Menaced by Denis

I've been Menaced by Denis.  Lemme explain.  I needed to get my first Californian haircut.  It's been almost 3 months now, and I was getting a bit shaggy.  So I go to the place Dr Desert Flower gets her hairs cut, but it was Monday, and they had some kind of hair demonstration, CEU, training session going on, so everyone (about 20 women) ignored me as I stood by the front door and receptionist podium.

No problem, I had a Target run to do - Rainex for the cars' windshields, bike gloves to replace the ratty ones my son left, new socks to replace the holey-ed ones.  Went to Target, cruised a couple of strip malls looking for another possible hair salon - found 2 closed salons, one Vietnamese nail salon/hair combo place whose acetone vapors hit me before I got out of my Mazda, and one "one chair" salon that had just one stylist doing a color job, and 9 or 10 empty chairs.  No thanks.

So I head back to DDF's preferred salon, and the training class is STILL going on.  I stand at the door, ignored.  So I leave, and walk across the vast parking lot to Supercuts.  I don't normally go for the corporate express hair cut...  but I was getting frustrated.   I walk in, there's 5 or 6 people waiting.  "How long will it be?"  (there's 2 stylists working) "About 30 or 40 minutes" was the polite receptionist's reply.
"Can I make an appointment for later?"
"We don't take appointments more than 30 minutes in advance"
Ugh!
"That's okay, I'll come back another day".
In my car, I realize, it is 3 days before Valentine's Day, and likely everyone who wants a hair cut to impress their beau or belle is getting one...  so I drive home, and google "stylists" in my zip code.   A 20 stylist salon pops up, just a mile south.  I've biked past this place...  I know where it is.. and they'll take walk in's at 4:15.   Kewl.  I'm there.

I walk in... and I am introduced "This is Denis, he'll be your stylist".  Ok.   That's fine.   I haven't had a guy cut my hair since the Barber in Highland cut it when I was a teenager, 2 blocks from my parents' home.  But that's fine.   I show Denis print outs of options 1, 2, and 3, and ask if he can do "Option 1" (the Affleck).  "No problem" he reassures me.  And starts shampooing me.   Why do hair stylists try to talk to you when your head is in a bowl, and they are squirting water into your hair?

Dried off, I get in the chair.  Denis then precedes to tell me (non stop, without me able to get a word in edge-wise) all about
- his world travels
- his hatred of Chicago and fans of Chicago sports teams
- his love of the German language
- his hatred of the French, and how America is "the opposite of France"
- his love of curry and Indian food
- how much he loved visiting China
(I mentioned how Sheldon Addleson, Gingrich and Romney's financial backer, gets more than 1/2 his income from Macao casinos, as Denis waxed on and on about taking his mother to Macao and how much he loved it)
- how this has become a nation of takers who expect to be given everything "I've WORKED for my living!", Denis exclaimed "for anyone to expect their employer to Give Them Anything, ughhh!!!"

As Denis trimmed my side burns, he remarked how most people's ears are not the same height or shape.   I commented on how Colbert's ears are disproportionate, and he said 'I watched him for the first time last week, but I CAN'T STAND that Jon Stewart!"

I remarked how The Daily Show is an equal opportunity satirist show, lampooning BOTH Republican and Democrats, as they each warrant it... and he dismissed my comment summarily.  "if you're not a liberal when you're young, you don't have a heart, and if you're not conservative when you're older, you don't have a brain"  ... ok Denis, your tip is shrinking, exponentially now.

I asked him not to put product in my hair, and he slathered "bed Head" through my short blond and gray.   He then put The Rest of the bed head In His Own Hair...  ew!   I don't want his hair stuff in mine!   (or mine in his, cross pollinated!)

All the while, as Denis was cutting my hair, he would (about every 15 seconds) GRIP my head in his fingers, and RE-TILT it to the position of his choosing, forcefully.  He'd grip my hair, yank it tight, before shearing it.   Not really painfully...  but not pleasantly, and at the strangest angles.   Had I come in with any cervical vertebrae issues, he would have severely injured me.   I've never had any hair stylist ever do that to me before, ever.

When we were all done, he talcum powdered my neck with a horse hair brush, making me EXTREMELY itchy.  I waited until DDF came home to show her my Affleck cut, before I ran upstairs to go shower to get the talc and product out of my hair.  "So you don't want to go to Monday trivia tonight?" - No.   I just want to wash Denis's menacing out of my hair.

DDF does like the hair cut, as my buddy Ron recommended in the comments section...  so that's good.  But I won't be back to have Denis harangue me about the evils of liberals, his love of curry, or have his unlicensed chiropractic services applied to my upper spine.

Now...  off to dinner!  =)