The Iron Rose

The last time I got my hair cut was in March, so it had been been five months rather than the six weeks advised by my stylist re: getting a trim. I’d also gotten my hair balayage-highlighted before I left in the spirit of change: change of city and imminent change of lifestyle mapped to a change of hairstyle. I didn’t know the next time I’d be somewhere and able to get a good haircut, so I shelled out big-time with my Boston-based hairdresser, trusting that she would set me up with something that would grow out without looking completely stupid if left unmaintained. Even so, a few months of semi-pro jiu-jitsu training later, I looked like a short-circuited Pikachu, my hair a static electric mess of split brown-blond ends.

I picked The Iron Rose because it was close by, the prices were reasonable, the stylists were well-reviewed, and, if I needed to re-highlight my hair, this place seemed particularly well-regarded for its hair color professionals. The reviews were filled with richly-colored glamour shots of coiffures ranging the full color spectrum. If they could make electric blues and slime greens look good, surely they could make my basic brown look acceptable. 

I’d driven by the place before, a spearmint-colored house with a yoga studio upstairs and a vegetarian cafe next door. I didn’t know what to expect beyond a likely-abundance of hippy, artistic people, but when I walked inside, I felt like I’d just entered a small-scale theme park…

As I checked in for my appointment, I saw cartoonish quartzes and rare minerals painted on the dark wall to my left, turning the surface into some geologist—or astrologist’s—fantasy cave. On my walk to the bathroom, the hallways were lined with sculpted busts of Ren and Stimpy and Beavis and Butthead, mounted like hunters’ tokens on the wall, a homage to some of the best animated works of 90s television. The bathroom itself may as well have been an art gallery, and if it wouldn’t have made people think I had some bowel issues, I’d have stayed in there for a solid half hour to parse the various clippings, words, pictures, and more on the walls. The amount of art crammed into that water closet (emphasis on closet) was enough to rival a small museum. 

It doesn’t stop there: when I tilt my head back into the washing bowl, my eyes are met with those of a long-haired mermaid painted on the ceiling. Her expression is blasé, even as she’s cutting off a tentacle of a pink, many-eyed octopus. It gives me a lot more to contemplate than the usual white ceiling punctuated by halogen lights. This might be a grunge-era female’s take on the Sistine Chapel, an artist colony with three-dimensional topography in one of the flattest parts of America. It’s relatively fresh paint, I’m told—the owner of the salon will rearrange the stylists’ chairs and re-paint the walls as often as monthly or whenever it suits her whim. 

Now, it’s time for the actual haircut. I sit down and make myself comfortable in the chair, visually overloaded from everything I’ve seen. I’m soothed by the sight of some plants around the chair to my left. If civilization ended and plants took back over the earth, it might look like that stylist’s chair to my left. It’s got a land-before-time style profusion of exotic-looking plants, terrariums, and flowers that feels arrestingly primordial but comforting. 

My stylist, Cassie, has a muted-scarlet mane and a careful, black ink landscape of butterflies and skills articulated along her arms. In most cases, would seem a bit trite and typical, trying-too-hard, or, at worst, trashy, but I found it transfixing. Maybe I’ve been around too many tattoo sleeves through training jiu-jitsu, but the more I see, the more I wonder if the last stand of the “Nice Jewish Girl” may fall to a Japanese irezumi creature seeking to consume the blank space of my right arm. For now, I’d like to keep my options open for being buried in a Jewish cemetery, so I keep myself unmarked, ink-wise, and admire the handiwork on other illustrated individuals. 

Cassie combs, snips, and tames the last of my wayward wisps of hair, and I feel like a new woman at the end of the hour. Leaving the spearmint-color house of scissor-handed artists, I think if I were to do a second trip after this one, in a dream world where I get a book deal and am asked to pitch a second book, I would eagerly write one about hair salons across the world and the subculture of hairdressers. Most people don’t do jiu-jitsu. Almost everyone gets a haircut, and most people don’t know a thing about it. I certainly don’t. Something to think about going into the rest of the trip, and, perhaps, an idea to table for a few years down the road—so to speak. 

Wise words from inside the museum that was the bathroom stall.