Open Letter to My Suburban Hairdresser

Dear Kooky Hairdresser Lady,

I like you, kooky hairdresser lady. Sure, you've been fired from four different salons. No matter. I've followed you to each and every dump. Even this last atrocity. You know, the nail salon in the strip mall that says nothing at all about HAIR on its signage?

Yeah, I've met you there. In the corner of Jazzy's Nails, where our hairstyling encounter was tucked away by a decrepit sink like some back-alley abortion.

And sure, you only take cash now because you say Jazzy doesn't "get" you, and it might be because when she sneezed you said, "Jazus, you even sneeze in Vietnamese!" right before you made me look like Robert Plant with foils and paraded me around the room like the Elephant Man, a giant frizzball stumbling blindly, arms outstretched, among a roomful of silky, sleek-haired Asian women.

And that's all fine. It's fine, kooky hairdresser lady. It's fine that no matter how I tell you I want my hair, you unfailingly give me a '90s Rachel shag. And it's fine that you impale me with scissors and stab my cranium with comb handles and burn my scalp with hairdryers.

That's fine. I will still follow you. Because you're cheap. And I like you, kooky hairdresser lady. I do.

But please, PLEASE, for the love of Pete, stop it with the old lady magazines. When you have a stack of Star and OK!, WHY do you give me the Ladies Home Journal? Do I look like a decoupager who makes American Chop Suey? Knock it the fuck off with the Good Housekeeping. That's just mean. And if you ever again give me Reader's Digest --the magazine my grandfather read on the can--I will cut you out of my life forever. Snip, snip.

Thank you for your time. Please keep me posted on your next place of employment.

Sincerely yours,
Sugar Mama