I LIKE YOUR MARILYN MONROE

I'm so glad I quit cutting my own hair and started going to a salon.

It's not because I wasn't doing a good job. The front of my hair always looked fetching (Remember, I come from a long line of hairdressers). But the back would depend on the skills of my significant other or a roommate or a kindly neighbor. So the back was always a crapshoot.

My philosophy has always been if you want something done right, do it yourself. But I couldn't do the back of my hair myself. So I had to modify my philosophy: If you want something done right, find a stylish young man with magic hands.

That's when Ryan came into my life. I called this salon a few years ago and the gal they set me up with ended up not being there on my appointed day because she had gotten pregnant and quit school and gone to live in some tiny town in Arkansas. Too bad. I bet she would have been a fun hairdresser. But her misfortune led me to Ryan, the salon owner who took all her appointments that day.

We've been together ever since.

The thing I like best about Ryan is that he doesn't expect me to talk. It's not that I would mind talking to Ryan; it's just that I can never think up anything to say beyond "been busy?" or "sure is hot outside" or "been busy?"

The thing I like next best about him is that we have a similar sense of humor. Like some gal at the next station will be telling her hairdresser about how she's not getting along with her roommates because they don't appreciate the feng shui of her space, and Ryan and I will look at each other and snicker. Or some dude with a tattoo of a dagger on his neck will be instructing his hairdresser to not give him a cut that would be "unflattering" to his tattoo. And Ryan will look at me and give a long, slow eye-roll.

A thing I enjoy about going to the salon in general is that it's like a zoo where you can gawk at stylish people. I really enjoy gawking. Like I love to look at the girl at the front desk and see how every millimeter of her body has been attended to: skin, nails, makeup, hairstyle, hair color, eyebrows, scent, clothes, shoes, pedicure. Everything is just so. When she offers me a cup of coffee I always decline because I don't feel well-heeled enough to be waited on by her. And everyone there is like that. It's so exotic.

Another thing I like about the salon is that it reminds me of my mom.

My mom (in the picture above - in her early 20s) used to be a hairdresser when we were young, and I imagine that in her youth she was a lot like the kids at my salon. Very trendy. Very well put-together. I remember she was always doing new stuff to her hair. Like she'd drop me off at preschool with a big blond bouffant and pick me up with a short brown bob. I found it very romantic. Even though I never felt any compulsion to change my look every other day, or even every other 10 years, I have always been intrigued by people who do.

My very favorite thing about the salon, though, is that I always learn something there. It's practically like going to the library.

Today, for example, I learned about two things that I did not know existed: (1) a thing called "a couple's massage"; and (2) a thing called a "Marilyn Monroe."

A couple's massage is apparently something you can do on a cruise ship. This trendy businessman getting his hair cut at the next station was telling his hairdresser gal about this cruise he and his wife were about to take along the coast of Mexico. It was his wife's idea. He resisted at first, but now he was on board. You could tell he was one of those guys who works like 10 hours a day saying motivational things to people like "Come on, team, let's take this to the next level." And I don't know why he was even having a $42 hair cut; his hair was only an inch long to begin with. Anyway, he told the hairdresser, "One of the things we're going to do on the cruise is have a couple's massage." A what? I thought. I was hoping the hairdresser would quiz him on this so I could find out more about it, but all she said was, "Oh that's fantastic. My girlfriend and I had a couple's on our cruise to Cabo San Lucas." I looked at Ryan. He seemed to know what a "couple's" was, so I tried to act like I knew also. But when I got home, I looked it up on the Internet, and it said: "Couple's massage isn't actually a different massage ... it's a special arrangement that allows a couple to receive their massages at the same time, in the same room with two massage therapists. The massage may actually be any type of massage such as Swedish, Deep Tissue, or even Hot Stone.  You could even mix and match. Couple's massage is a great way to share the power and benefits of massage." Very interesting. Is this just an orgy, except more boring?

The other thing I learned about is a "Marilyn Monroe." Some gal who works there got this procedure done called a Marilyn Monroe, and that, I found out from Ryan, is when you get an area by your mouth pierced and put a piece of jewelry in it so it looks like an attractive mole. Anyway, this gal had this done, and the reason I know about it is that she came up to Ryan while he was cutting my hair and said she was really pissed because she had just "swallowed" her Marilyn Monroe. Apparently, the hole was too big, and the $50 piece of jewelry she bought to put in it to mimic a mole fell all the way through the other side and went down her throat.

Ryan gave me the deep background after she tromped off to the little girls' room. And he ended the story by saying, "I don't know why I find that funny, but I really do."