wickedqueen.net

So back in July, I was at CONvergence* and some old dude told me I looked 19. He was probably hitting on me.

Then the other day I was walking over to my friend Alexis’s place and a guy–probably middle-aged, I’m guessing–on the Square asked me how old I was (no, I don’t know why; it wasn’t like the question really seemed to arise naturally), and then responded, “NO. You got THAT BABY LOOK, you look 19, MAYBE 20.”

“That baby look”? Me? Is this because I don’t have a chin?**

I had just assumed this was something guys say when they are hoping you will be so flushed with pleasure at being mistaken for, my goodness, NINETEEN, that you throw your panties at them in delight–although personally I find being confused with college freshmen to be moderately insulting–or possibly that pink hair, as my friend Matt argues, just screams “Barbie’s favorite color” so loudly that it automatically subtracts 5-10 years from your perceived age.

But then last night I was at a teacher training session with some people I hadn’t met before, and when I said I was a grad student, one of them instantly replied, “Oh, first year.”

“Ah, no…”
“Second year?”
“No.”
Another person, incredulously: “THIRD year?”
“…Ah, sixth.”
(pause)
“In GRAD school?”

Some of that may have been shock and horror that a person could be in grad school for six years and counting, but really, do I look 22 or 23?*** Or is it just the hair?

And yet, somehow, there are always those two or three students who are absolutely terrified of me. The hair has many powers.

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*It’s a convention. The guy who played Chewbacca was there, as was Mercedes Lackey, my most favorite ridiculous fantasy author. So were the corset sellers–there are ALWAYS corset sellers at cons–and one of them was selling yarn/ribbon pony falls, which are like fake hair that you pin to pigtails except that being made from yarn and ribbon it’s hardly meant to be convincing, except that somehow when you pin pink yarn to my head, it looks like it really BELONGS there. I love fake hair. Anyway.

***I realize one can be in one’s first or second year of grad school at any age, but this seemed to be an age issue.

The hair pretty much looks the same every time, although this time I may have gone a little overboard with the 40 weight developer in the bleach and I’m still shedding little bits of hair, causing my sister (who is visiting from Minnesota, information that she remembered to convey to me approximately 10 minutes before boarding her flight on Wednesday night, and who was over last night for dinner) to ask me if I’d been trimming my hair in our shower. But basically, it’s Atomic Pink, and it sticks up real good.

Really, the thing you should be paying attention to here is my eyebrows. I love the little salon by Trader Joe’s.

I are serious Cabell.

Those are my hairdying sheets, visible in the background. I sleep on them whenever I’ve just refreshed my dye job.

And that’s one of my new pairs of boots. They have survival pockets!

Actually, I really need to take a picture of my hair when it’s styled in a hot pink 80s mod inverted triangle, which it does amazingly well. I look like a Hologram.

Note: It’s sort of buried, so I thought I’d just add an opening note that the point of this whole entry, aside from how cute I am in my cycling clothes, is that I made my first 30-mile ride yesterday. This is somewhat less impressive in light of my father’s latest exploits, but we all have to start somewhere.

I got this jersey half-off from Sierra Trading Post, so it was a reasonable price instead of the usual crazy high one. Another cyclist complimented me on it while I was out riding, and she didn’t even get the full effect of my hair.

As you can see, however, it also pretty much matches my helmet. Also oleander.

I love oleander.

Soon after I took this photo of the fancy houses from afar, I discovered I was hopelessly lost. I don’t know why I continue to be surprised every time this happens. Eventually I had to call my sister and give her my location so that she could figure out how the hell I was supposed to get to Arastradero.

I got so lost that I got to see some of these houses up close. Los Altos Hills is full of them.

Of course, it’s also full of hills. This one has been magically flattened by the act of photography, apparently; I assure you that it was nearly vertical. I actually attempted to bike up it and had to give up about a third of the way up–WALKING up this hill was punishing. Then it turned out to be a dead end. Thanks for signing that, City of Los Altos Hills.

I did eventually make it to Arastradero. Apparently this is what lies beyond my turn-off for work–some kind of mini-vineyard.

Once on Arastradero, I actually even figured out where I made that first wrong turn, so next weekend maybe I’ll actually be able to do the route my landlord recommended, instead of random riding around, getting lost, backtracking, etc. At any rate, I still made 30 miles, so I was pleased. The jersey, in addition to suiting my personal style, was indeed very lightweight and comfortable. I’ve ordered a couple more, plus real bike shorts,* from Sierra Trading Post, since they have a bunch of stuff on clearance and they’d sent me an additional 20% off coupon.

The hair in these photos is already out of date, however, as following my triumphant return I redid my dye job–I’m back to solid Atomic Pink, thanks to Cyn. I couldn’t find the vaseline when I was getting started, which led to an unintended second bike trip to Long’s for supplies (you need vaseline to minimize hairline staining), which I have to say I did not really enjoy–I’d sort of been planning to be totally done with biking for the day. I also picked up some bleach wipes and leave-on spray cleaner for the shower, though. Just trying to reduce my environmental impact.

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*In fact, I ordered two matching ensembles, one purple/rose, one orange/coral. Rest assured I will post photos.

You know, all those years of secondary school gym class, I thought I hated physical activity, but it turns out I just hated fascism.*

I remember all those thousands of hours
that I spent in grade school watching the clock,
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.

–Richard Brautigan, The Memoirs of Jesse James

(My other reflection on biking lately is that the older I get, the more like my father I seem to become. Biking, cooking,** and I’ve started contemplating camping, which was definitely not my thing as a child, at least not after age 8 or so.)

My hair is also getting really faded. I’m loathe to cover the highlights, which still look good (if faded), but probably I’ll dye it all back to Atomic Pink after I get back from visiting my cousin in LA. This does mean that Cyn and I will not be total twinsies if we get together for lunch, but that may well save the universe from implosion,*** so perhaps I should consider it a necessary sacrifice.

And speaking of the universe imploding, today’s Thursday PARC Forum is about dark matter. Maybe I should go.

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*I’ve remarked this to several people now, which is why I can’t remember who thought it should be on a t-shirt. I think it might be a little long.

***I’ve always been a big fan of parallel universes, such as Star Trek Dark Mirror and the Futurama Cowboy Universe. Maybe there’s one where everyone’s got pink hair EXCEPT Cyn and me. I’ll tell you one thing: I bet Evil Bizarro Cabell has really conservative hair. Lime green would be the photo-negative, but I’ve done that, too.

So I finally actually paid a professional to do my hair color. I generally take care of it myself, with bleaching supplies purchased in bulk from Sally Beauty Supply and Special Effects dye, but I’ve been wanting to try highlights for a long time, and they are a little out of my league. Since I wanted another haircut before I left Boston anyway, I checked with the Jadie at Diego’s and she said it would be fine if I brought in my own product.

The front is Cherry Bomb with highlights in Blood Red and Napalm; the back is a solid mixture of Blood Red and Cherry Bomb. The difference between Cherry Bomb and Napalm is kind of subtle now, but I expect it will become more glaring as the colors fade a little, because the former goes hot pink and I anticipate that the latter will go ORANGE.

The sunglasses I found at Newbury Comics right after I got my hair done. Serendipity. The friend I met for dinner declared that I looked like “a fucking rockstar,” which is pretty much my goal in a hairstyle/sunglasses combination.

Not a great framing job, but one of the best displays of the color.

I needed the natural light, but the wind doesn’t show off the highlights to their full dramatic effect when they’re combed straight.

A little overexposed, but damn, my eyes look blue.

If you look at the full-size version of this one, you can really pick out the orange.

Overall, I am pleased with it. I think I’ll probably go back to Atomic Pink at the end of the summer, but I wanted something a little “harder” for awhile. I think this works.

ETA: NOTE TO POTENTIAL EMPLOYERS AND MY PARENTS: No, I was not participating! Read the footnotes, geeze. It just HAPPENED TO BE amateur night.

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I have mentioned before that African American women love my hair. Just yesterday I was walking down the Infinite Corridor and was informed by a young black woman (she looked about junior high age): “Man, that makes you HOT.” Something along those lines, anyway. I remember thinking that I don’t understand how the kids talk these days, although it seemed generally positive.

At any rate, I have identified another group with a special appreciation for my hair: exotic dancers.*

Proportionally, exotic dancers seem to love my hair even more than African American women. I see a lot of the latter in any given day and only a small number of them say anything about my hair. Of course, I recognize that dancers are working for tips. They also got to see my hair under a black light, a condition in which it is particularly striking.** Unfortunately, I suspect I will never be able to conduct a truly controlled study to determine, for good and all, who likes my hair BEST. But I will say, over half the professional dancers I encountered last week were very enthusiastic about it.

The amateurs, not so much. An interesting difference between professional dancers and the women who participate in amateur night is that the former see a group of women and make a beeline for them, whereas the latter LITERALLY cannot be paid to come close.

Another thing that dancers like (in addition to my hair, the nominal topic of this post in case you lost track) is $2 bills. Another member of my party knew this and came prepared. I realize that $2 bills are worth twice as much as $1 bills, so they’ve got that going for them, but dancers seem to love them far out of proportion to their doubled economic value. One woman told us that they are lucky, which I of course found subculturally fascinating.*** Another woman told us that she gives them to her daughter, a fact that I suspect she would never have disclosed to a group of men–that’s not what they’re buying.

At one point, I was in the bathroom and heard two women discussing how “there’s nothing like a strip club to make you feel bad about your body, god, I need to do some crunches!”

Huh, I thought. You’d think amateur night would be more of a consolation than that.

I mean, no, I do not think I am as hot as the PROFESSIONAL dancers,**** especially not the one who was double-jointed and could cross her ankles behind her head. But this is kind of like acknowledging that I could not take an Army Ranger in a fight. They’re PROFESSIONALS and they’ve dedicated way more time to their pursuit of choice (being smoking hot, killing people with spoons) than I am willing to put in, so it’s not like there’s any SHAME in it.

Anyway, I have my hair. Even the dancers are impressed.

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*My information from a friend of mine who worked for several years in the profession, as well as what I gleaned from that Lerum 2001 article I read for the social psych prelim, suggests that dancers do not like being referred to as “strippers.” I have to agree that the term eclipses a truly impressive degree of athletic skill, not to mention various other professional competencies that most people probably don’t think of when they hear “stripper.”

****But I am totally as hot as the amateurs. The main difference between us, I would venture, is that I recognize the fact that I lack the necessary social skills for success in exotic dancing. Nudity? No problem. Making nice to strangers? Not so much. Also, I saw one of the amateurs almost fall off the pole while hanging upside down. I try to avoid any job that entails the risk of cracking my skull open, naked or clothed.

The other day I was walking to the gym when a woman stopped me on the pedestrian mall by the student center, exclaiming, “I love your hair!”

“Thank you,” I said.

“I love it!” she cried. “THANK YOU for doing this!”

“Er, thank you,” I said. “I like your umbrella.”*

It was, overall, an enjoyable hair encounter. I pondered it a bit as I made my way to the locker rooms. It’s not actually that unusual for people to produce expressions of gratitude in the course of complimenting my hair. I can recall at least two other instances off the top of my head: one at MIT, and one at PARC. In both cases, the complimenting party expanded on the thanks with a statement along the lines that I “brightened up the place.”

I’ve noted before that I think the pink is a particularly approachable color. People were not nearly as inclined to approach me directly when it was blue, or even purple. My initial impression that Boston was a more reserved environment has been pretty much demolished by patches of warmer weather; it’s not, I think, that people here are less likely to comment on my hair than people in San Francisco, but just that most of the time I’ve been wearing a hat–or at least the situation allowed for the reasonable assumption that I might be.**

But it’s more than just a general sense of pink-haired people being safe. There is an active appreciation here, at least from some people–people who are very “normal” looking, people who do not themselves have strange hair or piercings or wild and crazy shoes. It’s funny, because I find that often it’s people with a more overtly “alternative” personal style who are rather disapproving, implicitly or explicitly, of those of us who “go too far.”

Or maybe it’s not that funny after all–these are people who might perhaps have done the same, but for whatever reason they decided it wasn’t available to them, and now they’re cranky. They don’t want other people getting away with something. Whereas the people who wouldn’t really have gone for it themselves can appreciate it without any sense of envy or missing out. THEY don’t want pink hair, but they enjoy seeing it on me.

It’s like being some kind of sacred style clown, in addition to a delightful Ghost of Hairstyle Future for small girl children. I rarely mind being stared at by people who are smiling.

Yesterday I redyed–same color,*** not much point posting pictures; it looks about the way it always does. I used my grandmother’s old hairdryer from the 60s for the first time, and it was AWESOME–I applied heat for a full hour without having to stop to rest my arms. The color looks good, although right now I still have some little stains around the hairline, despite having used Vaseline. But I am pleased.

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*This was true. I’d been admiring it as we walked towards each other. From a distance it looked pink, but then it turned out to be a lot of red flowers on a white background. It was very attractive.

***Special Effects “Atomic Pink.” I got it at the Garment District in Cambridge and it was like $9.50, which is a very good price for Special Effects. The staff was really nice, too.

On Saturday, I went down to the Economy Hardware in lower Allston and got window insulation kits and a wall mirror. Any ideas about how to hang a full-length cheapo wall mirror that definitely weighs more than the two pounds that my “heavy duty” double-sided tape says it will support, but has no hooks or wires of any kind currently attached to its cardboard backing, are appreciated.

The window insulation worked pretty well, except that I in no way got it up in such a way that it is “nearly invisible.” My friend Crystal said hers was, but Crystal is neater than I am. The important thing is that there is no longer a stiff wind coming through my bathroom or living room room windows, and thus I no longer feel like I am actually setting money on fire when I turn on the gas.*

Anyway, when I got home from the hardware store, I noticed that there were several shopping carts just sitting around on the sidewalk near my building. I was puzzled, but didn’t spend much time thinking about it.

It was only Sunday morning, as I reflected on what a pain it was going to be to get a scratching post home from the nearest PetCo,** that I realized that the shopping carts had no doubt been stolen from various local retailers by non-car-owning Allston residents who found themselves in similar quandaries.

I would certainly never say, in this public forum, that I would steal a shopping cart–burdened with a 36″ kitty condo scratching post or not–but I will say a) “broken windows,” and b) it never even would have occurred to me that stealing a shopping cart was a viable course of action until I realized that the practice is apparently rampant in my neighborhood.

The PetCo is in a shopping plaza with a Shaw’s Grocery, so I stopped there for a few necessities before selecting my scratching post, on the principle that groceries, unlike a scratching post, will fit in my backpack. I had been to this Shaw’s the day I arrived in Boston, when I had my father and the minivan at my disposal. We had a really weird bagger. She was so weird that when I realized I was going to get her again, I almost switched lines, but it was the shortest, so I stayed put. I was sorry.

The checker was a young woman with streaked dark hair–I would have guessed she was Indian, but her English wasn’t very good, which has not been my usual experience with Indian people. She told me she liked the color of my hair, and then asked if it was “fixed.”

“Oh,” I said, “Yes.”
“I mean–if you put water in–”
“Yes, I understand. It’s permanent.”
“How much?”
“Does it cost? Well, the dye is $15–”
“ONE fifteen?”
“No, just $15–”
< incredulous look >
“Well, it’s just the dye. I do it myself. So the dye is about $15.”

She then launched into a long tangent which, as best as I could interpret, was about wanting to put highlights (?) in her hair–in addition to what she already had, I guess, or maybe those were pretty old; they looked grown out–and how much would it cost, and some people said $400 but others said no, only $100, and what did I think.

“Uh… I really don’t know. I don’t get my hair done, I just do it myself.”
“But how much do you THINK?”
“I really don’t know.”
“JUST GUESS!”

At this point, the checker seemed manifestly hostile that I would not give her a random number, but I stood firm. I suppose I could have said “more than I am willing to pay,” which is pretty much all I am qualified to estimate on the subject, but I didn’t think of it at the time. There’s a reason I don’t get my hair dyed professionally.

It will need to be cut soon, though. Gene in the departmental office, when I asked him where a person like me should get her hair cut, responded immediately, “Judy Jetson’s!”

I looked it up on Yelp.com and it does look like my kind of salon. I prefer a stylist with more visible tattoos than me; I find the mundanes just get hung up on how damaged my hair is (duh, it didn’t turn this color BY ITSELF) and don’t know how to work with its natural aggression. I should probably call them for an appointment today.

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*Not that I am so foolish as to believe my gas bill is not going to be astronomical, regardless. But at least now I can feel like I did all I could.

**We had to leave my cats’ scratching post and homemade “kitty castle”–basically a plywood bookcase upholstered in carpet remnants–in Wisconsin, because there was no way to get them in the car with the rest of my possessions. Given that I am renting this place furnished and have a security deposit, it quickly became apparent that they were going to have to be replaced.

So today I was at the gym* about to get on an ab machine following my cardio, and this strapping young man comes up to me.

“You’re pinker than the last time I saw you, aren’t you?”
“Uh… where did you see me?”
“At that party at [something or other] house.”
“I don’t think so. I just got here like three days ago.”
“Oh. So you’re new?”
“Yeah.”**
“Well… you have competition.”
“You said I was pinker, right?”
“You are a little more vibrant, yeah.”

It’s just like I used to say about PARC, where the security people barely glanced at my ID when I came in. People see pink hair and they don’t bother remembering ANY OTHER identifying features. A six foot tall black man could pretend to be me with the aid of an appropriately hued wig.

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*Visiting students do not get free gym privileges. “Affiliate” rates are not exactly cheap, but the location is good and it’s a nice facility and if I don’t have a gym, I’ll go crazy.

**Yes, at this point, it seems likely that he was flirting with me, but a) I don’t like to flirt when I’m sweaty and b) he WAS kind of cute, but in a barely legal kind of way.

I spent yesterday in wine country with friends from Stanford; it was fun. Mostly what we did was taste wine, and I suppose I could have gotten Thrilling Action Shots of that, but I was kind of busy drinking tasting. And getting surprisingly blotto surprisingly fast from what seemed like very small quantities of wine, although I guess we did share a bottle at lunch, but come on, there were FOUR OF US. My friend Anne suggests it was the altitude, which sounds like a good excuse.

Anyway, the wineries were cool. Brandy was collecting ceramic coasters from them, and I did a little Christmas shopping. There were also some totally bizarre random aspects to the buildings and grounds, Exhibit A being the Giant Thumb at Clos Pegase:

No, we don’t know, either. Awesome thumb, though.

Clos Pegase was my favorite of the wineries that we visited, although in the interest of full disclosure, it was also the last. Their emblem was Pegasus, which was cool and reminded me of my childhood, when my parents and I would have long and no doubt frustrating discussions in which they would attempt to explain to me that “Pegasus” was the name of a SPECIFIC WINGED HORSE, rather than a categorical reference for all horses with wings, and I would steadfastly ignore them. I was a strong-willed child.*

Today I walked to Mountain View intending to visit Target and Trader Joe’s, but got sidetracked checking in at the Happy Salon, which I am always passing by and wondering if they do walk-ins, which they didn’t exactly, but they said I could come back in an hour, and I REALLY needed an eyebrow wax.

So instead of walking the rest of the way to Trader Joe’s for milk and produce,** I elected to browse the Tower Records going-out-of-business sale across the street. I was checking the science fiction paperbacks for S.M. Stirling*** when a nerdy middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap inexpertedly fabric puffy painted “45!” came up to me.

“Ah, hi,” he said.
“Hello…” I said.
“I’m on a scavenger hunt for my friend’s birthday–he’s 45–pointing at hat–we just started, and we have to find someone with at least two piercings not in their ears, and, um–I was wondering if by chance–”

I stuck my tongue out at him. He was overjoyed.

“Can I take your picture?”

I permitted it. He thanked me effusively and darted off. Twenty minutes later the woman who waxed my eyebrows at the Happy Salon was grilling me on what I use on my hair, and how often, and how do I get that color? I only wished that Kristen, who once doubted my accounts of the attention my hair draws in public, could have been there to see it all. (I realize that Scavenger Hunt Guy didn’t ACTUALLY say anything about my HAIR, but let’s consider why he was so sure that I’d have a second non-ear piercing.)

At least one wine taster guy remarked on my hair at GREAT length. Then he carded me. It’s not exactly MATURE hair, I’ll grant you.

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*My sister gets those at the children’s museum a lot.

***If you like the post-apocalypse–or as my father puts it, if you are big on revenge fantasies–you will dig S.M. Stirling.