Hair Stylist (slash butcher)

What needs to happen in order for my husband to let me touch his hair? 1) We have to live in another country for nearly 3 months, a country that is obsessed with hairstyles for women and men thus thrusting the price of a haircut sky high. 2) This country must speak another language such that we have no way to communicate how a haircut should be executed. And lastly 3) James must become totally exasperated with his current length of hair.

Check, check, check.

Today James officially let me “style” his hair for the first time since our sophomore year of high school. As I recall, James let me dye his hair blonde which instead turned a marigold shade of orange and his scalp had slight burn marks. Oops – guess I can understand why he’s waited 10 years to let me touch his hair again.

There were a few tense moments throughout this experience. They were probably precipitated by the fact that I couldn’t stop laughing as I was cutting. (perhaps nervous laughter?) This led to the following conversation:

“Nicole, seriously, if you don’t stop laughing while you are cutting than I am going to chop your ponytail off tonight when we are sleeping. I’m not joking.” (And he wasn’t).

“James, calm down, I’m doing just fine. The back looks great.”

“No, don’t tell me to calm down. I’m your client, and you can’t laugh while working on your client’s hair. And let me see the back.”

“Chill out James. You can see the back when I’m done.” (There were some seriously uneven spots at this point and I was trying to figure out how to fix it)

“What’s wrong with the back?!? Stop cutting, right now. I’m going to look at it.” James leaps up and uses the 3-way mirror to check it out. “Nicole, what the heck are you doing back here? It looks like you just hacked at it with a chainsaw. I’m finishing this hair cut – you can leave.”

I start laughing again at this point, because James has grabbed the scissors and is now trying to use the 3-way mirror to even out the back of his head. It’s not going well. James finally invites me back as his stylist once he realizes there is no way he can even the back out on his own. On the condition that I don’t laugh the rest of the haircut.

I start cutting again, and believe it or not the back of his hair starts looking pretty normal. He then teaches how to cut around his ears, and 20 minutes later we have things even out pretty well. I would say it’s a mission accomplished.

Here we go - just starting out here.

Doing okay at the mid-way point.

Here's James near the end of the process, after the heat has settled.

And here's the near finished product. The bottom still has the patchy parts, but we realized that part needed to be shaved off. Which we did after this picture and it looks much better.

And of course, the bathroom mess that took me 3o minutes to clean up.