I'm a ten

Last Wednesday, I had yet another reblonding session. It was similar to the usual routine in the following ways:

• I was late (rain+I-93/accidents=traffic) and feared Jason's wrath the entire ride home into the city
• Jason lied to me (as usual) and ever so convincingly intimated that I am indeed a natural blonde
• As he was lying to me, I couldn't help but feel totally vindicated in my natural blondeness, and COMPLETELY BOUGHT Jason's line that I'm really a blonde (it was hours later before I reminded myself that that's total bullshit)
• Jason talked conspiratorially in hairdresser language, explaining to a newbie what he was doing and why ("You see, when lightening and bleaching, you are lifting the color out of the hair. You've got use some manner of blue, because on the color wheel blue counteracts orange, and some manner of purple, which you also use later in toning, because purple counteracts yellow..." DUDE. Seriously.)
• I felt more confident after we were done (and by "more confident", I mean that afterwards my skin, hair, and eyes all seemed to glow, I felt more beautiful than ever, and walked out of the salon feeling poised and certain that it was only a matter of time before I was discovered)

This time, because it was slow and there weren't many other processings going on at the same time, Jason let me stand by him at the color-mixing table while he concocted the paste that would bring me to blondeness. I made him tell me what everything was, like an obnoxious four year old, and he answered my questions with the measured patience of a very nice Mary talking to a little kid. He used one powder that was "a bleach" and another powder that was "a blue." He then added a bit of water and mixed it into a goopy paste the consistency of cake batter and the purplish blue color of the light on a bug zapper.

Jason also did that thing again, where he talks over my shoulder to another stylist about what he is mixing and what color he is bringing me up to, which it turns out is a "10."

"Platinum is 12, Kitty. You are a 10. So, while I'd never bring you up to 12 (because it would make you look like common street trash) you're pretty damn close. And really, the only reason that you can go as light as you are is because your hair is so naturally light. You can't do that with just any color hair, you know." I feel so lucky

We also had what I considered a very hard conversation: the conversation about going back to brown in a few months. It went something like this:

ME: But Jason, do you think I'll still look pretty as a brunette.
JASON: Of course you will, don't be ridiculous.
ME: Well, what do you prefer me as? What color do you think I should go back to when all is said and done?
JASON: (Pausing mid-foil.) Are you kidding? We're going back to blonde, honey. Even if we have to cut it all off and start from scratch.


And let me tell you, it's going to be quite a process to put the color back into my hair. When he does my hair brown again in a few months, heÂ’s going to have to add gold to it, saturate it with gold even before he can bring it up to brown, and maybe add a little orange (I think.)

JASON: I think a chestnut-y color will be right for you, don't you? Black will be too severe--I'm not letting you go black. And you may want to think about tanning when we do it. So you don't look all sallow and pasty.
ME: Ew.

I will need to book a double process when I get my hair browned. I wonder what that entails? I mean, as it is, IÂ’m in there for 2 hours when I get my hair done. Does a double process mean IÂ’ll be in there for four hours?

But when I asked Jason to write down exactly what he did to my hair to get it blonde in the first place, so could post it to my blog, so I could get it right for my bookconversationsatino went like this:

KITTY: Jason, will you write down what you did to make my hair blonde?
JASON: No.
ME: Touche. I suppose a magician never reveals his secrets.
JASON: It's called six years of experience, honey. Put that in your blog.