May 19, 2000

I was killing time yesterday, walking around the East Village, before going to a reading of some friends of mine at KGB, when I decided that it was very much time for a hair style adjustment.

See, yesterday morning, it was rainy and gloomy and all kinds of textbook crappy outside, so it would’ve made sense to put my hair up in the librarian bun that I am known for the world over. But I wear my hair that way every damn day. It’s practical, yes, but, well, why the hell do I have hair down to my ass if I don’t show it off every once in a while? So, even though the weather was, as we old-schoolers like to say, grody, I let my hair flow wild and free, restrained only by a big bronze barrette clamped tightly against the back of my head. So, really, not so wild, not so free. But, compared to my usual follicular Gordian knot, wild and free pretty much fit the bill.

Sometime in the afternoon, I overheard someone in the office talking about how hot it was outside. I chalked this up to the general level of wrongness that is prevalent at my workplace. It was cold when I walked to work, and it had remained cold throughout the course of the day. Of this, I was sure. I mean, it was raining. It’s always cold when it’s raining.

Except when it’s not. Like yesterday. Which I found out after I had donned my jacket -- over my long-sleeved, nouveau-corduroy shirt, mind you. The rain had stopped, the temperature had suddenly shot up, like, 30 degrees, and the humidity factor was not helping. I was sticky, to say the least, and my hair, cascading down my back, reveling in its wild freedom, did not have the cooling effect that one might imagine.

So, around 6:00 (the reading was at 7:30), I paused outside of St. Marks Church to regroup. My hair had to be dealt with. I proped myself and my bag (often indistinguishable) up against the wall, unclamped the clampy thing, and rummaged around in my backpack for my dainty travel brush. The bristles attacked my cuticles and gave me a mild case of bamboo-shoots-under-the-nails, but it was worth it to be able to smooth back my silky locks before winding them up into what resembles nothing more than a giant head tumor and ramming (yes, ramming) a hand-painted chopstick through the center of the whole ungodly mess.

As I was smoothing back said locks, I turned toward the benches in the little park area in front of the church, because that’s where the breeze was coming from, and it’s always nice to have my hair blown out of my face, rather than in. This is when I noticed that every single person in the park was watching my hairstylin’s intently. Granted, there were only about five people there, and they all seemed to be at least, but not limited to, one of the following: a) homeless; b) drunk; c) lecherous; d) shirtless. At this point I feel it prudent to mention that yes, they were all men.

So, now I’m all self-conscious an’ stuff, and I turn away to finish my complicated hair machinations. I tug at the stick to make sure it’s secure. It is. I pull out some little wispies near my temples, because I do not have bangs and my forehead has stagefright. I zip up my backpack, turn around, and one of the homeless, drunk, lecherous, and/or shirtless guys has ventured a closer look, and he is standing about two feet away from me.

“How much?” he asks, in that slurred, smelly way of his. I have no idea what he is talking about, and so I just stand there, in mild shock, for a beat or two. “How much?” he asks again, this time the corners of his mouth turning up and his eyes narrowing into a stereotypical leer. Oh my god, I think. This guy thinks I’m a prostitute. Oh my fucking god.

I wish I had a great wrap-up to this story. I wish I had played along, maybe asked him what he wanted, specifically, and then given him a price range. But, I am not that cool, not that New York, and so I just high-tailed myself right on outta there, forgetting about the heat for a while, forgetting about the hair, and just reflected on my newfound knowledge that when one brushes one’s hair in a park outside of a church, one should be prepared to be presumed a whore.

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