Politics as Usual!

There are two things they tell you not to talk about in a professional setting....... RELIGION(we'll get to that down the road) and POLITICS. I usually try to avoid them but there is always someone that wants to shove their views down your throat! Now I know that everyone is entitled to their opinion and I'm okay with that. What I'm not okay with is when someone wants to express their point of view but not have anything valid to back it up with!!

I watch CNN for the better part of my day and I try to keep up with the daily news locally and nationally. I want to know what the hell is going on in my world so that I'm not clueless when someone asks me who the President is and I have no answer! So in the area of news and politics, I'm pretty well informed.

I have a client named........Lisa. Lisa is an older woman, maybe in her mid fifties. She works in the education field(Have mercy on us all!), has far too much energy than any one person should have and has "GEORGE W BUSH" stamped across her forehead and most likely tattooed on her ass!(yeah I know right??) I have been doing her hair for about 10 years now and over the past two years she has gotten to be a bit of a pill in the arena of politics.

Now I've always had alot of patience when it comes to clients and I guess the older I get, the more sensitive my BULLSHIT-O-METER gets. That is not a good thing when you're average service ticket is $125. But her $110 is costing me $150 in therapy!!

Lisa was in this morning and oh what treat it was for me. Today, the funeral of Ted Kennedy and low and behold as soon as she walked through the door she was already bugging that she wanted to watch it on TV while she was getting her hair done(you're kidding right?). FUN TIMES! While my thoughts go out to all of his family, my thoughts were also going out to me and gearing up for the events to come.

Here's the problem.......Because it is such a high profile event, not to mention highly political, naturally there will be many political figures attending. She may as well as hugged the TV when she saw her lord and savior W SHRUB, but when the camera then focused on President Obama I thought she was going to pull him through the screen give him "fitty whippins" and talk him to death!

This has been going on since before Obama took the Presidency and I have had to endure this over the last year and let me tell you it has not been easy. She of course blames him for all of the problems that he inherited from the last administration and when I ask her why........I never get a straight answer other than whatever she is repeating from something she may have heard on the local news or from the water cooler gatherings at work. OK can I just shoot her yet?

Unfortunately not(give me one more month) but today was the day that I could no longer keep my mouth shut and so I spewed! I was so tired of hearing her dog Obama and health care reform time after time and never giving me a decent reason. She began to tell me at one point that it was because he wants to create "death panels"(again.....something she probably just heard and was repeating). After hearing that I threw my scissors and comb down and forcefully said, "WHAT HAS HE EVER DONE TO YOU?.....REALLY.....WHAT HAS HE EVER DONE TO MAKE YOU HATE HIM SO MUCH??" She tried hard to get a few words in but I was DONE! I was no longer going to listen to the negativity and allow her to contaminate my mood so early in the morning!

I pushed more, "Can you do better than what he is doing?......If you can then maybe you should run for office" I tried hard not to get too passionate about it but I just couldn't help myself and I went further, "Do you have a solution to the health care problem??.......if you do then you should write it down, put it in an envelope and send it to your closest representative. At least he is trying to do something which is more than I can say for the idiot that was in office the last go round!" Now Obama was my personal choice because I was not going to sit through 4 possibly 8 more years of Bush via McCain. I can at least agree with the current administration that "doing something is better than doing nothing".

Ahhhhh! There it was.....all out in the open. I had finally gotten it off my chest and I guess she was stunned that I even said anything because she just sat quietly throughout the rest of her service. When it came time to pay, she handed the money to her husband to pay me and she quietly walked out the door. I had never really opened up to her about my political views and whenever she had brought up politics in the past, I tried very hard to adhere to the rules I was taught and not talk about it. But today, politics ruled! If she thinks that's bad.......

Wait until she hears what I think about GOD and RELIGION!!

WRONG TIME ZONE!

I HATE BEING LATE!! I used to think that most people were the same. I would never keep anyone waiting and I suppose its because I have always worked on a schedule from the day I started in this business. Things happen and I understand that and I guess I could cut people a little slack..........MY ASS!

Ok........let me lay this out for you, If you have an appointment at 10am for a color and you KNOW that you only get 2 hours of my time and then I have another client at 12pm.......YOUR 15 MINUTES OF TARDINESS IS GOING TO THROW MY ENTIRE DAY OFF!! Not to mention you are going to make all of my clients pissy at me and throw their days off as well!

So you say I need to book more time for that client? Are you a total dumb ass??? Why should I give more time simply because you are in some completely different TIME ZONE?? Now I am not going to say that there are not times that I am running a little behind myself, but it usually stems from the dumb ass that did not make their appointment on time!!

Here is probably the worst part of it all.......You walk in and act as if you were on time and then look at me funny when I tell you I don't have time to give you the runway look you will NEVER be able to get even if we could schedule you for cosmetic surgery!!!

Ok, so now that I have jumped off of my soapbox we can get down to business. So let's see......where were we? Ah yes, the last time I wrote I was thanking the neighborhood SLUT for getting me into the business. Speaking of sluts, from an entertainment standpoint my favorite kind of slut, I would have to say, are the married ones. Particularly.....the MEN!

Now I would have to say that in all my years doing hair, this one person in particular, we'll call him DAN, could not ever have taken me by surprise more than he did on this one day. His wife was out of town(in another time zone) on business and would not return for a week. I never felt particularly close to him and there was something about him that just kind of struck me odd but I never gave it much thought.

Dan had an appointment with me for a haircut and he was usually my latest and last appointment on his scheduled day. it just so happened that on this day all of the other stylists were gone for the day. Because my salon was a multi-level space, the entrance being on the bottom floor, I locked the door behind him so that I didn't have to worry about watching the lower-level while I was shampooing and then cutting his hair.

Now, every once in a while........not often but sometimes while shampooing and conditioning a client I will give a nice scalp massage and then leave the conditioner in the hair afterwards for a few minutes while I either clean up from my last client or in this case, start my closing paperwork. I noticed that he had gotten very relaxed while I was washing and conditioning his hair.......so much to the point that he was kind of mumbling and maybe an occasional moan. Not uncommon right?? I was flattered that I could relax someone that much. So, I leave the room and when I come back in he has pulled his pants and undies down to his knees and is jerkin off!!!

I stopped dead in my tracks and tried to be as quiet as I could possibly be and not let him know that I am standing right there. Now keep in mind, I left him laying back in the shampoo chair with his head tilted back in the bowl with a warm towel over his face and the conditioner in his hair. Now I have to be completely honest with you........part of me wanted to just stay and watch, another part wanted me to "reach out and touch someone" and then there was the part of me that just wanted to go to my office and scream out "YOU DOIN' OK IN THERE??" just to see if maybe he would get his pants back up by the time I got back to him. Now at that point in my life I owned the salon and was a single man that didn't get much opportunity at a social life not to mention a sex life, this to me was one hell of an opportunity!

There I was, watching a man whom I rarely spoke with during his appointments and didn't know much about, stroking more than his ego......and seeming to want me to stroke him as well. Then the thoughts of his wife came into my mind and I think, "poor woman has no clue" or did she? Who am I to say that this isn't just the norm for them? Maybe she is the one that set it all up. After all it was she that made all of his appointments! So many things were going through my mind and I had to make a decision on how to handle this awkward yet thrilling situation. My heart races, my mouth begins to dry out and I feel like my feet are just glued to the floor that I am standing on...... all the time he is stroking harder, faster and closer to his climax and just as he was about to explode........someone begins to bang on the front door downstairs!

He nearly jumps out of his chair the towel falls off of his face and there I was standing, frozen.....and I'm sure beet red. There was about 10 seconds that passed (felt like an hour) that our eyes just locked, neither of us knowing what to do or say and then the banging starts again. Finally, my feet moved and I worked my way downstairs to see what all the noise was about........it was the cleaning service........EARLY!....BITCHES!!!

As it turned out, it was not the usual cleaning person and they couldn't find the right key to open the door, so I let them in, went back upstairs and Dan had already zipped it up and was in the same position that I originally left him in with the towel on his face. I didn't say a word about it nor did he. I continued with his usual service(cutting his hair) and got him on his way home. But before he left he did something that I thought to be very unusual and completely out of character for him.........HE MADE HIS NEXT APPOINTMENT and requested to be my last appointment of the day!

Now I bet you are wondering what happened on his next appointment huh? Well let me tell you when it comes to something like this.........

What happens in the cutting chair, STAYS in the cutting chair!!

Introducing the Maestro

We always say that we are like bartenders or therapists, people come in, sit in the chair and start spewing their life stories, problems and deepest secrets and then leave usually feeling better than when they came in. Is it rewarding? Well its about to be more rewarding than I ever thought possible.

I've been doing hair for over 20 years now, yeah I know....thats a long time!! I never thought that when I started in this business that I would make a career out of it......but here I sit ready to share all the blunderful things that this life in cosmetology has brought me. What I didn't think it would give me was the opportunity to sit with you and hopefully make you chuckle, scream, cry and maybe make you wanna go out and kick a few people in the ass!!( I can only hope!..... I can't do it all alone!)

People often ask me what got me into this business and I usually say "I owe it all to the neighborhood SLUT". Sit back for a few and I'll fill you in......oh and by the way, I will be changing all the names in this blog to protect the guilty! But......they'll know who they are!

I was 14 years old and probably the only guy in the neighborhood that wasn't running around trying to get into some girls panties(or some guys undies). I pretty much kept to myself and usually stayed inside watching tv. I was a fat kid so my energy levels were pretty lame and with that comes the pokes and jokes from the other kids so I just avoided it all.

This girl named Mary(I know, how original) came over one day while I was watching tv and started banging on my door looking for her sisters. Usually when she showed up at our place its because she couldn't find them anywhere else. We were the house of last resort so to speak. Usually when the sisters scattered it was most likely because Mary had a date and needed their help doing her hair. Color, perm, cut......whatever the flavor of the week was. She was a real bitch not only to her sisters but to the guys that were courting her. I never understood why she was like that but then again, I never understood much when I was 14. Anyway, I opened the door and there she stood with her ratty hair with roots about 2 or 3 inches long and a box of drug store color asking if I had seen her sisters. I told her no and before I knew it she was sitting inside telling me how I'm going to do her hair because she has a date in a couple of hours. Fun fun, talk about opportunities! I could really get back at this bitch for all the times she called me fat ass! Well she guided me through the application process of the hair color and although it was a bit messy the first go round, It didnt look bad and.........it was fun!

It became a regular "date" for us after that and her sisters no longer had to go into exile every Friday night. Every week it was something different, whether it was color, a perm, a haircut, blow dry, she was very experimental and I just hitched on for the ride. Before I knew it, I was her regular hairstylist. A couple of years after that I dropped out of high school, got my GED and went to cosmetology school, graduated and the rest is history.......and so was she!(Sorry Mary)

I live in Texas.....weeeeeee doggie!! I've worked in some of the best salons across the state. I've worked for Paul Mitchell as an educator. I've done some print work( catologs, magazines, newspapers) as well as some fashion shows and tv shows. I have worked with some local personalities as well as more famous mainstream personalities. I've had the opportunity to work with many gifted hairstylists as well as some who have NO business being in the business and yes........I've told them!(you cunts know who you are!)

I don't profess to be the best but I am far from the worst. I have just about heard it all from many people from all walks of life with all sorts of issues, vices and all kinds of fucked up personalities and for those of you who doubted I would never kiss and tell.........

SUCK ON IT!!! I'M HERE TO CONFESS!