friends are waiting for me". Who leaves the club at 1:30 in the morning when he finally found a cute girl to kiss? That's when I knew that I had became a cougar without knowing it: He was 20 years old! That explained why after kissing me he hugged me, guys who are my age don't do that.
I let him go, we literally kissed each other goodbye.

And there I was, in the middle of the dance floor, drunk and lonely again. All dressed in black, but with nude lips.

I stared at my boots and thought: "What's the point of wearing black lipstick again?"
My old young love is not here, and he won't be in the foreseeable future. And his are the only lips I wanna mark.

At least wearing my docs made my walk home so much easier.