The Aly

It wasn’t until dinner last night that I realized I had a hair experience.  One of the many thrills of living in a new place is finding your very own hairdresser.  For me, there are generally a lot of tears involved in my process.  You could say I am special about my hair.  It’s just so delicate.  It needs gentle and caring hands and I dare say, expensive products.  My hair doesn’t wake up in the morning and say, “I’m going to be fabulous, all on my own!”  No, it needs coaxing, time and effort.  It prefers to wake up in knots, snarls and the mixings for dreadlocks.  So to find a hairdresser that can make my hair look good is a feat.  Then comes the cut; even with full communication in the English language, I more often than not come away with a butchered do.  Enter tears.  I believe that my hair grows abnormally slow; I think genetically I was meant to be a shorthaired person but I fight it every day.  So, when I go in for a haircut and within seconds I’ve lost four inches of hair, I need to take a moment.

My fear of hairdressers was not enough to quell my urgency for a treatment in Italy, however.  The combination of hard water and cheap shampoo had given my hair the dazzling quality of straw.  I booked an appointment with a hairdresser that my Mom had gone to.  She had given him rave reviews, mostly based on his personality.  “He’s fun,” she said.  I was cautioned, though, that the haircut would take awhile.  He had washed my Mom’s hair three times when she was there.  I cleared my schedule and booked my appointment with the fun hairdresser.

It was a good thing I had cleared the entire day because after my appointment I definitely needed awhile to regroup and figure out, “what the hell had just happened.”  I thought my Mom had had the same experience with the fun hairdresser so we never really talked about it.  At dinner, a friend asked me if I recommended the hairdresser that cut my Mother’s and mine hair.  I started to explain some of what to expect.  My Mom looked at me in complete astonishment and it became clear that I had had my first Italian hair experience.

The place was young and hip.  I was greeted by a beautiful, young Italian girl who took my coat and led me to a couch.  Moments later in slid (literally) Luca.  He was young with perfectly mangled hair, the excitement on his face totally unforgettable.  His English, broken at times, was speckled with Italian animation, a Russian accent and New York City slang.  If I could have traded Giancarlo, the Italian on my language tape in my car I had been practicing with before I came here, for Luca, I would have in a heartbeat.  “Vwhaat vwill vwee be doing today my lovely.”  I explained with the best sign language and smattering of Italian I could come up with.  He led me, by the hand, to the washbasin.  Thus, beginning my hair experience.

this is what I felt like

Usually my favorite part of getting a haircut is getting my hair washed.  I like it when you get a mini scalp massage; for some reason it never feels like that when you try to replicate it at home.  He began with the scalp massage and then his fingers got free, or lose you could say, and before I knew it, my cheeks and forehead were all being smushed together like silly-puddy.  I imagined myself taking on a Picasso-esque façade.  I didn’t really know what to think.  Luca was singing to himself, dancing and would occasionally throw in a snoring sound as if to assure me it was ok to fall asleep.  I couldn’t help but wonder why my Mom had not mentioned this.  While my face was being pushed around my hair got the most thorough cleaning it had seen in a long time.  I believe you could see the remnants of pink, purple, blue, green and black dye that had once graced my hair in college during my color phase (the phase after the piercing phase).

After the wash, Luca snapped his fingers and a gorgeous young Italian guy in pants skinnier than my forearm ran over with a box of saran wrap.  My mind raced back to eighth grade when my best friend had me wrap her in a saran wrap dress for the homecoming dance.  I wondered where this was going.  With a few flicks of the wrist and some more singing my head was fully covered in saran wrap.  I looked like leftovers.

Dumb Blondes

I asked Luca what this was and he said, “dumb blonde.”  I laughed and he quickly apologized for his English.  I had laughed because I thought he had learned one of those phrases ESL students pick up and repeat like, “for sure” or “okay man” and he was trying it out.  But in fact it was the name of the hair product that was currently infusing my hair with nutrients.  Too difficult to explain, so instead I apologized for my Italian and we moved on.

He sat me down in the chair, vanished and came back with something that resembled virtual reality.  I always wanted to play a virtual reality game.  Really, how could my Mom not have mentioned this?  He manhandled this contraption onto my head.  It was pitch black.  Then he stuck headphones into my ears and put a remote in my hand.  He pressed some buttons, rattled off something in Italian and then I was magically teleported to Euphoria, a place I had recently visited by way of some really good cheese.  The contraption around my head started squeezing and then mashing, as if I were a piece of veal, followed by thirty seconds of serious vibrations that felt like the devil was being exorcized from me.  The headphones pumped melodies of clanking bells, but were somehow so soothing.  To top it off, a large heating contraption was simultaneously rotating around my head.  This went on for ten minutes and I swear I had no idea where or who I was when it was over.

I was then led back to the washbasin, where I’m pretty sure I passed out for a little bit.  My hair was cut, to perfect dimensions I might add.  Then it time for the blow out.  Usually it takes a good two minutes to dry my hair with a blow dryer because it is so thin.  Luca somehow managed to blow-dry my hair for forty-five minutes…and I had to participate.  He would swing the chair around and I would have to throw my head down, hold it there and then throw my hair back in a big, dramatic motion as if I were a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model.  He would not accept me merely rolling my head back to upright position.  He demonstrated this to me in a very theatrical way.  It turns out that Luca is a hairdresser for the stars.  He has a friend in the United States that gets him gigs as one of the hairdressers for the Oscars amongst other celeb-heavy events in addition to gigs for Bollywood.  His average cut in the U.S. starts at $300.  He says he is quite popular there because he’s seen as exotic.  He has an accent and his clients just eat it up.  But he tires of LA and enjoys coming back to his small shop in Florence where he charges 25 euro a cut.  Lucky me.

from the back

I throw my head back for the last time and he spins me around and turns off the hairdryer.  I look as though I have been electrocuted.  He is delighted.  I should be going somewhere more fabulous than my apartment.  So I give my praise and head out into the city.  As I pass by a vendor I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror.  I look like a rock star.  My face is relaxed, my mind at ease and I consider myself up 275 euros.  I should get my hair done more often.

As I snap myself back into reality, I realize that I am at a dinner table with 6 jaws dropped wide open.  I say, “yes, I would recommend going to the fun hairdresser.”