fear of dying

I’ve been avoiding it for awhile. Pretending that if I ignored the problem, it would go away. But the truth is, it’s getting worse. And the only way people don’t notice is if their vision is worse than mine. If don’t deal with it now, I might as well give up and just let go forever. I’ll never be able to look myself in the mirror again. Worse, the whole world will see how much of my hair has gone grey (prematurely, of course). The world can probably handle it. I can’t.

It’s been 23 years since I’ve seen my actual haircolor and frankly, it’s not high on my list of things to do before I die. But it’s getting to the point where my hair color could best be described as “striped” and the ugly truth will have to be confronted.

I’ve been coloring my hair ever since Brad added a little red to my dirt brown hair and I never went back. Brad has been doing my color for the past 23 years (that’s 92 seasons in fashion years) in various but becoming shades of blond to strawberry blond to red to auburn. I figure I’ve paid for at least two of his nine or so plastic surgeries —his pecs, really belong to me.   Don’t think I’m complaining…when I think about the money I spent on shrinks versus the money I spent on Brad, I have no regrets about Brad.

During rough times, Brad would always do my color for free. He owns a part of my head, but don’t tell him in case he wants to sue me for it someday. He’s one of the reasons I stayed in New York as long as I did. Brad and my rent stabilized soon to be ex-apartment.

Before I left, Brad tucked a little bottle of Wella brown rose number xxx (proprietary secret) in my hand and whispered, tell them to use this. I’ll fix it when you get back. I’ve been carrying that little bottle around since then, assuming when the time was right, I could figure out how to do it myself. Well, I just pulled it out and read the instructions. Are they crazy? This stuff seems like you need a professional to do it with all these high faluting hair dresser words like toner, filler and latex gloves.

I’ve noticed a couple of hair salons in Auvers. I don’t know if they’re any good or not. Or if it matters if you’re just giving them the bottle and saying please dye my roots this color for 30 minutes? S’il vous plait? One of the salons looks like it’s trying to be trendy. The other one is tucked away off the main street, which is the one that appeals to me.

The price for colouer permanante is 19E50. Brad was $210.00. This is a plus.

On the minus side is the fact that my French still sucks. How do I say can you dye my hair the color in this bottle? Peut-tu morte mes chevaux le colouer dans …ici? Le boit…yeah, le boit. No, I don’t want them to kill my hair. Dye it color it. Coloeur mes chevaux? Come on…if I apply myself, I should be able to do this. Bonjour, mes chevaux et mal ici (point to roots). Aidez mois, s’l vous plait? Ma coiffeur dans new york me donne cette boit (hold up bottle of haircolor) et me dit, ici quoi j’ employe. Je suis ici dan auvers pour cinq mois. Aidez mois s’il vous plait?

If they understand and answer my brain will blank and I’ll stand dumbly clutching my bottle of haircolor like Bush clutched the my little goat book on 9/11. And I will go along with whatever they say and hope for the best. I guess that’s as close to willingly putting my life in the hands of a higher power as I’m ever going to get.

I really do trust that once I actually go into the hair salon and wave the bottle and speak really bad French, they’ll be nice and do it. I also trust it’ll be kind of fun, in a challenging, mildly threatening sort of a way. I also trust that my hair will look fine…much better than it does right now. And that ultimately, I’ll feel and look much better once I cross this huge hurdle.

Today I walk by the little salon. I look in the window like a child looking into a candy store. When the hairdresser threatens to make eye contact, I smile briefly before fleeing like a frightened hare.

I think I’ll put my life in the hands of a higher power some other day. Right now, I could go for some lunch.

Back to my roots (more on the continuing hair saga)