When You Only Get A Haircut Once A Year

You show up twenty minutes early because you’re so excited and hang out on the wrong side of the glass looking half anxious, half eager, like a dog whose owners have tied her to a bike rack while they buy coffee.

Five minutes before your cut time, you stroll in trying to look cool, as though they haven’t all seen you skulking around on the sidewalk. They put you in the garden out back with a glass of water so that you can continue waiting like a civilized person / movie star.

Once they’re ready for you, a smiling guy brings you in to get your hair washed, and you’re so excited to have someone massage your scalp that you giggle frequently, even during the following exchange:

HIM: You have so much hair!

YOU: I know.

HIM: I mean, I do this as a job; I see lots of hair. But you, you have so much hair.

YOU: I know!

HIM: What ethnicity are you, if you don’t mind me asking?

YOU: Just Jewish, part Ashenazi and part Sephardi. Why? What would you have guessed?

HIM: Wookie.

You go on to have an in-depth conversation about Texas, where he’s from, and Jewish history, since, he tells you, his last name, Guzman, is one given to the conversos in Spain, Jews who stayed and became Catholic rather than leave during the late 15th-century expulsion. (Later, you look on the Internet and can’t find substantiation for that theory; Guzman seems to be prized name in Spain.)

“My people were cowards,” he says.

“They were resilient,” you say. “My people fled to Eastern Europe and changed to a German-sounding name so that people would think they were rich. Everyone does the best they can.”

Your stylist has been promoted since the last time you were here, a year ago, so a cut with her now costs $92, and you don’t even care. Otherwise she’s the same, almost too good-looking to be a normal person and yet friendly and excellent at her job.

While she works, you ask her about the Forbes list that put “Hair Stylist” at the top of the Least Stressful Jobs in America list for 2015. She laughs. “Whoever they spoke to, they must not have clients calling them and sending Facebook messages twenty-four hours a day,” she says. “They must not be so tired in the evening, from standing all day with their arms up, that sometimes they fall asleep on the couch still wearing shoes and covered in other people’s hair.”

She does love it, she says, and she feels lucky to be able to do something she enjoys and does well. “Sometimes, though, I fantasize about being a waitress. I’m serious! You still get tips but when you’re off the clock, you’re off.”

The tips are serious: she and her husband are both in tip-earning professions and she tells me they make tens of thousands of dollars annually in cash. In the mirror, as she speaks, you can see that she is hand-curling your hair one coil at a time. You start getting embarrassed. “You really don’t have to do this,” you say. “It’s all right. I’m not doing anything special tonight.”

“You deserve to look great just for yourself,” she says firmly, and keeps going.

She’s right. You even maybe deserve for it to happen more than once a year.

When she is done at last you look like a grown up, sexy version of something out of Dr. Seuss, and you love it. You pay your money to the man at the desk, who is also almost too good-looking to be a normal person, and who is a stand-up comedian to boot (“Sure, I know Hannibal”). He chats with you about all the times lately he has run into the ladies of “Broad City,” leaving you starry-eyed.

OUTLAY:

$92 for the cut

$5 cash tip to Guzman

$20 cash tip to the stylist, who gives you a hug and tells you to try to come back in January this time.

TOTAL: $117, and you’re still smiling about the experience the next day. Worth it.

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