Some of the Worst Mistakes

I have notoriously difficult, unmanageable hair. It is curly, but curlier on my left than on my right. It is snarly, baby-fine, and highly breakable. It hangs in my face. It grows fast, and before I have paid the credit card bill for my last haircut, it needs to be cut again. It is a mass of differing, unflattering, and uninteresting colors. I can blow it out straight, but again, it's that snarly, baby-fine, and highly breakable problem again.

I have had a number of extraordinarily bad haircuts over the last 30 years. Some of the worst mistakes I've ever made have been haircuts and colors, including one about a year and a half ago that made me look like the bastard love-child of Eminem and Elton John, bleached and burned out and absolutely not worth the money I was dumb enough to pay for it. Most of the time, it happens when I am feeling down or vulnerable or low, and there is a fair shot that I will feel worse when I leave than I did when I walked in.

I don't like to walk into a salon without an idea of what I want to have happen when I leave. If I walk in without specific directions for a stylist, I leave with the same boring, middle-aged, PTA-mom haircut--long, dull layers, long, dull, face-framing wisps, the assumption that I'll blow my hair out every morning and never wear it curly. Snore. Hair that ends up in a ponytail by 2 p.m. every day.

I googled "Try on hairstyles" the other day. There are numerous websites where you can do exactly this--feed in your picture and then freak the fuck out at the thought of actually doing that to yourself. Here's a pretty good example:

Anybody remember when Nick Nolte got caught doing Ecstacy with those teenage hookers, and passed out in his neighbor's backyard? Remember his mugshot? Yeah, this is me with that haircut. Is this a style anyone who's not addicted to heroin willingly accepts?

Here's another one. I'm planning on doing my hair this way when I audition to be Alby Grant's seventh wife on "Big Love."

Very attractive, no?

This one is less than awful. I think it's actually sort of fun. By the way, this is not terribly far off from the actual color of my hair. It used to be blond when I was little, and has grown progressively darker my whole life. This looks low-maintenance.

One of the difficulties with me and haircuts is that I have a roundish, longish face that may or may not look even rounder and longer based on where my hair hits my face. Not that this is a hairstyle I would choose by any means, but this does illustrate my point:

See? The ubiquitous fucking ponytail is better than this.

This is the haircut I always end up with--the one I was talking about before, with the long layers and the blah blah blah. It's not bad. Just boring.

So. Enough of that. But you get the idea.

Here's another one I'd consider. My fear is that, due to the ungodly humidity here, if I got this haircut, I would spend my entire life trying to convince my hair that it does indeed want to be straight.

Here's the same haircut, on me, without all the straightening.

Wow! Terrific. I may commit suicide.

This is the last one I'm considering. It doesn't make me look, you know, elderly. I really am not that crazy about the fact that a haircut has this much to do with how I feel about myself. But a bad haircut, on me, is just so unbelievably awful, and a good one is such a life-saver.

What do you guys think? I mean, I think I know what I want, but I am not known for my good judgement when it comes to my hair. Throw me a bone.

Lurkers, this would be a great time for you to, you know, out yourselves. Love ya.