Salon thoughts

"Haircut," I said to the tiny girl manning the cashier.

"Shampoo?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. I sat down on the chair when another woman started dripping water on my hair using a container similar to the kind that was being used for ketchup in eateries sometime ago. It took me a while to figure out that she was going to shampoo my hair in the chair, not at the sink, which is what I was used to. She expertly worked up a lather, very careful not to let any suds fall to the floor. Shaping my hair every which way, she demonstrated her skills in the longest shampoo session I have ever had in my life. My hair smelled terrific afterwards.

The stylists were all hip, as if ready to go on a night out. They had touchscreen phones and looked too cool for a salon beside a supermarket. I thought my stylist was going to be the young gay Chinese lookalike of Ely Buendia seated irritably in one corner. But no, it was the tiny girl manning the cashier. When she stepped toward me, I had a glimpse of her tattoo-covered calves.

She said that I have the unholy triumvirate of hair woes: too thick, frizzy and naturally wavy. Either I use chemicals (which I have had enough of) or I blow dry every day (which I do, but always in a hurry and most likely in the wrong way). She knew my hair better than I did in the three decades I have been on this earth.

Her cropped black jacket, though it looked plastic and not leather, made her look cool. Her short hair was perfectly coloured into an oddly natural-looking light brown. Her folded-up cut-offs, fanny pack and shiny scissors actually made her look like a manga character with a superhero alterego. I imagined myself writing about her exploits. Snip! Snip! Snip! Without a strand out of place.

There was no iced tea, no massage, no brush to dust off the stray hair that had entered my shirt. The stylist walked to the counter. She really was the cashier. The price was somewhere around what I expected, but it was still more than four times what I would pay for back home. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to tip so I lingered for a few seconds longer. She gave me her card. Now I have a heroine. Her name is Litz.