I was scanning the personal ads in the Chicago Reader and chugging my third espresso at the coffee shop in the revival movie house, waiting impatiently for my husband to show up. We had had a long argument over whether to see the 4 o'clock double feature of Steel Magnolias and Terms of Endearment in Theater 1 or the 5 o'clock double feature of The Searchers and Rio Bravo in Theater 2. And I was sure we had agreed on the 4 o'clock show, or at least I had. I couldn't figure out why in the world he could possibly be late for a Shirley McClaine double feature.
I was positively buzzing when I came upon this ad:
WOULD YOU SHAVE your head for $ 500? Seeking
Female 18-55 willing to shave or buzz her hair for alterna-
tive hairstyling video. Cash fee paid. Call 847-555-3227
Would I? Well, it's taken me quite a while to grow my luxuriant brown mane to its present twenty-inch length from the short curly pseudo-'fro I wore it in for years... say 34 months. I did some quick calculations in my napkin; that comes to $14.71 a month, or $3.68 a week or $.48 a day.
Now, it's not like I exerted any real effort growing this hair – (thank you waiter, I will have another espresso, make it a double; where is that man?) – the hair really does grow all by itself, kind of a by-product of drinking milk and breathing air, which I'd do anyway, even if I wasn't interested in growing hair. So I guess shaving it off would be almost a 50¢ a day profit for no effort. (Does caffeine make hair grow?? Mental note to ask waiter. Where is my espresso?)
The question is, how long will it take to grow it back? My hair grows fast, up to two-thirds of an inch a month. So it would take me two or three months to look sane again. That would be approximately sixty days, or $28.80, an amount for which I could probably buy a cute hat to cover my humiliation rather nicely. Giving me a profit of $417.20. Not bad for a resource I hadn't paid for in the first place...
I sat and stirred the double espresso, tapping my foot, checking my watch, thinking that if I got up to go to the bathroom I'd miss my husband. I checked my watch against the big clock on the coffee shop wall. If he was much latter we'd miss Steel Magnolias and have to go see the John Wayne movies, and I'm sure he wouldn't want that. In frustration I chugged the espresso. I began tapping both feet and drumming my fingers.
My eyes went back to the ad. I thought, "Right now I have a lovely head of shining brown hair rippling down my back, albeit with an ugly little secret at its roots, which gets taken care of every few weeks at a discreet little shop two towns over. After the shave, when the new hair grows in, it's going to be very indiscreet about the new color it's been adopting over the last few years. Two months from the shaving of my golden brown locks, I'll be lucky if I've salt and pepper curls and not pure white ones."
So I better figure in the cost of dyeing it back to the, hummm, preferred color. I started scribbling on the napkin again... $7.98 for bottled beauty at the Target. Tried that a few times myself... not a pleasant sight; I spilled it all over, stained the towels and the rug. It cost $10.50 for a new towel and $9.95 for a new throw rug... $28.43 for dying it at home, plus the aggravation of finding linens to match the wallpaper from last year's colors and all that schlepping around to outlying outlet malls to find last year's colors closeouts.
My numbers ran off the bottom of the tiny coffee shop napkin and I was now scribbling on the formica table top... If I go to the hairdresser, it's $40 for the dye job, but I don't risk ruining my clothes, towels, rug, wallpaper; permanently dying my cuticles; or ending up with dye streaks on my cheeks like Indian war paints. Then my trusty hairdresser has to shape my hair because of all the wild ends growing in all straggly, $25; and blow it dry in as much of an illusion of a hair style as hair an inch and a third can have, that's $15. Then he'll sell me some brand new shampoo especially formulated for freshly shaved hair that adds body and promotes growth and preserves hair color and prevents damage, for $24 for eight ounces. So the beauty shop bill is $104, plus a twenty dollar tip for him and a $5 tip for the shampoo girl for a grand total of $129... to be repeated two months later, when another inch and a third grow out with grey roots and have to be dyed all over again.
So, sucking the dregs out of my espresso (why do they use such tiny little cups? I need a nice big mug), I figure that the hair I got for nothing, that I could sell for $500, would cost me $28.80 for a hat (or twice that if the two months over lap seasons) and at least $258.00 in beauty shop bills until the hair is long and floppy enough to cover the grey roots... I totaled the final figures, figures that now had meandered across the table top and up my wrist half way to my elbow. Hell, that's $315.60, and I still haven't considered $300-$400 to buy clothes that will match the one hat I'm forced to wear day in and day out every day for two months.
I waved the waiter over for another espresso. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the number in the ad. My fingers vibrated as I dialed. "You've got a fat lot of nerve," I told the guy who answered, "You trying to bankrupt the poor kid that answers your ad?" And I slammed down the phone in self-righteous anger before he could say a word.
Now where the hell was my husband? John Wayne was sure gonna be a poor substitute for Shirley McLaine. I needed another espresso; it was almost showtime.