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  I couldn’t only go to school, though—I still had to work. First I got a job as a server at Applebee’s, but I wasn’t very good at it. People ordered chicken fingers and I’d bring them back chicken fajitas. If they ordered a Sprite, I’d bring them a Coke. I wouldn’t let them send it back because then my manager would know I’d fucked up the order. “Please just don’t complain,” I’d whisper to the table. “I don’t want to get fired. I just don’t know how to work the computers and I’m super stressed out.” I was way more concerned about keeping my naturally curly hair flat-ironed than I was with getting your order right. My first shift, I had twelve comped meals out of my fifteen tables.

  I lived on about $17 a day, scraps of uneaten Applebee’s food, and Nutter Butters, until I got fired after only three weeks.

  Next I got a job at a restaurant in downtown Minneapolis. On my first day, I had written down a message on the back of one of the business cards that were stacked at the host’s stand. The manager who was training me took me aside. “Never ever write on a business card,” he said. “They’re very expensive. It’s a waste of cards.”

  I nodded. He seemed very serious about this.

  The next day, an old heterosexual walked up to be seated just as I was finishing a call with a customer. I was looking for a scrap of paper to take the message on for the person who had called, and I didn’t want to waste a business card after having been chastised for it the day before. Helpless, I ended up taking a pen and writing the message down on my hand.

  The old heterosexual at the host’s stand, waiting for his table, looked at me like I was crazy. He picked up a business card. “Why don’t you write on this?”

  “No!” I said. “I can’t!”

  I went to seat the people in front of him and when I came back, he was still standing there, irritated. “Can I speak with you?” he said.

  It turned out he was the owner of the restaurant.

  He pulled me back to the kitchen and chewed me out in front of the entire waitstaff and all the cooks. “You know what?” he said. “If I wanted advice on how to take messages from a host with a Flock of Seagulls haircut who wears bowling shoes with khakis, I’d ask for it! But I didn’t ask for your advice, because I own this fucking restaurant!”

  I ran out, flustered. My manager called me after and apologized, but the damage was already done. “I’m never coming back!” I cried on the phone.

  Instead, I befriended a girl named Daniilushka who sent all her friends to be my clients in hair school. They only had to pay $12 for the haircut, and then they would tip me $10, which gave me just enough money to live on.

  That year at the Aveda Institute, I ran for student council president and won. But after I took office, this girl named Zoyenka accused me of stealing change from an empty jar of bleach we kept for donations to the Red Cross. The jar of bleach in question never had more than a total of eighty cents, mostly in pennies and nickels. Of course I hadn’t done it—but once I’d asked someone for twenty-five cents out of the jar for the parking garage, and Zoyenka never let me live it down.

  “People like you make me sick,” Zoyenka said to me. They removed me from office and another girl got put in my place.

  Later, I found out that Zoyenka got caught red-handed stealing money from the salon she had worked for. Side-eye emoji, hunny, and snap!

  Anywho, I was so relieved to find out that I loved doing hair, and loved working with people, as much as I’d hoped. Even when I got frustrated—like the time I drop-kicked a mannequin’s head through a window while I was learning finger waves—I still felt like I was becoming my best self. And after the disaster of Arizona, it felt good to not be a hot mess. For the first time in a while, I felt normal.

  I had expected Minnesota to have really gorgeous summers, but that’s a full lie: it’s, like, 103 degrees there in the summer, with 97 percent humidity. It was the first time I ever saw my cat Bug actually pant during one particular heat wave. We kept thinking it was going to break, but the temperature just kept climbing.

  I called my mom, desperate. “My cat’s gonna die of dehydration,” I said. “I have to get an air conditioner—please put some money in my account.”

  Begrudgingly, she agreed, and me and my dear friend Tasia went looking for a window AC unit to install in my sweltering apartment. But by the time we’d made it to our seventh Home Depot, it started to dawn on us that every air conditioner within fifty miles was sold out. I called my mom, crying, in a panic.

  She found a sporting goods store that sold air conditioners in Duluth, over two hours away, so we drove there to pick it up. When we brought it home, I went into my bedroom to retrieve the little box of tools we’d need to install it. While I was in there, I heard something crash in the living room. I ran out to see Tasia—a five-foot-ten, former figure-skating swan of a young woman—bracing herself against a couch. In her heat-stricken desperation, she had kicked the screen out of our second-story window and was now feverishly duct-taping the air conditioner into the window, shoving pieces of couch cushioning, socks, broken-apart Styrofoam cooler bits, and loose papers into the exposed slats on either side of the unit to seal it in.

  I looked at her. “Holy shit, Tasia! The window!”

  “Jonathan!” she yelped. “Your cat is panting! I’m freaking out!”

  I tried to help her. Waterfalls of sweat were burning my eyeballs. Once I felt them stinging my eyes, I realized that Tasia was right. We just had to make it work.

  And you know what? It did work. Whenever people asked what unit I was in in my apartment building, I’d just tell them it was the one with the air conditioner secured on either side by mounds of broken Styrofoam bits, magazines, throw pillows, and duct tape. Was it an eyesore? Yes. Was it effective? Kind of. A few feet around the window was markedly cooler than the rest of the hot-yoga-temperature apartment. Mission accomplished.

  * * *

  I loved my time in Minneapolis, but I knew I couldn’t live there. They had a very oversaturated market for hairdressers because of all the hair schools there. Also, it was really cold in the winters, and obviously summers were horrendous. I was ready for a different kind of heat, honey.

  On our midterm weeklong vacation from hair school, I traveled to Phoenix, since my dad’s parents lived there a few months out of the year, and I’d thought it would be a good place to live and do hair after graduation. I wanted to get to know my paternal grandmother, who had been diagnosed with this really, really bad ovarian cancer when I was in third grade that had spread all over her body. Her liver, lungs, everywhere. She was told to get her affairs in order because there was no treatment available for the terminal nature of her cancer. She smiled and asked for a second opinion, and the second opinion wasn’t different. So she smiled and got a third, and they said they would treat her. She may have lost her hair and lost her hearing but she beat the shit out of that cancer and defied all the odds. She showed me from a young age what grit and determination look like when you are the only one who believes in yourself. That was some badass energy I needed to get to know better, in addition to the fact that I was afraid I would turn into a colossal methball if I moved to a big city like New York or Los Angeles.

  One salon in particular that I interviewed at really stood out. So after I graduated, I moved to Scottsdale, where I got a job working there—Salon Beatrix Kiddo. Scottsdale was the capital of fake blondes, fake boobs, and $20,000 “millionaires”—who were driving whatever the equivalent of a Tesla was in 2006, but were actually completely upside down on their mortgage and endlessly in debt. It seemed that everyone was heterosexual and had questionable attitudes, but I was just so happy to be working and doing hair.

  My career as a hairdresser was unfolding gorgeously, but being part of a group like in swim team or cheerleading gave me a social circle and something I looked forward to. Now in Phoenix, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t have an activity to keep me busy outside of work, and it had me feeling wayward. I then got head-over-
heels infatuated with a boy named Viktor Baryshnikov who danced for the Phoenix Ballet Company, and it felt like he was constantly reflecting my own not-enoughness back to me: Like, if you’re this gorgeous sick ballet dancer and I’m kinda chunky and don’t do anything, what does that mean? I found myself regaling him with tales from my cheerleading days in every millisecond of silence that fell between us, which must have been annoying because it even annoyed me saying it. But his gorgeousness and talent left me feeling bleak and meager. He ghosted me on a Christmas text, and I had to drive past his apartment building on the way to work every day, which killed me. It also made Kelly Clarkson’s My December hit me like a ton of bricks. The bridge on “Sober”? Turn on the windshield wipers!

  But it was also a period where I grew a lot and learned that I could show up for myself—and the people around me. My grandma lived in north Scottsdale, a forty-five-minute drive from the salon, and I’d promised that I would keep her looking fresh. So every Friday I would leave my house, drive forty-five minutes to her house, pick her up, drive her forty-five minutes back to the salon, wash her hair, blow-dry it, and then drive her another forty-five minutes home. At the salon, she insisted on going around to every single old lady there and saying to them, in a totally endearing but slightly condescending way, “Hi, Susan—so good to see you! You look so beautiful today!” It was her way of saying, “Wow, you old bag, good for you for coming out and getting your crusty mop washed.” She was so spunky—it was like she didn’t realize that she was approximately the same age as them. It was the first time I could remember really keeping a commitment to someone else, and it showed me that I could actually kind of be a grown-up.

  Back then, a typical blow-dry cost $35. But my dad’s mom was a child of the Depression, so she would, very generously, break me off a hot $8.50—counting out a five-dollar bill, three ones, and two quarters as payment for the four hours it took me to drive her around and do her hair. She thought she was the best tipper, and I could never tell her otherwise. I was basically paying to do her hair. Eventually my dad called my grandpa and was, like, “Dad, the kid’s making $18,000 a year—can you please have her pay him something?” She was tighter than the bark on a tree, as my mom would say.

  Through three years of having the privilege of that weekly blow-dry time with Noonie, as I called her, a larger growing forgetfulness led to an increasingly problematic diagnosis—dementia. (You really can’t tell if it’s Alzheimer’s for sure until the person is deceased.) My grandfather—who was a doctor who served in the Korean War and had remained fiercely independent—was determined to take care of her and didn’t want her to go into a home. I think he felt extraordinarily devoted to protecting her because of how she had cared for him when, six years prior, he’d been the victim of a freak accident. My grandma had lost her balance getting off the toilet in the middle of the night and when she called for him, he reached down to turn off the water to the toilet and the tank fell and severed part of his hand. He nearly died, but because he was a doctor he was as cool as a cucumber. When they sewed his hand back together, it was barely usable. As my grandmother’s mental health deteriorated, she thought he was a weird pterodactyl who had kidnapped her. She constantly thought her parents were about to come home. They had been dead for, like, sixty years.

  She ultimately wound up being hospitalized and her condition worsened rapidly. My uncle came to help us get her from the hospital back to her hometown of Bloomington, Illinois. It seemed weird for this to happen in their vacation home, and it was really important to the family to get her back home alive. Noonie was always endlessly chic, but as they were readying her to go to the airport, they had dressed her in a dowdy-ass windbreaker.

  “She is not going to wear that on the plane,” I said.

  Even if her mind was rapidly losing itself, I knew she would never wear that outside.

  “It’s fine,” my uncle said. “Trust me.”

  No less than ten minutes later, I heard her screaming from the bedroom.

  “Kermerlin, I’m not wearing that, I WON’T WEAR IT.”

  Some gentle frustrated groans and tussling ensued when I went in and calmly pulled out a gorgeous little navy-blue Salvatore Ferragamo vest for her, with cute little slacks and saddle shoes, and got her ready to go on the plane.

  Back in Bloomington, she settled into a home, which my grandfather had begrudgingly agreed to place her in for end-of-life care. The doctors had said that while her brain was deteriorating her body was still very strong, so they thought she would be there for a while. That stressed out my family, wondering if they would have the money to cover a long-term, high-level-of-care stay. But my grandma had defied the odds before and I believe she was in control of her body still. Because being the insanely cheap and thoughtful woman she was, her condition ended up deteriorating more quickly than anyone expected. Within only a couple weeks, she was gone. That was simply money she wasn’t going to spend. Saving her family the anguish of watching their loved one slide away slowly over years, I believe she made the choice to go when she did. She died on my twenty-second birthday.

  It was the first time I had needed to step up to the plate as an adult in my dad’s family. I’d been so helpful with her in the last years of her life that my grandfather let me move into his house in Scottsdale, where I lived for several months, rent-free, while I saved money and tried to build my independence. When she first died, I was acutely aware that for the rest of my life, my birthday would be the day she had died. But then I realized how incredible it was that she had chosen the day I came into the world as the day for her to start her new journey out of this world, on to her next adventure. Thank you for being fearless, Noonie, and Ma. My two beautiful grandmas who I wouldn’t be myself without and who I miss every single day.

  I found other ways to grow too. My friend Anatolia, who was my station partner at the salon, introduced me to Bikram yoga, which started my journey of actually becoming healthy for the first time. In the beginning, I would smoke five Parliament Light 100s on my way to yoga, and usually leave in the middle to take a smoke break, which Bikram yoga really frowns upon—they advise you staying in the hot room at all costs. Puke, poop, pee? Deal with it! Stay in the room.

  After doing Bikram literally every day for an entire year, I discovered Vinyasa Flow, and pretty soon I had transitioned from hot yoga to a much floatier practice. Yoga at that time for me was all about ego—how long could I do a handstand, can I get into these splits, oh my God I wonder if that guy thinks I’m hot?—but then over time my connection to spirituality deepened. I read The Four Agreements, and The Power of Now, and A New Earth, and everything Deepak Chopra ever wrote. The Bhagavad Gita. The Upanishads. The story of Siddhartha. And, honey, I read Skinny Bitch and that book traumatized me so deeply I became a militant vegan for four years

  With the internal came the external. I really built my client base as a hairdresser in Scottsdale. Within nine months, I was booked and busy. There was lots of good feedback and lots of good word-of-mouth buzz. Even my family was proud of me. For the first time, I didn’t need help with my rent.

  In Phoenix, people typically made their money in the winter before all the snowbirds left for the summer. But in the summer of 2008, the economy dropped the fuck out. Five of my clients committed suicide. When I came to work on a Tuesday morning, my books would be full. By the afternoon, half my clients would have canceled. By the next morning, another 20 percent would have canceled. I’d have to go out onto the street and beg people: “I’ll do your haircut for $30 and your highlights for free if you come in right now.”

  The Great Recession hit Phoenix hard. And after a few months of that, I knew I had to get out. I wanted to go to Los Angeles—both because I knew business would be better there and also because I genuinely wanted to become a better hairstylist. With my grandmother no longer needing my help in Phoenix, and knowing that I had been responsible enough to show up for her when she needed me, I felt like I had my green light. Besides, in
Phoenix, no matter how I foiled someone’s hair, everything looked like Kelly Clarkson–circa 2002 in a bad way—chunky, piano-key highlights. In LA, people were bringing a more lived-in style of color, and I didn’t know how to create those looks.

  Anatolia and I had heard about a woman in Los Angeles who charged $650 to do your highlights, who had basically invented balayage—the art of hand-painted hair. Anatolia wanted to go study under her. And I was ready to follow.

  * * *

  So off we went to Los Angeles, loading all our stuff and Bug into my car, ready for a new adventure. Anatolia had moved a few months earlier to do the assistant program at Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze, a newly opened, all-the-rage place to be seen and the absolute best place to get your hair done. There was a specific energy about it that was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Anatolia had started calling me to give me verbal directions on how to do balayage after she got out of class, but I didn’t always understand exactly what she meant, so I fucked up some serious hair trying to learn how to hand-paint highlights. I was down to take her advice on what she was learning at Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze, but I knew that kind of environment wasn’t for me as I set out looking for a job.

  I’d heard about one particular Aveda salon in LA, and I had my heart set on working there. But in the interview, you actually had to assist a hairdresser on the floor, and I fucked mine up badly: I talked the colorist’s ear off. I talked the client’s ear off. I got her back wet. I was way overeager. I could tell the stylist wasn’t into it.

  I was devastated. I had identified so much with Aveda and it was so important to me, but I quickly realized it was kind of a midwestern thing, that didn’t have as much of a foothold on the coasts. People in LA wanted more luxurious brands. But I didn’t know anything about that.

  Now I had blown my big LA opportunity, and the little money I had saved up for my move to LA was dwindling fast. Soon I’d be broke.

  The weekend after the botched interview, Anatolia called me. “Can you get here right now?” she said. “This boy just showed up to work literally high and disoriented and he can barely speak so he definitely can’t work today and they just fired him and now they need someone with a license who can fill in in a pinch today!”