Hair

Men are unsociable. Get over it. But even I have to admit, at the climax of our unnecessary emotional solitude, we can be downright unreasonable. Particularly when discussing that least manly of topics, hair. A boy can drag himself out of bed at five o'clock in the morning to ensure not a single strand is out of place, but try and discuss it with him and you'll receive a look that would make a homicidal pubescent rhinoceros with a crick in its horn feel faint. It is the elephant in the room, that which is constantly fretted over and checked in car windows (sometimes to the bewilderment of their owners), but never mentioned. I am no exception. For me, asking someone else about their hair would be almost inviting them to ask about mine, and that might drag the conversation into an excruciating cross-examination of coiffures difficult to come out of with any dignity.

And is there a more compromising setting to be seen in than a hairdresser's? Sitting being pampered over by a gay man* with clips holding your hair in strange directions is possibly the worst time to turn around and find your best friend sitting next to you. This isn't exactly what happened to me, I was queuing for the gay man's attention when from the door emerges a rain-sodden, windswept specimen. With a comical double take, I realised who he was. My instincts and the wisdom of experience told me to sit very still and make no sudden movements. My darling mother had different ideas, dragging him and his mum's attention to us in the same way a suffocating blue whale might, with limbs flapping about the place and a strange twisted expression that to the two parents present was probably a smile, but to me and Zac was a pained grimace probably present before an indescribably agonising death. After all, how could she be pleased about this dreadful coincidence? Of course, for girls and women bumping into each other in the hairdresser's is the same as bumping into each other anywhere else, but we hadn't worked this out. Luckily for us,  we were sent to opposite ends of the room, where our pact of mutual ignorance (I won't look if you don't) wasn't really necessary, but it was close.

I'm unsure whether it would have been worse for us seeing each other have our hair cut, or hearing each other talk about our hair. It's not something boys are accustomed to doing on a regular basis, so when in the sort of pressurised situation we're talking about, either tend to act mute and adopt the complex of watermelon innards, or burst out with everything we haven't been saying to each other about our hair preferences for our whole lives. It's not cool.

To conclude then, boys are a bit stupid, but if you're a girl you probably already knew that, and if you're a boy that's the way you like it. So congratulations again Jacob, another post successfully written that will provide useful insights to, give or take very little, absolutely no-one. 

*My particular gay man happens to be one of the loveliest people I know, and I hold nothing against him. Yes, that can be taken literally or emotionally; I like him, but not in that way.