Firing the Hair Guy

I have just fired my hair guy. I have been going to him for at least eight years. I ended up going to him by default. The gal who had been doing my hair for years (who always made me feel like a million bucks going out the door) decided to make a career change and sold her list of clients to Mr. X. so I went to Mr. X and we got along OK. He seemed to be interested in hair, my hair in particular and he did a passable job. I was not unhappy. But I only felt like 10 bucks going out the door – not the million like I was used to feeling.  I would go home and just redo it to my liking.

However over time Mr. X’s life got in the way of his job. I sometimes felt I was his therapist. Usually it’s the other way around – YOU tell the hair person all the gossip and dirty little secrets. Not with Mr. X. He first told me about how unhappy and dissatisfied he was in his marriage and that he wasn’t ‘getting any’ at home. His wife had been in school forever and had not contributed to the family income for years. While he would cut my hair he would sigh deeply and lament his miserable marriage/life/situation and generally bring all spirits around him down, mine included. This went on for several months until he told me he’d fallen in love with another woman and was having an affair. He wrote love songs about her and decided to leave his wife for her, even though it was going to be tough on his 11 year old son. Before he could follow through with his plan his wife suddenly became very amorous and began giving him the attention he wanted. He decided to reconcile with her. When he told the other woman he was going back to his wife she was NOT HAPPY. She came in to his shop one day and in front of customers and other stylists proceeded to steal several hundreds dollars worth of beauty supplies. He was surprised but sympathetic, after all he had promised her he would soon be with her, and he changed his mind. I thought ‘Watch out, Cuckoo on the loose!’  remember that movie with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas????? Hell Yeah! Of course the wife could not keep up the façade of actually being in love with her husband (because she wasn’t) and the marriage began to truly fail. Mr. X wrote to the other woman to reconcile but his letter came back marked “return to sender”. “I guess she doesn’t want to have anything more to do with me” he said, as he shrugged and sighed deeply, sadly, mournfully. He was pitiful.  About this time I decided to have him color my hair – he did a great job, so-so on the style but the color was good so I kept making appointments. I felt pretty good when I walked out of the shop.

So on to the divorce. It took forever as his wife was not working, hadn’t worked for a long time and had very few job skills even though she almost had a PhD in family therapy ( a therapist who couldn’t treat herself!) – she could ever quite get the dissertation done. Mr. X could not really afford to get divorced, even his lawyer told him this. So he slept on the couch for months until he could save enough money to rent a room out from a friend. He finally moved out of the house and proceeded with the divorce which the wife fought against tooth and nail. Custody, spousal support – you name it. Mr. X was even more broke than before, and he mentioned it, complained about it, sighed about it every time I sat in his chair to get my hair done. I was sympathetic – I liked the color.

Mr. X decided to date around and started going out with several women. He basically wanted to get laid as he’d been missing out so long at home and he was successful with several women. He was happy dating several women at once until one of the women told him she wanted it to be exclusive between them and that she wasn’t going to see him anymore if he refused. He hemmed and hawed over this for days on end, after all he was newly single and he wanted to play the field, see what he had been missing. She told him she thought he was her soul mate and that they had a ‘destiny’ together.  She wanted a boyfriend. “We have a connection” he sighed. So he gave in and became a couple with her and as a bonus had sex any time he wanted. He moved in with her, and his son came to stay every other week. It was hard on the son but Mr. X was happy and it was worth it. The ex-wife was furious and vindictive. The divorce was still not finalized.

At this point my hair is starting to not look so good style wise. Mr. X would always try to use a flat iron on my hair to straighten it out. HELLO! My hair is a straight as you can get – what he was doing was making it flat and UGLY, poking up in all the wrong places. I said ‘no more flat iron’, I don’t like it. So the next time I would see him he would start to heat up the flat iron. No God Damn it! Duh! Don’t you get it???

He then began looking for a house to buy. STRESS! STRESS! STRESS! Yes, I got to hear all about it. Finally after months of rejections he was able to purchase a home in foreclosure. The ‘girlfriend’ promptly lost her job and she decided to move in with him as she was going to be evicted. She would look for work every day and help out in any way she could. Jump to one year later: The girlfriend has gone into menopause and has no desire for sex at all. She has admitted that she does not love him but likes him as a friend. She still has not found or even looked for a job. She has not contributed any monies from her unemployment to the household expenses. She told Mr. X “I’ve EARNED my unemployment!” Mr. X is basically back where he was before he got divorced, in a non-giving,  non-sharing, loveless, sexless relationship, where he still pays all the bills. Oh and by the way – that was his second divorce. In the meantime partly due to her unwillingness to help financially he has had to file for bankruptcy. And then his car blew up and he cannot get a loan to fix it because his credit is so bad. He only has a motorcycle for transportation. The economy is only partly to blame here I think, Mr. X has been making poor choices, over and over and over again.

He asked the ‘girlfriend’ to move out a couple of months ago – and she is still there, no job, no money. A parasite that won’t budge, a tick that won’t drop off, a bloated leech that will not release it’s prize.

By now my hair has suffered the ultimate and final indignity. Mr. X is using my head as a MOLD as he blows my hair dry. I don’t know where this crazy idea came from but if anyone out there has noticed – I have a very small head. They even had to order me an extra special small size cap when I graduated from High School way back in the day. So now I look like a red headed pinhead with very flat hair with a bald spot in the front. Even the flat iron was starting to look good at this point. I let this go on for a couple more sessions because like I said before, I liked the color and when I got home I could redo the whole thing. But come on – what am I paying him for???? Sheesh. During my last visit with Mr. X he whined and complained and said he had given the girlfriend 30 days to leave, but she hadn’t made any attempt to do so yet. I asked why he didn’t just pack up her stuff and put it on the sidewalk. Because, he sighed and moaned – he still loves her even though she has no feelings for him.

One word. LOSER!

When he finished drying my hair to the point of superior hideousness I walked out of there not being able to go to the store or anywhere because again, I looked like a very tall red headed pinhead with a bald spot. I got home and said to R, “I don’t like the way Mr. X does my hair anymore”. R said, “I’m so glad you said that because frankly it looks awful – and you know I never say anything about, or even notice those kinds of things”. He is right, he never notices these things. IT MUST HAVE BEEN EVEN WORSE THAN I THOUGHT!!!! Goodbye Mr. X, and good luck. Thanks for the bit of color you gave me, but other than that… nada.