If someone asks, this is where I'll be.

There's something to be said for starting over. For being, at 40, an absolute beginner. I've always thought that it's useful to have the experience of being an only: the only woman in a room full of men; the only white person at an event attended by an otherwise all-black audience; the only something, somewhere. Suddenly becoming a minority has the effect of making you understand a little those who live their lives as minorities. Starting over feels analogous to that: being a beginner makes me remember all the other times I was ever finding my way through something new, makes me admire & appreciate the people who have mastered the skills I'm learning now, has me looking forward to the day when I feel equal to whatever task might be set before me. Not, however, imagining a day when *poof* I'm all done learning! Because I hope & imagine that that day never comes.

We're not the new ones out on the floor anymore: the next class has just come out of the classroom. So we've been moved along the wall to our new stations. It's a point of pride to not be on the first wall anymore, a point that only the students know, not the clients. I have a station with more than twice the storage space of my old one, so now each day does not end doing a puzzle called Fit All These Oddly-Shaped Items Into This Very Cramped Cabinet. It was awful. If I got something wrong, sometimes I had to pull it all out & start over. Like a Rubik's Cube, only less fun. And I never liked Rubik's Cubes, so I didn't think they were very fun in the first place. But at least I never had to try to do one down on my knees in bits of cut hair.
I still feel like a stranger in a strange land, when the people around me talk about how prohibitively expensive taxidermy is or how many tanning minutes they have left or how they wish they'd gotten a wedding dress with camouflage on it (I swear I am not making any of this up). I am in the minority here & how. But I find that it doesn't matter as much as it might. I have my little group of friends: Amber, Mercedes, Michelle, & (you all saw this coming, right?) Sunshine. We eat lunch together, study together, sit together during class. Our stations all used to be very close together & mostly they still are, except Sunshine is way up front away from the rest of us. She waves sadly sometimes & we all wave back. We're a funny group, a mishmash: Mercedes is the youngest, she's 20, but by far the most steady & mature. And also possibly the most skilled of all of us. She's a tall, sturdy black girl with amazing cheekbones, a truly radiant smile, & the biggest most fabulous head of natural hair you have ever seen. Amber is 25, tall & skinny, a pretty tomboy with two kids & a part-time job a Food Lion. She's my closest friend there & I truly adore her. She's also impossibly goofy. She & Mercedes are what make my days. And the two of them together are hilarious, like an improbable sitcom. Michelle is 23, angel-faced & blonde, with a five year old daughter. She's funny & smarter than you'd think at first. Possibly the prettiest girl in the school, she & I are always being given men's haircuts to do, to the point where it's a joke between us. I always imagine the men, mostly old timers who appreciate the $6 price of our haircuts, are elated when they see her coming to get them. And Sunshine, well now, Sunshine: she's 34, very tan, the mother of two teenage girls. She's from Tennessee & her accent is like nothing I've ever heard. She's tough & loyal & funny & she knows how to work hard & hustle a little if needed (she has business cards she gives out, so people can ask for her again, though her name is pretty easy to remember without a card). I feel pretty certain that if someone said anything against me or tried to do wrong by me, these girls would be right there if I needed them. Certainly Mercedes & especially Amber have been there for me when I had some truly rotten days. So while I'll never feel like I fit in, I have what I need: people who I like, who like me, with whom I pass the time & share my days.
(That photo at the top is totally unrelated to anything in this post: it's just an updo that I did on my mannequin & liked enough to take a picture of.)

They call me Nature Girl.

Before I get started with the rest of this post, I want to thank everyone who wrote me after the last one, "You're too smart for that." Some of you commented here, some on Facebook, some of you emailed me, & some of you talked to me. I guess it struck a chord with a lot of you, which is gratifying to me as...a writer? Or whatever you want to call what I do here. I tried to answer everything, but I'm not sure that I did, so I wanted to say how much I appreciated hearing from everyone. Now, back to our irregularly scheduled blah blah...

The desire to change me has stepped up among my fellow students. At least once a week, someone suggests that I a. grow my bangs long, b. highlight my hair, c. wear more eye makeup, &/or d. grow my nails longer. I look around & realize what they mean is: look like us. I am the only one there with what I think of as real bangs (above my eyebrows), possibly the only one who is wearing lipstick, & among a very few with only my natural haircolor (virgin hair, it's called, when there are no chemicals in it), minimal eye makeup, & short nails. Now, I'm not opposed to change (& have in fact cut my hair from below shoulder-length to a short bob since I've been there) & I'm not saying that I would never do any of these things (well, I'm not going to grow long nails because I think they're icky), but these suggestions do seem to come from a place of conformity. One girl, who I like for the most part, touched my hair & called me "Nature Girl" because I wasn't wearing hair spray. Nature Girl! Now, I consider that as something of a compliment, which I don't think is how she meant it. This same girl offered to fix my hair on class picture day (Glamour Shots-style pictures, no lie) & when I said, "No, this is how I like my hair," she replied, "Messy & poufy?" I thought about it for a minute & then said, "Well, actually, yeah. That describes what I like pretty well." I guess the implication is that I couldn't possibly look the way I do on purpose, I couldn't have put any thought into it. I'm just accidentally filing my nails down & too lazy to highlight my hair. I have noticed that especially among students who have been there for a while, there are very strong trends. For a while, everyone (& by everyone, I mean about ten or twelve girls) had extremely bleached out bobs, some with a peek-a-boo color (meaning a darker or brighter color on the underneath layer of their hair). Now they're all going with a dark reddish brown. I think it takes a strong sense of self to resist the constant pressure to change. We'll see how I do.
I had a really delightful client on Friday. She was a pleasure to talk to, interesting & funny, & she had lovely hair. I'm not complaining about the other people I've had, but it was really refreshing to have someone who I could kinda relate to. She looked good when I was done (color & cut) & said she'd ask for me the next time she came back & bring her sons in for haircuts, too, so I'm hoping I just got my first repeat customer lined up.
I'm also cutting hair at home (or at other people's homes) & practicing blowouts on whoever will let me. It's nice to be free from the eyes of the teachers; with some things I might miss their guidance, but I'm trying to be aware of my limitations & work within them. I'm not going to try to do anything on my own that I'm not pretty sure of. I've appreciated how patient everyone is with me (I'm not doing anything fast at this point) & that they trust me enough to let me at their heads. I've gotten support in a million different ways since I started this, from Adam who helped me decide & take the leap & get started & who gets up in the morning with me, to David who invited me to come observe at his salon, to the people who read this & let me know what they think. Those of you who let me practice on you are giving me another kind of support. I can't thank any of you enough.

You're too smart for that.

Before I quit my job to start school, I had worked in what I'll call the book industry for about 20 years. I got my first bookstore job in the summer of 1989, after my freshman year of college. With the exception of a few brief periods totalling about a year & a half where I worked at a clothing store, a record store, & as a full-time art class model, I worked in bookstores until 2001. Then I worked in publishing, then back to a bookstore, then back to publishing until now, 2010. I never felt like my identity was tied up in my job, but I have realized that, in a way, it was. Not with any specific job, but part of how I thought about myself was as someone who worked with books. The world of books & reading has always been a huge part of my existence. I'm the younger of two children & I can remember realizing that everyone in the house could read...except me. And it killed me! So I learned as fast as I could & I haven't slowed down since. Working with books seemed the most natural career for me to have because reading was definitely the thing I spent most of my spare time doing. And it still is.
When you tell people that you work with books, they seem to assume, right or wrong, that you're smart. They at least assume that you read. So I considered the possible change in people's perception of me when I decided to make this move. About 98% of the time when I told someone I was planning to go to beauty school, they said, "That's perfect!" or "I can totally see you doing that!" or things of that nature. But two people responded in the way that I feared. One of them said something like, "Hunh...THAT'S what you want to do?" with the implication that it was a strange move for me. The other person (a very smart woman, I should add), actually said,"You're too smart for that." She backtracked pretty quickly & admitted that the stylists in the salon where we both went were all very smart & quite well-educated people. But I had seen what her first response was. In a nutshell: that's not a career for smart people. Which I then extrapolate to: when people meet me, will they not think I'm smart anymore? It seems a funny brand of shallowness for me to worry about this, but I do.

Stranger in a strange land.

It's surprising to me how long it's taking me to feel at home. In some ways I did pretty soon, but in other ways I still feel alien. Part of it is how little I have in common with everyone I've met (I think I've found one of the few spots in North America where being a brunette puts me in the minority). It's the lack of a shared aesthetic that always strikes me. There's the occasional overlap, but for the most part I admire different things than my fellow students. I think many of them think I'm drab or odd (or both); it's been suggested that I highlight my hair, grow my bangs longer, & wear more makeup. Among my friends, I think I wear more makeup than nearly all of them & probably do more to my hair, too (well, maybe not that part: I wash it nightly, dry it, & sleep on it). But I am in a different world now & my red lipstick is not enough.
I've been out on the floor working on real clients for two weeks now. We still work on our mannequin heads, too. There are about 60 or 70 students & not enough clients for everyone, plus there are things we have to practice that few people come in & ask for (curse you, finger waves!). Everyone I've had so far has been either nice or neutral. The oldest people are the friendliest. I haven't made any terrible mistakes, though I have had some mishaps:

• When I was putting the cape on my first hair client, I accidentally touched her breast. Then I took her to the sink where I...
• ...sprayed water on the teacher who was supervising me.
• During the first haircut I gave with scissors, I cut my finger & was too embarrassed to say anything to the woman. I hope I didn't bleed in her hair. I don't think I did.
• Trying to clip closely behind a man's ear, I cut him & he started to bleed a little. Sorry, sir. I hope that didn't hurt too much.

I've had plenty of bright moments, too, though:

• After I very carefully did a color retouch on an older man who very exactly knew exactly what he wanted & exactly how he wanted it done, he praised me to the supervising teacher.
• I told a very old woman, who was not my client but was under a dryer nearby & asked me a question, that she had beautiful blue eyes. She covered her face & said, "No, no, I'm so ugly, I hate to even come out." I told her she was wrong & that she was pretty & had truly beautiful eyes (all true) & she looked so happy & as though she might cry.
• A friend of mine came in for a haircut & he was the first client I've had where I didn't get intensely nervous & sweaty while working on him. And since then, I haven't again. It was also overwhelmingly nice to talk to someone with whom I have things in common. Thanks, Skip!

I'm at the point where school will stay pretty much the same until I'm done. What will change the most is how much I feel able to do & how much supervision I get. I feel like I have a gazillion miles to go, but when I look back to three months ago, I feel like I've come pretty far already, too.

Things I have overheard.

Let's listen in on my fellow students...

"After I had him arrested, he didn't bother me anymore."

"I'm going to a different tanning salon next time. My tan isn't popping like it should."

"I don't plan to support myself! First I'll depend on my daddy, then on my boyfriend, then on my husband, & then if he leaves, back to my daddy."
(This one, this one...hoo, boy. I nearly had a feminist stroke right there on the floor.)

"They don't let us look at our phones here, but when I'm working, I'm going to have my phone out the whole time."

"I only have to spend two weekends in jail."

"Did you just say that your half-sister is younger than your daughter?"
"Yeah."

It feels like the first time.

I've been sick for a couple of days with a nasty, spiteful summer cold. I spent most of Monday horizontal, trying to will myself to get well. I intentionally didn't sleep during the day, though, so I could sleep at night. Then I couldn't sleep at night. I awoke with one half of one functional nostril. But nothing, nothing, I tell you! could keep me home from school today. Because today was the day we got all our stuff & some of us, including me, went out to work on the clinic floor.
We got our kits this morning: big, black, rolling suitcases full of everything from shears to a new mannequin head to pin curl clips & a manicure set. A gazillion brushes & combs! Clippers! Hair dryer, marcel iron, flat iron! A big ol bunch of rollers! Etc, etc. After we inventoried all that & made sure we had everything we were supposed to, we had our individual evaluations with the director. My seat in the classroom was closest to the door so she took me first. Honestly, I was pretty overwhelmed & tired at that point, so I don't remember exactly what my grade is. She showed me how I was doing & said nice things ("Your grades & your attendance are both really good! Just what I like to see!") & some nice things that were funny ("You got a perfect score on your attitude & your appearance. Not everyone in your class did.") & I know I'm doing well. That went pretty quickly & then she said, "OK, if you want to, you can go ahead & get your stuff & get your station all set up," & I said, "Oh...ah...oh, that's ok. I mean, I think I'll just wait til someone else is coming out, too, y'know..." & started wandering away when I was pounced upon by one of the teachers, a small, energetic woman. She said, "Here, let's get you set up & then I'll get you a client to work on." I believe I spluttered in response. At least, in my head I did. "WAIT!" I wanted to say, "EVERYONE ELSE IS STILL IN THERE!" Or possibly, "Uh, I really don't feel good today." Which was true & I had this terrible vision of working on one of the many tiny, frail old ladies who come in to get their hair done, giving her my cold, & then later hearing that she had died. I guess I was in a melodramatic mood. In reality, I just fetched my stuff, bade farewell to my classmates, & headed out.
I set up my station as slowly as possible, unboxing & unwrapping all my new stuff & stowing it in the cabinet under my station (I'm not really clear on why it all came in a big rolling suitcase, which I just brought home at the end of the day). The other six people who had enough hours to work on the floor starting today filtered out over the next hour. Then, suddenly, the tiny energetic teacher appeared by my station. And she was holding a yellow ticket. "I have a client for you. Manicure." I gave her a terrified look (I don't just think that I did, it was confirmed by the people around me; "deer in the headlights" was the phrase I heard the most) & said something like, "Um." Now, I am not particularly good at manicures & we don't focus on them at all, but we do have to do them. Tiny Energetic helped me gather up what I needed & set up a manicure table. I went out to the lobby & called the client's name. I tried to act relaxed & normal. I've been told that when I'm very nervous, I actually look really calm. I always think that it's the same principle that I remember from the Oliver Sacks book/DeNiro movie "Awakenings": I'm shaking so fast that I appear to be completely still. She was 18 & I decided that was good, how many professional manicures could she have had in her life? Plus, as I looked at the price on the ticket, for $5.50, she shouldn't have grand expectations. She chose a metallic green polish from our selection of mostly old, clumpy bottles. I started in & the teacher whose class I just left walked by. "Ah!" she said, "A manicure!" & smiled at me kindly. I know she knew how nervous I was. We'd been expressly forbidden to tell the clients that they were our first service, so she couldn't really say anything about how new I was. She turned to the girl & said, "She does very good work. You're going to love your manicure." And that made my day. Maybe my month. I did a fine job & the girl did seem happy at the end.
And so ends the story of my first paying customer.

A dilemma.

Some of my friends from beauty school have tried to friend me on Facebook. I feel like I can't do that with anyone from there because of this blog. So far I've dealt with it by just saying, "Facebook? Oh, I haven't seen your request. I'm never on there!" & then just ignoring their friend request. I'm not really sure what else I can do, though it is a struggle because there are people I'd like to get closer to & that would be one way to do it. But writing this feels important to me, if only because I enjoy doing it so much. I don't think I can have both.