John and me, 5/1/99.
I got my hair re-colored today, although of course you can't tell from the black and white photo above. My Pepe LePew stripes are once again cunningly disguised as really, really light blonde highlights amid dark ash blonde hair. I really ought to make hair appointments more frequently so I can avoid the embarrassment of two-tone hair, but I have to be in the mood and have the money at the same time.
My hairdresser is an eccentric and talented Japanese lady named Masako. She is insanely chatty. She's the shop owner, so I can't insist she not talk so much while working on me, but it's not a very restful experience. I have to mentally gird my loins to deal with her before going in. I will not escape without being made to comment on current events, the wisdom of wearing orange pants, the benefits of wearing my hair in a French twist while still partially wet, the merits of herbal tea, the latest craze for butterfly hairpins, and the beauty of the Virgin Mary's feet in Italian Renaissance paintings. She's exhausting, but my hair always looks fabulous so it's worth it.
Today, Masako informed me I had Asian hair because my hair is so thick, silky, and resistant to color. "You have hair like Japanese girl! I will be aggressive with your hair from now on just like Japanese hair! It is a compliment! Asian hair requires aggression! You cannot daub, daub, daub, no! You must fight it, force it to take the color, paint and push it!" I tried to look complimented as she did battle with my recalcitrant follicles.
After the war, I drove over to a park and just sat in the sun reading the end of my Steven Leigh novel. Dark Water's Embrace is about colonists marooned on a planet who discovered their genes mutating rapidly from generation to generation. The latest are being born hermaphrodite (and bisexual) which causes great strife due to a perception of the herms taking child-bearing females away from the tiny gene pool. The previous indigenous civilization died out about 1,000 years before, and no one knows much about them until a dessicated but intact body is discovered in a bog. The first of the herms, who is also the group's doctor, studies the body and concludes it was also a hermaphrodite. As she and others study and ponder the ancient civilization, a simultaneous story set in that ancient time clarifies why the hermaphrodite gender was necessary, and what happens when they are all killed off. It's an entertaining, thought provoking story about gender, environmental disasters, and social behavior in a time of change.
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