The door is lighter than it appears and I sort of stumble into the hairdresser. I am wearing a soft smock dress, pajama bottoms, green velcro shoes, and a light headache. On my forehead hangs a very haphazard fringe. I catch my breath, exclaim my names. It was just ten minutes ago that I was lying horizontally in bed with my phone camera inverted so to reflect my face; I contemplated the contents of the screen and quickly pulled up a search engine to find out if any hairdresser in my area was open on a Sunday and willing to cut my hair into something mildly acceptable. Hair GR, the salon in which I now stand, told me that if I could get here in ten minutes they would do it. There are bright lights, strange faces, and the familiar potent smell of bleach and shampoo. I consider if I might still be inebriated.
My hairdresser’s name is Galex. She sees me struggling with this. Like Alex with a G. Glex, I say. No like Galaxy without the Y. I make a series of convincing nods. I explain the situation: the negronis, the blunt scissors. The only other customer, the one with foils in a chair one and a half meters over there, turns and laughs at this body. Galex sits me down, starts shuffling things around, purses her lips when my new fringe insists on parting to make me look like Marcus Brewer from About A Boy.
Galex asks me why. I say I was after a change and this somehow manifested in alcohol-induced haircuts in the early hours of this morning. I do not desire a full-on, clear-cut fringe, I tell her. Galex informs me that bangs and the fringe are synonymous. The former is simply an American term. Galex tells me fringes take training, management, and sacrifice. I tell her I do not have a dog, university is strictly online, that I am currently receiving government support thus not working for my money and my partner is a horticulturist who takes care of keeping our plants alive. In the leather chair, I commit to the fringe and whatever sacrifices it may encompass.
Post-wash, I realise I am in the blind spot of the woman’s foils. She is sharing the goings-on of the two months since she last sat in this chair. It’s when she begins talking about her partner’s recent birthday that my ears really attune to what she is saying. On the Wednesday that has just been, Wednesday the 27th of May, I turned twenty-three-years old. On Friday the twenty-ninth, my sister turned thirty-three. It was also on this day that my nephew was born. I am still unsure what to make of all this Gemini energy and my turning twenty-three.
The lady with the foils has just told her hairdressers that on Wednesday, my Wednesday the 27th of May, her husband celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday. However, at the end of the evening, reflecting on how far apart they now are in age, they realised he was, in fact, thirty-six. In a single day, the lady in the foils says, my husband lost a whole year of his life. They all burst out laughing; even Galex joins in. I stay silent, contemplating in the mirror the dumb fringe and the wine lines creeping from my eyes. I feel compelled at this moment to call up my mother and ask her to verify my own age. I consider the flaws of memory and what it means to be sure. The clouds making there way across the sky make the building across the street look as though it’s falling, right on top of T’s car.
Later, I will hold my nephew for the first time, he will look up at me, at my bangs. As far as he knows I have looked like this all my life. I will tell him I have not, that I have presented in so many different ways and he too will present in so many different ways, we just don’t know how yet.
Yellow Days 