this is the post where I talk about my friend who died

Dan always asked about my hair.

Not the way other people at Liquid did. Not that other people asked in a bad way -- that people asked at all is quite flattering. But Dan was always so interested.

When I met Dan he was an assistant stylist. He brought me water or tea and cookies while I waited for my hair to "cook" beneath the foils. "How's the book coming?" he'd ask, then listen attentively while Jason explained the complicated chemicals he'd used to turn me into an Undercover Blonde.

Dan gave the best head massages, and he was the best at washing hair. Between the massage & the personal chatter, you always felt so welcome in his chair.

Then Dan graduated. Before I knew it he was on the floor, building up his own client base. I felt like a proud older sister watching him paint tiny little brush-strokes of bleach onto a client's hair, or snip away at their bangs, chattering away as thought he'd been cutting hair all of his life. Just look at him, I'd think, Is he really only twenty-years old?

The biggest difference between Dan and the other stylists -- the other people in this neighborhood who I know casually, for that matter -- is that Dan always listened to me talk about my book. Attentively. In great detail. It wasn't just small talk, or bullshit smiling and nodding. He wasn't just waiting for me to finish talking so he could talk again. And even though he was little more than an acquaintance when we met, Dan believed me when I spoke about my book idea. He believed my project was a good idea, and he encouraged me to pursue it. Even when Undercover Blonde felt like a weird dream I was telling people about, a concept that would probably never go anywhere, a forgotten goal like those had by so many failed artists.

Dan believed in me before I did.

I guess that's why he's right there in Undercover Blonde, right on page two of the first draft of the first chapter: asking me how the book's going; explaining to a regular that I'm a writer, working on a study of hair color. Because Dan's supportive, interested, honest belief in my project was a perennial part of every visit to Liquid.

Last week Dan died, just hours before I delivered that chapter to my agent. He was murdered, actually. The details are hazy. I don't want to think of them. They are too much like an episode of Law & Order. You can read about it yourself here, here, here, here, and here. I almost threw up when I found out, and have felt mildly queasy ever since.

I worked so hard on the scene where Dan appears on page two: shaping, editing, infusing it with as much vivid detail as I could muster, reminding myself all the while, show don't tell. I know this is just the beginning. There are edits from my agent to come and professional, wordsmithing copy editors and proofreaders in my future. And with their help, someday that scene will jump off the page, it will be so rich and full of life. You'll see Dan as a stylist again, forever twenty-years old, painting tiny purple ribbons of bleach onto a client's frizzy bangs, then pushing his dark-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose with the back of the brush.

"How's the book, Kitty," he'll ask, and listen to me. Just listen.

Someday, in that scene, Dan will come to life.

shimmer lights

"The first thing you need to know about going blonde is Shimmer Lights."










My head is dipped back over the black sink, cold fake marble pressed against the nape of my neck. Like, really cold. It’s-20-degrees-out-and-this-sink-isn’t-making-me-any-warmer cold. Jason is pulling the foils out of my hair in rapid succession and crumpling them into balls as he drops them into the sink. So haphazard compared to the careful, loving way he wrapped each chunk of hair up in the first place, like precious little taquitos. Foil crackles in my ears and I can barely hear him.

"Shimmer Lights?" I say, "Really?"

"Shimmer Lights. You like it hot, right Kitty? What am I thinking, of course you do," he winks. Without waiting for my answer, he sprays piping hot water along my hairline. Water and bleach--oh yes, we went with bleach this time--cascade into the sink. A single warm drop escapes down my neck and trickles into my left ear. Ew.

“Clairol Shimmer Lights, right Dan?" he says to the assistant sudsing a scalp in the neighboring bowl.

"Mmm-hmm, always use Shimmer Lights," Dan nods, widening his eyes at me in the mirror. His lower lids are lined in dark black pencil, making his agreement that much more emphatic.

Jason has rinsed the bleach out of my hair and has pulled my hair back into a thick rope which he massages with baby-pink cream, none other than Shimmer Lights. It doesn't smell quite like the banana-melon-daquiri stuff he usually uses, or the orange-blossom, jungle-in-your-bathroom stuff the Aveda salon I used to frequent used. But something about Shimmer Lights smells warm, enticing, and…familiar.

Jason and Dan are commiserating on the virtues of Shimmer Lights above me, as well as the various ratios of chemicals he used to get me this blonde. The conversation sounds something like this:

DAN: “Is she 2 parts x with a level three z?"
JASON: "Oh, no no no, it’s x with z with y.”

I watch in the mirror as they exchange a knowing, this-is-why-I-love-my-job look. I know I should be paying attention, taking mental notes because really this is all research for the book, but I am far, far away at this point, combing my memory for that elusive smell. It’s something from my childhood…something almost anise-y, apple-y even…

“Anyway, Kitty. I always use Shimmer Lights on all my blondes. What it does is take the yellow out of the color. It alleviates any of that yellow-y, orange-y hue, that brassiness? You know what I'm talking about?”

“Uh-huh…” I say…Whatever it is, it’s got an almost sweet but not quite sweet undertone…

“Remember how I told you that brown hair always wants to go orange when it goes blonde? Well, not yours of course, honey. You were always blonde.” See why I love him?

“Okay…” I say…The smell, it’s like the olfactory equivalent of sucralose, like Crystal Light pink lemonade mix, only for hair…

“So Shimmer Lights brightens you up, makes all that terrible brass go away,” Jason shakes his head in disgust.

“It smells funny,” I say. I almost like it. “I can’t put my finger on it…but it reminds me of…”

“Old ladies?” he laughs. “It’s what old ladies use to make their hair white. Probably something used by your…”

But I remember it now, and I finish the sentence for him: “Grandma! Jason, Shimmer Lights smells like Grandma!!!”

As you can see from the photo, the Shimmer Lights work.

Thanks, Clairol, for turning me into the blonde old lady I always knew I could be!