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  “Oh my God, yes!” I said, and I was off to Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze.

  The bustle was indescribable. You stood up three inches straighter and held your shoulders the fuck back. The assistants were strutting like Naomi Campbell on the floor just to get someone a cup of water.

  I was assisting a stylist named Czarina. She looked like a young Supreme—take-your-breath-away gorgeous, with a triangular-shaped fro and smoky lavender Stella McCartney thigh-high boots and skinny jeans and an oversized sweater—the baddest most feroshist. I was enamored.

  I was naturally inclined toward formulating color: my eyes understood it, my brain got in lockstep with color theory much easier. The three-dimensionality of a haircut intimidated me. What I knew how to do best was how to curl my long layers so you couldn’t see how fucked up the haircuts were.

  Even though I had always seen myself as more of a colorist than a stylist, I was still excited to work with Czarina because getting out of my colorist comfort zone was important. Plus in this world of luxury hairstyling you either color or you cut, you don’t do both. The boy who I was replacing was a stylist’s assistant, so that’s the role I stepped into because I was ready to learn everything I could when it came to cutting and styling hair. Plus I knew I would still learn gorgeous sums of color knowledge by working so closely and watching such incredible artists.

  When Czarina’s first client arrived, I started talking up a storm. “What did you do this morning?” I asked the client. “Oh, me, I got a smoothie and then I went to yoga!”

  I didn’t realize that my job was to go in and be seen and not heard. For someone like me who was used to having a clientele of my own and having people give a shit about me, this new role wasn’t going to be easy. I was talking up a storm, having so much fun. I wanted Czarina to love me. She was such an incredible hairdresser: She could style Afros to look like they were flat-ironed with just a round brush and a blow-dryer. She had done hair at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show for years. I wanted to be able to give blow-dries as straight as she could, to set the hair in a way that it could stand up to Hurricane Maria and still look slayed. I wanted to deliver an updo so good that it could make Serge Normant cry. No matter what the client needed to achieve, Czarina could make it happen and never break a sweat.

  After my first day assisting her, another senior assistant pulled me aside. “Okay, here’s the thing,” she said. “You can’t talk like you did today—that was insane. These people have known Czarina for years. Nobody cares about the smoothie you had this morning. Your job is to relax them, help her be nice, keep us on time, and stay quiet.”

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Next Tuesday,” she said, “they’ll have you back and you can try out for Natacha.”

  Czarina was a very busy stylist on her own, but her best friend was Natacha, and the company required one assistant to help with both of them. The following Tuesday morning, at Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze salon, the click-click-click of heels perked up my gay ears. I did a 180-pivot turn to reveal a blunt-fringe wavy-bob and the most gorgeous freckles I’ve ever seen caressing the face of a hairdressing queen with a cute LBD and the most moisturized legs I’ve ever seen. To this day, I just want to eat ice cream off her legs. I’ve never been attracted to a woman, but Natacha just had this sexy swag that made my titties perk. She’s the type of hairdresser who could cut the best haircut you’ve ever seen with both hands tied behind her back using only her teeth because she is just. That. Bitch. Best hairdresser I’ve ever seen. But if you say that to her, she’ll punch you in the face because she doesn’t take compliments well.

  I was on my best behavior. Somehow, my puppy-dog energy was just cute enough and just not annoying enough that it worked out. And I was hired.

  Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze was the place to be, for anyone who was everyone. It was so bustling and so sought-after. I went from being someone who charged $50 to give a haircut to assisting people who charged $200 for a haircut—it was a whole different playing field.

  I loved being there. I quickly met all these other assistants who were working hard, which meant there was this gorgeous community of assistants together, who all hung out after work.

  But it was also incredibly fast-paced. The women I assisted were working quickly. They could do seven or eight clients a day, which meant I was blow-drying fourteen to eighteen heads per shift. They would do the front, and I would do the back, and you had to do it on the same speed and timing they did, but also not talk or ask questions in the middle of anything, plus you had to be checking in the new clients and checking out the old ones, and also if a client was getting their color done with another colorist after their cut you had to be responsible, as the assistant, for getting them to the colorist on time. It was so many moving parts, and if anything went wrong, which inevitably happened with hair color because it’s time-consuming and fraught with unseen pitfalls, not to mention difficult, it was always the assistant’s fault. We were paid minimum wage and had to work crazy hours, and you could never forget that this was not about you. They didn’t just make you feel that way, they would tell you to your face. The message was: Get used to it, and get back to work.

  From my perspective, the manager of that salon was drunk with power. She kept a stack of assistants’ résumés on her desk at all times just to keep us on our toes, not to mention most people couldn’t last more than three months so she needed them at the ready. I was one of the ones she was nice to, because she liked my personality and that I was quick, but I never got too comfortable because on the inside I knew she was cold as ice.

  And all the famous people! A celebrity who shall remain nameless—she’s a D-lister, anyway—would bring an entourage of six people while she was getting her hair done at Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze, then call the paparazzi on herself so they’d get a picture of her new lewk as she was leaving.

  Meanwhile, I’d see an icon like Jane Fonda come in for a blow-dry, polished, kind, and the epitome of class. That’s the kind of fiercedom I could get behind. I even got to work with her hairstylist a few times and got to wash her hair.

  After one of those times, she complimented my long hair and said, “It makes you look like Jesus.” I felt so seen I could barely even go about my day.

  Years later, right after Queer Eye was announced, Netflix invited the Fab Five to the Grace and Frankie premiere. Jane was there with Lisa Kudrow and Lily Tomlin. I wanted to introduce myself, but my show wasn’t out yet—what right did I have to go talk to Jane Fonda?

  Bobby was ballsier than I was. He walked right over and introduced us. She tolerated us, very politely. Then suddenly the words were bursting out of my mouth. “Jane,” I said, “I’m so sorry to do this I just love you so much and you used to call me Jesus at Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze when I was the fill-in assistant and I used to wash your hair and I love Grace and Frankie so much and I’m just so excited to be here.”

  She got a little twinkle in her eye. “I remember you.”

  “That was me!”

  I curtsied and we shook hands. We exchanged congratulations, and I nearly sharted.

  I’ve never gotten over the Jane Fonda of it all. Every so often, I think about the fact that my picture is next to her on the same platform and it totally blows my mind.

  The great televangelist Joyce Meyer once said: “Don’t put God in a box.” And it’s true—you never know where you’re gonna end up.

  * * *

  Anatolia and I would drive back to Scottsdale to do our clients there every other weekend, which took a toll on us. After working sixty-hour weeks for eight dollars an hour, we would drive Saturday, from 6 p.m. until 1 a.m., then we would do twelve clients each on Sunday and then eight-ish clients on Monday, all with no assistants, then drive back to Los Angeles on Monday night, arriving at 1 a.m. or later so I could be back at work at 8 a.m. on Tuesday at Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze, then work until Saturday again. I did that sort of schedule for years, and it ran me ragged. But that
’s what we had to do to make ends meet. In the service industry if you don’t go to work and do work, you don’t eat.

  But I loved my clients. I loved getting to check in on them. At Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze, I saw colorists who charged $750 just to touch a highlight on your head. They were masters at balayage, whereas I had only ever foiled hair. I was witnessing beautiful transformations from the most talented colorists in the industry, right in front of my face. And at the salon, you had to be willing to be an assistant for a really long time before they would let you into that club.

  Part of moving to Los Angeles was learning to perfect my craft. I was really driven to be successful and actually good at doing hair. Part of that was financial, but it was also because I’ve always had an indescribable drive to be good—to have an invite to the party. Truthfully, I’m so competitive that I’ll let it run me into the ground: maybe not to the point where I’ll hurt myself, but I’ll lose sleep over it. If I’m passionate about something, I won’t give up on it until I master it. (If I don’t care about something, it’s like pulling teeth to get me to even attempt it in the first place.)

  Leaving work, I would cry on the drive home and continue crying as I was making myself dinner. I was so scared that I would never wrap my head around the three-dimensional nature of hair. I kept seeing Natacha do it right, but when it came to my haircut—it just didn’t look like that.

  Every Thursday, we took class with one particular educator named Mikhail—someone who always rode inappropriateness to a razor’s edge. He was always there with a gross joke nobody wanted to hear, but with a heart of gold . . . ish.

  As an assistant, if your boss finished early but you hadn’t hit your overtime yet, they would keep you on to work with someone else. Once they kept me on to work with a stylist who had a scary reputation that I’d never worked with before.

  On certain days he’d be great and fun to work for, but on other days, he would make you cry for the sport of it. All the top stylists were very particular about blow-drying and styling from the ears forward, while you did it from the ears backward, so one boss would be doing the front left side, while you’d be doing the back right side, which meant you were never on the same side of the head.

  On this day, after I’d been at Tonia’s for eight months, Ygor needed me to do the back of a woman’s blow-dry. At that point, I only knew how to use metal brushes, as opposed to bristle brushes, which he was using. I was doing it the best I could but it was flipping out—it wasn’t lying totally straight.

  When I finished the back of her hair, he looked at it.

  “I asked you to make this straight,” he said.

  “Ygor, I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know how to do it with a boar bristle brush.”

  “No, faggot, I want you to get it straight with the brush I asked you to use,” he said, leaning in to my ear. He took the brush out of my hand and threw it to the floor. “I hope you die of AIDS,” he said. “Get away from me.”

  When I told the manager what had happened, she shrugged it off. “Yeah,” she said. “Ygor can get pretty intense sometimes, but he never says no to a client. That’s why we like him.” This sort of aggressive behavior was commonplace in the salon and something I thought was necessary to endure to reach my goals as a bad bitch hairdresser.

  To get onto the floor, we had to do ten “checkoffs”—certain haircuts that we had to execute well. I had to do ten just right in order to pass as a stylist able to take new clients from the front desk.

  Mikhail was a high-level educator at the salon, and both he and your boss had to be in the salon with no clients booked in order to watch you do the haircut and check it off to pass you. Getting both of those extremely busy people to be at the salon at the same day at the same time—especially when Mikhail was only there three days a week—was next to impossible.

  But I found a model who was willing to let me try a shag so I could get that checkoff in the bag. It was cheer tryouts on hair level stress: while you’re doing the haircut, they’re watching you, and you can feel your heart in between your eyeballs as they watch every cut you make, but you have to seem very in control—and you can’t just be quiet and focus, you have to be good on the floor, and conversational, and charming.

  So I did what, to me, looked like the most modern fabulous shag. Mikhail preferred shags like Lisa Rinna’s hair, that look like you’ve been electrocuted—really big, really piecey, really textured. That’s not my aesthetic—even if it was the salon’s aesthetic—so I was just trying to create a shag shape that wouldn’t make the client want to Yelp my ass into oblivion. Not a voluminous Lisa Rinna shag—a flatter, more L Word shag.

  Natacha checked the haircut and said it was perfect. But when Mikhail checked it, he said even though it was technically perfect, they couldn’t check me off on it because it was too flat on top. (It wasn’t flat, it just wasn’t 1987-electrocution style.)

  I was so crushed. I went down to the alley and stifled back tears before returning to assist for Natacha that afternoon.

  Mikhail was a savage. In classes, he would rip the scissors from my hands. “Can you explain to me why you’re lost in this haircut and actively fucking it up and not asking for help?” he’d say. “Can you explain why this section is completely incorrect and you’re completely perpendicular when I’m telling you to be parallel?” The model would be sitting, frozen, in the chair. “Why are you actively fucking up this haircut?”

  One week we were learning a rock ’n’ roll shag technique, inspired by Ashlee Simpson: chin-length face-framing, but then collarbone in the back, like a long fashion-y mullet with lots of face-framing to make it really wispy.

  I had one client, Nicola, whose hair I’d been cutting back in Scottsdale for years, who had also moved to Los Angeles around the time I did. Typically, I did her hair at midnight at my house after I got off my shifts, because I had also brought the first salon chair I’d ever had from Arizona to Los Angeles in order to do clients at my house.

  We had very strict monthly education classes where we would have to provide a model for specific haircuts. If your model canceled last minute, or was a no-show, you would find yourself begging strangers on the street, in a coffee shop, or at the mall in the forty-five minutes after work before the class to find your replacement. During Ashlee Simpson week, a model canceled on me, so I called Nicola and asked if she would sit for me.

  She said she was down to try the new haircut, but she needed to preserve her length, which the supervisor said would be fine.

  I had just finished cutting the first section of her hair when Mikhail came over. “Jonathan,” he said, “that guide length is way too long.”

  “I know, Mikhail,” I said. “But you said we could do it halfway down her neck, instead of chin length.”

  “No,” he said, irritated, “I said the top of the lip.”

  He took the scissors from my hands, took the entire side of her hair, and cut it off to her top lip—cutting a full eight inches from the length of her hair. Then he put the scissors down and walked away.

  Nicola looked at me, stunned. Horrified. “Jonathan,” she said. “One second.”

  She jumped off the chair, pulled two minibottles of vodka from her bag, and chugged them, one after another, then turned to me. “Keep going,” she said.

  “Nicola,” I said, panicking, “if I make the back longer, it’s going to be a full mullet. It won’t be a fashion mullet. It’s going to be a literal mullet.”

  “Just do what you need to do.”

  “I can do a tiny little lip bob,” I said. “Or a Dutch pageboy! Or a true mullet. What do you want?”

  “The bob!” she said. “The bob! Just do the bob!”

  It was supposed to be a shag, but it ended up looking like a helmet. By the end we were both ugly-crying like we were at a funeral.

  “What are you doing?” Mikhail said when he finally saw it finished. “That’s not anywhere near a shag!”

  Nicola got so drunk that ni
ght she had to come sleep at my apartment. In bed, tossing and turning, I thought about how she would never come back to me.

  But Nicola still followed me to every salon I ever went to. Those types of people, who were that fiercely loyal—they made it all worthwhile.

  Growth often happens when we’re uncomfortable. During those years, processing my personal experiences and professional experiences provided for so much growth because I spent so much time in discomfort having to learn and be quick on my feet.

  I wanted to get on the floor at Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze with every last fiber of my being. But after nearly two years, still working as an assistant and having the goalposts for what I’d need to become a stylist constantly moving, I knew that I wasn’t going to make it there. It wasn’t worth giving up my well-being and working in a toxic and frequently abusive environment to make 20 percent from a clientele that I knew I would have to build myself. (You read that right—once you got on the floor and got to start charging $200 for haircuts you only got to pocket $40 plus the tip.) For that time of learning and exposure to a different level of excellence, I was grateful. But now I was armed with the knowledge of the kind of boss I wanted to grow into, the kind of person I wanted to be, and I had more importantly learned the worth of saying “This isn’t worth it.”

  When I finally quit to go work at another salon, I was devastated. But unlike when I’d left college, I didn’t feel like a failure. I knew something better was coming.

  Chapter 8

  Mr. Clean

  I REMEMBER EVERYTHING ABOUT THE NIGHT I MET SERGEI.

  It was November 22, 2010, and I was out in West Hollywood. It had been a long day at Tonia Skoekenkaya Tutberidze, and like any hardworking, red-blooded American, I was ready to let my hair down. Back when I was living in Tucson, I’d met this boy named Alyosha—a really cute biracial boy who wore a full face of MAC makeup everywhere he went. We’d met at my first gay party when I was cheering at the University of Arizona, where I was a seventeen-year-old college freshman, and he was still a senior in high school. He’d come hang out at my apartment, show me around town, and introduce me to the Tucson gays.