Maternal Dementia

After I’d called to arrange to see him, at his place, I felt dirty. I hadn’t been with anyone else for a long time. What would it be like? I mean, you get used to someone. Someone who knows what you like. Someone who knows how to make you feel good. Someone who knows your secrets. It’s an intimacy you develop over time. You’re with the same person for years. You build a trust. Why would you go anywhere else? It could ruin everything.

I stared at his number, grinning up at me from the WhatsApp dialogue cloud. He spoke English and French, if that would make me more comfortable than having to do this in Spanish, a language I’m still acquiring. In fact, he was French. He’d know how to do this.

I looked carefully at myself in the mirror, fussing with my hair. There’s a kind of conversation you have in these moments, close to the mirror, face-to-face with yourself. The candid, truthful tell-it-like-it-is self-talk, where you call yourself by your last name. Are you really going through with this?

His place was in a ritzy neighborhood, near Turo Park. At least it’d be fancy. I have two friends who live on the park, but I didn’t want to see them on my way there. I didn’t even tell them I was going. I wanted to be discreet.

Later, standing before him in my robe, he combed his fingers through my hair, grabbing it and pulling it from the roots, marveling at its thickness.

“How long have you worn it this way?” he said. “It suits you.”

I thought about my coiffeur in Paris and the first time I went to see him, eight years ago. I was mired down with a too-busy-with-two-toddlers-to-care hairdo, a straight and blunt pageboy cut. He persuaded me to sport a messier, spiky hairdo. There were tears as he cut my long, even locks into layers, but in the end, there was no question that the new, wilder look worked much better. Not only that, it helped me get my mojo back. I was different after that haircut, more like my previous pre-mom self.

“Don’t worry,” he said, leaning in. “It won’t hurt.”

He put his hands on my shoulder and turned me toward a long, flat, reclining chair. He moved behind me and eased me into the black leather seat, cradling my head carefully as against the porcelain sink. I heard the water before I felt it, and his hands squeezed the water through my hair, making sure it was damp before he applied the perfumed shampoo. His strong fingers massaged my head, and I felt myself letting go.

Sitting in front of the mirror at his table, I watched the chunks of my hair fall to the ground. He had his own way of trimming it, circling around my scalp in a quick rotation, each pass clipping off a bit more. It was different than what my usual coiffeur does, but I had no choice now. I was in the hands of this man. He would butcher my hair or, who knows, maybe he’d make it better. There was no turning back. I exhaled, nervously.

“Close your eyes,” he whispered. “You just have to trust me.”

What is it, this thing we have with our hairdressers? I know I’m not the only one. The Fiesta Nazi, one of my favoritest friends in Paris, has been going to the same woman for thirty years. My mother saw the same man for just as long. Do a survey of the women around you. I’d wager most of them have a steady hairstylist, one to whom they are fiercely loyal.

Finding the right one is like dating. You have a lot of one-night-stands where the walk of shame is just about walking out of the salon wishing you’d never gone in. You’ll go to anyone who’s recommended, politely explaining the various quirks and hairlicks you’ve lived with your whole life. It’s always about finding the right balance between their expertise and your knowledge of your own head. Once you happen upon the hairdresser who gives you a good cut, time after time, and who makes the best out of how you look from the neck up, well, you hold on tight. You only leave because you have to, or because of a very, very compelling recommendation. Which is what took me, eight years ago, to my coiffeur in Paris, the second most important man in my life.

When De-facto and I first talked about moving to Barcelona, I checked out the flight schedules to Paris. If I could think ahead and get a good fare, or fly through Paris on my way to other places, could I get back every six weeks or so? My hair grows like a field of weeds, I used to cut it every four weeks. I could stretch it if I had to, but the last days before the next appointment were sloppy ones. Remarkably, since we’ve moved to Barcelona – just under a year – I’ve managed to have legitimate reasons to travel to Paris almost every month. Each time I paid a visit to my coiffeur. Until now. It’d been 10 weeks since I sat in his chair. The mop on my head was a Medusa mess.

“Mama,” Buddy-roo shook her head at me. “Your up-hair is all down.”

She was right. No amount of product could keep my thick mop in the preferred vertical position. I’d pinch and twist it to stand up, but within 5 minutes it wilted. I looked like I’d slept with a bowl on my head.

A number of people have noted that eventually, if we stay in Barcelona, I’ll have to find a new hairdresser. I’ve acknowledged this with a mildly-affirmative grunt. I don’t want a new hairdresser. I love my Paris coiffeur. He is the second most important man in my life. De-facto knows this and indulges my almost monthly trips to Paris to see another man, if only in a cranial sense. But he’s given me my style. He’s played with my color, moving me from blonde to red to my current shade, honey-badger. He experiments enough to keep it fresh, but not enough to ruin the look he has created for me. He’s a coiffeur coveted for his runway experience, but he’s not as hard on the wallet as you’d think, especially given the consistent quality of my color and cut.

But I feel like I cheated on him, going to see another hairdresser. Even though the other man did a perfectly fine job. He was quick and confident with his shears, he stayed true to the spirit of my original hairstyle, cutting my hair very much like my signature look. I had to wash and style it again myself the next day, but it does, mostly, what I want it to do. It’s good enough. Just good enough to carry me through until I can get to Paris again to see the second most important man in my life.