Tuesday, September 11, 2007

color

It was such a windy day! The waters of Lake Mendota looked like the Baltic on an especially choppy day. Perhaps I exaggerate. But only slightly.


005 windy, copy



I may have had time to write an interesting post today, but Jason laid claim to a substantial chunk of my afternoon hours. Yes, yes, long-time Ocean readers, my man Jason continues to be a significant force in my life. The man of color and conviction.

Ed (another force to reckon with) asks me – why do you color your hair?
And I respond – I do NOT color my hair. I only touch up the roots.
Why?
Because they are of the color a mouse would be, were she to live to a ripe old age.

Ed studies the roots. They seem fine to me…
That’s because you are not seeing them as they would be, were they not touched up a bit.
To me, it seems like your roots are brown with highlights. So, you pay Jason huge sums of money
(for Ed, anything done at a hair place that costs more than $12 is a huge sum of money; particularly if it does not even include a beard trim) to turn what’s brown with highlights into what’s another shade of brown with highlights.
The highlights are the sun’s doing! They are entirely natural!

…Besides, I like your hair when it’s longer.

What’s the matter with men?! in my experience, they all say they prefer longer hair. Hair that gets in the way of most everything. Hair that looks ridiculously unkempt when it is on my scalp (because, truthfully, I run a comb through it just once in the course of the day – when I am straight out of the shower; otherwise, I can’t be bothered).

Jason, it has been suggested that I should stay with longer hair.
Jason regards me with that a look of great benevolence, which is only slightly better than an eye-roll. You mean, you don’t want me to take off more than, say, an inch?
(I have just visited Jason 4.5 weeks back; it is nearly impossible to imagine that my hair grew by an inch since then; so let’s interpret this for what it is: my man Jason is flexing his tattooed arm against my occasional travel companion, Ed. Fine, he is saying. Grow it out. Slowly. So slowly that it must get shorter before it, in a decade or so, gets longer.)

I stay silent.
Okay, three fourths of an inch. Jason is no fool. He knows and I know that generally, I tend to tip big (a relic from my upbringing in communist Poland). Generally.

Of course, tomorrow, when I bike to work, it will all look terribly unkempt, but tonight, my scalp is aglow with the Jason touch. The man’s a genius.