2/22/2007

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And we’re just so busy. Busy, busy. Busy scissors, oh-oh, oh-oh.

“You’re a hairdresser on fire!” Taylor snips and swishes as we gather in anticipation of what might just be the best, most ridiculous night ever.

“No, you are!” I twist and pout.

Morrissey’s coif is holding asexual sonic court in my gracious drawing room as varying shades of my nearest and dearest unsolved follicular homicides pile their suedeheads into my pre-party fray, and I could almost swear that I’m not old and tired, and that washing this Vicodin down with that vodka isn’t self-medicating, but an actual good time. Choruses of “We’ve still got it,” (or worse, “She’s got it,” in droll Bananarama post-AIDS tones) while not clearly sung, are presently being applied generously, rinsed and repeated.

“We should probably go,” reason speaks through its grinding teeth from up on high. Yes, we should.

In the low-culture blender tonight are two split ends of disparate means: a hair salon grand opening and a lesbian auction benefit mess, both on the same ViMi block, so reason probably isn’t what I’m hearing at all. If one were to take the implications of these two situations, boil them down into a toxic liquid and huff the noxious fish-n-Ferragamo fumes, then one would certainly be eyeing an imminent expiration date and a rainbow flag–draped coffin.

“How much is a lesbian going for these days?” Taylor wanders the underground railroad with a pink whip in his hand. “Strong back, sturdy haunches? Can she hoe a row?”

Well, the expected hos with cornrows are apparently not the order of the day at our first destination, Copperhead Salon. Gelled out of a stereotypical hairdresser mutiny from longtime Thornton Park’s gold-plated gossip hall, The Wave, Copperhead’s already been open for a few months and boasts a carryover clientele that includes, well, me. Which means that at some point in the evening I’ll have to remind bitch-supreme Joel, my personal hairkiller, that when he’s speaking to me it isn’t polite to stare at the recession of my hairline.

“Oh, I do that to everyone!” he’ll lie, and I’ll scrunch a few more hairs down there and cry a little. Sigh.

Around the salon water feature, finger foods are fingering and margaritas slurring, while planted model types mingle with tags on their backs declaring just which hair expert is responsible for the chunks of blond piled on top of their heads. It’s a little humiliating, and soon to be a lot hilarious. Taylor and I start stomping our feet in unison at the fact that we too should be branded by our own hairdresser, which leads an eye-rolling Joel to stamp our hands with a rubber ink stamp that has his name and his cell-phone number on it.

“Um, shouldn’t that say T-cell?” we croak like AIDS is now officially funny.

“Oh, don’t be so negative!”

And the giggles begin. We eye up a hipster Amish beard and make mandatory references to protein rinses. Somebody nearby gags that all of the food has hair in it and the drinks taste like conditioner. All the jokes we can think of already exist right here in this very room, just begging to be plucked.

I stick my finger in the chocolate fountain — not the first time, dear readers — and rub it across Taylor’s upper lip.

“Sanchez, the name is Sanchez,” Taylor stinks. “It’s my beauty mark!”

“Er, booty mark,” etc.

Then some skinny Florida-tante mentions that I look 39 so we have to leave (she’ll say she said 29 later, but the damage will have already been done … like my hair).

Next door at the GLBT Center the dyke sale is about to begin, only this year they’ve allowed a few men into the mix, although to the naked eye the distinguishing factors are negligible in this particular fellowship-hall fluorescence. Somebody hands me a paddle and a toothpick — again, not for the first time — and doesn’t tell me what to do with either. Hmmm. All proceeds are reportedly to assist the women’s (womyn’s?) group or something, and the room is packed. But is that a good thing?

“OK, so why does everybody have some version of Rick Springfield’s hair from each point in his career?” I mutter a little too audibly about hairdressers who should be fired. Several mullet girls, probably named Jessie, frown back.

An icebreaker ensues involving the passing of a Life Saver on a toothpick to the person standing next to you with only your mouth — a wet spiral perm drops it halfway down our row, soiling our chances for whatever lesbian booty that might bring — and the auction begins. Barking tonight is public defender and presumed bear Bob Wesley, in a tuxedo, and he’s a real hoot. Woof!

“How about that Anna Nicole?”

Boos.

“Too soon? OK, Lisa Nowak.”

Grumbles.

The auction itself is an uncomfortable non-event with two coupled boys and a twink-in-a-vest selling themselves off for bourgeois dating situations with older men that might involve either paddles or miniature golf. Michael and Will, the couple, reportedly fancy themselves present-life reincarnations of Antony and Cleopatra and love Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, which is almost too much. The beefy Harley lesbian selling off her riding instruction while peeling off her leather jacket, however, is more than I can handle.

“We should probably go,” reason beats me over the head this time.

If only. Outside, a shampoo boy recounts masturbatory tales from Asian massage parlors before detailing his own pants’ tenting to follicular massages of an aerobic instructor’s scalp.

“I had to turn around and grab a towel,” he says.

Hairdresser, you’re fired.