Cut and Colour

Today I went to see my hair guy, Greg, or Gregory, as he’s also known to many of his clients.

I always like going for my regular cut and colour. It feels like we’re old friends now even though we only see each other to look after my hair.

Greg’s business has changed radically from when I first knew him as the very busy owner of a trez chic salon with 6 or 7 stylists plus employees plus someone he was training. In those days you had to book your appointment at least a couple of months in advance and even then you had to share your hour with another client. I once had my appointment bumped by Courtney Love.

Now he rents a chair in a tiny 3-chair salon and my sessions with him often go 3 or even 4 hours as we stretch out the luxuries of hair consultation, shampooing and massage, colour-mixing and application, more shampooing, conditioning, cutting and drying, styling and more styling.

Greg’s a somewhat eccentric dresser. I’ve seen him in waist-length hair (his own), a brush-cut, skirts, cowboy boots, a silk suit, white palazzo pants with a white wrap top, every imaginable type of hat, all sorts of sunglasses, silver bracelets, chains, rings on every finger, with and without beard…

Today he was even more outlandish than usual - bright pink wide-legged pants with ruched side seams long enough to drag on the floor and almost hiding the faded orange Adidas. Over the pants (which Gregory wore several inches below his waist, exposing a fair amount of skin) he had an orange fringed scarf tied around his hips and a camouflage purse fastened to a lime green belt with silver buckle. He had a fuchsia-coloured top under a pink Hawaiian shirt; and over all of that an off-white long-sleeved knitted duster with shawl collar. He had a lime-green turban covering his black hair and over the turban, a white Stetson-style straw hat; plus big sunglasses which he swapped for reading glasses on a string around his neck whenever he needed to look at my hair. In contrast the jewelry was very restrained today, a couple of wide silver bands on one finger and a tiny silver hoop in each pierced ear. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the black nail polish.

Ziggy, Greg’s dog, was also in the salon today. The front door was open and every 5 minutes Greg had to call Ziggy back in when he snuck outside to better see the world go by on Broadway.

Greg played his David Bowie CDs and I had a fabulous time.