I went and got my hair cut today. Let us never speak of this again.

Okay, I'm slightly kidding. I went to go get my hair cut today, at this place on Solano Avenue. Reasonable prices, my roommate told me they did a decent job on her hair. So I made an appointment, moseyed in there right on time, and told them I wanted a cut and color.

First of all, the woman who cut my hair didn't speak English all too well. Initially, I thought she just had an accent. That would prove, tragically, not to be the case.

Also, I don't think she likes long hair. When I took my hair down she said, "Uuh. Long hair." Most of the time I get, "Wow, your hair is so long. How beautiful," or something. I should have known from her strangled "Uuh" that I was in trouble. That was probably Korean for, "I must cut off the vast majority of this as soon as possible."

I also wanted to go with sort of a light brown color, get away from the red and black thing I've had going on for a while. The first thing she did was erase any thought I had about coloring my hair. "No, you hair too dark for color. We don't bleach here. You need bleach hair." Okay, forget the color. Two tone hair it is.

I said I wanted three inches off the bottom and some long layers (starting at about chin length) around my face. She nodded as if she understood me perfectly. As she began cutting, she said, "Oh, that too long still three inch. How about here?" She pointed to a perfectly reasonable spot on my back, or so I thought.

It's the typical woman's dilemma. Part of you wants to grow your hair out so it hits your ass. Part of you wants to chop it all off. I figured, well, what the hell, I'll go a little shorter. I embraced the "do something drastic" part of my personality. So she started cutting.

One thing you have to understand about me: I live in morbid fear of layers. When I was in the seventh grade, I got my hair cut in layers. I thought "layers" meant that my hair would be fluffier. Like, it would still be a blunt cut across the bottom, but more layers would be inserted between my hair and my head. So I said yes to layers.

I was in an awkward period.

I ended up with an appalling, extremely short, aggressively layered haircut. I remember going home and bawling because of my sheer junior high school ugliness, and my terrible, awful, no good, very bad hair. Keep in mind I also had acne, braces, no friends, and glasses with a dachshund design etched on them. All photos of me from that time period have been systematically destroyed.

Which brings me back to today's haircut. She interpreted "layers around the face" to "layers all over my head." It wasn't until she actually cut a large chunk of my hair at the back of my head to chin length that I realized the misunderstanding. And by then, it was too late.

I sat there, trying not to cry. Layers. Layers were appearing all over my head. My beautiful long hair was being chopped almost entirely off, in favor of layers. My hair was going to look hideous. It was seventh grade all over again.

My friends were going to have to look at my head, which was starting to resemble the ass of a mangy stray dog, and tell me it didn't look "that bad." If they wanted to keep a straight face, they would need to practice ahead of time. I was going to tell them to find a dog, place their faces an inch and a half from the dog's ass, and practice their fake haircut compliments.

I managed not to cry until I got to the car.

But a funny thing happened on the way to this entry. My haircut started to grow on me. Other than my visceral fear of layers, I'm thinking it might be sort of cute. It's certainly different from any haircut I've ever had before. The one and only time I've had layers before was that disastrous episode in seventh grade. So this is a brand new thing. A layered haircut that might actually look okay.

You can still practice your compliments by paying them to a dog's ass. But you might want to make sure the ass belongs to a sort of fluffy and cute dog. At least that's how I'm trying to think of it right now. And that, my friends, is progress.

I took off my clothes to take this picture. Oh, the things I do for love.

"It’s an instant relaxation technique, this tangible embodiment of my happy place. It represents escape. Paradise. It represents being anywhere but here."