03/01/98

I was joined in watching last night's Iron Chef (Flounder Confront!) by Denise Rehse and her niece Therese.The Rehse family are from Detroit, and Therese still lives there, but when I first met her she was trying to decide whether she should move to San Francisco. She was 16 or 17, tres Goth, and more than a little dubious about the California lifestyle. However, she met me in all my mohawked, tattooed glory and decided if California let punks like me flourish it might not be too lame. When she found out how old I was she was completely taken aback. "Wow," she said, all innocent admiration, "you are so cool for someone so old." It was 1985, and I was 27.

Here's what I looked like three years later, post punk but still not mainstream. If the resolution on your browser is really good you can see the shaved sides of my head underneath that blonde mane.

London photobooth, 1988.

I cut my hair last week, speaking of such things. I wanted something edgy and postmodern but the hairdresser thought I wouldn't look pretty so she decided just to trim me up. I have such bad luck with hairdressers. The only one I had worth a damn gave up cutting hair to focus full time on the London rave scene, back when there was one. No one ever wants to give me a cool haircut. They either envision me in something completely inappropriate to my lifestyle (i.e., something incredibly high maintenance), or they don't believe I would really want a choppy little do. At most I can persuade them to do my bangs asymmetically. I guess I ought to just go up to the city where style equals content and no one would dream of letting me walk out of their salon with a boring hairdo, or else do like firedrake and just take the scissors to myself. That'd pretty much guarantee a choppy do.

Either way, I think a new style is called for. It's traditional when changing jobs or boyfriends, you know.