What I Learned Obsessively Cutting My Hair in Lockdown
It’s not like I immediately jumped into cutting my own hair. I started with my husband’s. He was game. Actually, desperate is more the word. Five months into lockdown and his hair was crazy — not just long, but Halloween clown scary crazy. ‘You could totally cut my hair,’ he said. ‘I think you’d do a really good job.’ ‘I think I’d do an okay job,’ I said. ‘I think you’d do a really good job,’ he said. Does a girl need more encouragement than that? I bought the scissors. Began watching YouTube. You can learn anything on YouTube. And, secretly, I’ve always wanted to learn how to cut hair. I was fascinated by it. The rapid scissors, the falling hair. Hair. It’s a weird thing. It has weird powers, magical powers. Samson and Delilah stuff. Snippets power witch’s spells. A great hair day makes you feel divine, invincible. Levitates your soul. A bad hair day makes you feel murderous. Or maybe murdered. And a bad haircut? Torture that lasts weeks and weeks and weeks. Sometimes months. Years. Once, a hairstylist suffering from a nasty fit of hay fever did such bizarre things with a pair of thinning shears, it took over two years for my hair to recover. Women cry at hair salons. My mother made me cry just saying, ‘let’s cut your hair.’
I know — cutting your own hair sounds strange and impossible. I’d heard of people cutting their own hair but I’d also heard of two-headed pigs. It’s true that my hairstylist cuts her own hair, but she’s a pro and she has really long hair so she just cuts the ends.
So — knowing that cutting your own hair is a stupid thing to do will not stop you from being stupid and cutting your own hair. I began envying octopuses and owls. Nothing like cutting your own hair to make you realize just how limited Homo sapiens are. Without an extra pair of arms sprouting out the back of your shoulders like wings, you have to perform yoga moves to twist and turn so one hand can grab the hair on the back of your head while the other hand cuts like you’re two separate people with two separate hands and two separate desires. Cutting your own hair is like driving a car with nothing but sideview mirrors. It’s hell.
The thing about hair is that it’s constantly growing, changing. It moves. It has its own life, its own lifestyle. An hour after I cut my hair, it looks different. It looks wrong. How could I have missed that strand of hair? Why is that piece sticking out in that weird way? I swear I cut that layer straight — I’ve cut that layer straight five times! My hair does not behave. And I need my hair to behave. Every time I look in the mirror, I’m cutting hair. Every time I correct one chunk of hair, another chunk goes wonky. Nightmare Jenga.
Confession. I spend hours in the bathroom. Three in the morning? I’m in the bathroom. Cutting hair. Five in the morning — Husband finally pokes his head in and says, ‘Welfare check!’
Have I lost sanity? Maybe. But, here’s the thing: cutting hair gives me flow. You know, that thing the Yale happiness course says is important to keep you sane. While cutting hair, all I do is think about cutting. I’m in the zone, being mindful, in the moment. Three hours goes by and I’m not thinking, thinking about things, things out there beyond anyone’s control. Covid-19 deaths shooting up? Grab the scissors. The west coast is now one ginormous forest fire and friends and family may be fleeing for their lives? Grab the scissors. Rent due? Grab the scissors. Another job rejection? Grab the scissors. Ruth Bader Ginsburg died? Grab the scissors. Life isn’t a box of chocolates; it’s an endless cycle of bills, disasters and heartbreaks. But at least with a pair of scissors and a mirror, I can tunnel myself into a more manageable slice of life, where the problems are simple, if not soluble, and the results of my actions immediate and tangible. All my hair days are now bad hair days but I laugh about it because it’s absurd, I’m absurd and it’s okay because I have tons of bandages for all the nicks and cuts on my fingers from the super sharp scissors I bought on Amazon for ~$30, free shipping. And my husband swears the haircuts I give him are the best he’s ever had because he’s learned to be super caring since I’m now always carrying a pair of super sharp scissors.
I’m turning all this into a standup comedy act. I have two solid minutes and counting. On Netflix it’d be titled ‘Hair and Beyond!’ Maybe ‘Let the Hair Flow!’ Oh, I know! ‘Hair Bounce!’ Of course we’ll bounce back. Only — bounce back from what to what? My great-great-great aunt (maybe one too many ‘great’) died in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, jumping out a window to save her life. And here I am working part-time at a fulfillment center during a pandemic, ignoring chronic migraines because migraine medicines are too expensive, with husband doing welfare checks, asking ‘okay?’ and my answer perpetually ‘yes’ because it has to be. If I was a real standup comic I could make this hysterically LOFLMAO funny, tragedy crouched between banal shopping jokes like how whenever I go to my local hippie coop grocery all the granola lesbian couples check me out and all I can think is, ‘I’ve really got to stop shopping at Goodwill.’ [laugh track]
What? Really! This little piece of autofiction is inspiring you to cut your own hair? Any advice, you ask? Watch YouTube videos, of course. Buy a decent pair of haircutting scissors. Oh, and a nice hat just in case of disaster. Try to leave enough hair for a ponytail, which hides many evils. Be brave. Be patient. Then embrace the Japanese idea of wabi sabi: accept the transient, accept the imperfections. And when trying to even out your hair, remember symmetry is not your goal. The illusion of symmetry is what you’re after, like the illusion of Instagram happy!
A version of this story was published in the fall 2021 edition of Maggie.
