my big, gay mistake

I live in the South End, a.k.a. Boston's gayborhood (though, as the hilarious SouthEnder attests and I agree, it's rapidly becoming the pretentious-yuppie-borhood...but, what can you do?) I've lived here for a while now, and have worked in restaurants here for even longer, which means that here in the gayborhood, I feel quite at home. The gayness of it all is, by now, intricately woven into the fabric of my daily life. As such, I have developed a problematic habit:

I tend to automatically assume that all the men that I meet are gay. Period. And I am especially apt to assume this with men that I meet in the South End.

This has come back to bite me in the ass on several occasions, and it is always embarrassing. How exactly are you supposed to hide your shock when you learn that the harmless Mary who you thought loved you for your great fashion sense actually loves you for your body? How are you supposed to respond when he asks you for your phone number and whether you'd like to have dinner sometime? No matter how hard I try, I still can't think of a polite way to say, "I'm afraid I've given you the wrong idea. I thought you were gay. I was confused by the Dolce & Gabanna belt and the Gaultier cologne. Are you sure you aren't gay? I seem to have made a big, gay mistake."

I made a big, gay mistake at my waitressing job on Friday night. Now, before I even started working at Toro I understood that the crowd there was mostly straight, comprised for the most part of folks from the Back Bay or Weston or Newton who've come to the trendy South End to dine, or new-to-the-neighborhood Megans and Seans (to borrow a catchphrase from the SouthEnder) who recently relocated to the neighborhood because of it's trendy, artsy appeal. However, as with any metropolitan restaurant environment, the crowd is sufficiently mixed at Toro that I still wait on my share fair of gays each week. I am always relieved when they sit gay men in my section--it makes me feel right at home, and brings me back to my days as a waitress at Tremont 647/Sister Sorrel.

So, Friday night, around 10 o'clock, a very attractive guy and girl about my age sit in my section. They are friendly, cool, and well dressed in the casual version of designer clothes (the just-going-out-for-a-quick-bite-Diesels, not the I'm-going-to-dance-my-ass-off-at-Rise ones). The guy in particular is very well mannered and gentlemanly, and takes control of ordering and figuring out the very large menu for his female guest. As usual, I instantly assume, that he is gay, and imagine that he's out for dinner and to catch up with his best, girlfriend, who is pretty and fabulous and fun to shop with. Plus, he looks kind of familiar to me...maybe I used to wait on him at Sister Sorrel? In any case, the table orders fairly well, which indicates that they know something about food and that always makes me happy, and when they finish their cocktails, they share a very nice, delicious, and expensive bottle of wine that he picks out all by himself. I am charmed to see them treating themselves on their night out together, and think the girl is very lucky to have such a wonderful gay boyfriend to dine with when she's sick of her real boyfriend.

After their table has been cleared, I walk over to drop dessert menus and to pour off their wine. I have no intention of actually engaging my customers at this time, and am staring off into space like some sort of waitron-zombie as I pour for them. I am busy thinking about how hungry I am, how I wish this night would end already since I've been up since 6 a.m., and about the new play I am promoting, CONFESSIONS OF A MORMON BOY, which opens next week. Suddenly I realize the girl is talking to me: "I mean, what do you think about that?" she asks, sharply.

"Um, I'm sorry," I snap to attention. "What was the question?"

"What do you think about someone checking their blackberry every five seconds when you're out with them? When it's not for work, I mean? Don't you think that's just...rude???"

"Oh yeah, terrible," I say, without missing a beat. "I HATE that. Seriously. It's rude."

"I mean, how am I supposed to feel? You're sitting there, trying to have a nice dinner with your boyfriend, and every five seconds, he's typing away..."

"Ech, I'd be pissed!" I say. "I'd be SO pissed. I just think it's inappropriate behavior for the dinner table. In my house, dinner hour was a time you respected. There was no TV, no phone calls. I absolutely hate bad cell phone ettiquette! I think it's just plain rude. You know?" I say, turning to the gay friend. I expect to find him nodding, ready to chime in and say something affirmative & positive about his best girl friend, possibly that she deserves better from any man that is lucky enough to get to take her on a date...but he just looks up at me, sheepishly.

"Oh GOD," I say, "Is that you???" He just smiles a very uncomfortable, very sheepish smile. No, I think, It can't be you. You're her GAY boyfriend. She's talking about her straight boyfriend. But he is speechless, glancing back and forth between the two of us, wild-eyed, as though he fears he is about to be attacked from on all sides by an army of slighted, irritated girlfriends. Uh-oh. She is talking about him.

"I just feel totally overwhelmed by communication sometimes," I mumble, a feeble attempt at deflecting her anger, and restoring the neutrality of the conversation. The couple just stares at me, and I take this as my cue to walk away.

OOOOPS. He is NOT her gay boyfriend, he is her for real boyfriend. And now she is pissed, and I only made things worse. I can hear her going off on a rant, on a tirade even as I slink away, back towards the bathrooms, then run to the kitchen to hide. Oh man, did I just throw that guy under the bus.

I consider my situation for a moment from the safety of the kitchen. I'd love to try to right things for this lovely couple whom I've enjoyed waiting on so much. But what can I say? "I'm so sorry for the mix-up, sir! I really thought you were gay!" or "Sweetie, when you were complaining about your boyfriend, I didn't know you were referring to this guy, right here! He's gay! Let the blackberry thing go, honey, you've got bigger fish to fry!!!"

So, basically, I stayed as far away from that table as possible for the remainder of their dinner. And really, I felt awful. The gay-seeming-straight was such a nice guy: he obviously had money, but was not a pretentious prick about it like so many guys who have money. He was a real pleasure to have in my section, and their bill was fairly high for two-top. And in the end, he still left me a really big tip, despite the fact that I so obviously fanned the flames of his girlfriend's anger, and that there was no way he'd be let off the hook for this tonight. I even saw the poor girl wiping tears from the corners of her eyes as she left the restaurant!!! It just sucked. I wanted to give her a big hug, and tell her that I agreed with her and that it was wrong of her boyfriend to make her feel unappreciated by checking his blackberry every five minutes during their dinner, but that I was also pretty sure that he is a good guy who didn't mean to hurt her, and that it is obvious that he loves her very much...

Even if he is a little bit gay.

flattery will get you everywhere...

Today, I discovered thru technorati that my blog had been reviewed on somebody else's blog--and favorably, no less!

I was frightened when I first found the link, fearing that it might contain more hateful drivel a la the scary Aryan nation comments posted to my poor, defenseless little blonde blog by that Blond from Birth lady. But actually, it's a very well rendered, complimentary review. For anyone who wants to check it out:

Chick on the Road reviews Undercover Blonde

And Happy Monday to you all, too!

color blind

So, further to my post of last Monday, the current state of affairs with my hair color is dark.

Yep, it's dark alright. As we know from my inital posts about the blonde-to-brunette change, I elicited some great reactions my very first night working in the restaurant as a brunette. Here's a laundry list of favorites that I have not yet shared:

Andy, the chef, said:
"Hey, Kitty! That looks HOT! I like it. But next time, I think you should go RED. Red hair's awesome."
(His girlfriend is a redhead. Not surprisingly.)

Olivia, my friend's adorable baby, who was always standoffish when I was a blonde:
She said nothing, since she's only 18 months old. However, I took grasping for my hands and smiling and laughing at me instead of cowering in fear as a positive reaction.

Uri, the sous chef from Belarus:
Uri also said nothing. He also wouldn't make eye contact with me for the first hour of service, and squared his jaw in a way that was so somber, so Eastern bloc, that I feared I'd sent him spiraling into some sort of deep depression. Only later did he speak to me, to squeak out one little syllable: "Why?"

Tony, the very fabulous Brazillian busser who calls me Barbie:
"AAAACCK, Kitty, what did you DOOOOO??????"
(Thereby supporting my theory that Latin American gentlemen, at least, prefer blondes.)

All of these reactions really made me feel that I'd made a remarkable change to my outward appearance, that my new hair color was something that would not go unnoticed.

Then after my most recent touch up, a peculiar thing started to happen. People who I had seen at least once, perhaps even twice or three times since my initial deblonding, starting saying things like:
"Hey, oh my GOD. Did you dye your hair? I didn't recognize you, it's so different!!!! I like it! I really do!"

"Um, yeah," I'd say, puzzled, "I did dye it, Like two months ago, have I not seen you since then? No, no, wait a minute, I saw you last week. And the week before. Dude, I've seen you like six times since I dyed it. WTF?"

"Oh," they'd say, "well, hmmm... But now it's REALLY, REALLY dark. Before it was just, you know, a little darker."

"You mean when I went from platinum to dark brown? Yeah, that's hardly noticeable."

I can only assume that these people are color blind.

my brunette garbage

A reader recently left an interesting comment in response to this post. It was so interesting, in fact, that I wanted to post about it. She said:

Brunettes that are bleached are not Blonde. Yes, I know that Bleached Brunette sounds ugly but hey, if you are a Brunette and you're bleached, then you're a Bleached Brunette. Stop using the name Blonde to dress up your Brunette garbage. Blondes are actively disassociating from this forced relationship. Blonde is the name of the Blonde people and nobody else.

Well, she certainly told me, didn't she?

(Also, did you guys know there were a "blonde people?" Perhaps they hail from a great "Blonde nation" located in some remote region of Scandinavia?)

I was intrigued and just had to check out this reader's website, Blond from Birth. It's basically a soapbox where this very disgruntled blonde laments the shitty, undermining stereotypes she faces as a blond woman, and has likely been facing all of her life (if she is, in fact, among the 1 in 20 women who are naturally blond from birth--she's posted no pictures to prove it.)

The content is problematic to me: virtually unsupported & for the most part WAY oversimplified, i.e. her comparisons between blonde prejudice & racism or anti-semitism--in my opinion, that's totally inappropriate. But, I can't say I blame this woman for feeling upset about her plight. I'm sure that as a blonde, she's treated like a bimbo all the time. I lived as an almost platinum blonde for a year and a half, I know what that feels like. And truly, it sucks to be treated like you're stupid, solely because of the color of your hair.

That said, I think that more of the time, blondes are celebrated based solely on the color of their hair. I certainly was as a child, from the moment wispy strands of baby hair grew in flaxen on my head (yes, I was blonde from birth), thru my teens, when puberty, hormones, and the natural aging process turned my hair light brown. All of that happened again in a whole new way when I went blonde as an adult, and persisted thru the day I dyed my hair brown. Sometimes, as a brunette, I truly miss that special treatment...though I am beginning to suspect that the person who felt the most special about my blonde hair most of the time was me.

So, thanks for the food for thought, Carol "Blond from Birth" Cox. It's too bad you didn't take the time to read my blog, and just skimmed thru that one post before leaving me an angry/mean/slightly scary comment. The fact of the matter is, Undercover Blonde is a very pro-blonde, very pro-woman project, designed to question stereotypical notions of blondes, and make readers think twice about the prejudices we hold based on meaningless physical traits.

Far more interesting to me than your 'natural' blond hair color, however, is your self-protective, othering attitude about your blondness. It tells me that you fail to see the big picture I am so desperately trying to deconstruct with my project. The fact of the matter is, your experience of marginalization is so much bigger than you, and so much bigger than the plight of blondes alone. It's part of a very complicated web that has all women of every race, class, and sexual orientation ensnared in it's sticky fiber. It's the experience of being female in a sexist, looksist, unfair society.

The sad thing is, by fostering an "us" and "them" mentality with rhetoric about my "brunette garbage" and invalidating my experience because I'm not part of the elite "blond from birth," you are only making a complex situation worse. As women, we are constantly pitted against each other in this culture, constantly finding ways to undermine or undercut the other, based on horribly superficial things. Anyone who has ever critiqued the length of a colleague's skirt is guilty; anyone who has ever been so critiqued is a victim. It's a classic example of divide & conquer, baby. Ever heard of it? As aggrandizing as it is to put another woman down in the moment, it only serves to undermine our power as a group. And it's a remarkably effective way to perpetuate a sexist, looksist, and totally unfair status quo.

With a little bit of patience and a little bit more reading, you might understand that I get what it feels like to be treated like an idiot because of the color of my hair. Every woman does, because if it's not our hair that marks us as ditzy sex objects, it's our bust size or our height or not being pretty enough, or being too pretty, you name it...mostly we're marked as inferior because we were born with a vagina. It's part & parcel of the sticky web of sexism. Hair color? That's just the icing on the patriarchal cake.

Then again, perhaps you're not actually the blog reading type. Perhaps you lack the patience to pore through the many pages of Undercover Blonde, to make sense of my goals and ambitions with this carefully drawn project. If that's the case, you can wait until it's all out in book form, buy a copy on Amazon, or take a copy home from your local library. By then, I'm sure, it will be much more concise.

Lucky for you, that will sooner than late, because I just signed on with a literary agent.

And no, I will NOT be changing the title of my "brunette garbage" to Undercover Bleached Brunette. Something tells me a title like that just wouldn't work in the marketplace.

darker still

I have gone darker & darker still twice since my initial date with the brown bottle.

I first returned just a few weeks after the great deblonding of Dec 29th, 2006 because my locks were starting to look totally peaked as the semi-permanent color Jason so judiciously employed washed out. I couldn't handle it, as this post attests. When I went back again, just two weeks after that, well, that was sort of an accident: I had scheduled a meeting with Jason to discuss the various color stages we'd gone thru over the course of this project, just so I could get some solid details & facts written down, and when I called him that morning to confirm, he informed me that instead of meeting over coffee, we'd meet over color.

So, by now, I'm a brunette twice over. However, it occurred to me the other day while I was scrolling thru my phone that I've taken an absurd amount of pictures of myself over the course of these past four months as a brunette, and have hardly posted any of them for you all to enjoy. So, without further ado, here are the lost brunette archives:

After a few glasses of wine late on Dec 28th, the night before I was scheduled to deblonde. I was freaking when this picture was taken, and also, totally over it with the roots. Look at those roots? Wouldn't you have been, too?




With orange hair, because they had to add "gold" before they added back any brunette color. It was a frightfully long process that took 3 hours to complete. And this looks more like an attempt at strawberry blonde gone wrong to me than "gold", but what do I know.








Looking like sophisticated brunette with Shanna, my brunette idol (the color from the initial deblonding was three weeks old and starting to fade & wash out here. In light of this, I wore it up.



My girlfriends, reacting to my new hair color...they all like it!!!



This is after my first touch up (kinda how my hair looks now.)

Darker still, an experimental shot of the brunette sans make-up taken just the other day.

So there you have it, it's much, much darker than even after the first process. This, however, is the darkest it will go, lest we turn my hair irreparably brown and I have to shave it off to go back to blonde.

More on all of this later, of course, but I thought it was time I stopped being so tight lipped about my brunette color.

is blonde boring?

Once upon a time, when I filled in at Toro as a host, I'd have nothing to do at the end of the night in the period after the yuppies had stopped clamoring at the door for tables, but before I could be released from my guardpost. Always a multi-tasker, I'd use this opportunity to circle the restaurant and take inventory of the number of blondes in the room, as "research" for my book. I'd walk slowly around the room, and take notes. I found some just the other day, in a box that is yet to be fully unpacked from my recent move. It's written on the back of an old discarded menu and reads: "19 women out of 38 = blonde...98% = obviously dyed...97% have visible roots."

Now I work at Toro as a waitress, and I'm typically too busy for this kind of record keeping. I still take mental note of the blondes in the restaurant, though, and at least twice I week I'll find myself thinking: "look at all these dye jobs!" at some point during the night. Sometimes these women number half the women in the room. Sometimes more. Sometimes I inspect their roots from where I stand taking their order, high enough above them to look down at the crowns of their heads, but still at the perfect height to get a good, close look. From here, I appraise the quality of their highlights, note whether the blonde has been employed to cover brown hair or grey hair, and assess how much longer these women have before they need to hightail it back to Newbury Street for a foil.

Sometimes, when I see a really good set of highlights, like the ones that Zoe, our hostess, rocks, I feel jealous. I long for the days when I, too, was the hostess with with long blonde hair that always made me feel special, like I was pretty and sparkly and something to look at.

But most of the time, especially lately, I find myself struck by how artificial all of this unnaturally blonde hair looks. I look around and I wonder to myself, "Do these women think they're fooling anyone? Because they so aren't. They all look fake."

The fact of the matter is, I am 100% sure that these women don't care how fake they look. I know this because back when my hair was that blonde, as it was in this picture, looking natural was the last thing on my mind.


In fact, when my hair was that light, I embraced the fakeness. I rocked it. And for some reason, it make me feel oh-so special.

This candid, snapped by the Mathematician in Florence's Boboli Gardens, is one of 100 random pictures from the trips we've taken since we started dating. It flashes across the screen of my work computer as a part of a slideshow screensaver of all the pictures on my Iphoto, a feature I turned on a few months ago by accident. Every time the screensaver comes on the pictures go thru their cycle, and visually rehash our first trip to Prague, our Xmas '05 odyssey in California, and our second trip to Italy and Prague in Fall '06. My hair gets lighter and lighter with our travels. I like watching the screensaver, and I'll just let it run sometimes, when I'm on a call with a client or chatting with my roommates. And whenever I get to the Italia-Praha 2006 photos, I am shocked at how light my hair is. It just looks so...fake. I thought I'd miss those goldilocks so desperately once I became a brunette, but the fact of the matter is, I don't.

Now, at Toro, I look around the room at these blondes and I don't feel jealous, as I thought I would in the eleventh anxious hour before my de-blonding. Nor do I feel struck by how "pretty" these girls and women look with their fake blonde locks. What interests me is that I usually feel nothing at all when I take note of these blonde women. I stare and I scrutinize, and still, the only thing that comes up for me is an ennui so deep it would be the envy of even the most affected Williamsburg hipsters.

So, my question to all the brunettes out there is this: is blonde actually boring? Are the only people who buy into the whole "blondes have more fun" thing blondes, themselves? And men with blonde fetishes?

liam's thoughts

We were busy tonight at Toro. Some sort of yuppie catnip must have been blowing through the air in the South End, or maybe it was just the shocking "oh-my-God-it's-not-2-degrees-out" factor of the evening that had people out and about. Whatever it was, they seemed to be coming to Toro in droves, all headed straight to my section to eat tapas. It wasn't the busiest night I've seen at Toro, but it was definitely one of the choppiest. The flow of new tables to my section was about as graceful as an offensive line rush, and I felt like I couldn't get a break all night.

My body language must reveal all of this as I finalize my tips and print my cashout report on the computer terminal that's right next to the kitchen.

"Aw, Kitty. What's the matter?" asks Liam, one of the cooks. "Did you have a bad night?"

Liam has completely busted me during one of those down moments when you REALLY don't expect that someone else is watching you. I can tell by his tone that I must look like a sad little kitten who got stuck outside during a rainstorm. The fact is, I spend so much time smiling when I'm in the presence of other people that if I look even the tiniest bit sober, somber, or tired, people usually take it to mean that I'm, like, really upset (remember the Bells Palsy posts?)

"No, my night was fine," I say. "Busy. I'm just tired. I work another job, did you know that? I work here, and as a publicist...and I'm also writing a book, so it's kinda like working three jobs. So, I had a little bit of a rough day at my day job, and now, tonight was just a rough night. Just tired."

"I didn't know you had another job. And you're writing a book, huh? What's your book about?"

So, I explain my hair color project, and the blog, and the whole mission behind Undercover Blonde. As I am talking, my manager Adam approaches.

"I do the majority of my research here, you know. On the customers. And my managers," I say. "Hey Adam, did you see the blog post I wrote about you yet?" I ask.

"No," Adam says, "what's it say? Something awesome?"

"Of course," I smile. "I talk about how refreshingly honest you are. It's about the time I asked you how I look as a brunette, and you told me I look less ditzy than I did as a blonde."

"Oh yeah," he laughs. "You do."

"I know, and now the whole world does, too. It's on the InterWeb. He's right, though," I say to Liam, "People do think I'm less stupid as a brunette. I mean, people always tend to think I'm stupid at first, but they thought I was really stupid when I was blonde."

Surprise and slight confusion cross Liam's face. "Stupid? Really? I didn't think you were stupid when I met you," he says.

"It's okay," I tell him. "You can admit it. A lot of people think that I'm dumb when they first meet me. Trust me, I won't take it personally."

"No, really, Kitty. Stupid is not something that comes to mind when I think of the first impression I had of you." He pauses for a moment, as if giving the topic some serious thought. "No, I definitely didn't think you were stupid."

I look at him warily. Is he teasing me? I have three brothers, lots of guy friends, and have worked in restaurants forever. I expect that most exchanges with kitchen guys will not be serious, and that even the serious ones will involve at least some degree of ball-busting. But Liam appears to be totally serious. Yes, he is definitely serious.

"Wow," I say. "Huh. Are you sure you didn't think I was dumb when we first met? Because you can tell me if you did. I won't get mad."

"Nope. I didn't think you were dumb," he says.

"Interesting. How refreshing. Maybe it's because you met me after I became a brunette...?" It doesn't matter either way, this is very nice to hear after a shitty night. The fact is, people have always perceived me as ditzy or gullible (and I am gullible), for as long as I can remember. Or at least I thought they did. But who knows, maybe I'm wrong now. Maybe people are finally starting to take me seriously. Starting with Liam.

"Yeah," says Adam, flashing a cat-like grin as he walks away to do something 'managerial.' "Because trust me, she did seem ditzy as a blonde."

That's Adam, unflinchingly honest.

"the fancy people"

One of my fellow waitresses, Cinthya, also works as a backwaiter at Clio. Clio is an amazing place, one of my favorites in Boston. Dinner there is the culinary equivalent of a runway fashion show--delicious, expensive, and totally inaccessible to most people. In that sense, it is very different from Toro, where work together.

I was curious as to what it's like for Cinthya to work at both places, so after our shift together about a week ago, I decided to ask. Cinthya had a lot to say, and most of her thoughts confirmed my suspicions: the clientele there is a lot more stuck up, a lot more demanding and difficult, and it makes being a waiter there "very hard." Cinthya is very diplomatic, though. She is pretty much the sweetest person on the planet and very bright. So, it came as no surprise to me that her way of saying that the rich people who dine at Clio are a pain in the ass was completely sweet and utterly innocent:

"For example," she said, in very charming, accented English, "the fancy people are very allergic, and it's very difficult when they can't eat something, because many of the dishes are very complicated."

Cinthya's English may have been a little bit off here, but I got what she was trying to say, and I have to agree. In my illustrious, eight-year waitressing career, it's always been the rich people who have a mysterious "butter allergy" but can somehow eat cheese, or have a "garlic allergy, but a little bit is okay." And I have no way to prove this, but I'm fairly confident that cries of "NO carbs!!!", "dressing ON THE SIDE!!!, "and "ABSOLUTELY NO OIL!!!" echo off the walls of very few Dennys' or Waffle Houses or, other more accessible eating establishments, where people of almost any income can afford to dine.

So, I'm wondering: is it possible that rich people are actually very allergic? Are they more allergic than poor people? Does money cause allergies to foodstuffs that a common chef would deign to employ to make his entrees taste good?

A legitimate food allergy is one thing, but come on, people. At what point to people cross over from being tolerant, hardy human beings, into pampered pains-in-the-ass? I suspect that it correlates to your tax bracket, and that it has more to do with power, prestige, and dominance than it does to do with food.

In any event, I don't like it. And I vow that, no matter how fancy I get, I will never turn into one of those people. Barring adult on-set food allergies, of course.

how Jason keeps me in line

Jason came in to visit me at Toro the other night. This is how our conversation went:

JASON: (Inspecting my color, as he does whenever we see each other) It's holding up nicely! You're about a week and a half out on roots, though, honey.
ME: Ugh, really?
JASON: Yes, I know...but it's like I told you, you're actually going to have to come more as a brunette than you did as a blonde. You can't have light roots and dark locks. That just looks weird.
ME: True. Okay, so I'll come in like 2 weeks maybe?
JASON: Mmm-hmm...see, you're at almost a four now, down from 11-almost-platinum, so we're going to have to do [INSERT SCIENTIFIC SOUNDING STYLIST MUMBO JUMBO] with some [MORE CHEMICALLY SOUNDING TERMS] to bring you to a nice, warm 5 with some [STYLIST TERM]-y overtones. And all of this without using any permanent color.
ME: Cool! So...does all of that mean that next time I come in, we can start going lighter again? Like, kinda back on the road to being blonde?
JASON: (shaking his head like a parent telling me I can't stay up past my bedtime) No.
ME: Oh. Okay. But...
JASON: (now speaking like a FIRM parent telling me I can't stay up past my bedtime) NO. Kitty. Brunette for six months. Remember?
ME: (Sheepish) Yeah...I guess I remember...

Jason always keeps me in line.

adam's thoughts

ADAM: So, what made you decide to dye your hair brown? Dark for winter?
ME: Well, no, actually, I'm writing a book about being blonde. It's called Undercover Blonde. So, the brown hair is part of the research. What do you think? Do you like me better as a blonde? Or as a brunette?
ADAM: I don't know, I like it both ways.
ME: Be honest. Don't just say you like it better brown because you feel bad.
ADAM: I don't know. It looks good.
ME: Thanks. That's really helpful feeedback. I'll be sure to record that in my notes.

It is a few hours later, and now we are kind of busy. I am new and still getting my bearings. I am not exactly in the weeds but my mind is about as far away from my hair as it could get.

ADAM: You look less ditzy.
ME: Excuse me?
ADAM: With your hair brown, you just seem less ditzy. You were a lot ditzier when you were blonde.
ME: Oh, so you used to think I was a ditz? Kinda dumb, perhaps?
ADAM: Yeah. Kind of.
ME: Thanks. That is helpful, Adam. truly.

Hey, at least he's honest.

bad tips because you're pretty

I am a writer and a book publicist and because these jobs don't pay me nearly enough for me to make a living, for three nights out of every week, I am also a waitress.

It's going on 8 years now that I've been waiting tables in some capacity to pay all the bills that my chosen career won't, and since that career is finally progressing at a satisfying clip, I am just beginning to think that the end may be in sight...However, I am not there yet. All of this is quite alright with me because, in the restaurant where I work is a cash cow, and I can also use it as my personal human nature laboratory, a.k.a. the perfect setting within which I may conduct my little blonde vs. brunette experiment. In the month of February alone I have waited on almost 400 people. I'm certain that in just this month, I have come into direct and intimate contact with more judgement leveling strangers than most people who work in offices with cubes and water coolers and the like. Each and everyone of these unsuspecting patrons is my own personal guinea pig, and every single night that I work, these customers unwittingly provide me with vast amounts of information about human nature itself. The blonde/brunette thing is really just the tip of the iceberg. I could write a whole, book called Undercover Waitress. It would be a lot longer and a lot more depressing, I'm sure.

The trendy tapas restaurant where I work is always busy. We don't take reservations which means that we usually have at least a few tables full right off the bat when we open at 5:30--the after work crowd, old people who eat absurdly early, or people who are smart enough to realize that if they don't stake their claim before we even open, they will never get a table. This past Friday was no exception. Yet for some inexplicable reason, on this particular Freaky Friday, my section was predominantly populated by women. Contentious women, difficult women, and competitive women, kinda bitchy women. Here's an example of how the one of those women spoke to me when I approached her table to say hello:

ME: Hi, how are you this evening? Welcome. Can I start you off with a drink? A glass of wine or a cocktail?
DARK-HAIRED WOMAN AT TABLE 46: (Curtly) No. We just sat down. We haven't even looked. (She glares up at me until I back away, mumbling something like "Okay, sure, settle in, take your time, there's really no rush...)

It was a lovely way to start off our rapport, and ordinarily would have inspired me to be just as curt back. Curiously, I was feeling pretty zen about my life on Friday, and despite the fact that this woman's curt tone stung, I was able to shake it off as I walked away from the table. Sure, fine, the dark-haired woman at table 46 is a bitch, I thought to myself. It's Friday night and before long she'll be gone and before long this night will be over and I'll be $300 richer. Maybe I'll buy myself some new jeans. Ooh, I'd better call Shanna to see who's got the good sales right now...

As though on autopilot I slipped instantly into a formal, hands off approach with table 46. I spoke precisely and knowledgeably while talking with them about the menu, acted polite yet aloof while taking their order. Save the friendliness, the schmooziness, and the big, bright smiles for other tables, I thought, feeling proud of myself for conserving my energy. Show those big doe eyes to the tables occupied by men with money, who can be easily beguiled by such charm.

I was feeling inexplicably fine about the situation with table 46, and felt even better when I vented for just a quick second to my female co-worker, Sarah:

ME: Table 46 needs to calm down with her attitude. It's not my fault I'm prettier/thinner/younger than she is.
SARAH: Ugh, I hate that! Seriously, it's not your fault.

About 10 minutes after greeting the bitchy brunette at table 46, my section filled up. From that moment on, I was sufficiently busy that I completely forgot to feel phased by her cold attitude. I kept my visits to the table to an efficient minimum. Soon enough, the women were looking at dessert menus, and shortly thereafter, I was dropping their check. The damage hovered around $80.

I did not think about the woman at table 46 again until I picked up their check 15 minutes later, to enter the tip into the computer, and close their tab out for good. Good riddance. But when I opened the check presenter, I did a double take:

The bitch only left me $9.

I squinted my eyes and looked at the tab more closely. Maybe I read it wrong and she'd actually left me $19. Ha, as if. No matter how closely I looked, there was just one number scrawled in the "Tip" line: a fat, round loop bobbed precariously atop a curling, comma stem.

Whatever, I thought. Bitch. Fifteen-percent-er...No, wait a minute, that's not even 15%. $9 on $80-something is barely even 10%...a pathetically low tip, the kind that you usually reserved for terrible service. Was my service terrible? Had I done something wrong? Quickly I rehashed the the details of our interaction in my head:

• I greeted the table promptly.
• My beverage, bread, and water service was equally prompt.
• Their food came out quickly...but not too quickly for tapas.
• I checked on them several times during their meal to make sure they were enjoying everything...I even said things like, "Are you enjoying your chopped salad and corn on the cob?" I mean, who says that?
• Their sangria glasses never went empty.

There were no screw-ups, no complaints, nothing at all to write home about, on either end so far as I could tell. I am most certainly a proud person, but I am also an unflinchingly self-critical person, and the first to accuse myself when my performance, as a waitress or otherwise, is sub-par. And no matter how scrutinously I went over table 46's dinner in my head, I could see no reason for the unjustly bad tip.

I walked back by table 46, on my way to the furthest corner of my section, table 50, where a party of four had just been seated. I looked closely at their hair, their clothes, the Crow's feet and frown lines that were just beginning to crease their faces. The women betrayed none of the stereotypical red flags of bad tippers: they weren't old, they didn't seem like they were from the 'burbs, they weren't from Europe. They were dressed in nice, if pedestrian, casual Friday outfits, and they weren't acting coarse, like people who'd never dined in a real, live restaurant before. Judging by the Louis Vuitton wallet the dark-haired woman had so prominently displayed on the corner of the table, she could certainly afford to leave at least a few more dollars for her nice, sweet, hard-working waitress.

Why??? I thought, shaking my head as I passed their table. Why the shitty tip?

We were pretty busy by the time the women from table 46 got up to go. Still, I couldn't help but cast a few imploring glances at them as they lingered, finishing up their sangria and their insipid conversation, before heading off to what I had ultimately decided were boring lives. They appeared in no rush to kick off another, presumably because their weekends were lame and spent undoubtedly, alone. What better fate could possibly lay in store for such a cheap woman?

Later that night, as lay in bed, trying to erase the details of an otherwise non-descript Friday evening from my head, it dawned on me: perhaps the bitchy, shitty comment I made to Sarah about table 46 was more on the money than I could have guessed. Perhaps she did think that I was younger/thinner/prettier than she, perhaps in her mind that is my fault, and an offense worth punishing with an embarrassingly small tip.

Do people actually leave bad tips because their server is pretty?

Yes, I decided as I began to drift off. Really, honestly, I think they do.

the pitfalls of dying one's hair DARK

Highlights are a real pain in the ass.

It took no more than two visits to Jason in the very early stages of my blonding experiment for me to realize this. They are expensive, they are a bitch to maintain, and if you go as light as I was for a time, your roots seem to show up almost instantly just two weeks after coloration. If you are a finicky Virgo like me, and you like things to be neat and orderly and seek to maintain a certain aesthetic at all times, such transgressions are bound to drive you nuts. The only way to truly keep up with your roots is to return to the salon once a month (six weeks at the most) to endure yet another three hour foil treatment that will leave your wallet at least $150 lighter.

But I loved my blonde hair in spite of all this...LOVED it, almost unconditionally. Do you want to know how I know this to be true? Because every second of every minute that I spent in Jason's chair at the salon felt worth it to me. Sure, on the one hand I had to be there because I was working on a book about my experiences, and truly, I had no choice but to keep up with my roots if I were to walk through my life as an honest to goodness blonde. But in addition to all that, I really believed, deep in my heart, that I looked more lovely as a blonde. Of course, after a year of this color-happy madness, I was getting a little tired of the whole process. And, in those final, traumatic moments before I went brown, as I prepared to grieve the loss of my lovely goldilocks as one might grieve the loss of a favorite childhood teddy bear, the only thought that could console me was this:

At least I'll finally save myself some money on highlights.

I was smoking the color crack for a few months there are the end of my blonde year. It had gotten to the point where I'd sit in Jason's chair on a monthly basis and beg: "can we go lighter this time? Please? Please? Just a little bit lighter? Just a little bit closer to platinum?" I just wanted to keep pushing the envelope, but somewhere, deep down inside I knew: my hair was starting to look really tired. On bad days, which were becoming more and more frequent it looked frizzy and fried. To be honest, it was probably suffering at the hands of my blondeness obsession.

So, as I faced my day of brunette reckoning and tried to make peace with it all, I'd imagine myself like this: strutting out of the salon, long, freshly dyed brown hair streaming behind me, looking soft, shiny, and healthier than ever. The sun hat had so loved my blonde locks would continue to glint on my hair, only now it would make the brown locks shimmer, accentuating hints of auburn and rich chestnut with it's rays...

And you know what? At first, that's exactly what happened. My hair looked healthy and gorgeous and full and healthy again. Somehow it appeared that the brown hair dye had managed to make my sick hair well again. "Good riddance to fried blonde frizz," I'd think, as I brushed my shiny hair in the mirror. It looked longer to me, fuller, and bigger than ever before. And I loved it.

And all of this brunette magic lasted for exactly four days. Then I made a terrible mistake: I washed it.

Did you know that dark hair dye fades when you wash your hair? Within three washes, my hair looked dull and sad, and those ends I'd friend from so many bleaching processes faded to a mousy, brooding brown. Then, just a few weeks later, these sad, light brown roots (a.k.a. my natural hair) started to reveal itself. I found myself right back in Jason's chair about a month after my initial double process.

"I tried to warn you," Jason said. "It's going to fade because that's just what happens. Your hair is ridiculously porous from all the bleaching you've already put it through. Plus, I'm using SEMI-permanent because you've demanded that I turn it back to blonde in just six months. This is what happens, honey. Unless you want to chop your hair off and wait for it to grow out, it's semi-permanent or nothing."

*Sigh* So there you go. There is truly no rest for the color happy.

olivia and the brunette

Olivia is Tanis’s baby. She is just sixteen months old. Tanis and Adam had her just one day after my birthday last year. Several months ago, when Olivia was still in a phase where she was more amenable to being held by everyone and anyone, she came to an all staff meeting at Tremont, and I wrote this post about her. She was fascinated by me, and wouldn’t stop staring at me, and at first I assumed this meant that she understood that I was her Aunt Kitty and that I loved her and thought she was pretty much the cutest most beautiful little peanut in the world. I assumed, in short, that we had an understanding, that we had a connection, I mean after all, she was born just one day after my birthday—and that’s just so special. It wasn’t until Tanis passed her to me to hold for a second as she fished around for something in her bag that I realized that Olivia’s fascination was less about an understanding, intimate connection, and more about a fascination with the unknown. As I bounced her on my hip, her little eyes lit up. She reached out her tiny little nectarine fist, grabbed a chunk of my bright blonde hair and tugged, as babies do.

About six weeks ago, Tremont 647 turned 10. We had a big party at the restaurant, and Olivia of course made an appearance, with parents in tow. Once again, I was tasked with holding the baby for a brief second, while Mommy put down her coat and got something out of her purse. I took the little peanut in my arms, hoping to bond with her again, to forge a more substantial connection than the last time I saw her and she tugged my hair. After all, I hope to be a mom myself someday, and I’d like to believe that I am naturally one of those people who is just “good with kids.” These hopes were quickly dashed when Olivia started crying instantly. She wasn’t just fussing, either, she was really, truly crying, and her screams just got louder and louder, until mommy finally rescued her from the tall blonde lady who it seemed was taking her hostage. As I passed the baby back to Tanis, she made an apologetic comment about the baby being “a real pill today” and given to crying if “anybody besides mommy tried to hold her.” But I knew what time it was: Olivia was letting us know that she doesn’t really like blondes. In her opinion, they’re unfamiliar (mommy is a brunette and daddy is bald) and they’re scary. Hey, at least she’s honest.

But could there be a more perfect test than another encounter with baby Olivia, just minutes after Jason had finished dying my hair brown? Olivia was one of the first people I encountered as a brunette last month. She, mommy and daddy were at the restaurant, dropping off mommy off for work, and were just about to say goodbye when I walked in. Both Tanis and Adam acted appropriately shocked—they gasped, their faces lit up, and they said, “oh my god, Kitty, your hair! I like it!” They looked at me with wonder as they tried to make sense of the new Kitty.

Olivia, who is almost walking now, was also quite intrigued. Tethered to her mom with one hand, and pointing at me with the other, she made her way across the room on her little 16 month old legs (with surprising speed.) She walked right up to me (with mom’s help, of course), and was undeterred when I waved and knelt down to say hi. Instead of screaming, or looking at me with her usual mistrust, she giggled and smiled, as if to say “what’s up.” She then reached up to me with her right hand, and let me hold her hand on the one side as mom held on to her left hand, and we walked around the restaurant. We went on a little adventure, all around the front bar area of 647 and back into the narrow row of tables that stretches back in front of the kitchen line. The baby wanted to keep going, but just as we were making our way to the further back corner, daddy came over and told Olivia it was time to go.

About a week later, Adam came into the restaurant for dinner. We didn’t really talk because I was kinda busy, but as he was passing me on his way to the bathroom, he tilted, smiled, and said: “You know what Kitty? I think I agree with Olivia. I think she’s right—I think I like you better as a brunette.”

6 a.m. and I can't sleep...

So, I have been a brunette for almost a month now. And my whole life is completely different. Of course, that is in part due to a conflux of other changes that have conspired to keep me very busy, hence the lack of new posts in the past few weeks. I’ve changed waitressing jobs and have left Tremont 647 after almost 5 years of loyal service. I started a new job at Toro, the place where I used to fill in on occasion as a hostess, and where I conducted lots of research on blondes, and will continue to conduct research as a brunette. I will also be moving into a new apartment with Marissa, the best friend who USED to live in Italy and just moved home to Boston to go to grad school, and Alyssa, my very good friend who manages Toro. Between all of this I have somehow ended up working almost every day and night of the past two weeks, and though I am scheduled to do the same this weekend, and am in fact scheduled to work both places on Friday night, I will somehow also need to make moving happen. It’s been an intense three weeks, and has left me with no respite in which to reflect upon my life. And now, instead of sleeping heavily and soundly until my alarm goes off in about an hour and I need to get up and live the dream a little more, I am lying here wide awake, staring at the ceiling, thinking about the myriad of things I need to handle before I can relax and superimpose a sense of routine on my new life. The Mathematician had to get up early today, at 5 minutes to 6 a.m., and left at 5 minutes to 7 a.m., and since we all know from this previous post that I can’t really sleep at all when he’s not in the bed with me, I am up too.

So, where to begin the reflections on my hair? It’s elicited such a reaction from people, and it’s been really fun to observe. For your reading pleasure, another post on Olivia…

the brunette in the shirtdress

Remember this post, which I wrote six months ago, about the blonde in the shirtdress that I saw at Toro one night last June? She was ethereal and perfect and her hair was the lightest shade of all-over platinum. Well, she became my unforgettable model of blondeness that evening. I have kept her in the back of my mind as a personal icon how to be a blonde ever since.

So, isn't it interesting that my very first night as a brunette, the very first customer that I waited on should be a brunette in a shirtdress? And she wasn't just any brunette, this girl. She was absolutely gorgeous: her deep, dark brown locks glinted with a hint of auburn, and cascaded over her shoulders and down her back to tickle her shoulder blades and her cleavage; her searing brown eyes were framed by long, perfect black lashes. She was voluptuous and sexy, a vision of perfect, palpable sex appeal. The guy she was with wasn't so bad himself--a tall, dark, and handsome type who seemed as though he probably had a lot of money. However, the brunette on his arm was the real starlet of the evening. She was polite and nice, but not in a ditzy or demure way. She exuded confidence and elegance.

"Jackpot!" I thought as I walked over to greet the table. "A pretty brunette couple being waited on by a newly christened brunette! What could be a better way to indoctrinate myself into this new club?" When I told Tony, the fabulous Brazilian busser who calls me Barbie (or used too), that she was my model as a brunette, he just looked at me. "Really, Kitty?" he said. "I don't know...you were so fabulous as a blonde, why'd you dye it anyway?" Tony is Brazilian after all, so I am totally not surprised by this reaction.

A while later, after watching the brunette in the shirtdress walk down the narrow corridor of the dining room towards the powder room, Tony just looked at me, shaking his head: "Now I know what you mean girl--she is sexy, she looks like she's walking on the catwalk!"

Who would have thought that my brunette icon, my new model of how to live in my new hair color, would be found sitting right in my station on my very first night as a brunette? I hate to be such a nerd, but I couldn't help but take it as a sign. I had, after all, tried like the dickens to get my shift covered that evening, petrified to display my new look to everyone i know in the South End without having some time to get used to it first. I mean, what if i hated it? What if I couldn't handle it and couldn't get out of Jason's chair that fateful Thursday? What if I looked ugly? How was I supposed to wait tables if the whole browning process went horribly awry? All of these thoughts raced thru my head as I dialed server after server to see if they could cover my shift on Thursday morning...

And thank goodness everyone I called ignored me, or I never would have met the brunette in the shirtdress.

vanity

Do you check your horoscope every day? I do it. Here's what astrology.com has to say about me today:

Do you know how sexy you are? Probably not, because you never have to think about it -- you're effortlessly elegant. Part of the reason you're attractive is that you have much better things to think about than how to be attractive.

First of all, thank you, astrology.com, for the lovely compliment. Does this mean you like me better as a brunette? I think it does.

Seriously, though, this leg of the project has had me thinking a lot about my vanity, my self esteem, and how these things are intertwined with the way that I look. This blonde project evolved in the first place, you see, because I wanted to see what it would feel like to embody this European standard of beauty, this blonde haired, light eyed image that is so intricately woven into the fabric of our culture as THE beauty standard. I knew when I first went undercover that I'd never be waif-thin as I should be, and I'm probably too short to really embody any sort of statuesque, model style beauty. But hair is something I can change, I already have light eyes, and I'd also always wondered what it would be like to be blonde. And so it began.

As the experiment wore one, though, I became increasingly aware of those ways that I fall short of the aforementioned beauty standard. Sure I had blonde hair and light eyes, and sure I was getting lots of attention. But my thoughts were constantly also fretting over things like my weight (Oh my god! I think I gained a pound--I'm off food for the week) and my skin (that wrinkle in between my eyebrows is growing! shit! does my health insurance cover Botox???) In reality, I am intelligent enough to know that I am a healthy weight, have healthy eating habits, and can do nothing to stave off wrinkles, aside from taking great care of my skin. But inside my head there persists a little voice, urging me on, closer and closer towards this very unhealthy notion of "perfection."

Don't believe me? Consider this quote, from a journal entry I penned the night before I dyed my hair brown:

I am nervous. And mortified. What if I hate it? What if I no longer look hot? What if it makes me look fat? What if people don’t think I’m sexy anymore? What if the Mathematician doesn’t love me anymore? What will become of me as a brunette?...

Without the blonde I think I’ll look less pretty, and I think I’ll look ordinary. On the upside, I think people will start to treat me more seriously, and perhaps be more interested in my ideas than in me being hot. But a part of me doesn’t give a shit about that. Which is at once mortifying, and brutally, truly honest.

So, it seems that once again, the stars are talking to me today. It seems that they agree that it was time for me to take a step away from that vain blonde person that I was, and spend a little time focusing on more important things. So, in honor of this decree, here's a photo of me from this morning, taken without make-up, while sitting here, writing, and drinking my coffee.




New Year, New You. Here's to brunettes in 2007!

are you freakin out right now? 'cuz that JUST happened...

I did it! Finally, I have made the conversion. I told no one it was coming, so don't be upset, blog readers. I kept my mouth shut and vowed to tell NO ONE about my decision to go brown today until I just couldn't contain myself yesterday and was left with no choice but to confess my big hair secret to a select group of randomly chosen people (my boss at 647, my mom, my roommate.)

So, here are the preliminary pics. I had to work tonight, so I've already begun to amass a throng of significant reactions...more on those tomorrow, for now, though, I want to see yours...

pictures to prove it

Last night, East Side Girl called me up to chat.

"Where the f*** are all the pics from your trip???" she asked. "You promised photos and all we get are some big wine glasses, and that's it???"

It was almost as though she didn't believe I had gone on the trip at all. Okay, she has a point. So, here are a few more pictures to prove it...



Me with my best friend in Siena at night...










Us again, looking mischievous...










Me with Prague Castle...


















The Mathematician in Cafe Mucha, one of a gazillion gorgeous Art Deco cafes in Prague. Seriously, it feels like time stopped in Prague in the early 20s, at least architechturally, and in the dining establishments and hotels. Everywhere you eat or drink it looks a little bit like the dining room on the Titanic...


How is that East Side Girl? There will be more to come, too...

I didn't recognize you...

"I didn't recognize you...you're so blonde!"

This is what a former colleague of mine said to me when I ran into him at the grocery store on Friday night. And he couldn't have known how happy that statement made me.

It was very, very nice to see Brian at Shaw's on Friday. Brian was my supervisor when I was an intern at Beacon Press back in 2003, which feels like 100 years ago now. We do this periodically--he'll pop into Tremont or I'll drop him an email by way of saying hello, and we'll catch up in a cursory way. Last time we spoke I was still acquiring books at my last job, still working at Tremont to pay the bills, and trying to call in a favor and get my friend an internship. That was maybe last March?

This time when I saw Brian, I was rushing through the aisles at the grocery store, trying to find pancetta and bucatini in preparation for the Amatriciana dish I was preparing for a special dinner with the Mathematician--our mini-Christmas before he departed to California for the holidays. I caught a glimpse of Brian out of the corner of my eye as I ran from the pasta aisle to the bacon section (yes, Shaw's has a sepcific refrigerated area labeled "BACON"), by my brain didn't register who he was until I was many, many grocery store aisles away. By then, it seemed the opportunity to make small talk had passed...until I walked right by him in the candy aisle, on my way to the check-out counter.

"Hi!" I said, walking right up to he and his partner, with a very big friendly grin on my face.

"Um...Hi," he said, casting a sidelong to his partner that said, 'Why is this crazy girl STARING at me???' Then, a second later, he realized who I actually was and said the magic words:

"Oh, it's you! How are you? I didn't recognize you...you're so blonde!"

And I felt so proud of my blonde hair. I mean, it caused him to do a double take, to stop mid-sentence, and even cast a dubious sidelong glance to his partner because he didn't know who the fuck I was! My blondiness baffled him! I was--am--so elated by this that it didn't even occur to me until now, as I sit down to write about the effect my blonde hair had on this scene, that in my mind the very, very artificial color of my very, very blonde hair overshadowed ALL of the other life changes and accomplishments that have shaped the past three years of my life. I of course filled Brian in on the latest news--my career change, my fabulous new life as a cookbook publicist, how happy I am that I no longer had to commute every day, how much I ADORE my new boss and my fun new job. But as I was chatting away, all I could think about was how I couldn't wait to go home and write in my blog about Brian's confusion and his inability to recognize me as a blonde. Even as I stood there rattling on about my career and my life changes I felt that Brian's bafflement was somehow proof positive that my theory about going blonde is true--it has made me different.

But really, my hair is about the LEAST significant thing that has changed in my life since I last worked with Brian. Since I left Beacon Press I have:

1. Gotten my first publishing job (my first REAL job) as an editorial assistant
2. Been promoted in that job and learned how to be a book editor
3. Grown dissatisfied with my job as an editor and quit
4. Started a new career as a publicist
5. Started writing a book
6. Survived the demise of my engagement, a slow collapse which included: years of patient waiting, hundreds of hours of personal & couples therapy, even more hundreds of hours of arguments, and gallons of tears
7. Supported my mom as she battled breast cancer
8. Supported my dad as he battled a myriad of heart problems
9. Fallen hopelessly in love with a Mathematician who whisked me away to Prague twice and Italy once

Yet the blonde thing is the thing I cherished most about seeing Brian? Am I a little too obsessed with the project? Or just in the habit of underselling myself? Or is it maybe that I've just got the whole thing twisted...that being blonde hasn't made me different at all, rather, that being different is what made go blonde?

brown is the new blonde?

Well, it appears that “brown” is the new “blonde” in Hollywood. And it kind of has been all fall. And I couldn’t be more annoyed.

I have purposefully been avoiding the likes of People and Us Weekly for at least 8 months now, filthy rags that they are. Don’t get me wrong, I own that are fun to read, and in the past, I have consumed them voraciously. For a time, they provided a deeply satisfying sense of joy (which I now recognize as schadenfreude) in my life whenever I hunkered down with one -- plus you can read them in the time it takes to do my entire circuit on the treadmill and the elliptical machine at the gym. I stopped reading them when my girlfriend Camilla explained to me what schadenfreude actually is. The conversation went something like this:

ME: I know the technical definition of the word schadenfreude: taking pleasure in the pain suffered by others. But I don’t get it. It seems really fucked up.
CAMILLA: Yes, I know. But everyone kind of indulges in it.
ME: Really, even me?
CAMILLA: Of course.
ME: No way. OH MY GOD (gleefully) LOOK at this picture of Britney Spears’ nasty cellulite thighs on this beach that I just found on awfulpicturesoffamouspeoplelookingugly.com. Whoa. Seriously, LOOK! It’s amazing…Ummm, what were you saying?

In an attempt to salvage whatever brain cells I have left after the long restaurant industry induced party-phase that so eloquently shape my early twenties, I stopped reading those magazines some time ago. Really, if I hadn’t, this brunette thing that everyone in Hollywood is doing would not have come as such a surprise to me.

I mean, of course I've noticed the brown ‘do being sported by the likes of Cameron Diaz, Lindsay Lohan, and that awful, alien-esque Olsen twin with their new hair. But my acknowledgement of the trend has been more…peripheral these past few months. I've been too busy working way too much and gallivanting in Europe to care what those media-whores are up to. It wasn’t until this article flashed across the sidebar of my hotmail account yesterday that I realized what is actually happening:

Brown is becoming the new blonde.

I am extremely disappointed by this because I, too, am on the cusp of converting over to the dark side. I know I faked you all out with such decrees in October, and truthfully, I’m glad I didn’t do it then, because I really wasn’t ready. I needed to go to Italy as a blonde, live a few more months as a blonde, and truly get my head around what I think of myself as a blonde.

And you know what? I’m still not ready to go brown. I am just now coming to terms with the fact that regardless of what anybody else thinks, the catcallers, the strange men on the street, the many friends, the very vocal restaurant regulars, and my family members all of whom seem to like me best as a blonde, the fact remains:

I like me better as a blonde.

Nevertheless, I want to see this experiment thru to completion, and in the New Year, I plan to eradicate the blonde, cross over finally to the brunette-side and to see for at least a few months how that other half lives. Jason and I will be setting the date this week. When and how dark will remain a secret to you all—but no worries, I will post pictures.

In any case, the recent brunette trend that has been happening in Hollywood really bugs me. Now people will think I am following in the footsteps of such odious starlets as Britney, who made headlines by going brown, then back to blonde, then back to brown again over this past weekend, and idiots like Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie.

I’m telling you all, and you read it here: I had the idea first.

"he likes blondes"

This weekend, the Mathematician and I were having brunch at Zaftigs when an adorable little boy came running up to our table and started flirting with me. He had dark brown hair and shiny brown eyes. My back was to the room and I heard his giggle before I even saw him.

"Oh, hello," I said, turning around in my chair. I looked at him for a moment, flashed him a big, friendly, big person smile and gave him a pint sized wave, flapping the fingers on my right hand up and down. He looked down at his shoes, like he was maybe a little embarrassed, as though he didn't really know what to say. Then he looked up at me again, and his face broke open into a 1,000-watt smile. He pointed at me, started clapping his hands, and erupted into a fit of giggles.

"Whoa, where you going, kiddo?" said a dark-haired, dark eyed woman, who must have been his mom. "Gosh you're fast! I'm so sorry," she said to me as she wrapped one arm around the little boy's waist and picked him up to take him back to where his family was waiting together for a table. "He likes blondes," she said, shrugging.

"That's okay," I said, gesturing towards the Mathematician. "So does he."

I'm sure the mom was just making a joke...but is it possible that this little boy has already developed a prediliction for blondes? He couldn't have been more than 18 months old, and could barely even talk! But when I looked around at the other people dining around us, it seemed true. Every other diner in our section had dark hair: light brown, reddish chestnut, jet black. I was the lone blonde, and the only person in the restaurant who piqued his interest. Is it possible that he's already got a "type"?

Prague dreams

I hope everyone out there in blogland had a happy thanksgiving!

While visting family in Delaware I find myself telling everyone about our trip. It has me thinking about Prague, which is just the most beautiful city. It's a somber, elegant city that worms it's way into your heart and your psyche. At least it did for me. I find myself thinking about it and longing for it, even though I've only ever been a tourist there, and have never gotten down with it the way the locals do, the way we did in Roma.

Here are some fun pictures from our favorite restaurant, Restaruant Davide, which we went to on our very first night in Prague during our visit in 2005.

Let me set the scene...I had been dating the Mathematician for a month and a half when he invited me to accompany him to Prague, where he would be giving a lecture on cryptography. At first I said no, flatly, I cou;dn't possibly come along. I was still reeling from the break-up of my engagement, and I felt like I barely knew the Mathematician. But the more and more I thought about it the more a trip to Europe seemed like a viable option, an adventure, something brazen and impetuous that I, a not-so-brave, very cautious and careful person, was capable of doing. Deep down I think I knew it was the only way to separate myself from my current life, from Boston and all of the ghosts of relationships past. It would be the only way to co-exist with this new person, who I was quite sure I was falling in love with, against a neutral, exotic backdrop.

Our very first night in the city, jet-lagged and confused, we stumbled upon restaurant Davide, thanks to a listing in Rick Steves' Prague & the Czech Republic 2005. Here we were introduced to Czech cuisine done fine dining style, with all the elegance of formal French ettiquette and service. We ate the most delicious, exquisite cabbage soup I have ever eaten: it was salty and sour unforgettably rich and satisfying. We ate a trio of game, inclduing Wild Boar, rabbit, and the most decadent leg of duck confit I've tasted, before or since. It was lavish, and because the dollar is worth so much more than the Czech crown, it cost little more than a full meal with wine at the upscale bistro where I work.



But by far the most enchanting thing about Davide is the fact that they inexplicably serve all of their ice wine, port, cordials, and cognac in irregularly sized, enormous glasses. We saw on customer sipping a honey colored liquid from a glass that had the normal sized tulip shape of a pinot noir glass, but a stem as long as my forearm. We watched as the waiter liberated another glass from an elaborate Louis XIV style cupboard: it was a snifter that was literally as big as my head.

Returning to Davide was one part of my trip that I was so, so excited about. This time we brought my camera, we were sure to sample drinks from glasses of both sizes, and here are the pictures to prove it.



So here's to Prague...city of inexplicably big glasses, salty meats, and love...

most beautiful

Today, as I was walking down Tremont Street to Mass Ave. on my way to pick up some over-priced produce at Bread & Circus..er...Whole Foods, a guy walking by told me that I was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, "like, ever."

Well, he didn't so much tell me this as he screamed it in the general vicinity of my ear as I was passing by, craning his neck and making an awful, slightly howling sound behind me as I walked on.

It was really an interesting compliment.

Invisible Blonde

I’m back! First of all, I am a total delinquent in posting, and how silly of me for even thinking that I could post while away. Duh. It’s bad enough that I had to work while traveling (just an hour or so a day, but still), the last thing I felt I could make time for while hotfooting it around the continent was more sitting in front of the computer, even if it was to write, which is something I love. Instead, I detailed the nuances of my blondeness in Italy and Prague a little pink journal. How cute.

I’ve got so much to ruminate upon from the trip, but the abbreviated blanket statement I can make about how blondes fare in Italy is this:

Blondes brunettes, redheads, whatever—you are completely invisible as a woman Italian culture if you are with a man.

If you are NOT with a man, however, but walking down the street with a girlfriend, or heaven forbid, by yourself, you will be lavished with lots of attention, freakish amounts of attention, so much attention in fact that you may be left wondering if you have something on your face or if you’ve accidentally tucked your skirt into your panties and are now flashing all of Rome and the joke is on you.

I can only conjecture that this two-faced sexual harassment happens for the obvious reason that the harasser, who I will refer to as Primate A because behavior like this is truly for the animals, would never disrespect a female in the presence of her boyfriend, Primate B, for fear that Primate B would come to his sweetie’s defense and kick the living shit out of him. Or maybe it’s more subtle than that—maybe men just share an understood, mutual respect for each other that they’d never want to sacrifice, no matter how hot or blonde the woman in question. In any case, this Jekyll and Hyde behavior is something that is a given in my normal life in America as well, and was also true when I lived in Ireland, and I can only imagine that it is as universal as the human inability to subsist without water. And because of all this, our brothers, our boyfriends, and our fathers, no matter how sweet and how sensitive, will never really know what it’s like to be us.

Anyway, the only reason I bring this two-faced behavior up is because in Italy, it was so dramatically pronounced that I felt virtually invisible while I was out and about in Italia with the Mathematician. We’d walk into a coffee bar and the barista would view me with the same measured stare that he seemed to be leveling at all the customers. “Due caffe,” he’d say, with the same businesslike tone he used with the Mathematician. He never cracked a flirtatious smile, or even raised a suggestive eyebrow.

At first I felt silly—both for extending the life of my blondeness so as to be blonde in Italy, and for spending the money on re-blonding to make sure my hair was as bright as possible before I left. “Is my experiment really yielding no results? Is everything that I’d heard about Italianos being abundantly vocal in their praise of anything possessing a vagina a lie? Or perhaps Italian men are impervious to blondes, preferring the dark hair/dark-eyed/olive skinned look of southern Italian women?” Then I had a terrible thought: perhaps I’d somehow…I don’t know…lost it? Maybe I am only easy on the eyes in America?

I started to realize the gig was up somewhere during our first full day in Roma, while the Mathematician and Marissa and I were doing a little sightseeing. We traversed crowded streets, so thronged with tourists and Romans going about the business of their late-Friday afternoon that it was difficult to distinguish us as a group, traveling as three. As we walked I heard comments, whispered to me under the breath, in Italian and I could only understand a handful of words with familiar roots like bella. The minute the Mathematician would emerge from the crowd, appear by my side, or wrap his hand around mine, the comments would cease, the searching eyes of their speaker cast down towards the cobblestone street or skyward, towards the buildings over my head, or occasionally they’d simply watch us pass, innocuous and silent, perhaps relieved that the Mathematician hadn’t heard a word.

Something I did not consider before I left was how vulnerable it feels to spend two weeks in a country where you don’t speak the language. It’s exciting and exotic, for sure, but when you first arrive, after you’ve stumbled off the plane in your jetlagged stupor, been made to feel foolish by airport personnel, taxi cab drivers who charge you twice what you owe because of your American accent, and coffee bar staff who can’t understand why you don’t understand their simple, basic, Italian question about your coffee and pastry purchase, it can leave you a bit raw. For this reason, experiment, project, and book aside, at least in the beginning of the trip, I relished the silence.

blonde again...at last!

Jason did it! He made me blonde again! Bless him! I feel so much better! Now, I HAD adjusted to the darker version of my hair, mind you. However, this is much more what I am going for. And this will most likely have been my last visit, so I'm going to relish every second and every strand.

As I was sitting in the chair, having my hair blown out, Jason and I overheard the girl in the chair next to me asking HER stylist about going brunette. "I'm thinking of going darker," she said, "what do you think?" She had just a few light layers, and they looked like they needed to be touched up or put out of their misery (she had obviously only visited for a cut that afternoon.) So, her stylist went on and on about the deep chestnut color she could do, or maybe even an auburn.

Jason just looked at me in th mirror and said, under his breath: "She's gonna hate it."

A few minutes later, I heard HER stylist say, "I'm really not into going too blonde." Jason just looks at me again. "I mean, I think it's really easy to end up looking washed out."

Half an hour later, as Jason curled and styled and put finishing touches on my new goldie locks, I couldn't help but wonder if that was exactly what was happening on my own head.

What do you guys think? More pictures (from Italy and Prague, of course) to come...

We leave in half an hour! I'm simply bubbling...

bellissima!

I leave in one week for Italy! I couldn't be more ecstatic. I plan to keep a detailed journal of what my experiences are as a blonde over in Roma & Firenze, and I'll post here as often as I can while abroad.

We're also going to Prague (Praha), which should provide a very different back-drop for the experiment. According to one of my new fave bloggers, blondeness is so much more common than any other hair color in Prague. We shall see how the two European cities stack up.

There will be another visit to Jason before I go, next Tuesday, to touch up those roots and maybe even go a little lighter. If I can convince him to brighten me up, that is...