Days Like These

Yesterday (Sunday) started off well enough. I had congee for breakfast, picked up my flat (I pay my housekeeper to clean for me, not to clean up after me), and took a shower.

I was meeting AnD artist (and all-around great person) Mimi Leung to talk about something we're doing and also to just catch up since she's been in Australia for a while.

So I went to Sha Tin, the designated meeting place, and since I was there a little early I went into the Tom Lee and made sure I bought one of these:I'm not worthy and neither are you.Mimi and I talked, I ate a salad. She gave me a painting by an indigenous Australian artist. We walked around, she bought a DVD, she bought some Bee Cheng Hiang and gave me half, and then she went home on the bus.

It was nice to be able to feel, and be, social for a change.

On my way back home, I stopped in the QB House hair cutting shop in Tai Wai station. $50, 10 minutes, what have I got to lose?

My mind.

I hate getting haircuts. Even in America, where I have a lot less of a language barrier, I never know what to tell the person when they ask how I want it cut. 

Obviously, that only gets worse in Hong Kong.

Or maybe better.

"Short" is all I ever say.

I usually get my hair cut short because I don't have to bother with it that way.

It also lasts longer and stops me from pulling my own hair out by the roots when people's stupidity sends me into a lather.

On rare occasion I can manage to stop the people from using thinning shears. I don't like them. They make my hair look sloppy.

But try to explain that to someone A) in another language and B) who apparently doesn't really care whatyou think about your haircut.

Yesterday, he grabbed up the shears and got started before I could utter a word. F@#$ it, I thought. Hair grows.

I find the whole process quite simply nauseating. So I tried to let my mind wander and not focus on how miserable I felt.

And that, dear reader, is exactly why I was totally unprepared when the guy cutting my hair picked up the clippers and blunted my widow's peak:What the f@#$ is this???It was an odd feeling, sitting there covered in a huge vinyl bib, feeling violated, humiliated, frustrated and yet ruefully resigned to the inevitable reality of something that couldn't be undone, no matter the reason (or lack thereof).

Try as I might, I couldn't figure out the Cantonese for "You ignorant f@#$hole, what the f@#$ is the matter with you?"

I just can't tell if this is my comeuppance for:

 A) Only going to this place because there is a woman who works there and if given the choice I'd rather have a woman touch me than a man.

If that makes me a homophobe, then so be it. At least she never did anything this f@#$ing horrid and actually listens to me. And she's a girl.

 or

B) Not insisting on continuing to wait for her to come back from wherever she went right after her last customer such that I didn't, after all, get to sit in her chair.

That's not a euphemism.

I'd be rather fascinated by how much this is bothering me if I wasn't so upset about it.

But what can I do? Nothing.

My only option is to get totally Y3 about it.

I'm not sure I want to go that far yet.

But you can be absolutely motherf@#$ing sure that if I do, I'll get the woman to do it.That's not a euphemism either.