Uf! Just…Uf!

The 80’s called. They want their decade back. Ugh.

Everywhere we go in this area, Melide especially, they are playing 80’s music. In the shops, in the square on Mother’s day. Even on the radio. You’d think it was 1984. I am being serious here. Jeff always jokes about the fact that doing business in Spain is like living in the 1980’s in the US. So it’s appropriate that there is a soundtrack to match it. But, I needed a haircut and my beloved Rubin is far away in Valencia. I considered trimming my own bangs with the kitchen scissors, just to get by. But I thought I should at least try to find a hairdresser here. Somewhere. And I should have known better than to go to one in a small town.

Most of the hair salons here have closed down because they couldn’t make a living during la pandemia. They all have signs that say se Vende or Disponsible. They are not coming back. So the ones who are left must be those with the most clientele. Thus, people are voting with their wallets. Those are the best reviews. How wrong I was.

I had an appointment at 10am this morning. I am home now and it’s 11:30. That tells you just how long it took to get this abomination that can not be called a haircut. Rubin, in Valencia, would have taken hours to do my hair. This nightmare took 30 minutes and it included a shampoo and a blowout.

The first indication that I was in trouble was upon entering the salon, it was like stepping back in time. Full on vintage 80’s. No ironic 80’s, as though an imitation. This was the real 80’s. The one I lived through. The music was playing and the guy who cut my hair was in acid washed tight skinny jeans and an 80’s graphic t-shirt. From a concert HE went to. But, I thought, don’t judge a book by it’s cover. Give it a chance, Kelli.

Generally, I’ve been letting my hair grow out in long layers. I want it a little below the shoulder, so I showed the guy this picture to orient him as to what I am doing these days. I told him I’m growing it out a bit. So I really just needed a trim.

I want to be able to shower and go. No fuss. I know my Spanish isn’t great but a picture is worth a thousand words and Rubin has been able to read it. We’ve been working on this for quite some time. Apparently, in Melide they don’t read picture.

I watched him cut my long layers into short layers. Like two inches from the top of my head. I tried to intervene but he told me to be tranquila. I tried deep breathing. Maybe this guy knew what he was doing. But he didn’t, and he made the classic mistake of chasing it. Trying to fix a bad hair cut by cutting more hair. In 80’s parlance, its like a coke fiend chasing a high. You’re never going to get there, and what you’re doing is potentially fatal.

In hairdresser school they teach you that you can always cut more off, but you can’t put it back on. I know this because Rubin told me. He was always conservative on the first cut. Then we would work on how much more he might take off, or noting at all. Makes total sense.

In Melide’s last vestige of female beauty, this is not their philosophy. It seems they live by the mantra Go big or go home. Or more accurately, In for a penny, in for a pound. He had already cut all the long layers off of the left side of my head. I couldn’t leave it lopsided. But then he kept cutting, and cutting, and cutting.

Soon, it became clear he wasn’t following the photo. He was just doing what he knows best. Like the movie Don’t mess with the Zohan, he followed the Paul Mitchell school of hair design and chose one of the four styles he seemed have learned at beauty school in the 1985. And it got worse from there.

What I actually ended up with resembled a montage of a few people. Carol Brady, the mother on The Brady Bunch. Ric Ocasek from The Cars. And Ronnie Wood of The Rolling Stones. It was like they had a threesome, and the resulting offspring was living on my head.

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It might be fine if you’re a rock star and can pull off this look. But, on me? When he finished, he asked me ‘Bien?’. I just got up and went to the counter to pay without speaking. It was awful. And I know this because the woman who took my money, the woman in a salon who normally tells you how great you look because she is paid to, (and this one spoke English) opened her mouth to comment, audibly gasp while stifling a choking gag, and then promptly shut it behind her mask.

I met Jeff on the sidewalk. Normally, he has a great poker face. But even he was shocked, choking on a laugh ‘What happened?’. As though I had been in a terrible car crash or a terrorist attack. It felt like both at the same time. This guy should be call a Hairrorist. Because what he did to me was deliberate and should be a crime.

Jeff, who notices literally nothing, noticed. The guy who is always watching movies or tv and invariably says things like ‘Was that the same actress who was in Love Actually?’ And I am forced to respond ‘No. This is Judi Dench. You’re thinking of Emma Thompson, who is more than 20 years younger, a foot taller, and looks nothing like Judi Dench.’ Yeah. That guy. He stood on the street and told me it was the worst haircut he had ever seen.

I wanted to cry but I was too mad. Not at Jeff. He was right. But at Hairorrista in the salon. We came home and Jeff suggested a shower to try to wash away the result of the giant bulbous lump of short hair on top of my head where this genius artist decided to blow dry it with a round brush. Thus, heightening the mushroominess of his masterpiece. Now Jeff is offering me beauty fixes. This is not to be borne.

The Hairrorista even asked me in the end if I wanted to ‘lacquer it’. Yeah, that’s what I wanted. Let’s preserve this for all time. He’d cut 6 inches off my hair in chunks. In one fell swoop, the guy wiped out a year of hair growth.

My next cut will involve air travel. As I predicted before we moved, Rubin will be clucking on over drive. ‘Kelli. Uf! Just. I don’t even know where to start.’ And I will have to tip him for hair dresser combat pay. Because ‘Uf!’ is the only way to describe it. And the lesson here is Never get your hair cut in a salon playing White Snake. And never in Melide.