In the early days of college, getting dressed was the last thing I ever did when I was getting ready to go out for the night. All of my friends would be gathered in the living room of the apartment I shared with my two roommates, drinking store-brand fruit juice spiked with cheap vodka, and I was always the last one to shower (sometimes setting my drink on the ledge of the sink—or even the ledge of the tub for convenient in-between rinse sipping … those were the days) and thusly, the last one to be dressed, fully make-upped, and hair-dried before we would leave to paint the town red—to go to the same bars and flirt with the same guys that we did every single weekend.
“Mar, your hair always looks so good when it’s messy like that,” someone would always tell me. “You should wear it like this …” One of the other girls would add, tousling my hair in the back, maybe offering up their latest styling product as a sample.
They said I had great “sex hair.”
I didn’t know what sex hair was exactly, since I was, let’s say, a late bloomer in that area when mid-way through college, I’d yet to experience actual sex hair, or sex anything for that matter. I had a pretty good idea of what it really looked like—sex hair looked, simply put, like my hair when I’d waited too long to dry it after getting out of the shower and as a result, it started to dry itself in unmanageable half-waves despite my typically straight hair. In other words, glorified “bed head” (that I wouldn’t in a million years dream of anyone letting see first thing in the morning). After a few incidences, I could see where some might think it was stylish, maybe even sexy, after a couple of glasses of cheap vodka/store-brand fruit punch, but I never really understood the meaning of “sex hair.”
Now I do, and interestingly enough, I find nothing attractive about it. As someone who is quick to admit when I’m right, I’m also happy to admit my own flaws, and freely. I’m “my own worst enemy” sometimes, as my mother phrases it, but what I really think I am is honest with myself. I know when I have dark circles under my eyes looking as though I haven’t slept in a month (when really it was a night or two of not-nearly enough rest) and I know when my jeans look just-so tight that it’s time to start spending more time at the gym and less time on my couch, telling myself that one more scoop of ice cream is OK. I also know my good hair days, from my bad hair days, and never in my wildest dreams would I classify sex hair in the good hair day category. There’s a reason that sex hair is “sex” hair and not “first date” hair or “wedding” hair. There is a time and a place for it, and never is that time a college dorm party. Sex hair is usually accompanied by the telltale signs of too-red lips, smeared make-up, wrinkled clothing. Not exactly job-interview style, and not exactly the best foot I want to put forward when getting ready for a long night out with classmates.
As “my own worst enemy,” when I was in first grade I tried to deny the fact that I needed to wear glasses after a routine eye exam in the nurse’s office. There was a substitute nurse the day that I peeked into the optical screening machine and read off the tiny letters in each row, so I was sure she was wrong when she gave me a folded slip of paper that only the kids who read the letters wrong received. I tucked it away in the front compartment of my book bag (my mother only flipped through my trapper keeper folder in the main compartment to look for important handouts or notes from the teacher. That front compartment was for spare house keys, tissues and my bus pass).
