April 1997 bumping uglies by Todd Levin |
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SEXUS, PLEXUS, NEXXUS HUMECTRESS
I like getting my hair cut. I mean I really like getting my hair
cut. Nothing I have ever done has more closely approached purchasing
sexual services than slapping down green for a slickety-slick hair styling
(except that time that I paid a hooker to poke her head into my bedroom
every fifteen minutes for two hours and nag me to make my bed).
I love approaching the front desk, speaking in hushed tones across the
counter, telling the aging shop Madam (I'll bet that she cut a great head
of hair in her day) that I don't have an appointment but would be willing
to wait forever for anyone named Denise.
I love flipping through Italian
hairstyle books, imagining a complex coiffure superimposed on my plain old
head of smoothed down black bristle, dreaming precious Suffolk
County-raised hands laboring through the damp jungle of my head. And I
love the Nexxus Humectress handjobs.
I have tried to explain, without success, my hang-up with hairstylists
(someone once said -- I think it was one of them rascally feminists -- that
"women have challenges; men have hang-ups"). I find a simple shampoo and
haircut to be the single most fulfilling experience in my current sexual
vocabulary (funny thing -- there was a time in my life, not too long ago,
when I could have repeated that same exact sentence and replaced the words
"a simple shampoo and haircut" with "the sit n' spin," "peeing my pants,"
"prison showering," or "the sensation of room temperature uncooked veal
against my face" without changing the meaning of the sentence one tiny
bit). There is something so completely erotic about a woman dressed in
nothing more than a plastic Paul Mitchell smock inviting me into the back
of a perfumed room and easing my head backwards into a low sink, running
warm water over my hair, and working long, Hard Candy nail polish-tipped
fingers drenched in sweet, sticky conditioners deep into my grateful scalp.
I cannot get over the mutual confidence of having my neckdown regions
covered up for privacy while Denise leans in close, her smock buckling to
reveal dark pockets of wonder, with the only light still shining coming
from the gold-filled nameplate charm necklace dangling between her breasts
like an incense lantern on a holy swinging chain. And let's not forget the
Nexxus Humectress handjobs.
Once, in my typical no-appointment fashion -- I rarely get my hair cut at
the same hair salon twice -- I had my stylist pointed out to me as I was
led into the shampoo stations at the rear of the salon. Much to my horror,
the shampooist was a young hustler named Victor. As he was testing out the
water temperature, I remember that I kept crying out "colder, please"
through a veil of confused tears. Which isn't to say, incidentally, that I
passed up the Nexxus Humectress handjob. Victor still writes occasionally,
that impetuous fool.
But when I am down, feeling defeated and craving some self-serving
attention, I will force myself to cough up the forty or so horse
painkillers I'm likely to have swallowed, turn off my Nick Drake
eight-track, throw on my dry-cleaned Members Only beige bomber, and find
myself a half-hour later, dizzy with lusty delirium, at some foolishly
named ("Hair Apparent"; "Locks, Stock and Barrel" -- you get it -- just insert your
favorite cornball follicle pun here), just-out-of-beauty-school, training
ground for working-class hair stylists. Frankly, I am not interested in
the more professional European salons; I find the experience quite
masochistic. I will, however, proudly march into any establishment that
claims to be "Euro-Style" or "Europeanish" because that usually sends up a
very visible Aqua Net smoke signal, promising Nail technicians and teased
up experiments with restraining orders on their ex-boyfriends. This is
where I feel at home. This is where I will be spoiled for 20 to 40
minutes, under the carelessly roaming hands of a certified Cosmetologist
hell-bent on making me attractive to other women, and emerge a new,
gelled-up man with an embarrassing erection.
I once heard a story from a hair stylist about an associate of hers who was
cutting a man's hair and noticed something disturbing going on beneath the
man's light-resistant smock. She described it as a rushed, rhythmic
movement in the region of his lap. The hairdresser, increasingly
disgusted, reacted as she should, and beat the man's lap with a hairbrush,
announcing loudly to the rest of the establishment that this man was a
"fucking pervert." It turns out the man was just cleaning his glasses.
After hearing this I remember thinking, as I was furiously masturbating
beneath my own smock, this is probably a pretty typical story.
Obviously (is it obvious?), I am not such a complete sociopath that I would
actually act out any of the creepy fantasies I have about having my hair
cut. Contrary to anything I have said in this column, or to my Jungian
therapist, my Freudian therapist, or any of my Psychic friends, I have not
masturbated during a haircut. I have not dreamt of being in a steamy
standup shower, getting a full-on conditioning with a hard-working
hairdresser pressed tightly behind me, her cheap plastic smock the only
thing separating our raging teenage lust. I have not begged my hairdresser
to fasten banana clips to my nipples. And I have never received a Nexxus
Humectress handjob (though I have received a Salon Selectives #5 for
Color-Treated or Dry, Stressed Hair enema, but that was self-administered
and was purely for research purposes). I am just peculiarly attached to
the blatant hampering (after all, how often do we get our hair cut for
medical reasons?), and the effort from a total (female) stranger at making
me a more physically attractive man. I like walking out of the salon and
into the sun, changed, cleaner and, in the eyes of a woman whom I hardly
know, a better looking person. It's shallow, it's strange, and, if you
make the kind of efforts only the most fantasy-laden creepies like myself
would to find all of the bordello metaphors in a typical beauty parlor
experience, it is slightly erotic. And nothing beats those damn Biolage
Leave-in Conditioner handjobs.
back to the junk drawer
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·and such and such·
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