Lives Column

For my non-fiction workshop this semester, our assignment was to write a short piece in the style of the "Lives Columns" in New York Magazine. The guidelines dictated that the work be centered around a single event that changed you as a person, written in less than 1400 words. I was hard pressed to remember a life changing event that could be properly recounted in such a small word limit, but I managed to find one. I've pasted it here, in really small print so it looks like you have to read less . . . Aren't I tricksy?

Anyway, I like sharing this stuff, so here goes. (This is a pretty rough draft, so any cold-hearted bashing and/or lovable praising would be appreciated.)

One of the biggest mistakes I ever made was getting a perm. Like most teenage girls surrounded by media where image is everything, there were more than a few things I was self conscious about. This included my hair, which was so straight and thin that even an industrial sized can of hairspray couldn’t help it hold a curl, and no amount of mousse or teasing could give it any volume. For as long as I could remember my hair had been the bane of my existence, unremarkable and unchangeable. It was the summer of my sophomore year in high school that I decided to take a stand.

I did extensive Internet research, browsing sites that asked “Is A Perm For You?” and listed steps to “Getting a Good Perm” that armored me with some knowledge of the process. I saw photos of women with beautiful, thick, and bouncy ringlets framing their faces, piling and curling into the endless volume that I so craved. Their permed curls bounced off the page, reached out to me and told me that a perm could solve all my problems.

I convinced my mother to come with me on that fateful day, and we drove a short distance to the Paul Mitchell Academy, a cosmetology school where beauticians and hairdressers learned the tools of the trade. A perm there cost $15, which was a much more appealing price than those upwards of $75 at salons where the employees were already established and skilled. We were told that the student performing on my hair would be accompanied by a professional, so there was nothing to be afraid of.

My mother and I entered the building and signed in for my appointment at the desk where a heavily made-up receptionist told us that Tracy would be over shortly. A few minutes later a young woman greeted me and led me to my seat, draping a billowy cape around my shoulders.

“Is this your first perm?” she asked with a nasally sweet voice. I nodded with an affirmative smile. “Well then this will be new for both of us!” she said happily. “I’ve never done real hair before.”

After a short consultation where I should have realized that this girl (who was hardly older than myself) had no idea what she was doing, and where she should have told me that my hair was too thin and long to hold a proper perm, we began the two-hour process.

With the help of a professional instructor named Jan who looked like she couldn’t have cared less (and who, my mother said later, she wouldn’t have let near her own hair), Tracy began the arduous task of wrapping small sections of my long hair around tiny rods and pinning them to my scalp. “Your hair will conform to these rods when I put the chemical on,” she said.

Then came the perm solution, which Tracy violently dabbed around my head, drenching each rod with the smelly, acidy formula. There was so much of this mixture on my scalp that I started dripping and could feel the little liquid beads slide along my neck and the sides of my face into my t-shirt collar. Two rods dangling by my ears sent the chemical dribbling into the tiny fissures. The ammonia seemed to singe my nose hairs. In the harsh light of the salon mirror, with all those rods poking up off my head, I looked terrifying.

“Okay,” said Tracy, her nostrils flaring at the smell, “now we let this sit for about 25 minutes, I think. 25 minutes, right Jan?” she shouted across the salon to confirm her estimate.

“Yeah, I think that’ll do it,” came the hoarse reply.

Tracy placed a shower cap over my head, mumbling something about the trapped heat making the chemicals move faster, she thought. I sat for 25 minutes under that shower cap, feeling like my head was being microwaved under the poofy dome of heat and moisture that was collecting. My despairingly incompetent hairdresser came to check on me every few minutes, always reinforcing the cap around my head and turning with a quick, “It’s looking good sweetie!” Once she came over with Jan, who circled me and grunted in approval before waddling off. The last of these visits finally led to the removal of the cap, which caused the built up steam to explode off my head and right into Tracy’s face in a cloud of acidic moisture. I couldn’t help but chuckle as she stood blinking out the sting of ammonia.

We rinsed out the perm solution, and I relished the relief of the cool water running across my burning scalp. We then returned to the chair where Tracy proceeded to douse me in neutralizer, once again reassuring me with her usual knowledgeable comment.

“I’m not sure what this does exactly, but it’s the next step.”

After five minutes, we returned to the sink for a final rinse, then back to the chair for the unrolling of the rods that had been biting at my head for the past 45 minutes. I must have counted over 50 red flags from the moment I walked in the door to the moment Tracy removed those rods, but said nothing while my poor follicles fried. At that point, my excitement and anticipation outweighed any reservations I had about the disaster happening on my head. I just wanted those curls!

Tracy slowly began to unroll my hair, each little rod unwinding and dangling sadly at the ends. I wanted to close my eyes so I could see the final result all at once, but the anticipation was too tempting. After the first rod, I kept watching as my hair fell to my shoulders in limp, crinkled sections. Predictably, the perm was not what I expected, and certainly not what I wanted.

“How long did you say it would last?” I asked nervously as I looked at my once straight, perfectly fine hair that now resembled thin, twisted roots sprouting from my head. I could feel tears welling in my eyes and quickly told myself to calm down to keep from bawling at the irreversible damage, which I did promptly upon returning home.

“A few months,” Tracy said, her brow knitted in concern, avoiding eye contact. Clearly the outcome had surprised her as well. An uneasy smile spread across her lips and she whipped the cape off me and walked me to the lobby where shelves and shelves of hair products stood in perfectly lined, color-coordinated rows. She picked up a bottle and tried to tell me that this would make my hair look better. “Give it a few days,” she said, as if I had a choice.

            Well, I did give it a few days, I gave it months, in fact, and my perm never developed into what the pictures and hairdressers had promised me. For months my hair was nothing but a mess of uncontrollable frizz. It still wouldn’t curl, and attempting to straighten it proved just as impossible. I had no choice but to wear it tied back everyday, and I eventually cut most of it off in a desperate attempt to eradicate the permed hair as soon as possible, which ended up taking a couple years to grow out. It became routine for me to check the mirror everyday for signs of my straight hair growing through, straight hair that I missed greatly.

In spite of all this, I managed to make it through those years with my head held high, finding some sort of confidence in my awful decision, being brave enough to face my peers and the public without being overcome by my locks of chemical devastation. And today, whenever I curse my hair or any other part of me that isn’t exactly what I want, I always remember that botched perm and its aftermath: results of the decision that taught me to recognize the difference between the things that I have the power to change and those that are probably best left alone.