Start 2025 with a Bang

Bangs will change your life

The hair salon smelled like coconut, jasmine, aerosol, bleach, and scorched hair. “I’m Ainsley-Leaigh,” the stylist introduced herself and assisted Nicole, who’d just arrived for her two o’clock, in removing her jacket. Nicole caught a chemical-sweet whiff of Red Bull on Ainsley-Leaigh’s breath. You must be my lucky star / cuz you make the darkness seem so far Madonna’s shrill pitch cut through the din of the salon’s chatter. Nicole felt uncomfortable with this person undressing her. To roleplay the aloof society woman who doesn’t bend at the friction of client-service-provider relations took a lot of energy out of her. It made her feel guilty to be waited on, but also, in a way, superior to those who didn’t feel as guilty.

“Did you regret cutting your bangs” Nicole had typed into google the night before. It depends on your face shape; they always grow back; I don’t have a pretty forehead; I’m a want-what-I-can’t-have kind of person; it depends on which bangs; I’m more low maintenance than bangs require me to be; they look good on most people; time heals everything; I want a glow up; very few people can pull off short/micro bangs; my wispy fringe sticks to my forehead on hot days; I don’t trust myself with scissors: Nicole lay in bed scrolling, her laptop perched on her chest, her thin face bathed in the screen’s blue-green light. Her long center-parted hair accentuated that she looked like a wraith. She wanted to be skinnier, but more than that she wanted to be special. She wanted everyone who’d ever been mean to her to apologize, and she wanted them all to know she wasn’t a poor little rich girl or a dumb slut or an evil basic or a stank-faced whore. Bangs seemed like the answer. Bangs could change her life.

“Was this self care?” Nicole thought as the shampoo girl named Helen massaged her head. Nicole had quickly said “yes” to seem agreeable when Helen had asked if the water’s temperature was okay even though it was actually too hot. “I’m getting bangs,” she told Helen, trying to distract herself from the scalding water. It was hard to hear over the running faucet but Nicole was pretty sure Helen had responded, “Brave.” Helen had her tongue pierced. “What a thot,” Nicole thought.

“I don’t want to look like Diablo Cody or too Tarot or like I sell vintage lingerie at a popup at the coffee shop around the corner. No fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror of my classic car,” she told Ainsley-Leaigh after her shampoo when she was sitting in the stylist’s chair. Ainsley-Leaigh nodded languidly, pressing a piece of chewed gum onto the edge of a 40 oz Stanley mug. “It’s Nicorette,” she said like that was an excuse when she noticed Nicole’s disgusted face. Then, she turned Nicole around in the swivel chair so she couldn’t see herself in the mirror. Snip snip snip went Ainsley-Leaigh’s shears.

[This story was originally published in Flaunt Magazine Issue 191 “Fresh Cuts”]