My Argentina Haircut

Charley runs a salon at the edge of San Telmo, on Bolivar Street.  She's a smiley Argentine woman around 40 and fit for her age, who, today, was encased in very tight stretchy blue fabrics.  Despite Jess's haircut disaster at the same shop a month ago, I went there because A) it is very close to the house B) I knew I could say I am a friend of Paola and Guy, and I hoped that meant I wouldn't get any sneaky extra charges.  I came prepared with 3 photos from the summer, each from just after I drove back to PA, where my mom (a former stylist) had cut my hair to a short, manageable, summertime length.  Charley directed me to wait my turn in one of the lather-and-aluminum chairs all salons seem to order from the same furniture catalogue.

When the woman who would cut my hair called me over--a plump, authoritative woman in a green sweater, despite the insane summer heat--I told her up front that I could hardly speak a word of Castellano.  She asked me a question about one of the photos, to which I had to simply repeat Hablo un poquito español and to hope that I wouldn't end up with a mohawk or military buzz.  She worked in silence, combing the hair into a faux-hawk and clipping away at the sides before hacking the middle away.  I thought maybe I would end up with one of the mullet-backed, faux-hawkian Argentina-dos that I see on the subway, and when I considered it, I didn't mind.  It would be native, I guessed, to have a cut like that.  And by the time it grew out, my mom would set the style straight with her own shears back home.

As the woman cut away the hair, though, it became obvious she'd studied the photos I showed her--the style took the same shape as the air-dried post-pool hair I had in a picture my sister had taken of my cheersing with a Foster's can.  The back she cut short, shorter than the slight overhang (which develops mulletish tendencies after 2 months of growth) I'm used to.  No worries.  I've got room to grow.  The whole deal was $10 pesos cheaper than I thought it would be, running only $30, or less than $8 US.