The hair salon near my work is uber-fancy, full of hip people with hairstyles that I can only dream about pulling off. For instance I totally want Alice's haircut, but I would look ridiculous. (Alice is the blonde on the right. Actually they both have cool haircuts--but that's a bad picture of the other girl's haircut.)

Anyway so last time I went in there, my stylist had Alice's haircut. Except there were green streaks in it. And he was an Asian guy named Andre. You see what I mean? If I went back home with a green-streaked Andre-style bob, my mother would pass out. And she wears a tea cozy as a hat, so you know she's pretty liberal about what you do with your head.

This time I made an appointment with an unknown person, since Andre has moved to New York and is no longer available, which is too bad because his haircut was the haircut that eradicated the mushroomness from my head forever, and therefore Andre is a god. But no Andre this time. When I walked in, I saw a bleach-blonde girl in stilettos hiking up her boobs. I snap-judgemented her as someone who would not understand my hair.

Fortunately my appointment was not with her, but with a woman from Denmark named Milla. (Pronounced Mee-la.) She's from Denmark, I'm from Holland--It's practically the same country!* Clearly, she would understand my hair. (And let me tell you now, if you're expecting another sad mushroom ending, thank god, you're going to be disappointed. This salon is too fancy to turn people into mushrooms. Which is why I go there.)

*Not really.

Here are some reasons the fancy hair salon is fancy.

• When you enter, your coat is taken and placed in the coat closet, and you are ushered into a private changing room. All of this so you can change into a plastic smock. I'm surprised the smock isn't designed by Monique Lhuillier. (Well, for all I know, it is.)

• The bathroom has no paper towels. Instead it has individual white washcloths, rolled and stacked into a pyramid. And I was in the men's room, historically the lesser of two bathrooms.

• While you are getting your haircut, you are offered your choice of beverage from the espresso bar. For example, I had a cappuccino! And it was damn good!

• The person who washes your hair (not the same person who cuts your hair) gives you a scalp, face and neck massage.

• There is somebody whose job is, as far as I can tell, to stand in the middle of the floor and observe the haircutting process while looking very hip. You feel that you are growing more hip by the moment under his watchful eye.

The actual haircutting process is the same everywhere. I stare into the mirror for the first twenty minutes and despair over the fact that my eyebrows aren't waxed, my skin tone is not even, and my head is shaped like a potato.

Then for the next twenty minutes, I try and figure out what the hell the stylist is doing that makes my hair fluffy and perfect. I conclude that it involves blow dryers and round brushes and effort, and that I will never be able to do it myself.

Then I look at the back of my head in the mirror and admire my new haircut, which is not particularly drastic but is flippy and cute. All I am doing is the simple mushroom test. "Do I look like a mushroom? Yes or No?" If the answer is Yes, I immediately take the poison that is concealed in the secret compartment of my gaudy gold ring. If the answer is No, I pay my seventy-five dollars plus tip, resist the urge to buy overpriced hair-care products that I will never use, and get out of there.

Then I toss my head for a while, look at my reflection in windows and mirrors, and try to "make the haircut my own." This means running my fingers through it a few times, ruining its perfect fluffyness but increasing the feeling that it is, in fact, my hair. It's hard not to feel stupid with a new haircut. But it's also hard not to feel simultaneously sort of cute.