A version of this work was published in ZineWest: Western Sydney poetry art prose, 2022. Awarded First Prize and Best Prose.
Haircut 1: the bob
Mum helps me to slide the glass door open because it always gets stuck.
‘Chin-length bob with a fringe, the usual,’ she says.
First, a shampoo. The basin is cold and hard against my neck. I squirm trying to find a comfortable position but there’s no such thing. He senses my discomfort and pulls out the grey neck-rest. It’s damp and smelly. I don’t care. The foam padding hugs my neck in its neat curve.
Then, to the swivel chair where my feet dangle under the long black gown. A black-and-white model looks at me through the mirror. Wearing black lace underwear and silk dressing gown, her long curly hair drapes over one shoulder and cascades in waves to her hip.
Phillip Street is more theatre than thoroughfare. One hears an engine before seeing the car. I turn my head at the screeching display of mechanical machismo.
‘Keep your head straight or soon you’ll have a mullet.’
He holds the scissors against my forehead, the cold silver jolt a reminder that I need to stay especially still.
‘Close your eyes.’
I peek one eye open to watch how he does it, a careful straight line above my eyebrows. Not one strand out of place.
Our family get our hair cut here and always have. Later, in high school, I’ll find myself ashamed to go here. On route to the train station, my friend will say, ‘You always get the same boring haircut, you should go somewhere different,’ shaking her long black emo fringe out of her eyes.
Haircut 2: the pixie
I’m hugging my friend who is similarly cling-wrapped, our teeth clenched in the same ‘what did I just do?’ smile.
I calculate the timing of my rebellion perfectly: before Schoolies, after the formal. Long brown parcels falling on to white tiles. A tickling breeze blows the back of my neck and I shiver. I look in the mirror, behind me an emo girl has a similar haircut of spiky layers to the chin at the front and a shaved nape.
Oh wait, that’s me.
In a Port Macquarie hotel with walls lined with bottles of vodka, gin and whisky, a paintbrush of cold red dye glides over Haircut 2. She covers my head in cling wrap, the pressure a little too tight. I feel like myself for the first time, until I look in the mirror and realise I feel like an alien.
A photo is taken which will later appear on MySpace. I’m hugging my friend who is similarly cling-wrapped, our teeth clenched in the same ‘what did I just do?’ smile.
Haircut 3: the mullet
‘This is how you get rock ‘n’ roll layers,’ she says. I wonder how she knows my record collection without even asking.
She holds clumps of hair and runs scissors at an angle down each strand. The result is very ‘70s punk, boundary-pushing. Dad will be annoyed so I love it.
‘You look like Pat Benatar,’ says my uncle as he carves generous slices of Christmas ham.
But who is Pat Benatar? After the day of heady eating and unsolicited comments draws to a close, I type the name into a search engine. She is outside of the time frame of acceptable music (‘50s to ‘70s) and therefore not in my CD collection.
Oh no. I have an ‘80s mullet.
After weeks of wearing beanies in summer, I take Haircut 3 to Macquarie Uni orientation day with three high school friends. Two out of the three friends aren’t even enrolled but come for the adventure. Eschewing any academic events, we climb on steel sculptures in green parklands, taking photos of ourselves with silly faces. We walk to the shopping centre, across a dirt path that will later become the glass archway of a monolithic metro.
‘Your hair looks amazing,’ says the friend who used to walk with me to the station.
Danielle Catherine 