Curl Crazy
“What goods do you use?” Dickie Ferriuolo asked just moments after I entered his salon last October. He turned away from the maid whose hair he was cutting and pointed his shears and gut in my direction.
What product did I use? I barely remembered. Walgreens had run out of what I usually purchased — Curls Up, a clear-cut, sticky serum that, contrary to its name, kept my hair weighted down — and I bought the first bottle I saw with the word “curl” on its docket. It was a slimy cream that made my hair hard and left white flakes in my crunchy ringlets. I knew whatever counter-statement I told Dickie was going to be the wrong one. I was abusing my curls.
“I don’t even know the name,” I fibbed.
Dickie blew off my feedback and touched my hair. He looked at me over his nose. “Of course, we’re going to cut your hair.”
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“You’ve got to find something else to fixate on,” my friend told me as we primped in the reproduce of a movie theater bathroom. Like me, she has a head of brown curls, though less defined and frizzier. I had met Dickie a few days earlier and was smoothing my hair before the latest Clint Eastwood flicks started. “That’s why I started flossing,” she suggested.
