Hair of the Dog

The other night, I had a little too much to drink. The thing is, I totally didn't realize it at the time, though. I was just hanging out at home, drinking wine and painting. This went on for hours. I was having fun, and making a lot of progress on the painting that I started in art class. And I guess I'd been refilling my wine glass little by little as I sat there painting, listening to music. I thought I was fairly sober actually, but before I knew it my bottle was empty. So I must have been pretty buzzed, probably drunk actually; that's the only way I can explain what happened next.

What happened next was that I decided, out of the blue, that I was sick of having my hair as long as it was. I'd been letting my hair grow longer and longer since the summer, and it had gotten to the point where it was down to my shoulder-blades somewhere. And I like having long hair; I always have. But for some reason, the other night, it struck me that it was time to cut a bit of it off.

So I did.

Cut my own hair, that is.

After drinking a bottle of wine.

Oy.

It started small; I just intended to cut off an inch or two, get off some of the ends that had been there a little too long, make it just a little bit shorter. But then I realized that I hadn't cut as straight as I thought I had, so I cut a little bit more. Just a little bit. But then I realized that the right side was still a little longer than the left side, so I cut just a little bit more, to make it even. Except ... well, yeah, do I really have to explain it further? It kept going on like that, just "evening it up" little by little, until finally I figured I'd gotten it right. Then, since I was covered in little pieces of cut hair, I jumped in the shower. Got out, jumped in bed. And quickly fell asleep.

Cut to the next morning.

You know how you wake up on a morning after a night of too much imbibing, and it takes you a few minutes to really gain full consciousness, and memories of the night before oh so gradually start to return to you, and you slowly realize that you might've done something really stupid the night before? And you're then a little bit sick to your stomach, as you remember all the alcohol, and start to remember the stupid thing(s)? That's what I had going on in bed that next morning. I knew I'd done something stupid; I was just trying to remember exactly what it was. And as I stretched, I ran one hand through my hair, to push it out of my eyes ... and suddenly my eyes were wide open, and I was wide awake, and I was a little bit scared, and totally cursing myself.

With much trepidation, I got up and went to the bathroom, and looked at myself in the mirror. Man oh man oh man, did my hair look bad. Granted, a lot of it had to do with the fact that I went to bed with wet hair, so I didn't just wake up with regular bed head, I woke up with crazy bed head, all curly and dented in weird places from having my head on the pillow all night. But on top of all that, it was short crazy bed head. Like, chin-short.

Oh, man, did I get mad at myself. I jumped in the shower again, to wash my hair so I could get out with it wet and straight and try to survey the damage. It turned out that it wasn't quite as short as I'd thought at first; it had just looked that way from the crazy curls, but the ends ... oh, man, the ends: there was nothing even about those ends. What the hell had I been thinking?

Well, just as you sometimes need to have a beer in the morning after a night of heavy drinking to help ease the hangover, the only thing to do that morning to cure my crooked crazy short haircut was to cut yet more. I thought about the fact that I probably should go to the hair salon to get this done, of course, as any normal person would do; but at that point, I figured I'd take my chances of fixing on my own if I could rather than risk the total mortification of having to explain to my hairdresser what had happened. And at least I managed to get it straight this time, finally. But shit, I was not happy.

Now that a few days have passed since my bad behavior, though, I'm feeling better. I don't think it came out so bad. In fact, I think it's kind of cute. Sure, I said goodbye to months and months worth of growth in those long locks that I cut off, but now it's much bouncier. Cute. (And thankfully longer than chin length after all; over an inch longer at least.) And I got compliments on it all day today at work.

But while my hair may have come out looking cute enough in the end, there definitely is a moral to this story. One that is obvious, apparently, to everyone but me. NEVER, EVER, EVER CUT YOUR OWN HAIR WHILE YOU'RE INTOXICATED. If you're very lucky, you might come out looking ok in the end, after much fixing; but the process, oh the process, once you realize what you've done, is extremely painful.