Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

We're coming up on Valentine's Day this week, kids. Love abounds! Except when it doesn't. And you know who you are. And believe me - though I am crazy-insane in love with my wife for decades now, there was a time when I treaded the ground of "Having to Figure Love Out." And that inevitably included break-ups. And man, I hated those.

I used to work with a girl named Tobie.* Tobie had lived in Las Vegas for a number of years, but originally heralds from Planet Drama, where she is considered royalty. (*Names have been changed. Kind of. She spells it without the “e.”) Each morning when I walked into the office, I couldn't wait to see what the Crisis De Jour would be. The dramatic episodes ranged from “Last night I talked to my mom for the first time in three years!” to “I lost 1.5 pounds!” And most memorably, when she broke up with her boyfriend of eight months. Or more accurately, he broke up with her. And what, I ask you, could be more dramatic than that?! (Well, if you’re Tobie, then just about anything.)

So I’m listening to her heartbreaking story, line upon line and precept by precept, when I suddenly begin having flashbacks to my own breakups. I start getting knots in my stomach, I get a little moist under the arms, and I find myself looking for the opportunity to assure Tobie that her and I can still be friends, even though we aren’t the ones breaking up. It’s just instinct.

For me, breakups were the absolute worst. I avoided them like they were cancer. Oh, how they pained me to the core of my dating soul. It’s still hard to talk about some of them…

Tess Dresher. Fourth Grade. I can still recall the day she walked up to me during recess and asked me to “go with her.” “Sure,” I answered. And those were the last words every exchanged between Tess and myself. We occasionally sat by each other, and I gave her a very special Peanuts Valentine’s Day card, but we never did speak, or even make eye contact. So I guess technically we are still “going together.” Boy is she going to be mad when she finds out I got married and had eight children. She’ll want to break up for sure. I’m not looking forward to that conversation.

Julia Zimmerman. High School. It was the summer of 1987, and I was sixteen years old – with a license to drive and to date! I knew Julia really liked me when her mom had grounded her and she promptly ignored said house arrest to go to the movies with me. Yes, we were young and crazy in love! I was pretty sure that after the summer of 1987 I could die happy. By fall of 1987 I was so miserable I was praying for death. We went to different high schools and Julia was first to acknowledge that our long distance relationship wasn’t really going to make it. I nodded my head in agreement, but inside I felt like somebody was cramming my heart through a paper shredder.

College break-ups were the toughest, obviously. You've all been there. Sometimes it's almost cliche. But there was genuine pain, due to genuine feelings and possibilities. It might be too soon. I don't think I can talk about it. Her name was Danielle. It was Halloween night. We had gone to a party and we were sitting in my car in the parking lot of her apartment complex. I was dressed as Aladdin, she was Jasmine. Things had been in the pooper for quite some time, and it felt like a stranger walking by could glance in our direction and know exactly what was happening. It was silent for a few minutes, and then I spoke up. Tell me if you've had this exact conversation before:

“I think we should see other people.”

"Define our relationship,” she said.

“What?”

“Define our relationship!”

“Uhm…we should…see other people…but we can still be -”

“Are you giving me the Friend Speech? Don’t you DARE give me the Friend Speech!”

“Uh…NO…never, never. I think it’s just me.”

“OH, NO – the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ bit?”

“Noooo! That’s not what I mean at all...”

An eternal silence. Like…three days have passed while we’ve sat in the car. And finally she speaks.

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“I…don’t understand the question.”

“I can’t do this!” she yelled, and bailed out of the car.

Joy to the world.

It was truly painful. Of course, not as painful as Tobie’s overly dramatic reaction to the hair she found in her salad at lunch one day. “I almost ate this and diiiiiiieeeeedddddd!”

Let Me Cut Your Hair.

First off, let's just start by thanking Ken for his thought-provoking and turbulent post about me yesterday; he also named the other guys who write for this blog, but if you were me, or my mom, you stopped reading after my paragraph.  But here's the thing: not only am I a playwright and a songsmith, but I can also cut your hair...almost legally.

Once, when I was 21 and fresh-faced and fancy-free, I found myself wandering the halls of my local community college wondering how far my 'Intro to Music' and 'Film' classes would take me.  I was halfway though the semester and it was clear that I would not be passing either one, only because when I say wandering the halls of my local community college I mean lying face down in my pillow at noon.  So college was going to be a lot like high school, only they don't care if you come to class in college, because they want to charge you to take it again...it's okay to fail as long as you keep trying.

At some point, I must have gotten out of bed to get a haircut, 'cause I was at my friend's new studio getting my hair cut.  And you know how it is in a Salon, you're chatting and you're making the ladies laugh and they are all smiling at you and rubbing your head with fancy smelling potions and then boom, you find yourself interning as an apprentice sweeping up strangers' hair but getting an education.

It was great!  My dear friend from high school had recently gotten into the hair game, and somehow I convinced her to let me hang out the studio and do stuff.  Turns out if you hang out and do stuff long enough, you get a hair license and can charge people to ruin their lives.  With my academic career freshly flushed down the toilet, I was grateful for the focus my life had taken.     

It might have been four months, it might have been a year; as most of you know, there is no time at the hair salon.  But I sorta worked and I sorta cleaned and I sorta can now cut, dye, and blow out your hair.  Eventually, Pier 1 realized what an amazing and dynamic leader I was and they offered me full time employment and I had to choose: hanging out with the girls at the shop (which is also the premise of my TV sitcom vehicle that will one day make me my millions) or take a job that paid me.

Though it was short lived, I did learn enough to be the sole hair artist for my wife.  Though there are guys out there who would scoff, that decision alone has literally saved me thousands upon thousands of dollars. Wait, no really, ten years of free hair.  How much does a woman spend on hair in ten years?

I have real good stories from those days. Once, I ran a comb through my hair only to find out it was a texturing comb that cut my hair off exactly where I began combing... the root, at the front of my hair line.  Loads of others too, about mixing dyes, and spraying myself and my client and some other girl client with the shampooing hose that shot off like a furious cobra that had to be wrangled.  Nothing is as funny as ineptitude in a hair salon.

As for cutting your hair, well you take your hair into your own hands (sometimes literally). And because I am not licensed, I call myself a hair artist. An artist does not need to be fully trained or need to be sanctioned by the state. No. And I am neither. Also, like an artist I charge exorbitant fees and don't take direction.  When I'm done, then that's what I meant to do, and I don't really want to hear your thoughts on my art.  If you want to give your thoughts then you can take them over at Fantastic Sam's...they'd love to hear them.

Please leave your personal contact information in the Comments and a picture of your current hair mistake.  I will get to you on a need to save basis.

Thanks.

Wax On, Wax Off

I need everyone to sit down, please. I have some unfortunate news for you, and I think you should brace yourself. My dear friends, I have been diagnosed with folliculitis. That’s right, let it sink in. I know you are in shock, so take just a few minutes to regain your composure. I remember when I found out. It was 1993.

For those not familiar with this particular ailment, folliculitis is a condition where hair follicles are damaged by friction from clothing or shaving, and result in a rash or tiny, ingrown hairs. According to the Interwebs, pseudofolliculitis barbae is a similar disorder, but occurs mainly in black men, where curly beard hairs are cut too short, and curve back into the skin and cause inflammation.

I remember thinking that pseudofolliculitis barbae sounded more like what I had, but despite my vertical leap and ability to lip sync every last word to EnVogue’s “My Lovin’ (Never Gonna Get It),” the dermatologist told me it was plain ol’ folliculitis. I told him, “Whatevs, home slice. Shoo’(t).”

I asked for the cure, and the doctor told me, “Grow a beard.” I was a BYU student at the time, and in case you live in a cave or were born on the Bayou, you may have recently heard that BYU has an Honor Code; and one of the standards is you could only sport a beard on BYU’s campus with proper documentation (read: a Beard Card) and a signed agreement that you clearly understood that you were, in fact, not going to heaven.

For the next couple of months I dabbled in a cornucopia of methods to tame this ailment. One of which, I will now publicly and shamefully disclose: Waxing.

Yep, waxing. My thinking was that if I pulled all the hair out of my neck in the most excruciating method known to man, then I would not have to shave my neck for an extended period of time, and that would give my follicles a much needed vacation from the steel blade that caused them so much irritation. This seemed completely logical to me. Of course this was at a time in my life when a number of techniques or practices that were reckless and possibly illegal seemed “logical” to me.

I brought the kit home from Smith’s, heated up the wax on the stove, and stripped down to a towel, so as to not get wax all over my clothes. I wasn’t sure of the extent to which this could go badly. But I was confident it could at least destroy my clothing and possibly the entire apartment.

I had carefully timed it so that this experiment would be conducted alone, while my three roommates were occupied with an assortment of activities outside of our apartment.

Unfortunately, my roommate and dear friend, Lincoln, unexpectedly came home and walked in on an awkward scene of me in the vanity area, in a towel, slathering hot wax onto my neck.

The apartment and in fact the entire city of Provo, Utah, went silent as Lincoln and I locked eyes. Finally, somewhere in the far end of the county…a dog barked.

“What’cha doin’,” asked Lincoln, carefully, as if he were trying to talk me into letting a hostage go free.

“Just…you know…nuthin’.” I answered, casually putting one hand on my hip and hiding the container of wax behind me with my other hand. Silently praying that he wouldn’t notice the single strip of wax on the right side of my neck, or the fact I was only in a towel. Or that I had an Enya cd playing. And some candles burning.

“Is that wax?” he began his questioning.

“Perhaps.”

Then, with both hands up, as if showing he wasn’t concealing a weapon, “I think you should put that down.”

“It’s too late,” I stood my ground. And turning to face the mirror, “I’ve already started. And I’m doing this.”

“My friend…I don’t think you understand the significant pain this is going to cause you.”

“I’ll be fine,” I snapped back, coating the rest of my neck with heavy, heavy layers of hot wax.

When the wax had hardened (no, of course I hadn’t read the directions) I stepped back up to the mirror to get a good, close look at my neck, and strategize where I could get a firm hold of a corner of wax (no, of course not paper, didn’t you read the part about how I didn’t read the directions?).  I was almost giddy to pull off sheets of wax and hair and folliculitis. And there, by my side, was Lincoln, morbidly anxious to watch the process.

With my right hand, I latched on to the left upper corner of wax on my neck, just below my ear, with a plan to pull a triumphant sheet of wax and hair and folliculitis – and in fact all my problems – diagonally down. I gave it a slight tug just to test its bond to my skin. And that was the precise moment when I realized that I just might be wearing a slab of wax on my neck for the rest of mortality, because it certainly wasn’t going to come off.

“At least I’ll never have to shave again,” I thought. I tugged again, significantly harder this time.

“SWEET SAINTS AND SOLDIERS, DID SOMEBODY TAKE A FLAMETHROWERE TO MY FACE! MORPHINE! I NEED MORPHINE!”

This is what my brain was yelling at me. But on the outside, I was strong enough for a man, even if I was using this stuff that was made for a woman. All Lincoln could see was a single, huge tear well up in my right eye.

“See? It’s fine.” I over-confidently stated. Then, while Lincoln scrutinized, and I successfully kept the tears at bay, I started to painfully, meticulously, agonizingly pull bits, chunks, flecks and even shards – but never sheets – of wax off my neck. It was as if the wax was “white” and my neck was “rice.” They simply refused to be separated without a fight. 

After a long time and a lot of yanking, I finally put my foot down and asked Lincoln to not follow me as I stepped into a hot shower to try to scrape off any wax remains. I got out and checked myself in the mirror again. My neck was florescent red; literally glowing. It was like a beacon. It was the Rudolph of necks, and if Santa had been recruiting, well, I'd be on a much different career path than I am now.

Then, to add insult to red and painful injury, not only was it unsuccessful in postponing the need to shave, but it rendered my neck so raw, it was if I had tried to shave with a dull potato peeler. My ambitious experiment had failed huge.

The remedy I finally settled on, and still utilize to this day, is to shave with an electric razor every other day. This seems to keep the folliculitis at bay. However, on occasion, and usually when I’m listening to RUN DMC, I find my pseudofolliculitis barbae still flares up, yo.