the dye job

I was once obsessed with my hair. Well, more so than I am now, anyway.

In high school it was thick and wavy, dark blonde, incredibly healthy, and I let it grow all the way to my waist. It was my defining physical attribute. People said I should do Pantene ads. Et cetera.

I used to flirt around a little with hair color, but couldn’t commit to anything serious. Clairol Glints, anyone?

I swore I wouldn’t ever use permanent dye on it, and that I wouldn’t be one of those girls who goes to college and immediately chops it all off to look older. And for awhile, I kept those promises.

But then, sophomore year, I was dating someone (who reads this: hi there!) who was opposed to anything artificial. Fake nails, fake tans, fake boobs, fake hair – he hated all that stuff. Still does.

And he did something that made me really, really angry. I’ll show him, I thought.

So I walked my angry ass to Osco Drug and picked up a box of L’Oreal Feria Hair Color in “Sparkling Amber.” I walked back to my dorm. I slapped that shit on good and thick.

And the color I ended up with was not Sparkling Amber, ladies and gentlemen. It was more like Sparkling Dried Blood. Holy crapmonkeys, it was the darkest, reddest mess of hair I’d ever seen.

Incidentally, I was so very angry when I did this first dye job that I slung dye all over the carpet in that dorm room during the process. I happen to know that the dye stains persist to this very day.

So. I did this to “get back at” a guy, and then I didn’t even see him again for like 8 months. And when I realized that I wasn’t going to see him again anytime soon, I decided to call him and somehow work the fact that I’d dyed my hair into our conversation. Which is precisely what I did. Because I am a jackass.

He reacted as expected, with “why on earth would you do that?” I reacted like a child, with a petulant “We’re not seeing each other anymore anyway, so what do YOU care?”

Thus began a trend that persists to this day. When I get antsy and angsty and freaked out about things, I change my hair somehow. I cut it. I dye it. Whatever. I change it.

I finally did cave in and chop it all off later that summer, in part to get rid of the thick curtain of Goth that I lived in every day. Ha, I just remembered something else. Right after the dried blood disaster, I went on a spring break trip with my best friend at the time, who told me that she worried that her grandmother would think I was a Satan worshipper when we met. Granny saved gallon jugs and filled them with water in case the Rapture came, so I don’t blame her.

Anyway. The hair. So I cut it. And then I grew it. And then I cut it. And then I grew it. And then I dyed it and dyed it and dyed it and dyed it and dyed it.

I think I’m finally done dying it. I keep trying to quit and then caving in, but this time I think I’m really finished. And it’s not even like I’m dying it blue or anything. I’m just dying it, usually a shade somewhere near its natural color, sometimes lighter. I was streaking it for awhile, and that was cool, but now it isn’t so much anymore.

And it’s currently right near my chin in terms of length, but starting to look all mullety again, so I need to get over to Jonathan and have him shape it up.

So yeah, I think I’m stopping with the obsessive dying, and I definitely don’t have any plans to dye it to piss someone off. Because that was phenomenally stupid. As I have a tendency to be, sometimes.

But even now that I’m writing about it I start to think “ooh, but I want to try that new “iridescent super-special-riffic light brown” I saw on TV. Ooh. Hair dye is pretty. And whenever Jonathan cuts my hair he comments on how he loves the color I’ve chosen. And so on. And so forth.

But no! I’m stopping.

Maybe.