Yeah, sure, David Attenborough nature documentaries can be fascinating and informative.
But as a source of relationship advice? Not so much…
“Oh, you got a full-ride scholarship? Wow, you’re not only handsome and funny, but smart too–that’s a lady-killer combination you got going on there. Tee-hee!”
As my new-found hair stylist busied herself dying my hair half electric-blue and half neon-pink, we had started chatting to pass the time as one does. And it wasn’t long before she landed such a devastating blow to my ego, catching me completely off guard.
Wait, let me clarify: I don’t mean ‘blow’ as in the ‘it hurt so bad and now I have zero self-esteem and want to shuffle off this mortal coil’ type of blow. No, I mean ‘blow’ as in the ‘one hit of that white powdery goodness and now I’m high as a kite’ kind.
Cocaine. Blow is slang for cocaine, if I have to spell it out for you. It’s a frickin’ controlled substance joke.
Anyways…What I mean to say is, even though she was a much older woman at 31 years of age–it’s hilarious what a college freshman considers ‘old’, lol–as I sat there basking in the afterglow of such an ego-stroking comment, I couldn’t help to wonder if I had accidentally engaged in some type of secret college town mating ritual. Was it possible that she, upon seeing my beautiful plumage, couldn’t help but to call out with a series of irresistible vocal chirps and squeaks in an attempt to lure such a lucrative life-mate into her little love nest?
The thought bemused me, particularly because not only was I a poor college student, but a cheap one at that–and the whole reason I was sitting in her chair was because her hair-transmogrifying prices were the cheapest in all of Manhattan.1Manhattan, Kansas–home of Kansas State University So if she was looking for a bread-winner to provide financial security for our future children together, then the joke was on her.
When our time together finally came to a close, and I had to pay my bill, she had me feeling so good about life that I did something very much out of character: I left an embarrassingly large tip–somewhere around 50%! Yup, that’s right: thanks to her little compliment, I ended up blowing all the money I was supposedly saving on her tip.
And it wasn’t until days or weeks later that it occurred to me that was the whole point: she didn’t see me as a potential suitor and/or genetic donor–no! She saw me as a paying customer who–on account of his requested hair colorings–apparently was crying out for validation and/or attention, and he might just pay a little extra were she to lavish either or both of those upon him.
Alas, she was right. But again, if there’s a life lesson that I wish I would have learned long before then, it’s that a little flattery never hurts no one. Heck, if you’re good enough at making people feel good about themselves, they might even pay you handsomely.
Hmm…
The more I describe the situation…well, the more it starts to sound more akin to a trip to the local brothel. You know…a whorehouse, or whatever y’all Boomers used to call it back in your day. Hooker hotel, maybe? Does that ring a bell? Or is that too Cival War Era-y for you? Not that old, eh…
Ah! I got it! ‘Prostitute’–there’s a term I think that everyone will understand. In retrospect, it was kinda like going to a Prostitute Place–dangit! That doesn’t sound right either, does it?–anyways, you get the analogy here, ya? You go somewhere and you pay some rando to make you feel real good. Like, what am I actually paying for here, anyways?
On the other hand…wouldn’t that line of thinking call into question the moral fidelity of any one who frequents a masseuse?
Wait…NO. I’m not taking all y’all’s suffering souls down this philosophical rabbit hole. I came here to talk about how I had really cool hair when I was in college, and somehow here we are talking about crack cocaine and escort services. Needless to say, “I digress…”
So…um, yeah. Fun fact: a mildly interesting side effect of my choice of hair colors was that they looked suspiciously close to the colors of our sworn enemy and intrastate rivals, Kansas University (blue and red), rather than that of the hometown team, Kansas State (my favorite color, purple). Ultimately, I tried to navigate that situation with some snappy-yet-incredibly-stupid comeback like “red and blue make purple, you ass–I’m surprised a cross-eyed inbred idiot like yourself didn’t see that already!”
Yes. Witty. I know.
I really had to bust this out when KU rolled into town to play us in football. It got pretty old pretty quick, being mistaken by my own comrades in the student section for a heinous traitor. Can you believe it? They thought that I identified with the goofiest-ass of all the birds in the imaginary animal kingdom: the JayHawk. Oh, the indignity…
“Man, I appreciate where your heart is, taking a seasonal approach to your choice of hair color, but…”
A few months later, it was time to move on with my life and say goodbye to my now-fading red and blue ‘do. And one of the first people to see my new look was my good friend, Gfeller, who, like any true friend should do, was excellent at shooting straight with me. So…kinda the complete opposite of ol’ Compliments-For-Cash Candi, or whatever my hairstylist’s name was. Yup, he was definitely never one to feed my ego.
And as his voice trailed off, I knew exactly where he was going with his silence: I had made a gross error in judgment.
“…but maybe celebrating Thanksgiving by going half-brown, half-orange wasn’t the best idea?” I finished his sentence.
“Yeah, let’s just say you’re not going to be picking up any chicks anytime before Christmas.”
“Is it really that bad?”
Gfeller paused a moment before speaking some hard truth into my life.
“Dude, you look like a ----- turkey…”
“Welp, at least it’s better than last year’s orange-and-brown fiasco…”
Gfeller. Again. This time around he was seeing me for the first time since the beginning of our sophomore year. After a relatively vanilla (i.e. naturally blonde) spring and summer, my first order of business upon returning to campus was to revert to my old ways and chemically assaulting my follicles.
“Yeah, I’ve never really tried going with complimentary colors before, so…y’know…ta-da?” It seemed like any time I was in Gfeller’s presence, I would eventually end up questioning my life choices.
“Mmm-hmmm. I see. You know, if you really wanted to go that route, you probably would have been better off waiting until Christmas.”
“Pfft! Red and green is too bougie for me! Why would I want to be just another lemming running off a cliff with the rest of the crowd?”
Gfeller lost himself for a moment amidst yet another bout of wise and sage-like reflection.
“Nonetheless, orange and blue is a pretty, erm, ‘bold’ move, even for a bold guy like you. I can’t help wonder if there’s more to your color selection…”
“What exactly are you getting at, my dude?” I felt slightly attacked.
“This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with a certain female in our friend-group that you’ve been writing letters to all summer, would it?”
“Hey man, the fact that orange and blue happen to be her alma mater’s school colors is a complete and utter coincidence! Not that I would know what the colors of the Olathe East–I mean, ‘whatever high school she happened to attend’–would be. C’mon, what kind of guy do you think I am?”
“If you say so…” G-man clearly wasn’t convinced by my protestations.
It wasn’t but a day or two later when Gfeller and I ran into this particular female–whom shall remain un-nicknamed–and I swear the first words out of her mouth were: “Hey, orange and blue! Just like my high school! Go Ha–“
“Go Hawks!” I replied just a few microseconds before I should have.
Gfeller gave me a long sideways glance laced with a smirk.
“My, aren’t you rather knowledgeable when it comes Kansas high school mascots?” he said in a not very brothers-before-those-who-might-become-mothers2In college I ran with the Christian crowd. This was our adaptation of the incredibly misogynistic phrase “bros-before-hoes”. In retrospect, we weren’t doing any better of a job on the not-being-a-sexist-shitheads front than the heathens. tone.
“Or…um…whatever random animal your mascot might be…’Hawks’ you say? I guess I’m just good at guessing…so yeah, ‘Go Hawks!’…or whatever…does it feel hot in here to you two? He he….um…so, yeah…”
“Uh…you sure you want an Ichthus on your head? Umm, whatever you want, dude. It’s your hair, your dye…your funeral…”
It wasn’t but a month or so before it became clear that orange/blue wasn’t moving me any closer to marriage with…um…nobody in particular–I was just getting bored with that ugly color combination, okay? So, just like in the world of tattoos, the best way to fix a semi-permanant mistake is to cover it up with an even bigger, more permanent, mistake.
And for this task, I had eschewed the insincere services of ‘Candi’ and instead enlisted my #1 frenemy, ol’ Spanky Spankowich–who, curiously enough, was later revealed to have been interested in the same nobody-in-particular at the same time as me. I didn’t know about his pursuits, but he sure knew about mine because we took a road trip to KC at one point, and guess what happens if you get stuck alone with me for more than 3 hours? I don’t stop talking until you know every last detail about what is currently consuming my thoughts at that particular point in time.
Now that I think about…perhaps the fact that we were unspoken romantic rivals explains why he was more than happy to let me self-sabotage myself into oblivion…
Oh, Spank, you rascal! I entrusted you with my hair, and you return the favor by obliging my request for a green Jesus-fish running from front-to-back of my scalp…
…filled in with purple in the middle…
…with red on the outside on the left…
…and with blue on the outside on the right…
…and so thoughtful!–You even remembered the eyebrows…
…blue on the left, red on the right!
Jesus-fishin’ cries for help,3If you didn’t follow that stretch of humor logic, it was an attempt to be a play on “Jesus effin’ Christ”, with a dash of attention-whore self-judgment thrown in for a nice little circular reference. dude, true friends don’t let friends self-destruct like that! What were you thinking, letting me lean into my own poor af fashion judgment like that? Spank, you dirty bastard, you!
Yeesh.
One look at me, and you would have to ask yourself: “Is this guy trying to attract college girls or pea hens, amiright? You know…cuz he looks like a mother- ----- peacock…”
The point of the story is that if you want to randomly #HumbleBrag to whoever will listen about all the edgy sh*t you did with your hair when you were but a youth, may I suggest weaving them together with a common theme like, say, ‘birds’? Never mind the emergent theme of how your hairstyle choices played pretty directly into your repeated failed mating rituals. Don’t pay that no mind at all, My Little Pretty…
Oh! But speaking of ‘weaves’–we haven’t even got to the dreadlocks yet. That’s a whole ‘nother tale or two of poor-yet-humorous life decisions that’ll have to wait until next time…
Content created on: 3 February 2023 (Friday)
Footnotes & References:
Finally, the story of the hair colors! I do remember it being various colors, and good to hear some more back story. Nice job weaving in the bird theme. Olathe East? That could have been one of our shared pursuits as well.
I love how that you figured out who I was talking about just from ‘Olathe East’…surely we had to know more ladies at KState that went to Olathe East than that, right? But, yes, you have correctly identified her, lol.
I can think of several guys we knew at K-State who came from Olathe East but can only think of one female.