3WW: parallel; Bounce; Mysterious–Southern Highlights

I was going to thank Bone for the words out of habit but I picked them which didn’t make them any easier to use. This is a Three Word Wednesday. There are two–one Southern Highlights is about Southern life. The second is depressing.

The sun came out yesterday afternoon, and I ran out with it. I am a walker, and walking in the rain, though I do out of necessity, isn’t one of my favorite things.

Probably I should move to the desert. I know that it has its own kind of beauty, but it’s the ocean I need to be near. Even if I don’t go to the ocean for days, just being parallel to it fills my body with something akin to joy. I know it’s the negative ions but prefer to think it something mysterious; something that shouts “I am alive, never leave me.”
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I had my hair cut, dyed, highlight, and blow dried, the other day, all for less than the price of one of the first three items in the salon I go to on Madison Avenue.

Yes I cheated on my hair stylist and great personal friend, Rafe, and when he called the other night didn’t know how to tell him. He’s having a hard time believing that I’m really leaving for good, and this isn’t some long time vacation.

I have been known to disappear for weeks, sometimes months on end. My parents believed that travel was the answer to most of life’s myriad of problems, and while I might never make it to all the countries they went to, I will make up for it in time spent away. Though this is home now, I still own my Manhattan apartment and have lived in Manhattan or right next to it most of my life.

I have never cheated on him before. The one other time in the almost quarter century I have known Rafe, I had been gifted a visit to Nicky Clarke in London, and even Rafe agreed I should have my hair done by one of the “true celeb stylists.”

That was in 96 when John Barrett was “hair salon homeless” as he waited for his salon in Bergdorf’s to be built. I call Rafe, salon owner to the “homeless hairstylist celeb” as he has a penchant for taking them in. Now Rafe’s salon is filled with hairstylist, upon hairstylist, some of whom I have known forever.

For me to go to a salon without a pedigree was unheard of. I thought that I would bounce from salon to salon, but I think I walked into every salon in North Myrtle. I picked the one where the stylists and clients had highlights I loved. It was thrilling to me when it took the stylist awhile to realize I have frizzy hair for I had blow dried it that morning and walked the mile in soft dripping rain.

It took her almost four hours to do my hair. There weren’t a gaggle of assistants. The noise level was minimal. Nobody had their Blackberries out. Actually I was the only client with cell to the ready as I was expecting some calls I had to take.

The conversation wasn’t about media, real estate, the stock market, or politics. Nobody was trying to show their importance. Nobody was frenzied, or speaking above each other.

Exceptionally truthful moment: Monday was the first time I actually loved having my hair done. On Madison Avenue I always feel jittery and want the experience to be over.

Once I thought of making an appointment at John Barrett’s salon, just to be to say I’m a Bergdorf blond, but I couldn’t cheat on Rafe that way. John Barrett takes credit for inventing Jennifer Aniston’s haircut on Friends but I have read that somebody else does also.

Rafe sent me roses the other day. I hear that they’re exceptionally beautiful but I wouldn’t know. They were really a gift for my Manhattan apartment. My friends are so used to being there they still hang in it a night or two a week.

I thanked Rafe for the roses and told him they were the first flowers anybody has ever sent me that I haven’t actually seen. He found that hysterical and told me to write about it, so I am. The first time he realized I might actually have some writing talent was when I came up with the “hair salon owner to the celeb homeless hairstylist” line.

I don’t know if I will have the nerve to tell him my cheating will be permanent. When I go to New York for Passover, he will see that I might not be a Bergdorf blond but I’m a Southern brunette with blond highlights. Many highlights in a champagne/ash. They suit me.

Rafe’s known for his reds, and when I grew tired of having every color red hair nature never intended, Rafe seemed to grow bored doing my color. Maybe this change will make him happy. I pay for two out of three visits. Rafe buys me expensive dinners and sends flowers to my apartment when I’m not home….

I know how expensive the salon is. When Rafe was making the decision to go solo he would come to my house and we would bounce around ideas for hours. I encouraged him in this venture as I knew he needed the thrill of being the one and only boss.

He tried to discourage me from leaving but once he realized that I truly needed the change was one of my strongest advocates.

I think Rafe will understand when a hair obsessed girl finds a hair salon she likes she has found home.

I am going to look for a place to rent for six months as I want to hang with my friends not be the permanent lodger. I can’t buy until I sell my apartment and spend enough time here to make sure that it’s the right place for me. People are getting used to see me walk. It’s odd enough for people to comment on it. I tell them I hope they join me someday and not just walk on the “walking paths,” or the beach, but through the whole town as it really is the best way to get to know a place.
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Mysterious Despair
Just when I think things are becoming easier, there is a bounce or ten backwards. A not-very-mysterious headache happens; not mysterious as there are landlines all over the house and they kept going off all night. No way to turn them off but to take them out of the sockets. In a parallel world I would be able to say “turn off” and they would.
I would be a poet in a universe I haven’t found yet. I wanted to be one but my poems would bounce back marked “Don’t even try. Stick to prose. You’re a natural.” They never did explain exactly what I was a natural at. I fear “prose” wasn’t the word they meant but maybe “pose.”
The people who stand so perfectly between the parallel lines mock me. Luring me into mysterious worlds, once I find the energy to appear, they say “who you? We were only playing.”
I don’t usually feel such despair but mine is the only apartment in my building, for sale, not in contract. While the others were on the market longer mine was supposed to be the easiest sale. I was the only one not asking for the moon, stars, heaven, sun and more.
I need just once sign that things will take an upward curve and I will bounce back. I’m not really mysterious, not at all hard-edged or uncaring. The opposite actually. I wish nobody harm not really for karma but because it hurts to think of people hurting. Yet some find me unfeeling, uncaring. I think I must have been a horrible person in a parallel life where I actually knew parallel algothrims, and must have flaunted my abilities to too many people.
I’m seriously thinking of giving up writing except for myself as I love to write. Lately I have had so many real life things going on I couldn’t follow up on follow ups. I have never minded being rejected as writers usually always are. It’s the cumulative “we love you; we want your strange mind; we want your work;” and then nothing, that has beaten me down and I can’t bounce back in an hour as I usually do.
I keep forgetting that I’m going to be in a “big deal” book in the fall and a not big deal book in the early winter probably. I forget as I would rather not have personal expertise in a subject in the first book; and just happened to write a 3WW about not really about a person who is the subject of an anthology.
I will probably feel differently after a good night’s sleep, and if and when my apartment goes into contract.
It shouldn’t have hurt when an apartment the same size as mine but with a great kitchen and views went into contract for a third more than mine. Aside from the kitchen and view it’s not even as nice and much more cluttered. But all people in Manhattan care about is that Sub Zero and Bosch and/or Viking.
Life really does belong to the aggressive who feel entitled to everything including way too much money for an apartment.

The brand names are fridges, dishwashers, ovens etc. I have been living in the land of the too entitled too long.