Haircut
My increasingly bushy hair was beginning to make me feel like a Romanian porn star, which, in the mountains of central Oregon (or anywhere, for that matter), is a questionable profession. When my hair gets long it gets heavy, and it starts to fall flat from the central point of my scalp down along both sides of my head, like twin mud slides off a wet mountain. This phenomenon is particularly acute when I emerge from sources of water &mdash lakes, showers or swimming pools, and pull my hair back from my face, until it falls down behind me, mane-like. At this point, between my head hair, my chest hair, and my Speedo, I feel quintessentially European. All that I need is a forceful Italian woman at my side to cook me pasta and have me buy her things, only to get plump and surly once we marry. Anyway, for all of these reasons and more, I decided it was high time to seek out a haircut!
I prowled the streets of Sisters, looking for barber shops. The first one I found was simply called "The Place", and the barber was an ancient woman standing in the doorway, smoking a cigarette and barking commands at her Chihuahua, who kept wandering off into the snow. Two shaggy local boys waited inside, in off their tractors and glued to their cell phones, waiting for their parentally mandated Thanksgiving trims. The decor was bleak and the wait was long, so I proceeded down the street to the "Hair Caché", which was booked solid all today and tomorrow, filled with women having complicated things done to their hair. Next up was "The Metamorphosis", whose single employee was busily applying tin foil to a woman's scalp, as the woman read a magazine containing 99 tips to look great this holiday season (though turning into a giant insect was likely not among them). My next attempt was "Three Sisters Salon and Spa", whose receptionist said, "Sorry, Dude", after telling me that they, too, were fully booked. Apparently my hair had become license for middle-aged strangers to start calling me "Dude". The final option was "High Desert Hair", on the highway heading out of town, next to an archery shop where a man was shooting arrows at a stuffed deer as a large poodle looked at me out the window. This place at last could accommodate me, but only after a two-hour wait. So I had a swim, relished my last European pool exit for a little while, and returned to have some of my chlorinated hair chopped off.
In researching the We Feel Fine book, we learned that the main causes of people feeling sexy include lingerie, high boots, and haircuts. Not prone to wearing lingerie or high boots, I cannot vouch for those particular catalysts, though tonight, out here in the woods with my new haircut, I'm feeling pretty sexy.