A Very Big Day.

Well my friends. It’s been quite a day here in Santiago. I got my first haircut in Chile. This is a big deal for two reasons, which you will immediately recognize if you’ve been with me on this blog since the beginning (10 points for you!).

Reason Number 1: They love mullets here.
Reason Number 2: They love mullets here.

Since January I’ve known I needed to suck it up and find a place to cut my hair… in the US I was quite religious, going to Kat at A Cut Above on Cache St. every 6 weeks like clockwork, I even went as far to keep track of my haircuts on a calendar. It was one of the only predictable things in my life. So you can understand the state of anxiety I’ve been in. For the last three months I’ve been asking around, keeping mental notes of friends with nice haircuts and today I finally got up the guts to walk into a place called “Hair” – un lugar muy cool y muy de moda – and put myself at the mercy of small silver scissors.

It’s quite a process, the haircutting thing… here it comes with a scalp massage and a 15-minute shampoo, which was nice… I tried my best to relax even though I was rehearsing in my head the vocabulary words that would help me avoid the fate of the affectionately named “mono”. By the time I sat down in the swivel chair I was ready for battle, though slightly thrown off by the hairdresser’s nice smile and friendly hand on my shoulder.

She must have seen the fear in my eyes.

She asked how I wanted my haircut as she combed through my wet tangles, holding up the long layers that sweet, dependable Kat left as a guide. I made it VERY clear I’d like just the ends taken off, just a trim please, and ALL THE SAME LENGTH. I got a nice smile into the mirror as she said ‘But you see, you have different lengths right now, short up here, long back here’. Um… Short? Long? And immediately I knew where this was going. Halfway though I kind of gave up, she was cutting furiously, reaching for special shearing scissors, lifting and layering, clipping and snipping. Twice I tried to mediate, getting that same nice smile, a nod into the mirror and some version of “Si, mi amor” (Yes, my love) or “No te preocupes” (Don’t Worry).

Yeah.

I walked out 20 minutes later with only a mini-mono… It’s really kind of barely a suggestion at a femme-mullet, and things could have been much worse. Thank god I practiced my special vocab words.

I kept trying to check it out as I walked around in the afternoon, doing most of my errands in the upscale, mirrored high-rise district of Los Condes. It was hard to look inconspicuous checking the new do though. I also ended up in a Hooters (no joke) at one point accompanying a friend I ran into on the street who was trying to find a sports game on ESPN2. And the Hooters girls didn’t even blink an eye at my new hairdo. In the end, I figure it’s more of a social experiment than anything else… maybe it will make me blend in a little bit more. Viva Chile. Viva el Mono.