Dear David

Dear David,

A woman sat in you today and said she wanted to look "like herself but on a good day." Which is honestly the most devastating thing anyone has ever said in a salon, and people have said a lot of devastating things in salons. I gave her a trim and some face-framing layers and she looked in the mirror and started crying. Happy crying. I think. She didn't clarify and I didn't ask because sometimes clarifying ruins it. Like when someone says "I love you" and the other person says "what do you mean by that." Don't do that. Just let the thing be the thing.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Slow Tuesday. Only three clients. I re-oiled your lever and you went up so smooth. You've been squeaking at the 4-inch mark for like two weeks and I know that's been bothering you. It was bothering me too. We don't have to talk about it.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

A man came in today and asked for "something that says I'm going through a divorce but I'm handling it well." I gave him a fade. He is not handling it well. You could tell because he kept checking his phone and then putting it face down on the counter really hard, like the phone was the one who ruined his marriage. The fade looks great, though. Sometimes the outside of your head can be a whole different situation than the inside and I think that's fine. That's literally what hair is for. Hair is the PR team for your skull.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Do you think fish know they're wet? I was in the middle of a blowout and it just hit me. Like they have no frame of reference for dry. Wet is just... everything. That's kind of beautiful and kind of the scariest thing I've ever thought. Like what if we're all in something right now and we don't know because we've never been outside of it. What if gravity is our wet. What if time is our wet. I tried to explain this to Kayla and she said "Sabrina, please, I am eating lunch." Which is fair. But I'm right.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Somebody left a Yelp review that said the salon smells like chemicals. It's a salon. What did they think we were using, wishes?

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

I've been thinking about how you can tell everything about a relationship by how someone acts in a waiting room. Husbands who sit in the lobby while their wives get their hair done are either on their phone not caring at all or sitting there with this face like they've been taken as a prisoner of war. There's no in between. There was a guy today who brought a book. An actual book. Paperback. Dog-eared pages. He sat in the corner and read for an hour and a half and when his wife came out he looked up and said "oh wow" and meant it. That's the whole thing. That's what everyone's looking for. Someone who brings a book and still looks up.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Client today told me her husband doesn't notice when she changes her hair. She's been coming to me for a year and a half. We've done four completely different colors. We went from auburn to chocolate to a honey blonde and last month we did a whole copper situation that was genuinely gorgeous, David. It looked like autumn as a person. He has not said one word. Not one. And she wasn't even mad about it, that's the thing. She was just stating it. Like reporting the weather. "He doesn't notice." I don't know what kind of marriage that is but I know it's not about the hair. It's never about the hair. Except when it is. Which is like 40% of the time. The other 60% is just people sitting in you and trying to figure out who they want to be next.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

There was a wasp in the salon today and everyone lost their minds. Kayla was screaming. The client in chair two picked up a magazine like she was going to go to war with it. I just opened the back door and waited. It left on its own. Everything leaves on its own if you give it a door.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Why do people say "I just want something low maintenance" and then describe the highest maintenance haircut that has ever existed? A woman told me today she wanted something she could wake up and not think about and then showed me a picture that would require a diffuser, two products, a round brush, and a personal relationship with God. I gave her a lob. She's going to hate it in two weeks and come back and ask for what she actually wanted in the first place, which is permission to be high maintenance. I'll be here. You'll be here. We're patient like that.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

A teenager came in with a picture of a celebrity and said "make me look like this." The celebrity was blonde. The teenager has black hair. Like jet black. Like if a raven had hair. I didn't say that out loud because I've learned that teenagers don't always appreciate metaphors about their appearance. I said okay and gave her some honey highlights and a long shag and she looked in the mirror and said "that's not what I asked for" and her mom looked at her and said "no, but it's what you needed" and the teenager SMILED, David. Like actually smiled. Not the polite one. The real one that you can't fake because it starts in the eyes and the mouth just follows. Sometimes moms just know. Not all moms. But that one did.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

I'm sorry I spilled coffee on you this morning. I cleaned it up but I know you know.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

I think scissors remember. Like on some molecular level. I think my shears know the difference between a haircut someone wanted and a haircut someone was settling for. I think they cut differently. Kayla says this is "a lot" and that I should "maybe talk to someone" but I AM talking to someone, David. I'm talking to you. And you've never once told me I'm a lot.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Old man came in today. Like old old. Like he probably has opinions about Roosevelt and means the first one. He sat down in you and said he wanted a trim, just a trim, and to please not change anything. So I trimmed. Barely anything. Like I was giving his hair a suggestion, not a direction. And the whole time he was talking, not to me really, just talking the way old people do where you're not the audience, you're just the reason the words have somewhere to go. He was telling me about his wife. She died three years ago. They were married for 54 years and she always cut his hair. Always. In the kitchen. With the same pair of scissors. He said she wasn't good at it. He said she never once got it even. He said it didn't matter because she'd put her hand on the back of his neck when she was checking the length and that was the whole point.

He's been coming to salons since she died because he can't do it himself but he doesn't actually want a haircut, David. He wants someone to touch the back of his neck and check the length.

I did that. At the end. I put my hand there and pretended I was checking. He closed his eyes.

I charged him $12 and he tipped me $30 and neither of us said anything about why.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Mrs. Hendricks wants to go platinum and I told her we'd need three sessions minimum and she looked at me like I'd asked her to climb Everest in sandals. She said "can't you just do it all at once?" and I said "I could, but you would not have hair afterward" and she thought I was joking. I was not joking. People think bleach is like a filter you put over your existing hair but it's actually a chemical negotiation with the structure of who you are and if you rush it, things break. That's not a metaphor. Your hair will literally break off. But also it is kind of a metaphor. Some people want transformation without process and I think that's the root of most human suffering, actually. Mrs. Hendricks does not want to hear about human suffering. She wants to be platinum by Saturday. We compromised on three Thursdays.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Every single person who sits in you looks at themselves in the mirror first. Before they say hi to me. Before they tell me what they want. They look. And it's never a happy look. It's this quick, automatic thing, like they're checking if something got worse since the last time they saw themselves. Nobody sits down in a salon chair and thinks "nice." They think "okay, fix it." Even the pretty ones. Especially the pretty ones, actually.

I wonder what you see. You face that mirror all day. Do you see what they see? Or do you just see a bunch of people who don't know what they look like to everyone else? Because that's what I see. I see people who have no idea that the thing they hate is the thing that makes their whole face work. The bump on the nose. The weird hairline. The cowlick they've been fighting since middle school. I want to grab them sometimes and say your face is doing exactly what it's supposed to do, please stop asking me to help you fight it.

I never say that. I just do the highlights.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Mirrors are weird if you think about them for too long. Like you've never actually seen your own face. You've only seen it reversed. Every photo someone takes of you is closer to what you actually look like than what you see every morning. That means the version of yourself you know best is the one that doesn't exist. I was thinking about this while sweeping and I had to sit down for a second.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Lady came in, sat down in you, looked at herself in the mirror for a full thirty seconds without saying anything, and then said "you know what, never mind" and left. Didn't even take off her coat. I respect that so deeply. She came all the way here, drove or bused or walked, made an appointment, checked in, sat in you, faced herself in that mirror with the terrible lighting that makes everyone look a little haunted, and decided today was not the day. That's not quitting. That's listening. Most people don't listen to themselves at all. They just do the thing because they already said they would and then wonder why it feels wrong. She listened. I think about her like once a week.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

Kayla asked me why I talk to you and I said I don't and she said "Sabrina I literally just watched you say good morning to the chair" and I said that's not talking that's greeting and she looked at me for a really long time and then went back to her station. I think she gets it. Or she thinks I'm unwell. Either way she didn't push it, which I respect.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

You held 14 people today. 14 different bodies, 14 different weights, 14 people leaning back into you and trusting that you'd stay. I don't think you get enough credit for that. Holding people is hard. I would know. I do it with scissors.

Sabrina

~~~

Dear David,

The salon closes in an hour. Everyone's gone. It's just us and the mirror and the sound the faucet makes when it drips, which it's been doing since October and which I have reported four times. You're still warm from the last person who sat in you. I don't know her name. She didn't talk much. She just sat and closed her eyes while I trimmed her ends and I could feel her breathing slow down like this was the only place all day where nobody needed her to be anything.

I think that's what you are, David. Not a chair. A place where people get to stop.

I swept up. I wiped the mirror. I put my hand on your armrest the way I always do before I leave, just to say, you know. The thing I always say.

See you tomorrow.

Sabrina