70% sure my hair washer is an alien

By
Amy Vansant

I hate getting my hair highlighted because it kills a huge chunk of my day, but hey, at least it is expensive. Since I’m one the lucky people who started going gray at 22, I must. The alternative is slowly devolving into a bag lady. Since I work from home, I already lean a little toward picking up my knickknacks, stroking them and muttering “Precious… my precious…” so it’s best not to give in where I can avoid my inevitable decent into what the darling neighborhood kids will lovingly refer to as “that batshit old lady.”

I spend more time getting “gussied up” for my gay, male hairdresser than I do for a night on the town with my husband, so tack on that time lost.  Then there’s the additional hour getting a facial or a manicure because my damn salon hires SMOKING hot girl-women with gravity defying hair and tattoos they’ll never regret because they’ll never age and 9″ chunk heels they can stand in all day with no ramifications such as Turrets-like cursing bursts or heels that look like zombies have been gnawing on them.

I’m pretty sure one of the girls was genetically manufactured right there in the salon. She couldn’t possibly exist outside its rarefied air. She’s 77 lbs and 40 of it is boob.

Anyway, after staring at my round German face wreathed in foil in the mirror for two hours, I think a facial is going to turn me into a super model.  Call me a “glass half full” kinda girl.

I do like the hair washing part. Most of the people there are really good with the head rubs. And then there is Alberto. I go to the bathroom until Alberto the Merciless is occupied with someone else’s hair, just so I can get me some Magic Fingers. And believe me, if you’ve ever tried to go to the bathroom in a knee-length black salon smock, you know why Catholics don’t have female priests.

Alberto the Merciless has been washing hair so long that he can talk on his phone, gossip with a  coworker, file his nails, go to a rave and mix a bowl of color all while he’s washing your hair. The problem is, your hair is tangled up in his fingers while he’s multitasking, and he drags you around the salon like a sparkly caveman.

I had a good gal yesterday, though. Fingers on the right side of my head, fingers on the left side of my head, massaging my temples… rubbing the top of my head…

WAIT.

The woman behind me was massaging both sides of my head AND the top of my head with what felt like a third hand.

This is how my mind works in these situations:

First theory: MEN IN BLACK. The girl is an alien and a third arm had come out of her chest to massage the top of my head. I cannot stress how sure I was this was happening.

Second theory: ALBERTO. He had gotten so distracted he’d leaned in an started massaging my head instead of his own client’s.

Third theory: SHE’S WASHING ME WITH HER CHIN. It really felt like she had just leaned forward, rested her chin on the top of my head and started moving it in circular fashion.

Wow. This girl was good. I’d never had someone use their chin before. Maybe that’s how they did it in Russia. Russians don’t fuck around.

I started getting a little hysterical and she had to ask what was up. I explained to her that I had actually cracked trying to figure out how she was rubbing me in three spots simultaneously, and that my guesses ranged from alien to chin-washer.

Turns out it was her THUMBS. She had tilted her hands downward which freed her thumbs to reach to the middle of my head.

Ah. I guess that makes more sense.

Mostly sure (like 70%) that I wasn’t being massaged by an alien, I relaxed and enjoyed the lilting tones of the young man standing by my ear screaming to a coworker.

“I thought I need some apps, right? For my phone, right? So I went online on my phone to look at apps and there were like… *gasp* SO MANY.”

“Not like in the 80s.” I said.

“What?” he asked.

“In the eighties there were only like six apps.”

“Oh my GAWD,” he said. “You are, like, SO lucky. That must have made things, like, so much simpler, you know? Sometimes I wish I could live in a simpler time. Like even the 90s.”

I nodded.

In the eighties, there weren’t any damn hair washing aliens, either.