A Requiem: Hairdresser History

Let me tell you something about most black hairstylists. They're fine people. Nice people. But more than 90 percent are prone to some sort of trifling behavior.

Let me take you through the history of my hair stylists before getting to my latest, unusual hair experience. There was Forehead, who did my hair in high school. She had a monstrous dome. Forehead looked like a ski slope. She could do fabulous hair, but she was slow and always late. So it was guaranteed your appointment was going to be 30 minutes late and you were going to spend double the time in her chair than you planned. But dammit, nobody could lay down an SWV wrap like ol' girl.

She also was one of those women who was 45, but dressed and behaved like she was 25. Always complaining about drama with her man, drama with her kids, how long the line at the club was, the escalating price of human hair and booth rent, etc. This was '92-93, so homegirl was wearing big-ass sack-chaser earrings. She kinda dressed like Salt N Pepa did in the late 80s-early 90s.

In college, I was too broke to get my hair done as often as I liked. But I did come up on one, who I've still kept on the roster, named Mail-Order Bride. That's the thing about black hairdressers, you have to keep a roster of them -- as if they were a NBA team. You have your starters and benchwarmers. Besides, scheduling an appointment with some of them can be a little bit like trying to get a sit-down with the president. They don't always answer their phone. And when they do, it's too late. They'll tell you shit like, "oh just come in and I'll "squeeze" you in," which is codeword for, you will be there until your corpse rots.

Anyway, I called my post-high school hairdresser Mail-Order Bride because she married a foreigner so he could get his green card. He was a cab driver. Mail-Order bride wasn't half bad. But she was pretty old school. There were four or five occasions where she tried to give me a mushroom. And no, it was not 1987.

Next I had Thank You Jesus, who was probably one of the two-best hairdressers I ever had. Thank You Jesus is a born-again Christian, and we're still friends to this day. She reminded me of what my mother might be like if she were halfway normal. She was old-school ghetto, the type of woman who would probably crack the oven door before she cut the heat on in the house. She had a way of saying things. She was down for JC (Jesus Christ), but you could tell she still struggled with her worldly inclinations. So, whatever she said, it would be a mixture of Bible and World.

Case in point: One day we were talking about sex and she was saying just 'cause she could speakin tongues, that didn't mean she wasn't down for the pound. "Me and my husband still get freaky-deeky, I just told him he can't put it in my booty."

First, who uses the term "freaky-deaky?" Who says "booty" in common language? Last time I used the word booty, I was in 7th or 8th grade, back when a bold insult was calling someone an "African booty scratcher."

I almost forgot. Before Thank You Jesus, there was D-Nice. She was my hairdresser in North Carolina. She had four or five children with her live-in boyfriend. One commonality, with perhaps the exception of Thank You Jesus, is that every hairdresser of mine always is in a dysfunctional relationship. D-Nice was with a man she didn't really love, but just had a bunch of kids with. Forehead had a boyfriend that was about as mature as a 10 year old. Told you about Mail-Order Bride. Detroit Braider, aka Two Can Play That Game, lives with her baby daddy, but has been cheating with a married man for four or five years. A married man who often toes the line between gentle persistance and stalking. My current stylist, Fast and Furious, is married to a dude who was in the pen for 15 years.

Fast and Furious is hilarious. That description is so appropriate. She's in her late-30s and you could tell that in her heydey, she was quite the pimp. She's too smart to be a stripper or a call girl, but I truly think she was Heidi Fleiss in another life. She's just one of those women who knows the game. And of course, she had all sons. I pity the chicks that come through her door because they will get quite an education.

I was trippin' because the first time I met Fast and Furious, she was a stylist at a fairly high-class shop. But, she had a gold tooth. That didn't make any sense to me. This was woman was talking about yachts, traveling, etc., but she had Flava's tooth. Didn't get it.

This hairdresser genealogy leads me to the events of this past weekend, when I got my hair braided. This is not a process for the faint of heart. It took 10 hours. Last time I got my hair braided, Swollen Feet was eight months pregnant. I call her Swollen Feet because her feet were extremely swollen the first time she braided my hair...so much so that she had to rest them on me as she did my hair.

Swollen Feet operates like this: She asks me a couple questions every hour, and they're usually all fairly intrusive, and non-sensical. She makes inane observations. Last time, for example, she told me, "you look fresh." No explanation necessary.

This time, she asked me how much I paid for my house. Last time, she said: "How much you make?" She also told me she wants to come to L.A. with me and she wants to come to my wedding. Keep in mind I've only spent two days with this woman in my whole life.

And I'm always used to coming up on a ghetto hustle in the beauty shop, but typically it's DVDs, CDs, or electronics. For the first time ever, a dude tried to sell me bed sheets. Bed sheets? Is that a legit hustle now? What's next? Sofa covers? Wine racks?

Swollen Feet can braid, but she requires too much client participation. She just had a baby, so I had to put the pacifier in the baby's mouth. She asked me for some gum, but I left it in my car. All of a sudden, she stops braiding and basically orders me to go get it. She needs about three food breaks, which I'm cool with. Problem is, the food she eats smells like a mixture of feet, asphalt and armpits. She also stutters. In Ghanian. Or at least, that's what I think it is.

With a history like this, it's a wonder I'm not bald headed.