reactions

The conversations that ensued when I announced to a few very important people in my life that I had decided I was going to go-for-broke-blonde, get a full process, and thus be as blonde-beautiful as the girl I wrote about in this post:

JASON's reaction
Jason is the stylist extraordinaire who got me this blonde in the first place. I run into him outside of Toro, where I am dining, not working, with my brunette girlfriend.
JASON: Okaaaayyy, honey...sure...you've been drinking, haven't you?
ME: Yeah! I've had a lot to drink! We're inside, having dinner. But seriously, I think we need to do a full process next time. What do you say?
JASON: (nodding his head as you would while affirming for a small, gullible child that there is, in fact, a Santa Claus) Mmm-hmmm...yeah...sure, we'll talk about it next time you come in. You have fun tonight, honey, and try not to drink too much, okay?

SHANNA'S reaction
Shanna is the brunette girlfriend that I am dining with at Toro. She is a.k.a. my pretty, petite, publishing industry friend from previous posts and nights of general debauchery. She is standing right beside me as I announce my decision to Jason, and immediately interjects, as any good friend would.
SHANNA: Can I offer my opinion? I don't think you should that. I mean, seriously. You're blonde, honey. If anything, you might want to consider some lowlights.

THE MATHEMATICIAN's reaction
I announced my decision to him the next day, while meandering thru my cute little neighborhood, coffee in my right hand, holding onto his with my left.
THE MATHEMATICIAN: (heaves a very heavy, audible sigh) Yes. (sounding defeated) Sure. You should do whatever makes you happy.
ME: long pauseSo...you don't think I'll look good, do you?
THE MATHEMATICIAN: (he stops walking, turns to look me deep in the eye) No. No, I don't.

There you have it folks. As usual, my loved ones are there, ready to talk me down from the ledge as needed.

toro blondes

I've been picking up hosting shifts at Toro, while their usual girl is in Spain for a month.

My roommate Michael called me a traitor and an industry whore for doing this. I say, whatev--a girl's gotta make a buck. And since Toro is paying me almost as much by the hour as I make as a lowly publishing peon, how could I say no? Besides, working the door at one of Boston's hottest new restaurants, owned by one of Boston's most highly acclaimed chefs, is sure to give me lots of material for my little blonde vs. the world experiment. I've sat many, many blonde women, in the two shifts I've worked thus far. Last night, however, I sat this ethereal blonde woman who made me rethink my entire experiment: she made me think that I need to be striving to take my blonde-ness to greater heights.

Her hair was definitely a 12. It was so platinum, so light in fact that it seemed to glow. It looked almost white, like an ethereal (but not exactly angelic) halo around her head.

She was definitely a full process kind of girl.

She looked at once totally innocent and vampishly sexy. Her skin was tan, and her blue eyes popped with bedroom intensity. Standing next to her, with my level 10 color, in the same outfit I'd picked out to wear to my day job, where I hardly care how I look, I felt utterly dowdy.

As I felt that I'm-so-ugly-standing-next-to-the-prettiest-girl-in-the-room feeling seep into the pit of my stomach like spilled ink, I looked closely, carefully at her outfit, her body, did a part by part comparison of what this blonde had to offer that I didn't. (This is research, mind you--not sheer cattiness. Right.)

It must be the outfit, I thought. She's out on a date and I'm still wearing the same thing I threw on for work at 6am, over 13 hours ago. She's dressed up, and I'm just freaking tired--I bet she would be too if she had to work 2, sometimes 3 jobs. But the dress she wore was just a simple shirt-dress, black, short sleeved, well cut, but nothing to write home about. I think I even sat another girl wearing the exact same dress on the patio just a few hours earlier.

Well, the shoes must have something to do with it, I thought next. I'm wearing flats, and she's wearing heels. Heels increase your sexiness quotient by like 50%. But hers were low heels, 1 1/2-2 inches, and her shoes weren't particularly sexy. That wasn't it either.

I looked closely at her face, which was pretty: cute, ski-jump nose, square jaw, big eyes, pretty mouth. But pretty is all I saw, Kate Hudson or Reese Witherspoon style pretty. Not Angelina Jolie striking, or Gisele exotic, or anything more than pretty.

All of these parts on their own seemed so average, yet there was something about her that was absolutely striking.

Then I realized: It's the hair.

I have to talk to Jason, I thought. What is she doing that I haven't been doing? For this experiment to work, for the project to come to fruition at all, I need to be more like her.

Full process, here I come.

olivia and the goldie locks

Today we had a staff meeting at the 647. We usually have these about once or twice a year, to whip the new staff into shape, and to just generally make sure that we're all on the same page about how we do things here in Andyland. Staff meetings at 647 can be recognized by the following things:

• Some manner of food or treats, compliments of Andy. Today they were pastries from flour, the place where I go every day for coffee and they were delicious. I had a full-fat scone, thank you very much. And I even took half of one with me after the meeting, for the road.
• Some manner of race, which is intended to be a team-building activity, and usually entails running down West Brookline Street while balancing an egg on a spoon. Usually I am too tentative about this, speed-walk down the street instead of running for fear of breaking my egg, and talk all the while about how non-competitive I am, how I always lose the egg race and most other races because I have asthma, and how I don't know why I even participate in the stupid egg race anyway. I usually finish LAST or next to last, second only to, say, the cook who broke his foot and is on crutches, with a lovely, uncracked egg and confirmed suspicions that when it comes o all things competitive, I am a LOSER. Today, however, I had to hold hands with fellow waiter, Chewy, while balancing my egg. Chewy shared neither my fear of getting egg all over my new ballet shoes, nor my distaste for competition, and he made me run with my egg. And guess what? We WON...well, kind of. We got second place. First place was nabbed by the lightening fast pair of Tsering (the 60 year old Tibetan man who makes momos for us, who still has a bullet in his leg from the time he was chased out of Tibet by the Chinese Army) and Alex (a Brazilian prep-cook/busser, who has an equally insane immigration story, I'm sure.) But still. We were the first front-of-the-house team to complete the race. Yay, us!
• A run down of policies that I now know by heart, most of which end in the phrase "or don't work here." e.g. "Know the menu...or don't work here"; "be on time...or don't work here." You know, standard HR sort of stuff.

Today, they presented me and my co-workers Alexander and Tanis with flowers. Why? Because we've all worked at 647 for almost 5 years. It was a token of appreciation and thanks, and totally made my day. I've rarely gotten flowers "just because," and have never gotten flowers at all from a boss, much less "just because" flowers from a boss. Shucks.

A surprise guest of today's meeting was Olivia (who is pictured here) the amazing, gorgeous ten-month-old baby of Tanis. Olivia was dressed up all in pink: pink camouflage shirt, pink hat, pink cotton pants (not unlike the short pink Victoria's Secret sweatpants I'm wearing as I write this.)

Olivia was way into me when I was first saying hello to her, as most babies are. I think this is because I wear jangly, shiny jewelry and open my eyes real wide and smile as big as I can, and they like that. After just a few seconds, though, she started looking all above and around my head, like she was looking past me, with this pensive look on her little face. Whatever she was looking at, she was considering it very deeply.

"Blonde hair, baby, that's what that is!" Tanis says to Olivia.

"What? Really? Is she actually looking at my hair like that???" I am appalled. Now she is frowning, as though she doesn't know what to make of it all. Then she glances quickly back at my eyes, and breaks out into a big baby grin. Presumably this is because I am opening my eyes really big at her.

"Yeah," said Tanis.

"Oh my god, is she scared of it? I know it's really...voluminous today." My hair is in fact, enormous, a real tribute to my Jersey roots. Thank you 2 weeks of frizz-inducing rainy weather.

"No," said Tanis , bouncing beautiful Olivia on her hip. "She's just not used to seeing it that often." Which is true: Tanis's hair is brown, and Adam, her husband, rocks a Bruce Willis-sexy, shaved head.

An hour or so later, Tanis hands Olivia to Auntie Kitty while she cleans up the mess Olivia made by throwing bits of the aforementioned pastries from Flour all over the floor. Immediately the baby wraps her apricot-sized fists firmly around a chunk of hair on each side of my face and tugs. In fact, before I know it she is all tangled up, but tugging ever so gently, so we're cool.

Now I know why so many moms rock short hair.

Book Expo Lesson #3

Book Expo Lesson #3: You never know who you're gonna run in to at Book Expo.

It could be an agent whose name you remember, and at first you can't place it, until you reach back, way back in your memory and eventually remember that the reason his name seems like a part of your life is not because you were friends once or ever even met before, but because he did the same children's theatre as you when you were in middle school, and his name is so unusual it is like a tongue-twister, and your director made you chant it over and over as part of your theatre warm ups when you were just 11 years old. He played Peter Pan.

Or it coud be a diifferent agent, who it just so happens went to your Hebrew school, who knows all the same kids who went to the weird Quaker school downtown with you for 12 years, who's still in New York, who's still in publishing, and so are you.

Or it coud be a woman that you waited on once, maybe twice, at the restaurant where you work in the South End, who you can't stop staring at because you can't figure out where you've seen her before, who looks at you funny on the escalator because you won't look away, until you figure out why she has you mesmerized: she ate steak, medium rare, with a beet salad to start. She drank vodka tonics with a lemon, and the sweat beading off the glass in the close restaurant air formed constant rings on the table where it sat. And that drove you nuts.

Or it could be an old friend, turned agent, now pregnant and happy to no longer have a boss.

Or the next New York Times bestselling author.

Or Paula Poundstone, but all you can think is "bitch, why won't you take a goddamn flier???"

Or a guy from South Texas whose book about hydrogen gas is "perfect" for the Everything series, who won't stop grinning at you like a cat eyeing his mousy dinner.

Or it could be your neighbor, who covets your boyfriend's Audi A3, who drinks at your restaurant every week, who loves Sauvignon Blanc, who you never met until now, this moment, at Book Expo, hundreds of miles away from your apartment, in a completely foreign city.

It's a small world, and the publishing world is even smaller.

You just never know who you're going to run in to at Book Expo.

Book Expo Lesson #2: People go crazy for free shit

At this point, Book Expo was so long ago, I feel I can barely remember the event. It is effectively a big blur in my recent memory, that I remember through a thick haze as chaotic, fun, chaotic, overwhelming, and chaotic. Nonetheless, while sitting in traffic on the way to work today, it occured to me that my last post on Book Expo was entitled Book Expo Lesson #1, thereby implying that I learned more than one thing from the show. As such, I feel obligated to share more of what I learned at the show with you. Here goes:

The second key thing I learned while at the publishing industry's biggest yearly event:

2. People go crazy for free shit

Picture this: humbled and exhausted from our fliering experience, my brunette colleague and I schlep back to the booth, to commence with the full day of meetings which lies ahead. As we approach our booth, we see that it is mobbed with people, all clamoring around the table my company has devoted to educating the masses about our latest proprietary deal with popular internet info site, About.com.

"Wow," I say to my colleague, "these people sure are into that website. And they're like, really excited about this new companion book series."
"Yeah..." she said, giving me a somewhat funny look. "Well, they're giving away tee-shirts, too..."

I quickly realize that, while some people may in fact be totally into the About.com site, like About.com's biggest fans, and visit the site every day, multiple times a day, many of these people are mobbing my conmpany's otherwise completely civilized booth just for the free tee-shirt.

How do I know this? Because these are the same people who mobbed the booth the day before, during the two book signings we did which we also offered free tee-shirts. I recognized them, and the hungry, anxious look on their faces. Several of them came right up to me, got right up in my face, asking desperately: "CAN I HAVE A FREE TEE-SHIRT?" No regard for the long line that had formed in front of them, or the people who had been patiently waiting for fifteen minutes already to get their galleys signed, and the free tee-shirt that was rightfully their's.

It's almost as though they had never seen or heard of such a thing as a tee-shirt before. Or as if they'd go topless if they didn't get a free tee-shirt from me that instant.

"Get a galley, get a shirt," I'd answer patiently, and these people, these tee-shirt grubbing, tote-bag laden people, would waddle away in a huff. Suddenly I understood: these people are a type. They can be easily identified by their comfortable shoes, their frumpy clothing, and the 2,3, or more totebags that dangled from their shoulders like cartoon anvils. They troll the show, searching high & low for freebies publishers, and leave with their tote bags brimming with free books, galleys, tee shirts, stickers, pens, temporary tattoos, erasers, bumper stickers, you name it.

And here they were again on Day 2 of Book Expo, clamoring around my company's About.com table, freaking out about the enormous, over-sized tee-shirts we were giving away as though they had just seen Elvis himself in the flesh. Bear in mind, these are tee-shirts that would fit any normal-sized person like a house-dress, and bear the slogan "I'm About __________", with a line left blank, so you could fill in whatever it was that you are About with a tee-shirt marker.

"So," I overheard my saintly-patient Managing Editor say to one of the tote-bag trolls, "What are you About?"

The tote-bag troll's eye's grew very wide as she pondered the question. "What am I About?"

"I got your answer right here, sweetheart," I thought. "You're about mooching freebies off of publishers at trade shows."

The question remains: will these people ever wear those shirts again?

memorial day blondes

This Memorial Day weekend we threw a 40th Anniversary Party for my parents at my big brother's house in Delaware.

Yes, that's right, I said Delaware. What's in Delaware? I have no idea. Nothing. When they told me they were moving there three years ago, I was completely mystified. Then I went to visit them at their mansion of a first home, which they purchased for far less than the cost of a studio in my neighborhood, and I thought, "hey, Delaware is okay." As far as I'm concerned, there continues to be nothing in Delaware but my brother's house, and that's okay: they're reason enough for a visit.

A ton of people came to the party, most of whom I see once or twice a year at similar barbecue type events that my saint-like sister-in-law, Tara, & middle-oldest brother, Greg, host. I don't really know how it came to pass, but Greg & Tara holding a biannual, everyone's-invited type of festivity has become something of a family tradition in the past 2 years. Somehow, Greg & Tara went from a newlywed, twenty-something, everyone-to-the-bar-we're-doing-shots-at-the-wedding couple, to picture-of-domesticity parents of two, with a big lovely house, two cars, two dogs and a cat. Their babies are beautiful, blue-eyed, tow-headed children. And whereas five years ago, I never could have imagined them hosting large scale family festivities because they seemed more the type to be the cool, older kids in attendance, I now can't imagine a holiday without them, their house, their precious children, their silly bickering, and their hospitality. I am beginning to suspect that they may have crossed over to the land of grown-ups.

Of the many people in attendance, I noticed that several of us have gone blonde or blonder since the last time I saw them. How interesting...they are:

My other sister-in-law, Mariola, who I haven't seen since the last family party at Thanksgiving. She has always had long, light brown hair, often with highlights, sometimes blonder than others. This time she seemed really blonde. She looked lovely, and young, and it made her sparkly blue eyes pop.

My sister-in-law's brother's wife. Last time I saw her I was engaged, and I think they were still just dating at that point. In any case, since the last tiem i saw them, I broke offmy engagement, and they apparently got their engagement, and their marriage, on. I assume that Tara did her sisterly duty and informed her brother & his now-blonde wife of my marriage status. Still, I didn't really know what to say to them when they asked "what's new with you?" Last time I saw her, she was a straight-up brunette--didn't even have highlights or anything. This time, she looked as though she may even be one of those full-process blondes. She looked ethereal and pretty.

My Aunt JoAnne, who I idolize, who wears gold like Carmella Soprano, and who has always been blonde in a Carmella kinda way. She now appears to be that light version of blonde that you become when you want to cover up your grey. She looked as beautiful and put together as ever.

Myself.

All tolled, that's a lot of blonding. And that does not account for people like Tara, or her best friend Sue, who was also in attendance with her four gorgeous, honey-haired children, who admittedly highlight their hair as needed.

From a distance, we looked quite the much processed, blonde bunch.

Book Expo Lesson #1: THE EPILOGUE

An exhausted Kitty pulls up in the cab to the Hotel Helix in Washington, D.C. The Mathematician greets her on the sidewalk. What is the first thing she say to him about the show?

ME: Goddamn, publishing is a homely industry!
MATHEMATICIAN: Oh yeah? You've never been to an engineering convention. I'm talking tapered jeans with no sense of irony, pleated pants practically up to the neck, and obviously free golf shirts with "intel" logos galore. Total nerd-gasm.
ME: Touche.

Book Expo Lesson #1: Publishing is a Homely Industry

Where has Kitty been these past ten days? I mean, she was posting like it was her job when she had palsy, then she's back to work, and she disappears! What's the status of her face? Did she stop being totally self absorbed & self obsessed? Did she get a life? Did she drop the blonde project? What's the deal???

It's okay, it's okay! Nothing has gone wrong, nothing interesting has happened, I was simply out of town for a while, on business in fact, at the huge ginormous trade show that occurs for my industry every summer: Book Expo. This year it was in DC. The Mathematician and I then stayed in DC a few extra days, to ogle at lots of white marble and have a delicious, fabulous, expensive dinner a Kinkead's.

And fear not: my trip did not decrease my level of self-absorbedness either. It in fact, only made me more self-obsessed. I learned a lot at this large scale industry event, both about publishing, and about being a blondie.

The first key thing I learned while at the publishing industry's biggest yearly event:

1. Publishing is a homely industry. I hate to say it, but it's true. Sure, there are hordes of pretty, well-bred girls, recently graduated from schools Sarah Lawrence or Bryn Mawr or Wesleyan, or Holyoke banging down the doors of the New York publishers for minimum wage-paying assistant jobs (jobs that will most definitely pay less per annum than a year's tuition at their alma mater.) But as I learned on my trip to DC, the prettiness stops there, folks. What happens? Do these pretty girls all give up and go into fields like marketing & PR? Or is it that because they are assistants, these pretty people aren't permitted to attend events like Book Expo? Then they quit and pursue fields like marketing or PR? In any case, these eyes have never seen a steadier stream of harried, august, bald-spotted gentleman, or brusque, suspicious eyed, Easy Spirited-women than they did while passing out fliers to the masses at Book Expo.

I was exposed to the frumpiness of our field while handing out fliers for a signing at my company's booth. At first I assumed my company wanted me to do the fliering because the event was for one of my books, and after all, it was my authors who were doing the signing. In the back of my mind I thought maybe they were asking me to do it because I am still officially an assistant (though I sign my own projects) and as such, my job continues to entail a reasonable amount of grunt work. And I assumed they asked my friend (who does not have the word "assistant" in her title ) to pass fliers out with me because, well, we do everything together, and she would be quite likely to be a good sport & keep me company.

Boy was I wrong. I know that now. My company asked me and my brunette colleague to pass out fliers because we are young and cute. And it was a humbling experience, that did a number on our self-esteem, and left me feeling less young and cute, more like a big pile of poo.

Why? You see, generally, people don't like useless pieces of paper. Fliers irritate them. Talking to strangers unnerves them. And they are loathe to deal with both, especially first thing in the morning at 9am on their way into Book Expo. And if this is the reaction we got, I can only imagine what it would have been like to pass out fliers if you were as homely as the people we were giving them to.

Google had the right idea. They passed out cookies.

Now, I have had ample exposure, from waitressing and catering, to trying to peddle wares to the uninterested masses (anyone who has ever been stuck passing apps at an event for anorexic models knows what I'm talking about.) My poor brunette colleague has not. She marveled at my unrelenting smile, my perky "Hi, good morning, how are you," shtick. It really made me realize how good I have become at being totally fake, but sounding mostly sincere, thanks to waitressing. In any case, thank go we were in it together.

My brunette colleague/girlfriend and I were stationed at the bottom of one of two escalators that led to the main ballroom area of the show, right as the show opened, at 9am. As such, we were at the perfect spot to interact with at least half of the people entering the show during the 30 minute window of our fliering. We got rid of all of our fliers, and returned to the booth triumphantly empty-handed.

But here's the thing: I don't think a single member the target demographic for the chick non-fiction DATING AND RELATIONSHIP book we were publicizing took a flier from me. It's geared towards women aged 25-45, to help them develop a "fool-proof plan for finding Mr. Right." The Bridget Jones demographic. The Sex and the City demographic. People who are young, hip, and looking for love. Yet almost every person who took a flier from me was male, most of them were 40+, and a good many of them were grey-haired or bald-spotted august gentleman. I couldn't get women in our target demographic to take a flier to save my life. I couldn't even get them to make eye contact with me. And those who did would wave a dismissive, age-wrinkled hand in the air, while spitting out some lame excuse like "I'm busy at 3," or "Uh, no THANK-you," or "I just DON"T want another piece of paper, OKAY????"

To recap: 300 fliers publicizing a chick non-fiction book on DATING, RELATIONSHIPS and FINDING MR.RIGHT placed directly into the hands of most likely already married, slightly crotchety men. And the lonely bitches in my target demographic, the women who actually need a book like this, wouldn't give me the time of day.

Go figure.

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.

like totally different

My ex-fiancee has a new girlfriend. I have known this for quite some time.

I do not begrudge him this. After all, I have been dating the Mathematician practically since the second we broke-up. In a way, I was relieved to hear that the Ex had someone else in his life. I mean, you can only try to fit a square peg into a round hole for so long before completely and totally exhausting yourself. I hope he is enjoying the calm that comes with breaking off a broken relationship as much as I have, as well as the heart-racing, butterflies in your stomach, blissful, endorphine overload that happens when you're falling in love with someone new.

This weekend, I ran into the acquaintance who introduced the Ex to said new girlfriend. What could I do but play dumb?

"Hi, how are you, babe? I haven't seen you in so long! Kiss-kiss--what's new?" I said.

"Great to see you, pretty Kitty, how are you?" she said.

"I'm great. A lot has happened since I last saw you. The Ex and I broke up," I said.

"I know..." she said, "You know, I introduced them actually. She's a friend of mine, and she's a really great girl."

"Oh, really? Yeah, I heard he was with someone, but I didn't know you knew her." Lie. "That's great," I said, and smiled. A big smile. A big, half-palsy-faced smile. "Let me as ask you something: Is she a brunette?"

"Yeah, that's funny, how'd you know? She's a brunette, with short, short hair. Huh, how about that? You've got long blonde hair and hers is brown and short, short, short! You guys are, like, totally different."

"Huh," I said, scrunching my face up into something like a smile, "How about that." I tossed a thatch of blonde curls over my left shoulder. "How typical. And not surprising."

a month???

So, I saw my doctor today. This is how the visit went.

After waiting in her office for a half an hour, the door opens.

DOC: Hey there, give me just a second, gotta log on to this thing...so...oh my gosh, has it already been a week since you were here?
ME: Yes.
DOC: Are you sure? No...I thought you were here on Friday???
ME: No, it's, ummm...it's been a week. (I think I'd know how long I've been walking around with a half paralyzed face.)
DOC: So, how ya doing?
(I am about to open my mouth and say "Much better! Look! LOOK! My eyebrow twitched this morning! Can you believe it? And I can smile a little! See! SEE", when she says...)
DOC: Hmmm...not so great huh? Eye's still not closing?
ME: (Not so great? You should see the Serial Killer Palsy picture I posted on my blog!) No...my eye? No, no, it's closing. It's been closing all along, see?(I close both eyes.)
DOC: No, it's not.
ME: Yes it is! See, look! I can close it. (I close my eyes as hard as I can.) Look, it's closed! (I open my eyes.) See, I told ya...
DOC: (Shaking her head with pity) Nope. It's not. Sorry. So, let's see what they say for your treatment...
(Is she logging on to the Internet???)

So, 30 minutes of waiting, and 5 minutes of examination later, my doctor sends me off, saying "good luck, hope it gets better soon!" with instructions for care that were most likely culled from a Google search.

According to Google...er, my doctor...the symptoms are going to last for at least another month, possibly even two!

"But don't worry," my doctor said. "They should go away completely."

Excuse me? Should? Did you say should?

Awesome.

'roid rage

Here is a picture of my palsy pirate face. Arrrgh.

So, when my doctor prescribed prednisone to me, she told me it might make me a little jittery, and make it difficult for me to sleep.

She did not tell me that within an hour of taking my six pill daily dosage, I would be so amped up that I would feel like the walls in my bedroom were closing in on me. Or that my heart would be pounding. Or that I'd feel so fucking irritable that I'd want to push the old asian lady walking too slowly in front of me out of my way, shopping cart full of bottles and cans and all.

I am off work today, and am supposed to be relaxing, trying to rest up and sleep, so that the nerve that was damaged by this bullshit palsy business can regenerate and I can smile again. Sleep, of course, would require an ambien or a valium or at the very least a benadryl, none of which I have on hand.

Instead, I am going to stap on my running shoes and go for a jog. Maybe I'll run to Cape Cod and back-it's nice enough out.

I know this much is true: if I don't leave my house right this instant, I will likely end up shredding apart my pillows or my stuffed animals, like my dog Goldy used to when we left him alone in the house for too long.

Thanks, prednisone, for allowing me to reach previously unachievable heights.

blithe confidence

I think what fascinated me most about the little girl I was writing about the other day, from that show on the Discovery Channel, Born Without a Face, was that she seemed so normal...but for the whole no-face thing. She bopped around and giggled and flirted, just like any other little toddler, being all babyish and cute. She was adorable, despite the undeniable disfigurement of her litttle mug.

In one scene, they showed her in the bathroom with mommy, recognizing herself in the mirror, which I find to be one of the cutest moments ever in a young child's life. "Look honey, that's you!" Her mommy said, like any mother talking to any other child, seeing themselves in the mirror for the first time. The little girl got so excited, and waved exuberantly, and squealed with joy. What was she thinking? "Look, that's me! Hey, hot stuff!" Or was she too little get it, and therefore thinking, "oh cool, another baby is in the bathroom! what's up, girl?" In any case, one thing was clear: she greeted her own image with the most innocent, sincere, unadulterated joy, without even the slightest sense that there was anything wrong with her young visage. If I were her mother, I would have sold my soul to bottle that blithe confidence.

Then I would have sold it to the women of the world who spent thousands of dollars on bleaching their hair, smoothing their wrinkles, and flattening their cellulite. Women, like me, who take their working parts for granted.

pictures to prove it

BEFORE:
Here's a picture I took a week or so ago while waiting for the Mathematician to finish shaving so we could make out without my face getting all scratched up. As you can see here, I am smirking, and raising my left eyebrow, because that's the only one I can raise by itself and I think that's cool.

AFTER:
Here is a picture of me after Bells Palsy overtook the left side of my face. I call this Frumpy Palsy Serial Killer.











Okay, so it's not that bad. According to Michael, I still look pretty. Here I'm smirking & I look almost normal. But you can tell my face looks funny, right?

my vanity

I find it so ironic that this palsy thing is happening to me right now. Just as I am starting to feel quite the dish with my blonde hair, just after I have written an entire chapter about "becoming the stereotype," about "living the dream," and about all of a sudden, being "pretty" in a way that I thought I could be.

A few weeks ago, while I was writing away in my room in an attempt to tighten up my first stab at actual chapters, my hot gay roommate, Michael, was watching a horrifying/fascinating show on The Discovery Channel. It was called Face Eating Tumors (thought I believe it is now being re-aired as Face Saving Surgery, most likely because of the many bloggers who ranted about the awfulness of the title, and whose posts turn up in a long, angry list when you google the aforementioned appellation.) It was the tragic tale of a little five-year-old Indonesian boy whose face was disfigured by, you guessed it, face-eating tumors. I'm talking tumors the size of golf and tennis balls. I know because Michael kept calling me into the living room to watch, despite my repeated explanations that I don't have the stomach for that type of show.

MICHAEL: Kitty! KITTY! Oh my GOD, Kitty...you have to come watch this.
ME: Ohhh...I can't! I can't watch those surgery shows...you've got the wrong twin, that stuff's for Undercover Brother, not me.
MICHAEL: Oh...oh, ew, that's soooo disgusting...you have to see this! Come on, just come in here for one second!
ME: I can't! It's going to give me bad dreams. Didn't I tell you that I can't even watch the X-Files without having nightmares?
MICHAEL: Look, I know you're busy, writing that book about being all hot and blonde and stuff, but you have to see this...it's intense...
(SNIFF...SNIFF...)
ME: Are you crying???

He had a point. What's five minutes away from the blonde?

The next show, from which we both couldn't tear ourselves away was called Born Without A Face. This show is about a toddler who was, you guessed it, born without a face. Two shows, opposite problems: one kid has too much face, the other doesn't have enough, I see how their program director thinks. This little girl was born with no upper jaw, no cheekbones, no eye sockets, and the corner of her ear is missing. This show is being re-aired as well; you can see for yourself.

After some time, I went crawling back to my room, to write more in my Blonde Log about the sexually harassing comments that I'd heard that day. Comments that this young toddler girl, who walked and talked just like an adorable little cutie, who waved at mommy and was delighted by her own image in the mirror like any other toddler, would probably never hear.

And as for the Indonesian boy, well, I missed that part of the show, but Michael told me that people in his native village screamed and howled and hollered at him when he walked down the street with his daddy, because his deformed, disfigured, grotesque face must be an indication that he was deeply evil.

These shows have stuck with me since that night, long after Michael turned off the TV and went out to meet his boyfriend for a drink, leaving me alone in the apartment to ruminate, long after I closed my laptop for the evening and tucked into bed. I have been thinking constantly since then about how lucky I have it, thanking god (or whomever) that I have two legs when I see a three-legged dog bopping down the street, and reminding myself that I'm fortunate to have a face at all whenever I start to fret over the wrinkle that's forming between my brows.

I've also been thinking about my own vanity, and about the importance of retaining my humility in my quest to see if blondes have more fun. Kind of obsessively, actually.

And now, here I am with my own facial problem. A palsy of my very own.

Coincidence?

dude, where's my face

I woke up this morning and I could not move the left side of my face. Yes, that's right. The left side of my face is frozen. Here is how my thoughts went:

I am in the bathroom, brushing my teeth.

Gosh, my left molars feel kinda funny... Oh well, must be yet another cavity. Hey, what can I say, I've got soft Irish teeth. Still, if I keep going at this rate, I'm gonna have a grill like Nelly in no time.

I lean over the sink to take a mouthful of water from the faucet, swish around my mouth a little and...

SPLOOSH

Oops! Water is now everywhere, running down my chin, even dribbling in a few little renegade drops towards my neck, and also sprayed all over the counter in the Mathematician's bathroom.

Ugh. What the hell did I do that for? You'd think I just got a shot of novocaine or something. I don't usually dribble water all down my chin and all over the counter uncontrollably when I spit. I'm so gross.

Examining my face for blackheads in the mirror...

Whoa, look at those brows! Looks like I'm growing a small forest under them. I mean, I know thicker brows are in, but this is ridiculous. I can't handle growing them out, I just can't. Where the F*** are those tweezers. Those hairs are coming out RIGHT NOW. Who cares if I look a little like an old lady, pencil thin brows will be back "in"...eventually.

Pluck...Wow, that wrinkle I was developing between my brows sure looks diminished...Pluck... My new toner is no joke!...PLuck...now if only I could get at that goddamn baby hair right under my left brow...Pluck...goddamn baby hairs...

Lifting my brows in an attempt to wrest an almost invisible little baby eyebrow hair from it's follicle...

Hey...wait a minute...I'm lifting both eyebrows, but...only the right one seems to be going up...

I give myself a little old man wink with each eye, but only the left one seems to want to wink...

Dude, what's going on with my face?

Several hours (and over $80) later, I am walking out of the second CVS I had to visit today to get everything I needed, with a bag full of drugs.

According to my doctor, I have Bell's Palsy, which is a virus, related to the same virus that causes cold sores. Palsy. I have a freaking palsy. Some people get cold sores when they're stressed, I get a palsy.

I am taking:

• prednisone (6 tabs w/ breakfast)
• valtrex (3 a day)
• prilosec, eye drops every hour
• eye ointment for bedtime
• she decided not to make me wear an eye patch (though she thought about it), and
• I was spared having to wear special glasses or goggles,because I promised to wear my prescription glasses all day long
• I may need to take a benadryl in order to fall asleep because prednisone is REALLY speedy
• and I think my glasses are giving me a headache, because I usually wear them so infrequently, so I may also need to take some advil.

I am a mess.

Is this some cruel joke God is playing on me for undertaking such a vain book project?

1 in 20:the epilogue

So, further consultation with the Mathematician has confirmed that, according to the stats referenced in this post, you are six times more likely to be gay than you are to be a natural adult blonde.

For the record, this is indeed basic statistical math that anyone who wasn't totally intimidated by fractions probably could have sorted out on their own. But hey, if East Side Girl can rely on spiceboy to kill the bugs, I think it's perfectly appropriate for me to rely on the Mathematician to sort out little details like statistics.

6 times more likely to be gay than to be naturally blonde. Well how 'bout that.

1 in 20

According to my girl, Joanna Pitman, who wrote the awesome, entertaining, and deftly written history of fair haired foxes, ON BLONDES , only 1 in 20 blonde American adults is naturally so.

About 1 in 3 of us are currently sporting blonde hair.

Because I find statistics infinitely confusing, I'll leave it up to my dreamy Mathematician boyfriend to figure out what those percentages mean in more complex mathy terms. However I do think the moral of that story is that there are many of you out there who are fellow UNDERCOVER BLONDEs. Ladies, I'd love to hear from you. How have you been treated differently since you became a goldilocks? Guys, I'd love to hear from you, too.

By the way, isn't the gay statistic something like 1 in 10? So, does that mean that statistically, you are more likely to be gay than naturally blonde?

Mathematician, please come to my rescue if I am making some sort of dumb (blonde), improbable correlation.

no, you may not ask me a question

While walking home to my apartment from my car tonight, a young black man approached me. He was my age probably, maybe a little younger, but not that much. He was wearing normal clothes, I was wearing my day job clothes, so I looked professional, dressy, and cute. I had a long day with a shitty end, which involved the timely death of a book project that I loved (so sad to outlive your children!) and I was in no mood to talk to anyone, friend or stranger. I should also mention that I haven’t had a day off in two weeks, NOT ONE, so I’m tired. Just freaking tired.

So, when he said, “Excuse me. Excuse me, ma’am, hey, excuse me,” I didn’t look up. I didn’t even make eye contact or anything until the third “excuse me,” at which I raised an eyebrow. And when he said “Can I ask you something?” what was my reponse?

“NO.” Then, somewhat softer (but not much), I said: “I’m in a rush.” I then looked down, avoided eye contact, tried not to talk to him for the remaining ten feet or so from the curb to my apartment. He walked beside me and I could feel him struggling for something to get me to pay attention and I just kept walking.

A part of me feels very guilty about this interaction. Very, very guilt. Lots and lots of white guilt.

Another part of me feels proud of myself for what I did. The bottom line is this: I reserve the right to not have to talk to someone, no matter who they are, no matter what the situation. I have not always had full access to the kind of power that enables women to set personal boundaries. Today, however, I did just that.

It’s not like I thought he was going to steal my purse or anything. It was broad daylight in front of a bunch of traffic on Tremont St. My neighborhood might be a tad gritty, but it’s certainly not that gritty. What I really didn’t feel like dealing with, what really made me not want to talk to this dude, or any dude was because I didn’t want to be tricked by him. You see, I am INCREDIBLY gullible. I joke about it, and I like to think that it’s symptomatic of a sort of innocence that people find charming in me (it’s probably also why people often mistake me for stupid, but hey, what can you do.) But I can’t even begin to tell you how many times a man has come up to me and said: "Excuse me miss, excuse me, excuse me, can I just ask you one question?" And when I've said, "Oh, okay, sure, what's uo?" with my eyes wide like a deer in the headlights, he's followed it up by saying something like: "Man, are you looking fine today, can I just talk to you for a minute, damn girl..." and proceeded to just talk to me like I’m a well marbled piece of raw meat that he might decide to buy from his local butcher.

Today, I just couldn’t deal. I wouldn’t deal. When he asked if he could ask me something, I said simply, coldly, “No.”

I wonder what he wanted to ask me, anyway?

the low-fat scone incident

An extremely embarrassing thing happened to me last Friday. It happened at flour, my favorite bakery in the South End, located just three blocks from where I live. I go there almost every day, and after about a year of frequent visits, the ultra-cool counter-servers are finally starting to recognize me. The interaction went something like this:

COOL TATTOOED GUY: Hey there, what can I get for you today?

He recognized me! The cool tattooed counter guy recognized me! OMG! I've been coming here for a year and he's never given me the time of day! I wonder if it's the blondeness...? Mental note: write about that in the blog. He's so cool...

ME: (Beaming) I'll have a tall dark roast and a low-fat scone, please.

COOL TATTOOED GUY: The usual...A tall dark roast and a raisin pecan roll...

OMG! He knows my "usual"! I've been coming here for almost a year and he's never known my "usual"! But look! He knows it now! He's poured my coffee..he's walking over to the pile of raising pecan rolls on the counter...Wow! But wait...I don't want my usual today...

ME: Umm...

COOL TATTOOED GUY: Oh wait, you said you wanted a low-fat scone, right? A low-fat scone, eh? Splurging today, huh?

ME: (Shrugging, Beaming) Hey, it's Friday!

COOL TATTOOED GUY: (Raising one eyebrow and giving me a funny look now) Wait a minute...so, your Friday treat to yourself is a low-fat scone? Heh...(he shakes his head a little bit)...whatever floats your boat.

No...NO, wait, that's not what I meant! Ew, that sounded so anorexic, food neurotic, and LAME! I don't only eat no-fat things all week, then splurge on low-fat things on Fridays! I eat fat things all the time! All kinds of fat things, just ask the Mathematician. Medium fat things, full fat things, the other day I ate cheese and pate for dinner and nary a vegetable. I swear! You've got to believe me!

ME: (Smiling so lamely, face bright red) Hey, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do, right?

The following Monday, while putting milk (not half n' half) into my coffee, I noticed this quote of the week posted on the chalkboard:

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.
--Mark Twain

Thanks you, staff of flour, for the reality check. I'll have you know that for lunch that Friday, I ate mozzarella sticks and a smoked turkey wrap layered with cheese and dripping with so much presumably full-fat ranch dressing it would have made you proud.

And god was it good.

Operation Pick-UP Scene: Part 1...Mission Accomplished...

I can feel eyes on me before I have even fully descended the stairs, traveling up my legs, from the tips of my heels to my waist, to my shoulders, and my blonde locks. I am alone again, in a room full of hungry, consumptive stares. I pause for a moment at the bottom of the stairs, taking a minute to survey the scene, to regroup, to feel myself in my own skin. My eyes adjust and the room comes into focus, slowly at first. I see the outline of undulating bodies, and as my pupils dilate the details become sharper: I see arms draped over shoulders, hands clutching at waists, fingers gripping at thighs as women grind their bodies against their male dance partners. The air is humid and close, and smells of sweat and slightly of sex, a trashy, tasteless, loveless, condomless, one-night stand type of sex.

The brunette inside of me doesn’t know if she can take this, and wants to run back up the stairs, out of the bar, and down the street to the closest trendy South End mostly-gay bar I can find.

I take a deep breath and remember that my hair is blonde now. That means I fit in here, and to these people that means I am hot. I realize that at Clery’s, my blondeness is my armor, and that if I hold my head up high, and make my face into a blank mask, imitating models on the runway, I can do this. I step gingerly off the last step between the stairs and the basement and begin the hunt for Undercover Brother.

I make one round of the dance floor, sailing through crowd slowly, deliberately. I feel eyes searching my face, again looking for that crack of vulnerability. I make eye contact with no one, careful to look over people’s heads as I nudge and elbow my way through the crowd. I take in the dancers, who are unilaterally sloppy-looking, drunk. They grip and clutch at one another, and 50-Cent is bumping so loud, I couldn’t hear the men who are trying to talk to me if I wanted to. My eyes glance up for a moment, at the ceiling, which reveals exposed pipes, reminding me that this dingy space is indeed a basement. It reminds me of the basement of my childhood, where I’d hide in the dark when playing hide and seek.

There is another bar down here, and eventually I find it. As I reach the edge of the dance-floor, I realize that this is what Dave meant by “in the back,” this is where he was trying to send me in the first place. Far at the other end of the bar stands Undercover Brother, surround by a group of girls and guys I don’t know. As I approach them, the guys look me up and down, with the same consumptive glares I’ve been receiving since I arrived. “Ew,” I think, “I’m Undercover Brother’s sister.” But I’ve never met any of these dudes before, and I am certain they think I am just another available chick, looking to score at the meat-market that is Clery’s.

I push past two guys, who I am later introduced to as Undercover Brother’s friends, and tap my brother on the shoulder. He is flirting with a short brunette, who he later refers to as the “girl with the great rack.” She looks up at me, with glassy eyes, and I see a cloud cross her pretty faces as she takes me in.

“I hate you,” I tell Undercover Brother. This is our standard greeting.

“I hate you more,” he says, and I give him a hug. Then I see his friend Errol, who I’ve me several times, and turn around to give him a hug, too. When I turn back, Undercover Brother is making out with a different brunette at the bar. “Ew,” I say to Errol. Does he know that girl?”

“Huh…kind of,” says Errol, and we shrug at each other. Errol is a Muslim and doesn’t drink, and I have just arrived. I feel instantly bonded to him, in that we are both taking in this scene with clear, un-intoxicated eyes. “I think your brother’s drunk,” he says to me.

“Ya think?” I say, looking at Undercover Brother, who is still lip-locked with the brunette. “Maybe just a little bit. And by just a little bit, I mean totally wasted.”

Finally, Undercover Brother is done sucking face with Stranger Girl (“I had to,” he tells me later, “even though the girl I really wanted to make out with her sister,” who it turns out is the girl he was hitting on when I walked in. “The only way her sister would stay and have another drink was if I made out with Stranger Girl.” Right, because that makes so much sense. Drunk logic, go figure.) He comes back over to where I am standing, talking to Errol.

“Dude, did you lose weight?” he asks me. Then he cracks a smile, “You look, like, thin. Are you anorexic?”

“No,” I say. The truth is, people have been telling me this a lot lately, and I think it’s the hair. Or maybe it’s the slimming cut of these jeans. In any case, often when people say “you look thinner” they mean “you look better”, and this fact is not lost on me, as I conduct my blonde research.

“I think it’s my hair, people keep saying that,” I say. “By the way. do you like it?”

“Umm, the anorexia?” he laughs.

I make a face at him: "NO. The hair?"

“Yeah, dude," he smiles. "It looks good."

"So, do you think I look, like, different as a blonde?" I ask. He is my twin after all, and Undercover Brother is nothing if he isn't deadpan, cut to the chase honest.

"Yeah, you look totally smokin’. I mean, hey, let me put it this way, if you weren’t my sister, I’d totally hit on you.”

“Uch. Ew,” I say, but I can't help but smile, as I think: “Mission accomplished.” In this outfit, with this hair, I have miraculously transformed myself into something I never thought I could be: the kind of girl that my brother would hit on.

I realize that I have successfully crossed over to the other side, I have passed in this seedy other world as the UNDERCOVER BLONDE.

And no one, not even Undercover Brother, is the wiser.

Operation Pick-Up Scene: Part I...Inside the Bar...

Suddenly I am alone in line. I feel overwhelmed and a little panicky at first. I never go to bars by myself—I mean, why would I? Especially to a place like Clery’s. I might go to one of my neighborhood haunts, like Pho or the Franklin, if I knew someone who was bartending there that evening, but Clery’s? I can barely muster up the gumption to go there at all, and this would certainly be harder if I hadn’t had a quick martini before coming over with Photo Chick.

I stand on line for just a few moments before being whisked inside by the nonchalant bouncer. People are crowded around the door—there is a throng of twenty-somethings trying to get in, and a handful of them trying to get out, including two bitchy-looking brunettes, who are trying to nudge their way out on either side of the crowd. I see them coming at me from either side, elbowing and pushing at people, finally whacking me with their skinny arms on their way out the door in a way that is slightly too aggressive: I can’t help but think of it as a brunette on blonde attack. In their defense, they do look really drunk, as though one of them might be rushing out the door to puke and the other might be rushing along after her, to hold her hair. And if that is the case, I guess I can let their aggression go.

The minute I am past the front door of Clery’s I feel like public property. All eyes are on me and it is palpable. But is this because I am a blonde? Or just because I am a woman? I see guys searching my face, much like the guy from the line, looking for a vulnerable crack in the too-cool-for-school exterior I have affected to buffer me from too aggressive drunk guys. When they can’t find the chink in my man-avoidant armor, their eyes travel down the length of my body, taking in my breasts, my hips, my ass in these hint-of-lycra jeans. This is happening on all sides of me, and I can almost feel the gaze of these guys touching my skin: it gives me goosebumps, and not in a good way. “I knew Clery’s was a meat-market, but this is ridiculous,” I think. I feel hunted. I pray that my brother will find me soon.

I am just starting to feel overwhelmed by the task of scouring this bar and looking for my brother, when I notice a ridiculously tall, line-backer of a guy moving slowly through the crowd, like a glacier through icy waters. “Is that Dave?” I think. Dave is a friend of Undercover Brother’s and of mine. We went to high school together, and had advisory (my school’s version of homeroom) together freshman year. “DAVE!” I yell, loudly as I can over the blaring dirty hip-hop and the baritone bellows of the drunk guys around me.

“K-uhr-rsten Ah-menn,” he says, and all of a sudden, I feel like we’re back in the halls of Souhegan High School, as though it’s ten years before this moment and we are meandering up the halls to advisory together. Dave always thought it was hilarious to pronounce my name completely wrong—why would I expect it to change now? I run over and jump on him, give him a big bear hug.

Dave is 6’9”, 350lbs. I bounce off him like a raindrop off of goretex. “I am so happy to see you,” I say. “Where’s my brother?”

“He’s downstairs, by the dance floor, trying to meet chicks.” Dave gestures to a small line that has formed by a flight of stairs leading down into the basement.

“Christ. Another line,” a part of me thinks. This is the brunette underneath it all thinking, my everyday self, the me that hates to wait indefinitely, with no sense of when resolution will come. “Perfect, another line,” another part of me thinks: the research hungry part of me, the morbidly curious part of me, the UNDERCOVER BLONDE self. Something in my face must have betrayed my mixed feelings, because Dave quickly says: “Eh, you won’t have to wait in that.”

The line is about 7, now 8, now 10 people long and growing. The brunette underneath it all feels a surge of insecurity as I watch the line snake around the side of the staircase: “Come down with me,” I say to Dave? But he has is already talking to the bouncer, telling him that I need to get down there, and that I shouldn’t have to wait.

“Dude, she needs to go downstairs,” he bellows, “her brother is down there. You have to let her down.” The bouncer is maybe 5’6”, and has to crane his neck to look up at Dave.

“I can’t do that, you guys gonna have to wait in line,” the bouncer shakes his head, his face a stone wall. He has one arm spread out to his left, as though blocking a throng of people about to surge past him the minute he lets his guard down, and is talking into a walkie-talkie that he holds in his right hand. His eyes dart this way and that in protective paranoia, as though he’s about to get rushed, as though the entire bar is clamoring to get down to the basement, and is he takes his eye of the ball for even just a second, he’ll get trampled. His neck is craned up a Dave, who is at least a foot and a half taller than him, but his face is fierce and tough.

“Dude, her brother is down there,” Dave says emphatically. The thing about Dave is that he’s a pussycat—he’s 6’9” and though the bouncer should be scared shitless of him because of his size, his voice remains that of a gentle giant. “Her brother’s in the Navy. She hasn’t seen him in four years, right, K-urh-sten Ah-man?”

I open my mouth to tell Dave it’s fine, that the line isn’t that long, that I’ll just get behind the other eager drinkers…Then a bold though crosses my mind: why be obedient? All of my life, I’ve been obedient. I never cut the line, at the restaurant, I never seat tables in my section first, I’ve never cheated on a test, even dumb menu quizzes at 647. So maybe, just this once, it’s time for me to be a little bold. I’m blonde, after all, and I need to see if blonde girls get special treatment. Hell, it’s research, right? And besides, the last thing I want to do is stand in another shit line and get hit on by another glassy-eyed B.C./Bowdoin alumn.

I angle my chin slightly down, widen my eyes, form a small pout with my lips. “Yeah,” I say, “Please? My brother is in the Navy…I haven’t seen him in four years.” The bouncer and I are probably the same height in real life, but tonight I am wearing heels, and I tower over him. I toss my hip to one side, and put a hand on the opposite hip, so that I’m closer to his eye-level. With my left thumb and forefinger, I reach for the blonde tendril that has fallen in front of my left eye, and begin to twirl it around my fingers. “Please…?”

The bouncer does not smile. His tone does not soften. He pauses for a minute, thinking. I see his eyes dart above my head, to the right, to the left, as if scouring the area to make sure his boss doesn’t notice. “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do,” he says, looking at me very seriously, very meaningfully, as though he is about to let me in on some sort of government secret. “You need to give me your I.D. and I’m gonna let you go down there and say hi. You got five minutes to go down and say hi, then you gotta come back up here and wait on line like the rest of these folks. Five minutes, that’s it. And I don’t wanna have to come down looking for you. Got it?”

I exhale deeply—hadn’t realized I was holding my breath. Dave thumps me on the back and disappears into the crowd (as much as a 6’9” 350 dude can disappear in a throng of average-sized people.)

“Oh, thank you so much!” How about that—it worked. “You have no idea how much this means to me. I haven’t seen him in four years,” I gush. I don’t know why I keep saying that—it’s a blatant lie.

“Yeah, yeah…” the bouncer says, and he resumes his protective bulldog stance atop the stairs. I shove my I.D. in his hands and descend the stairs to the basement.

do people treat me differently as a blonde?

This, my friends, is the million dollar question, the question that drives this project, the question that is on everybody's lips when I tell them about being an Undercover Blonde.

The answer is an emphatic yes:

Men look at me more.
My friends tell me I look thinner.
My brother, for the first time in my life, refers to me as pretty.

Yes, people treat me differently as a blonde. Friends, family, strangers, but most importantly: me.

I woke up this morning with the startling realization that no matter what I've always said about beauty being within, about beautiful being more than just what they tell us on TV, no matter how I've shunned traditional concepts of beauty, and the whole blonde haired + blue eyes = beautiful thing, somewhere along the line, Sarah Lawrence education and gender studies aside, I completely bought in to all of it.

As a blonde, I feel beautiful, more beautiful than I ever did as a brunette.

I feel powerful, I feel bold, I feel sexy, I feel as though I am part of a long tradition of symbolism, representing desire, sex appeal, power, and danger.

I know that for this project, I will need to dye my hair dark again, darker even than it ever was before. But the problem is this:

I don't think I'm going to want to go back.

When You Do Something for Charity, the World Seems Like a Brighter Place

Last night I worked a charity dinner at Tremont 647 to benefit my boss's favorite worthwhile cause: fighting hunger through the hunger relief organization, Share Our Strength. I spent the evening working as a waitress at this event for free.

That means pouring wine for free, refilling endless glasses of water for free, running, smiling, nodding and laughing at bad jokes for free, clearing and bussing course after course for free, and in some cases, being scolded and screamed at by high profile chefs, all out of the goodness of my very own, very charitable heart.

After the guests left with their bellies full and their conscience's aglow, the work was not complete. We had to rack the hundreds of rental plates, glasses, and silverware, sort the rental linens, and clean up the copius amounts of mess we left in the wake of this well-intended hurricane of a benefit. The one benefit we workers reaped for this charitable donation of our time was the privilege of imbibing all the leftover donated wine, beer, and booze we could handle. Because that seems like the cool thing to do on a school night, after having worked fifteen hours already and looking down the barrel of a busy day ahead.

And of course, after sipping free wine from a bottomless coffee mug (so as not to dirty one of the precious wine glasses we were racking to return to Be Our Guest), the obvious next step is to follow all of my friends out to Anchovies once the clock strikes 12:30, instead of heading home to crawl into bed because I have to be up early for work. Eh--What's another hour?

Another really logical decision I made last night was to then follow my stumbling coworkers over to the Beverage Czar's house "for one" before calling it a night, pouring Punk Rock girl in a cab (maybe I should call her Drunk Rock Girl), kissing A-Lo and Chewy goodbye on the cheek, and skipping down the street to arrive at my house at 2:30 in the morning.

What do I feel this morning, as I pat flesh colored makeup over the dark circles under my eyes? Is that a martyrly sigh I heave as I smooth my hair in the mirror, and cross my fingers that I'll be able to feign presentability to my office full of square publishing folk, in spite of my late-night carousing. Is that a vague surge of pride I feel, for a job well done, for so successfully getting my charity on?

No, wait--that's just the beginning murmurs of a dull headache, nipping at the nape of my neck.

As I step out the front door, the birds are singing (when did they get back from the South?), the crossing guards are helping children cross the street (easy on the whistle, I can see your white gloves from here, I'm sure that car right in front of you can, too), and the hustle of commuters is well under way (hey, I'm walking here, you douchebag, I hate to break it to you but pedestrians have the right of way.)

I am assaulted by sunshine (please God let me find my sunglasses???)

The world sure seems like a brighter place when you do something for charity.

Operation Pick-UP Scene Part I: Outside the bar...

THE SETTING: Clery’s (not Faneuil Hall), Boston, MA

Clery’s is an anomaly to me, because it is a totally straight straight bar, like the kind of place you go to when you’re really looking to affirm your heterosexuality by doing something like making out with a complete and utter stranger at the bar who you just met and most likely will never see again. However, Clery’s is located on the edge of Boston’s gay neighborhood, between the tony Back Bay and the South End. Go figure?

THE ACCOMPLICES:
• Undercover Blonde’s twin brother, Undercover Brother
• Undercover Brother, Damien, Errol, the Animal, assorted other friends of Undercover Brother


THE OUTFIT: I labored over the outfit choice for some time before settling on something that I feel completely & totally myself in. My logic—this book is about me living as a blonde, so I should still be dressing as me, right? I wore:
• Fairly light wash James jeans, very fitted thru knee & slimming
• Scoop neck black tee-shirt, also very tight non-cotton material and slimming
• Simple pointy-toe, 3-inch black heels
• Dangly chandelier earrings
• Shiny rope necklace
•
HYPOTHESIS:
• I will be treated differently in the bar as a blonde than I ever have been in the past as a brunette
• I will be a blonde among many blondes in these bars

“You’re the bombshell now,” Paul says to me, his words slurring a little. At least I think that’s what he says, but between the bumping dirty hip-hop and the shrieks of laughter coming from the girls standing to my right, crowded around Undercover Brother, I’m not sure I’ve heard him right.

“What did you say?” I yell over the music.
“You’re the bombshell, now,” he shouts into my ear.
I’m flattered…I think. “Well what does that mean?” I ask him.
“You’re the bombshell, like you’re the prettiest girl here. It was my sister until you got here, now it’s you. You’re, like, the girl everyone’s going to want to talk to…” he says. His consonants are blurred, and his stare is glassy. Now he is just staring at me, not saying anything, his head tilted slightly to the side, like he’s looking at a painting.

“Well Christ,” I think, “this dude may be drunk, but he certainly isn’t stupid.” Just seconds after crossing the threshold into this place, I felt a surge of confidence, realizing that in a room full of soft, freshman fifteen laden bodies, I in fact represent the beautiful people. The room is a sea of mostly white, post-college age girls and guys, all of whom look almost exactly the same to me: The girls wear jeans for the most part, but I see only a few pairs of the requisite designer labels, like Sevens or Citizens, that are any girl’s staple choice for a night out. From the looks of it, these girls buy their jeans Express or the Gap, and their “going out on Saturday night” outfits feature said jeans, paired with camisoles and sheer, feathery tops from the same stores. I do a quick head count and notice that the room is populated for the most part by brunettes; brunettes and girls sporting cheap, painted on highlights. I see just one bright blonde-haired girl in the nearby vicinity. But whether the girls here are blonde or brunette, they all appear to be wearing this same boring uniform. The guys are all dressed like Undercover Brother: button-down shirt, either striped, plaid, or plain, jeans of the same ilk as the ladies, and, mortified as I am to say it, a few guys are even sporting pleated khakis.

So there was a change in plans for the evening: I got the text from my brother at around 11, just as I was changing from my black shirt, black pants, black apron waitressing uniform into my civvies:

At Clerys bring your hot friends/

And as abhorrent as the scene at Clery’s is to me, I am relieved, because at least it is in the neighborhood. I’ve had a great night at work tonight, but the last thing I feel like doing is trekking to Faneuil Hall to pay a cover to drink weak well-poured drinks in some crappy pseudo-Irish Pub. Clery’s may still be a crappy pseudo-Irish Pub, but at least it’s within walking distance.

I convince Photo Chick, my friend from the the restaurant, to come with me to Clery’s. We’ve already had one drink before leaving work, and since she’s a lightweight, I find that she’s surprisingly amenable to the situation. “It’s research,” I say, and for some reason, she’s totally game.

Photo Chick and I are in line for less than a minute, and are deeply involved in a conversation about the feminist underpinnings of this book idea (what else?), when I feel the less-than-sober eyes of the guy in front of me searching my face, trying to make contact with mine. Even though I’ve never met him, I know this guy: He is a carbon copy of the preppy, pseudo-hippie guys that dominated the popular crowd of my Southern New Hampshire high school. I am so familiar with the type, it’s not even funny: he drives his dad’s old Saab, he plays lacrosse, and he probably went to Bowdoin, or maybe B.C. This is exactly the kind of guy who wouldn’t talk to me in high school, and I am certain that he is only talking to me now because of my blondeness. Even now, so many years later, I am so disastrously not his type that I kind of wish I had a picture of myself in high school to show him. “See that freaky girl in the Cure tee-shirt? The one with the pink hair and the black eyeliner, smoking a cigarette like a badass? Uh-huh, that’s me. I may be blonde on the outside, but on the inside, that’s what I’m about.” I watched him notice me as we walked up to the line, and though I’m completely focused upon Photo Chick and our conversation, I sense that he has been fumbling to figure out a way to make a move ever since. This is when I learn Lesson #1 of the evening: Clery’s guys are not subtle. When his searching looks fail to get my attention, the guy in front of me simply does the next, most obvious thing: he blatantly interrupts me.

I have been telling Photo Chick a story about a guy I used to work with named Tad, who started a restaurant-wide rumor that, prior to my career as a waitress at Tremont 647, I had had a long and lucrative career as a stripper. “Tad,” she shrieks, “Ew! Tad?”

“Oh, I know, right?” I say. “Tad! Like, who is named that?”

“Uh,” says drunk guy in front of me, in feigning offense, “My name is Todd.” He pauses for a second, and Photo Chick and I just look at him. “I’m kidding. Actually, my name is John.”

“I said Tad,” I say, and shooting him a withering look, then turn back to Photo Chick.

Then the line starts to move, and Todd/John gets caught up in the challenging task of finding his ID while totally wasted. In a moment, Photo Chick and I are at the head of the line, and she suddenly realizes that she has forgotten her I.D.

“But I’m thirty,” she tells the bouncer, who looks all of 24-years old.

“I can’t let you in without ID,” the bouncers responds.

“But we just came from work,” Photo Chick says.

“I can’t let you in without ID he responds.” Photo Chick turns to me. “What should I do?”

I raise my eyebrows at her & shrug. “Get your ass home and get your ID. I’ll meet you inside.”

...to be continued...

Goldilocks and the Three Steaks

My second job, the one that keeps me in Sevens, is as a waitress at Tremont 647 in Boston's South End. I work there every Saturday.

This Saturday I was waiting on a three-top who were at least a little bit tipsy when they sat. By the time it was time for me to take their order, they were well on their way to drunk-ville. Situations like this can occasionally be perilous, but these particular patrons were hilarious, capable of taking a little shit, and I loved them.

WOMAN IN SEAT 2: I have to have a steak. I've been thinking of steak since this morning, since you mentioned it (points across the table to MAN IN SEAT 4)
KITTY: The steak is delicious
MAN IN SEAT 4: Well, I'm going to have to have one too. I'll have mine medium well, sweetie. I like me just a little pink in the middle.
KITTY: Who doesn't? (looking at WOMAN IN SEAT 2)And how would you like your steak cooked?
WOMAN IN SEAT 2: I'm going to have mine medium...(dramatic pause)...rare
KITTY: Ooh. Excellent. (looking at WOMAN IN SEAT 3) And, what can I get for you, dear?
WOMAN IN SEAT 3: Well...I just don't know...I mean, it's so unoriginal...but I really want to have the steak, too...
KITTY: (gently, affirmatively) Hey, it's a good steak. I guarantee, you won't regret it.
WOMAN IN SEAT 3: (hemming and hawing) Oh, all right. But I can't have mine done medium well, that's just too cooked for me. Nor do I want mine done medium rare, because I think that will be too pink. If I get it medium rare will there be blood? I can't handle blood. Why don't I get mine...(another long pause, as if this is a VERY important decision)...medium
KITTY: Now that's an easy order, you're all having the same thing. Of course, I guess they are a bit different, since one steak is medium well, one steak is medium rare, and one steak is juuuust right.

I'm like Goldilocks and the Three Steaks

Operation Pick-Up Scene: Part I

Operation Pick-up Scene: Part I

THE SETTING: Faneuil Hall Bar, Boston, MA

Faneuil Hall is a very famous part of Boston well known for:

a) Its history. Faneuil Hall itself as an extremely historical place, and was, in some ways, the birthplace of the revolution. Like, Sam Adams and other famous Bostonian revolutionaries used to rabble-rouse there.
b) It’s a terrible tourist trap.
c) It is the home of tons of cheesy bars and pseudo Irish pubs.

THE ACCOMPLICES:
• Undercover Blonde’s twin brother, Undercover Brother
• Friends of Undercover Brother, Damien, Anton, Errol

HYPOTHESIS:
• I will be treated differently in the bar as a blonde than I ever have been in the past as a brunette
• I will be a blonde among the many blondes who frequent these types of bars

BEFORE THE EXPERIMENT:

I know that going to the bars in Faneuil Hall is inevitable. It is a necessary evil, which I think will offer tons of relevant data for the project. Faneuil Hall bars are big, cheesy pick-up joints, populated with all manner of insufferable people, running the gamut from frat boys & sorority girls in the throes of rush week, to frat boys & sorority girls in the throes of quarter-life crisis, all grown up & living as pseudo-adults, to 30+ men and women from surrounding suburbs, yucking it up in Boston for the evening. There are all manner of tourists, bridge and tunnel folk, and members of the enormous Boston student community that swells the population of the city every Fall. The crowd is, in my opinion, terrible. There is a reason that I left the small town in NH where I came up, chose to go to an artsy liberals arts school for college over the very affordable UNH, ended up with a career in publishing over a lucrative career in, say, business or finance, and moved to Boston’s original gay neighborhood instead of a student slum like Allston or Brighton: to get away from people like this.

I am not a fan of the Faneuil Hall bar scene, I dread the idea of going to such places, and I’m totally stumped as to who the hell I’m going to get to brave these joints with me. However, since this is exactly the type of bar where guys who are “into blondes” hang out. At least, I think this is the case. I’m not sure this is so, since I try to visit these bars as infrequently as possible. However, part of living as a blonde myself means living as a blonde in her natural habitat. Thus, a foray into this type of bar as a blonde imperative.

Just as I was beginning to freak out about the prospect of this situation, I received a phone call from my twin, the Undercover Brother. Actually, it was a text message, because Undercover Brother isn’t a man of many words. It went something like this:

Coming 2 boston 4 parade next weekend make room I ur apartment

Now, I haven’t seen Undercover Brother since Thanksgiving. He is currently finishing up his third year of med school in Philadelphia, and if you read the recently published book, Men at Work by my author, Wendy Straker, you know: med students are really busy. I, too, am very busy, working two jobs to make ends meet because my glamorous publishing industry job simply can’t sustain the fabulosity of my blonde life in Boston.

Undercover Brother and I are twins, but we really couldn’t be more different people. He has dark brown hair, I have…well… blonde hair. He studied Math and Science amongst the Ivy leaguers at UPenn; I studied creative writing and literature amongst the artsy lesbians at Sarah Lawrence College. He always played on athletic teams and was really into sports (like sportscenter every day, twice a day, into sports); I read voraciously and wrote and dyed my hair funny colors and wore black dark eyeliner. If Undercover Brother and I were one person instead of twins, we’d be super human--if a bit strange.

In addition to being my opposite in practically every other way under the sun, Undercover Brother is also way into the bars in Faneuil Hall.

When I called Undercover Brother back to tell him that yes, I was making room in my apartment, I explained my project to him. He said he thought it sounded fascinating and was quite enthusiastic. In Undercover Brother speak, “I’m way into your project” sounds like this: “Sounds pretty sweet.”

To be continued...

what's wrong with America

(My car is in the middle.)

At first I was tentative about parking my little car between these two monstrousities. I drove right past them when I pulled into the parking lot this morning, looking for a kinder, gentler resting place for my little corolla.

Then I decided, what the hell? Why should I let these cars intimidate my car? Why should I let these people push me around? There is nothing right about driving a car that big, and everything right about driving my little gas efficient Corolla. There's a gaping hole in the ozone layer, people, hello!

So I back my car all the way up the lengh of the parking lot, and slid her right between these two behemoths.

I find even a speck of yellow paint on the passenger's side door when I go out for lunch today, I will key that monster H2, post-haste.

Oh, and since you probably can't see it in the picture, the Hummer's license plate reads:

BIGH2

For those of you who couldn't really tell if the car is big.

brunette envy

Is it wrong to be envious of your friends?

A few weeks ago, I had dinner with my pretty petite brunette friend, and I realized while we were sitting there, sipping blonde colored wine, that we are the aesthetic opposite of one another. She is tiny, brunette, with dark eyes, eyebrows and perfect almost olive skin. I am tall, blonde (now), and rosy complexioned. I was having one of those nights, you know, the night where your jeans just don't feel as sexy and tight as they did two days ago when you took them out of the dryer, and your hair looks cute when you're putting it up in the mirror, but seems to fall flat and bounce less, and just looks generally weird the minute you walk away from the mirror. But across from me, my pretty petite brunette friend, looked perfectly pulled together, pretty, petite, and brunette.

I realized while we were talking that, ever since I was young, a part of me has wanted to look just like that. I guess you could chalk it up to always wanting what you don't have, but it occured to me today that I have another reason for feeling this way, and that it's really all my brother's fault.

As I mention in numbers 4 & 5 of my About me section, I have several brothers: two of them are 12 and 9 years my senior, and one is my twin. My twin, who I always dreamed would some day miraculously turn into a girl, stayed "cute" waaaay longer than I did. I know they say girls develop faster than boys, but seriously, I was like a head taller than him my whole life until highschool. My awkward my-body-is-changing-and-I-don't-know-why stage dawned early, and lasted a hell of a lot longer than his.

The reason our uneven development bothered me all those years ago is because, with his goofy crooked teeth and sparkly blue eyes, my brother always seemed to steal the show. He got all of the attention from the cool friends of the aforementioned older brothers, especially their girlfriends, who would dote on my twin whenever they came over to our house. They'd say, "awww, he's so cute," or "isn't that adorable, he likes Motley Crue!" And in the background I'd be jumping up and down, waving my hands in the air, going "I like Motley Crue!!! I like Motley Crue, too!!!!" But of course, no one ever heard me. They were too busy cooing over his big crooked smile and his sparkly blue eyes.

"What an asshole," I 'd think, as those cool older girls floated past me in a cloud of perfume, bangs almost as high as the ceiling, eyes rimmed with blue pencil. i wanted them to notice me. We were girls, after all. Where was the solidarity? The mentorship I so desperately needed, being the only sister in a house full of boys? "If only he wasn't here," I'd think, "maybe those big girls would notice me, take me under their wing, and teach me how to get my bangs big, my perm poodle-esque."

I was certain that if I was shorter and cuter, everyone would pay attention to me, too.

So, here I am, 17 years later, and on nights when I can't get my hair quite right, or don't feel 100% comfortable in my skin, I still find myself wishing I was just a few inches shorter, that I had a petite little frame, with small hands and a more feminine shoe size. I imagine being exactly the opposite of me, and wonder if my life would be any better.

Is that wrong?

Jason Lies...or, the Denial Brunette, Part I

Jason lies.

I realized this about a week ago…but didn’t want to admit it.

He is a liar, liar, pants on fire.

You can see his lies at work, pervading my thought patterns and ruining the concept behind this blog in my most recent post of just two weeks ago (by the way, excuse me for being remiss in posting, dear readers, but don’t worry, I plan to bombard you with thoughts on blonding, to make up for it.) Here is what he said, which led to a trail of lies, denial, delusion, and self-deceipt, which I will detail below:

JASON: Brunette? Not you, honey, you were always blonde.

ME: [Hopefully, eyes wide with glee] Really?

JASON: [Nodding his head with a curt up and down motion that makes his nod seem utterly decisive] Mm-hmm.

ME: *GASP* You know, I always thought I was blonde! I really always did! When I was a baby I was a blonde, a reeeal blondie-blonde, like with a white-blonde curly mop. I mean, over the years it got darker, but brunette? Please! It’s just that people’s definitions of ‘blonde’ vary so much. I mean, I was always a dirty blonde, in my own opinion, it wasn’t until I got to high school when someone actually referred to me as a brunette, and I gotta tell you, I was so offended…

And I just rattled on like that for god knows how long, Jason staring back at me in the mirror, nodding that little nod of his with the tiniest smile playing on his lips.

Jason lies, but my pretty petite brunette friend, who should also be known to the elves of blogland as my super-savvy publishing industry friend, does not. A week later, while giving me feedback and comments on the project, she ever so gently pointed out to me that my illusion of my own natural blonde-ness was complete and utter bullshit. While writing about this project, I’d written a sentence about the “dark honey-colored hue of my natural locks.” All she had to do was put her finger under it, look at me, and shake her head pretty little brunette head.

To call myself a “natural blonde” is to lie; my pretty petite brunette friend knows it, I know it, and probably all of the people who have met me personally and who read this thing know it. Yet somehow, I always felt with deep certitude that really, I’ve always been a blonde.

It’s time for me to own up—this project was never about going “undercover” as a blonde to me. In my own skewed little reality, I’ve been a blonde on the inside all along. To vain, in-denial-Kitty, this project has always secretly been about getting back to my blonde roots, about living as the real blonde me. This whole idea, while pitched to the entire world and all the readers of blogland as an “experiment to see how the other half lives,” was secretly about experiencing life as I was sure god probably intended me to live it, but merely forgot to keep up with. He’s busy, he got sidetracked, he let my hair get dark, and according to my mother, this was most likely because I insisted on dyeing my it funny colors when I was a teenager.

Move over, James Frey. Make room for the real author of this blog, the DENIAL BRUNETTE.

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!