more pictures of France

We took almost no pictures in Paris, and did not visit a single art museum.

We did visit the infamous catacombs, an old quarry that became a communal grave during the 1800s. It reminded me of the basement at Toro...

...only in the catacombs, you can actually stand up straight.

* * * * *

We ate a lot of cheese, organ meet, and had a 3-star Michelin dining experience...















...It was almost as good as the Nutella crepe we ate from the crepe cart at midnight by the Eiffel Tower.

* * * * *

I made the Mathematician visit a whole bunch of open air markets, because I am obsessed with them, even thought we saw pretty much the same thing every time, even at this one in Lyon...

...but he was a good sport about it.

* * * * *

This is Mougins, the most special town on the Cote d'Azur...

...it is where my friend Alexander's family lives. And it really does look like that.

* * * *

This is the view from Chateau de Chevre D'Or, our hotel in Eze...

...this is where I want to be right now.

Bon soir, et bon weekend...

unforgettable

I am sitting on the hearth of the fireplace at Toro, doing my cash out with my fellow servers. A former employee who now works as a realtor, has been sitting at the bar with a friend having cocktails, for the past hour or so. I caught him looking at me three or four times earlier, before I knew who he was. (My initial thought: "Why is that tall blond guy staring at me? Do I have something on my face?") Eventually he comes over to where I sit with the other servers to say hi. He takes a seat right next to me on the hearth.

BLOND REALTOR GUY: Who are you?
ME: I'm Kitty. Who are you?
BLOND REALTOR GUY: I'm Emile.
ME: Hey, I know you! Yes, I met you one day on the street when you were walking by my apartment. You came right up to me and my friend while we were sitting outside on the stoop and asked us how we liked living here. You said that you were the person who originally listed our apartment. You didn't show it to us, but you gave the listing to my realtor, Joe.
REALTOR: Really? I don't remember that at all. I don't think so, that wasn't me.
ME: Yes, it definitely was. I'm sure of it. How many tall blond realtors named Emile could there possibly be in the South End? It was you.
REALTOR: Nah. I would have remembered that. Because I most definitely would have remembered meeting you. (He nods and looks up at me flirtatiously while tilting his head down to take a sip of red wine. The fact is, I've seen this guy before, and I've talked to him before, and I also had to call him once to ask him about something pertaining to my lease, which means that I've even spoken on the phone to him before. But at that time, I was still a brunette.)
ME: Yeah, you're right, BLOND REALTOR GUY. I'm sure you would have remembered meeting me.

Apparently as a blonde, I'm unforgettable.

alchemy

Well, it's roughly a month and a half since I became accidentally blonde again, and I am finally ready to talk about it.

Let's zoom back to that fateful May afternoon, just a few days before I was to head off to New York City for Book Expo, a very big publishing industry convention packed with important business meetings for myself and my boss. I wanted to touch up the color and the roots before I left--this always helps me feel confident, cool and collected before a big work thing--so I booked an appointment with Jason about a week before the show.

"What are we doing today, Kitty?" Jason says, as I settle into his favorite chair at the head of the color table. He says this every time I visit.

"You tell me, you're the magician!" I say, as I do every time I visit. "But, if it's possible, do you think we can start the transition back to blonde? I know it will take some time, but I think I'm ready to go at least a little bit lighter."

"You read my mind!" he says. "Back to blonde we go!"

My original transformation to blonde was so simple. We started back in 2005 by subtly highlighting my naturally light brown hair. Each time I returned to the salon to have my roots treated, we'd go a bit lighter, and a bit lighter, and lighter still, until, POOF!--one day I was practically platinum. It was glorious, and revelatory. Sitting in the chair, head swaddled in a towel, waiting for Jason to unwrap my locks and comb them out and style them into a movie-star like coif was like opening a fun, blonde present. SURPRISE! Today you're blonder than you've ever been!

I so loved that feeling. I look forward to chasing it all over again as we transition back to blonde this Spring.

So, Jason gets to work, painting little tiny bits of my hair with goopy bleach and wrapping it up into an impossible number of crinkly foil wrappers. I know the drill, I've done this before. He paints and wraps. We chat about his life and his boyfriend, my life and my boyfriend, and how much more fun we're going to have when I have become famous & he is part of my entourage...or when he becomes famous and I am part of his entourage. This step takes about a half hour, then he steps away to attend to another client while the bleach does it's magic.

My hair cooks and I read Vogue. I make friends with a brunette woman at the color table who wants to know all about the project. I tell her what it has been like to be blonde. Eventually we run out of things to say, and I pick up a recent issue of Glamour.

Periodically the other stylists come by to say hello. Wendy, Megan, Dan: they all know me by now, and they always say hi and ask about the book. "What are you guys doing today?" they ask.

"Embarking on the road back to blonde," I reply, flashing them a big, about to be blonde soon grin. "I'm back! Or will be in a few months. I think we're probably just going a tad lighter today? I don't really know."

"Really???" Wendy says, a faint cloud of concern flitting across her face. "Already??? That was fast."

"Wow, that's...well, that's kind of a big deal," says Dan, looking surprised.

"HUH, okay," says Megan. "Well," and she ends our conversation the way the other two stylists had before her:

"Good luck."

...words you never want to hear from your doctor, dentist, or hair stylist.

Periodically, Jason returns to unwrap a foil, sneak a peek at my hair. It crinkles in my ears as he unwraps, re-wraps. "More time," he says, walking away to see a different client. I read more Glamour.

Ten minutes later, Jason returns, takes a look. "Ready?" I say. "Nope," he shakes his head. This happens two or three more times. I'm getting bored. I am just about to move onto an issue of Real Simple, when one of the assistants beckons me over to the washing station. Finally! The grand unveiling. I am filled with anticipation as I dip my head back into the sink. She makes a great ruckus as she unwraps those millions of tiny foils with quick, deft hands. She washes, rinses, conditions, rinses, deep conditions, waits five minutes, rinses, then wraps my head up into a towel.

Five minutes later I am back in Jason's chair, where he un-swaddles my head to reveal...

A kaleidoscope of colors.

From ends to roots I see:

• Dark brown on the bottom, the same color I was when I walked in today,
• Salmon pink in the middle, the oldest hair, which has been platinum, brown, auburn, almost black, and now en route to blonde again
• A two-inch ring of brassy orange circling my crown, the two inches of virgin hair that grew out over the brunette winter, and has only ever been dyed brown
• An inch of searing, albino white at the roots, the newest virgin hair that has never been dyed, reacting violently platinum to copious amounts of bleach

Wow. Guess I'm going back to blonde--or something like it--today.

What ensues is referred to as a "double process," so another round of Jason mixing chemicals, painting colors on my hair, foiling, waiting, reading Vogue again, getting bored, shooting the breeze with the other stylists, getting bored when they walk away to deal with their clients, and eventually staring into space by myself at the color table, wishing I could be anywhere but here. I have heard the CD go thru this rotation already, and I am sick of Joan Jett and the Hair soundtrack. My scalp is hot, and is starting to itch & burn at the roots. I wonder if I'm going to get one of those mysterious and inexplicable rashes that I occasionally get when my skin encounters harsh things, like soap or cat hair.

Poor Jason. He is swamped with other clients and I can tell the chemistry experiment that is my hair is working his last nerve. He enlists Dan to help, and they work tirelessly to make my now 2-tone hair look normal. By the time I am finally done with the second round of washing, rinsing, conditioning, rinsing, deep conditioning, rinsing and blow drying, I have been here for a whopping six hours.

And my hair is 2-tone. The top has achieved a lovely light, ashy sort of blonde, however the bottom half...well, we never went there with the bleach. It's the same dark auburn hue that it was when I walked in here at 3 p.m. I have a huge, important business trip coming up. And my hair looks like something you'd wear to a punk rock show.

I feel exhausted as I walk out of the salon, completely disoriented, and a little bit helpless. Jason is going to touch me up before my trip next week, but truthfully the last thing I want to do is be anywhere near that color table. I am mulling all of this over as I pass a gaggle of kids from the project down the street, who couldn't be more than 12-years-old.

"Hey, you want to suck on a frosty nipple???" one of them yells out to me. I glance at him out of the corner of my eye. He is eating an ice cream cone, and probably feeling like a big tough guy for degrading a woman more than twice his age in front of all his friends.

Awesome. I've been blonde for exactly ten minutes and I'm already being sexually harassed...by a child.

Am I ready for this? This blondeness? The aggressive, entitled sexual harrassment that comes with it?

No. I certainly am not.

hiatus

So, as those of you who read this blog regularly have probably noticed, I haven't posted anything new for you in exactly a month. This is because I have been on hiatus. First my brother had a heart attack. He is only 39 years old. He is fine, but it was terrifying. Then my computer died. It was the hard drive and I lost everything. No, I did not have any of it backed up. In this day and age of simple, powerful technology, why would I have done an intelligent thing like that? Then, I went on vacation in France. It was amazing and lovely and relaxing, a much needed respite from the 2 jobs I work and the book I am trying to write. France was everything you'd expect it to be: narrow streets, baguettes and croissants, wine, lots of French language practice, cathedrals, castles, and chateaux. I was gone for 2 whole weeks and I still did not want to come back.

But like all things good and bad in life, the vacation ended, my other computer is back, and now it's time for me to get back to work.

But first, here's a picture of me in front of the Mediterranean Sea.

blondes vs. brunettes

More marketing at it's best! Since I don't have a TV (which really must change, since after all, I am a publicist) I only recently learned about the new marketing campaign for Sunsilk Color Boost. Here's the jist: marketing mavens at Mindshare Chicago have designed a totally interactive campaign to literally pit blondes and brunettes against one another, complete with TV ads like these that feature blondes and brunettes talking trash about each other, print ads (none of which I've seen yet), tie-ins to things like MySpace, and an interactive website called Colorshowdown.com, where blondes and brunettes can log in, choose a team, and "compete" to end this age-old question.

Isn't marketing fascinating?

Here's the lead to the press release I found on Imedia.com:

In order to answer the age-old question of who is better: blondes or brunettes?, Sunsilk created the Color Showdown, a campaign to ignite conversation about hair color rivalry while launching our newest line of products: the Sunsilk Color Collections.

Who is better? Blondes or brunettes? This first sentence struck me, because it is so basic. For two years now I have been pondering the "idea" of being blonde, images of blondes, commonly held notions of blondeness, my own deeply rooted feelings about being blonde, etc. To me, hair color has become a complicated web of questions. Blonde? Brunette? What does it all mean, to the world and to me, personally? And how can I work all of the many ideas and experiences I've had living as both into a cohesive, readable, 256-288 page book?

Left in the hands of a marketing team, however, there is really only one question: Who is better?

I was raised not to play favorites. I am one of four children and I have a twin brother, and no matter how many times I've tried to get my parents to confess to me that yes, I in fact was both the favorite twin AND the best child overall, it always yielded the same response:

"I love you ALL equally. You are ALL special and different and my favorite. I love ALL of you the best."

Sometimes my mom would answer "Well, you're our favorite daughter" (I am the only daughter), or "You're the best writer in the family" (I am the only writer in the family), but her and my father's message was always in it's essence the same: "You are all equally good and equally valued." In light of this, I find it audacious of Sunsilk Color Collections to so blatantly ask the world to play favorites on the question of blondes or brunettes.

On second thought, I suppose, Sunsilk probably does view brunettes and blondes equally. As long as women are spending money on their products, I'm sure the CEOs of their parent company Unilever will happily say, "Blondes & brunettes, we love ALL of you the best."

obsequious

Are you familiar with this word? I wasn't until an older co-worker of mine used it to describe me. I smiled and nodded and said, "Oh, thank you very much, you are too kind, you're making me blush." Then I got home and looked it up in the dictionary:

ob·se·qui·ous : /əbˈsikwiəs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uhb-see-kwee-uhs] –adjective

1.	characterized by or showing servile complaisance or deference; fawning: an obsequious bow.

2.	servilely compliant or deferential: obsequious servants.

3.	obedient; dutiful.

I was pissed.

"SERVILE? Do she think I act SERVILE???" I thought. "Maybe at my waitressing job, where I literally am a SERVER, but in my professional, 9-5 desk job? Where I wear high heels every day and use words like 'corporate restructuring' and 'P&L statement' and 'Q3 and Q4'? Is that really how I seem to my bosses and colleagues? At their beckon-call, ready FAWN over their achievements or honor them with the likes of an OBSEQUIOUS BOW?"

Sadly, she was right. At that point in my life and at that point in my career I'd developed this awful habit of "YES-ing' everybody to death:

YES, I will send that fax for you.
YES, I will pick up your lunch.
YES, I will take on the work that you should be be doing because you are too "busy" (a.k.a. incompetent/lazy) to do it yourself.

I YES-ed myself into over-working myself at all times and wondered why I constantly felt taken for granted.

After spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars on therapy, I have learned to be less obsequious with people. It's a constant battle for me, but I've gotten much better about it. I use little words like "NO" a lot more often:

NO, I cannot get that done by 5 o'clock.
NO, I cannot work extra hours this week.

And it has been difficult, but I have even found ways to work this less-obsequious persona into my servile waitressing job:

NO I will not cover your shift for you so you can go see the Red Sox.
NO I will not give you separate checks.
NO you may not have another drink, you are shut off.

As a brunette especially I felt the naturally obsequious woman inside me melting away. She was replaced by this whole other kind of woman, a brunette woman who didn't feel pressured to smile all the time, to laugh at other people's bad jokes, or be super-duper friendly to people who were being rude to her. She was reserved and conservative and she had this way of commanding respect from people, all people, even those seated at her tables at the restaurant. She was poised, polite, and friendly, but she was never obsequious. She knew that a straight, serious facial expression which only broke into a bright smile if you earned it was just as effective with people as the bright, bubbly smile that never left her face when she was a blonde. She was confident that her natural demeanor was quite enough.

Now my blonde hair is back, and all of that obsequiousness is back right along with it. Last night at work, for example, I kept hearing myself say things like:

"Oh, I'm so sorry! We're out of the ribeye. I'm sorry for that, really. I should have told you that earlier. Sorry," and,

"Oh, you want one glass of wine split between two glasses? NO, no, no, that's fine!!! You don't need to do that here at the table, it's quite alright, I'll have the bartender do it for you, or I'll do it. Really, it's no trouble at all!" and,

"Thank you guys so much for coming in! Really, it was a pleasure. Enjoy your night, and enjoy the rest of your week! Thanks very, very much!"

All night long I heard phrases like these coming out of my mouth, and each time, I felt shocked at how over-the-top they sounded. Seriously, when would I have told them we were out of ribeye? Before they came in to the restaurant? Should I have called them at home? And one glass of wine split into two glasses? Who does that? They wouldn't have minded pouring it at the table, why did I make such a fuss when I knew the bartender was slammed? And who was I, imploring these strangers to have a great night and a great week and a great life...they were nice enough, but seriously, who cares? 'Thank you' is certainly a plenty friendly way to say goodbye.

But I felt even more shocked by how naturally these words spilled from my lips.

And at the end of the night I felt exhausted. Really, it's tiring, showing this SERVILE COMPLAISANCE all the time, and FAWNING over people left and right.

Where did that sassy, no bullshit brunette attitude go?

I'm back...

Well, it happened. I'm blonde again.

It happened suddenly and without warning. I walked into the salon for my cut & color appointment at 3 p.m. yesterday, thinking we'd brighten me up to a light chestnut-y color, maybe even work in a few highlights if that was at all possible. I walked out 6 hours later as a blonde.

I was not ready, I am in no way mentally prepared, and I'm kind of freaking out right now. And I don't think I'm ready to talk about it.

But, I thought you should all know...

lucky

The other night at Toro I banged my head so hard that I made myself cry. Anyone who know me well knows, I have an immense threshold for pain--it's surprising, really given my girly nature. So suffice to say, if I'm crying it hurt pretty goddamn bad.

It happened while I was crawling around in the basement, stocking printer paper and decaf espresso. The "basement" is actually no more than a wretched, dusty old crawl-space that measures no more than 5 feet tall at it's tallest spots. The "ceiling" is a virtual spiderweb of exposed pipes and beams covered in many places with screw and bolts and sharp hardware. You can't move around down there without bending over and walking with your back at a 45 degree angle, which places your gaze constantly at the ground, meaning that all of these treacherous items are nearly impossible to watch out for. I've banged my head down there countless times...but never so badly as I did last Wednesday, when I whacked the crown of my head on an exposed beam that was obscured by a mountain of chef jackets.

I ran into that beam so hard that my head and neck wrenched to the left at a whiplash angle. The blow knocked me to the ground, where I fell on top of that evil pile of chef jackets, and burst into tears like a four year old. I lay there, tears streaming down my cheeks, nose running like a faucet, for 10 minutes. When I could finally collect myself enough to crawl out of the basement, I had to spend at least 15 more minutes in the bathroom trying to collect myself, because no matter how hard I tried, I could not stop crying. It was like I whacked the sobbing spot in my brain or something. I felt dizzy and kind of nauseous for the rest of the evening, and have had a dull headache on and off ever since it happened.

As I lay there, bawling and pathetic on top of the chef coats last Wednesday, I somewhat ironically couldn't help but think of how lucky I am. It sucked--I mean, it really really fucking sucked, but I knew that it would be only a matter of time before the pain and the crying passed, and I would get up, go upstairs, and wait tables like a trooper, as I have done a thousand times before, no matter how sick, hungover, or bloody the wound. It got me thinking about how infrequently I experience physical pain, how sturdy and solid my body is, and how sheltered I am from physical danger in this life. I thought instantly about my mother, whose arthritis has been slowly eating away at the cartilage in her hands and feet as long as I can remember, making every step she takes at times a painful struggle. It made me think about my good friend Alexander's sister in Holland, who nearly lost her life in a severe bike accident last fall. She was hit by a car that was driving very fast, and she wasn't wearing a helmet. She's likely going to fully recover, thank god, but I know she's been going through physical, and mental hell due to the traumatic head injuries she sustained. So while my mind may torture itself with notions that my body isn't good enough or perfect enough, with thoughts that I should eat less, be thinner, and work out more, at the end of the day, my body is a wonderful, competent machine that functions well above par and has for my entire adult life.

That same night at Toro, I overheard a table of pretty, lightly dressed girls say to the waiter they'd been flirting with all night. "Oh, we're just talking about how lucky and spoiled we are," one of the girls said, twirling a lock of expensively bleached blonde hair around her finger, "how our parents were, like, poor, and they had to, you know, work like really hard. And how we just, you know...come to Toro all the time."

I think I may have thrown up a little bit in my mouth when I heard her say that, but I couldn't help but think that these girls were okay, to be acknowledging their own luck and feeling thankful for what they've got. For the most part, I feel far more aligned with the hard-working parents than with their spoiled, vapid spawn, but the reality is, I'm just a profoundly fortunate. I spend most of my time here, in the decadent, artistic, cerebral sphere, writing a blog about hair, aspiring to be a writer, thinking constantly about art and meaning. I'm lucky, too. Very lucky.

I guess all it takes is a good thump on the noggin to remind me as much.

pink lady

It is Tuesday, and it is gorgeous. The temperature rose to almost 80-degrees today, and though the city is now cooling off, the sky retains a lovely, light pink glow. My favorite color.

My life is so busy these days. I realized the other day, to my dismay, that I have turned into a person who has absolutely no concept of how to relax. This is largely owing to the many directions I have decided that my life should take--writer, publicist, waitress, cocktail enthusiast, French student. In addition to all of these jobs and hobbies, I am also a girlfriend, a friend, a daughter, a sister. I am lucky to have so many things enriching my life, but sometimes I feel pulled in every direction by them. It's exciting. but totally exhausting, and makes me feel as though every free second that I have is precious, and must be packed to the gills with productivity. And that is why I can't relax. What them hell am I going to do when I have kids???

Lately I have determined that it is important for me to practice relaxing. I have added "Learn to relax" to my masterlist of goals and aspirations, the mother of all to-do lists. I aim to be methodical and meticulous about it. It's kind of ironic.

My attempts to relax usually start with me asking myself the following question: "What do you want to do today, Kirsten?"

My initial response is usually something like, "Well, I should work on my book," or "I should do a little brainstorming about new freelance articles I can write," or "I should catch up on the latest food writing in the Globe just to see what's going on out there," or something along those lines. I think of things that are both productive and interesting, a pleasurable two-for-one.

But that's not really relaxing, now, is it? However, I recently learned that if I let those thoughts flow through me and try not to pounce on them too quickly with immediate, self motivated action, another voice starts to speak up. This one is uniquely my own and doesn't give a shit about my career goals or my overdue duties. It says things like: "I want to get in bed and read for 3 hours, even though it is the middle of the day on a gorgeous day in May when I should want to be outside," or "I want to go buy some amazing, over-priced produce that I may or may not cook for dinner for myself and the Mathematician later tonight." That voice is the voice I must work to hear.

So, tonight, I had a free hour to kill before meeting up with my friend, Shanna, for a long overdue dinner. When I asked myself, "What do you want to do with this hour, Kirsten?" the little voice answered, "I want to make myself a fabulous classic cocktail." So, I went to the liquor store, bought myself a bottle of Plymouth Gin, and made myself a Pink Lady.

Pink Lady
.5 oz Plymouth gin
1 egg white
1 Tbsp grenadine

It is 7:45 on a gorgeous Tuesday evening in May. The light slowly fades outside my window, and the sky is darkening from light pink to deep purple. I am sipping a Pink Lady cocktail in my apartment alone and listening to Getz & Gilberto. The bossanova beats float through the empty rooms of my apartment on a lazy breeze. I am dressed for dinner.

Pink Lady is the name that I chose for myself when I recently joined LUPEC. So I guess that means that tonight, I am drinking myself. Or my namesake. Or whatever. In any case I have decided to drink to myself.

vocabulary lessons

I have decided to learn French.

The Mathematician and I are going to France in a few weeks, so I want to learn the language. I have become quite good at parroting the childish restaurant Spanish that Luis, Bibbiana, and Sylvia, the Columbian bussers that I work with at Toro, teach me on nights when the restaurant is slow. This has me convinced that I must be secretly "good at languages", that perhaps there is some sort of latent linguistic genius locked up inside of me, just dying to get out and start yapping unencumbered in a Latin tongue. So I have decided that it's time to bite the bullet and learn a Latin tongue. I have six weeks--we'll see if it pans out.

I took French in junior high and high school, and am hoping that even if I'm not an undiscovered linguistic savant, what I used to know will all come back to me like magic if I study really hard before our trip. So, the Mathematician and I took an Immersion for Travellers class this weekend at the BCAE with a fabulous woman named Nancy Winston (highly recommended!) and now I feel more confident in my abilities...even if the only phrase I could muster during our passe compose exercise on Sunday afternoon was:

Il a loue ses chaussures!

Literally this means "he has rented his shoes". But hey, the conjugation was right! Bon, c'est tres bien!

So, in light of my new found hobby (since between writing a book, working as a publicist, waiting tables, and freelance writing I have LOADS of time on my hands), I've been thinking a lot about words lately, and thought I'd post about the treatment of the word "blonde" in a few other languages:

En Francais, blonde is...well, blonde. Actually, now is a good time to note that "blonde" is technically the incorrect English spelling of this term. It should be "blond", sans the extra 'e' at the end, or at least that's what spellcheck thinks. I have chosen the spelling with the extra 'e' because, quite simply, it looks prettier to me than 'blond'. It is also interesting to note that the word 'blond(e)' did not appear in English until approx. 1481, and is believed to derive from the Old French term blont which meant "a colour midway between golden and light chestnut". The word was reintroduced into English in the 17th century from French, and was until recently still felt as French (thanks, Wikipedia.) But what did they call yellow-haired women before there was blonde?

En Italiano, blonde is bionda. I did not have to look this word up on WordReference.com to learn it. I learned in Florence, when Marissa and I went for a drink on our own one evening, sans Le Mathematician. As you may recall from this post, Italianos tend to be very friendly to women who are unaccompanied by a man. One Italiano was so enthusiastic with his friendliness, that his exuberance caused me to jump clear out of my skin with fright: "Que BIONDA, mamma mia!!!" he screamed as we passed him on the street. "Bionda means blonde," Marissa said. "See, I told you Italian men like blondes! Put that in your book!"

En Espanol, the word for blonde is rubio. In Columbian Espanol, the word is mona, which Luis was so kind to point out to me is also the word for "monkey" in his home country. "Monkey," I said, "are you sure? Blonde and monkey mean the same thing? Are you pulling my leg" Quickly I realized that some slang and colloquialisms are just impossible to explain to non-native speakers of your language, and should simply be accepted at face value, like the phrase "pulling my leg."

Blonde, bionda, monas, oh my! There you have it, mes amies, blonde in trois langues.

Now I just need to figure out how to say "undercover".

check please!!!

As a waitress, there are a myriad of ways that I communicate with my tables that are as reliant upon body language as they are upon actual words. When I'm trying to take an order, for example, and have no idea what the customers at table 51 are actually saying to me due to the explosive horns in the salsa song blaring from the speakers right above us. Or when any sound made at a normal decible is rendered inaudible by the jubilant shrieks of the ten girls at table 20, as they pass the porron and spill cava everywhere in honor of "Kelly's Birthday
--wooooo-hooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

These are instances when I find myself reading lips, wiggling my eyebrows up and down a lot, and nodding or shaking my head emphatically at my customers to determine what they need and how to best provide it for them. My brainy roommate Marissa, who studies international cultural relations, calls this "nonverbal gesture based communication." I call it silly, and I feel silly participating in it. I mean, imagine if all you normal desk-job people suddenly found yourselves pretending to type at an imaginary keyboard every time you told someone you'd email them? I bet you'd feel pretty silly, wouldn't you?

My favorite silly restaurant gesture is the universal symbol for "check, please!" You know, the one where people pretend to be holding a pen in one hand, and wiggle it up and down ever so slightly as they simultaneously move it from left to right. I can only guess that these people are pretending to write something in invisible ink with a fake pen on the air in front of them when they make this gesture...but really, when I think about it, I can't be sure. I mean, what is that? What exactly are you doing when you make the universal symbol for check?

Are you pretending, quite literally, to sign an invisible check? Why would that make any sense in a country where people rarely accept personal checks for any form of payment anymore, especially in food service establishments?

Are you mimicking the signature you will leave on your credit card slip after I swipe your AmEx? Okay, but how can that makes sense, when I'm fairly certain this gesture pre-dates the ubiquity of credit card machines in all retail establishments?

Or are you literally pretending to draw an invisible check mark on the sky, one short mark down followed by a swift, long mark up? This is my favorite theory, as it is absolutely absurd.

I have seen people from all over the world request the check like this, French, American, East Asian, Italian, in both America and in Italy. Somehow, everyone in the world seems to know that this is how to get your waitress to bring you the bill. But why?

And if you're like me, do you ever catch yourself in the midst of making this gesture--or as is more often the case, for me, responding to this gesture--and feel totally and utterly ridiculous?

If you don't, you should. And you should laugh about it. Out loud. No matter who accompanies you at the table.

And, fellow waitresses, next time you have a really annoying customer, someone you've really hated having to wait on, who has chapped your ass all night long request the check from you this way, I encourage you to think twice about this body language and smile. Because no matter how much power this person has yielded over your mood for the duration of his dinner, no matter how rude, or picky, or patronizing this person has been to you, right now he is asking you for his check, and he is doing so by drawing an enormous, invisible check mark in the air, for al the world to see. And there is no way for him to not look just plain silly in this moment.

I miss my goldie locks

For several weeks, the brunette thing has really had me going. I've enjoyed my dark haired status and have really gown into the role of the brunette--an intelligent, sultry, slightly more intimidating, no bullshit brown-haired version of myself.

But now, with 80 degree days upon us, my brown hair feels out of place on top of my head. This weekend, the Mathematician and I took a special trip to Newport, where we sat in the sun on a patio enjoying seafood & bloody mary's, made out on the beach we visited on our first date, and had a curious dinner at the most peculiar yet enchanting restaurant in Newport, Elizabeth's Cafe on Thames Street. The weather was glorious, the day was perfect, and I couldn't have ordered up a more perfect Saturday. There was just one small problem: I didn't feel entirely myself, and it was entirely because I am a brunette.

As a blondie I felt natural in the sun. Long before I started this bleaching business, I looked forward to the natural bleaching effect of sunlight on my brunette hair. Long summer days spent lounging at the beach always cooked my locks up to a lovely golden hue, and a week on vacation usually left me with at least a few wispy streaks of real, live, naturally blonde hair. As a brunette now, in the midst of all the sunshine, and the sparkling preview of warm summer weather, I felt strange.

We stole a few moments in the shade while waiting for a table for lunch. The Mathematician looked at a map and tried to determine how we should be spend our day, while I sat and stared wordlessly at myself in the tiny compact mirror that I carry in my purse. A brunette woman stared back at me in that tiny little square of mirror. Her skin looked paler than usual, and the small wrinkles that have begun to crease the space between her eyebrows and her nose more pronounced.

I've come to love and accept that brunette since my initial deblonding in December, and I appreciate everything she has offered me since that fateful day. She has allowed me to be such a different woman than I was as a blonde, and I am forever grateful to her for showing me the vastly different ways that I could be me with just a deeper shade of brown. But as I stared in that tiny little compact mirror, I knew--the brunette looking back at me wasn't the real me.

It is official. I want my blonde locks back.

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.