Manic Attack

XIII. Taking It Chloe-ly

The hairdresser had sandpaper instead of skin on his hands. His fingertips scraped against my scalp, leaving a trail of burning and tortured hair follicles in their wake. I wanted to cry.

"We have special instructions to take very good care of you, Mr. Moseby," Rodney had said before pushing me into the salon chair. "So don't give us a hard time while we work to give you a good time."

"I'm here for a good time, not a long time." There was no hope left for me. The toxic smell of hair dyes, tools lying on the dresser that morbidly resembled surgical equipment, and a man looking at me like he saw a bucket of fried chicken instead of a fully grown human had rendered me powerless against the hellish place called Cut It Out! Hair Salon.

"That you are," Rodney had said. It had been one of those four-leaf clover moments where my tongue had spewed a quote that actually kind of fit the situation. I would have to wait five more years to witness a verbal eclipse like this again. If only this had happened the other day when Miss Knightley was considering sending me to the mental asylum as I performed a dramatic reading of an emo kid's Facebook newsfeed.

"What's your name, handsome?" the hungry hairdresser asked before yanking my head to an upright position.

"Edward." Also, please stop shaking my head like a lucky 8 ball.

"You have a really round head," he commented, yanking my head up once again. "If I shaved all your hair off, people would mistake you for a hard-boiled egg."

I winced as he tugged at my hair and rubbed his thumbs firmly against the back of my ears. It was all I could do from turning around and shoving him into the couches behind us. I resentfully looked at his reflection in the mirror. "An egg isn't exactly round."

"And I'm not exactly straight." He caught my stunned reflection and shrugged. "Thought we were stating facts."

Rodney spoke from somewhere on the couch. I couldn't see him as he was sitting behind the person who was manhandling my hair. "As much as I love two guys sharing secrets of the universe in ways that would not be age-restricted online, I need you to relax my client with a good head massage instead of making him blush like a pubescent boy fantasizing about his English teacher."

"Ooh, colorful analogy."

"I imagined her reading Dickinson to me while I rowed us over a crocodile-infested river, occasionally asking me questions to make sure I was listening. 'This will be on the test,' she would say before taking off her housemaid cap and waving it under my nose. I would growl in response and--." Rodney's mournful sigh was reminiscent of his bygone youth. In Rodney's case, one could say his youth hadn't gone by fast; it had probably quit and run away from him. The man was a lost cause at best. "Too bad she was soon arrested for identity theft."

"Say what?" The hairdresser asked in surprise while also roughly lifting my chin. How was I supposed to read with my head held up straight? My arms were beginning to protest from propping the book in front of my face.

"Yeah. She used to be domestic help before stealing the identity of her employer." Rodney let out a sudden laugh. "I always wondered why I dreamt of her in a sexy housemaid dress. "

"Sometimes you know it before you know it," the hairdresser said, squeezing a bottle of oil into his palms. I braced for the impact, partially glad that a lubricant would somewhat reduce the friction my scalp was burning from. "I read that on a pregnancy test kit once."

"What were you doing with a kit?" 

"Let's just say the background details would be strictly age-restricted online."