Anyone who knows me well would say that I’m neurotic about my hair. It’s curly and thicker than Cousin It’s. During my teenage years I wore it in a ‘fro, which bounced as I ran down the basketball court. My teammates called me Goolagong, after the tennis star Yvonne Goolagong, who I resembled not only for the hair but the aviator glasses I wore. “Gool, gool, goo-goo-la-gong” they’d chant every time I made a lay-up or scored a jump shot. I worked the inside pretty well in those days.
In college I went through an unfortunate period where I rebelled against my feminity and cut my hair very short. It was the early 80s and everyone was doing it. I’ll never forget the look of disappointment on my Swiss employer’s face when she met me at the train station for the first time. “Your sister had such nice long hair,” she said. That’s the year I ballooned from eating too much chocolate and cheese. My pinhead did not balance my expanding girth. It was not a good look.
Armed with the more advanced hair care technology developed during the intervening years, I’ve since made peace with my hair, which I now wear longish, past my shoulders. While there have been numerous products created to tame curly hair, I have stayed faithful to Mr. Paul Mitchell, whose unnaturally blue leave-in conditioner has saved me for at least 10 years. It is the only product that corkscrews my curls with resolve, yet retains the right degree of softness. Without it my hair would frizz out and resemble a native hut. Not a good look.
I live in fear of the day this product is discontinued. Be warned: every friend who visits from the US will be asked to bring two quarts.
Getting a haircut is easy. All I need is a trim, and because it’s so curly, flaws and irregularities are easily camaflouged. It’s so forgiving that I’ll let anybody cut it. Most of my haircuts in Bali cost between 2 and 6 dollars.
The highlights are another story. I am ashamed of the amount of money I’ve spent on highlights during my lifetime. Not to mention the countless hours spent in the salon chair flipping through gossip magazines. And then there’s the gallons of grief I’ve given those stylists that didn’t get it right. That didn’t see my vision: that perfectly balanced blend of dark brown base color (with a hint of chestnut) with well-spaced chunky blonde highlights. But please Lord, not too many! Please don’t bleach me out! Don’t you dare make me too blonde. Because not every woman wants to look like Jessica Simpson. Because there will be hell to pay if you get it wrong. Because we’ll have to do it over and over again, until you get it right.
I cringe at some of the disasters that have befallen me because of this misguided vanity. There was the time in Delhi when the transvestite salon owner had her lackies dye my hair Indian black as a base color. That took two days to undo. In Bangkok, the bleach was so strong that my hair turned white and disintegrated as the foils were removed.
After I moved to New York, I started out spending too much money and time at Bumble and Bumble on the upper west side. After tiring of the oppressive trendiness and impersonal treatment I was receiving, I abandoned the high end salon for something closer to home and more down to earth. After several false starts, I finally found a safe haven at the Aveda salon in Park Slope, just a few blocks from my Brooklyn home.
Then I moved to Bali. Because all my past experiences with Asia salons had been so traumatic, I made sure to research all the possiblilities for high end, expat-oriented salons in the cities that I might be passing through on business. I sourced out recommended stylists in Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore and Jakarta. Because I had to go to Singapore for my visa in October, I had the opportunity to check out the Toni & Guy Salon there first. Before I went, I asked that I be assigned a “senior technician” that would be very experienced with western hair. I lucked out and got a really good British bloke, who did a fantastic job. I’ve been back there three times in transit for different business trips.
But this week I realized my hair was reaching the crisis stage again and I needed to do something. But since I have no business trips scheduled in the near future, I was stuck. Even I could not justify the expense of a trip to Singapore solely for my hair! (Not only is the flight expensive, it costs me 1,000,000 rupiah every time I leave the country…just another one of the ways the Indonesian government extorts money off foreign residents.) I considered Jakarta. It only costs about $100 for a round-trip flight and I could go and come back the same day. There is a Toni & Guy Salon there, so I figured they could probably be trusted to do a good job. I called and booked an appointment for next weekend.
Then my housemate told me about Donald. In her opinion, he is the only stylist that can be trusted in Bali. He’s good with color, she said. So I decided to give him a shot. If it didn’t work out I could always fall back on the Jakarta option.
As you know already, the story has a happy ending. Donald is actually from Jakarta and was trained there. His calm and gentle way of managing my neurosis put me at ease. The bevy of girls under his command ensured that there were several pairs of hands available at all times. The process was painless and speedy. The results were really good as well as ridiculously cheap (well, compared to New York and even Singapore prices, that is). I almost cried when I realized the money and time I would save now that I found Donald. I was so happy I wanted to kiss him. All the girls laughed when I ran back into the salon in order to take his picture, but he didn’t bat an eyelash. I’m sure he’s used to being showered with gratitude by absurdly vain women like me.
Of course now I live in fear of the day that Donald returns to Jakarta….
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