The New Rules for Blondes (11 page)

A few days later I moved to London to study abroad for a semester and unconsciously entered into the second stage of grief for my formerly blonde hair: anger. My assigned roommate, Mary Beth, had the patience of a saint and listened to my blonde-vs.-brunette ranting without judgment. I blamed every misfortune that befell me on my dark-haired status. Poor Mary Beth, a natural brunette, had to endure hours of my hair color kvetching and blaming. Stubbed toes, missing the Tube, snippy Brits—all were blamed on my brown hair. I was convinced that anything and everything would have been infinitely better if I were still a blonde. As a brunette, guys didn’t even notice me! Nobody was staring at me or chatting me up! I was angry and jealous of women with blonde hair—even subpar blonde hair. I felt like a lady in a coma who can still hear, think, and process what is going on, but cannot talk or register emotion. I wanted to scream, “Is everything so hard because of my brown hair? I’m blonde in here! Hello! Why is no one talking to me!? Get me out of this dark-haired hell!” I received a grand total of
one
compliment during my time in London, and it came from a muscle-bound bouncer at a cheesy bar. One night he told me that I had nice eyes. Yes, blue or green eyes pop beautifully when you have dark hair—we know this. After he complimented me, I wanted to say, “Of course I do . . . they’re blue and with this dark hair, it’s unexpected, as you normally see blue eyes with blonde hair.” Sigh.
Tears
.

I felt like a reverse “Englishman in New York” that Sting so beautifully sang about. I was like an alien, a legal alien living in London as a brunette. Too many unfamiliar things were happening concurrently. It didn’t help that Mary Beth and I managed to alienate ourselves from most of the other American students living in our building. Philip was the sole Brit among us, and he was the resident adviser for the five flats
47
in in our gorgeous home on a tree-lined street. The building contained a mess of guys in the dungeon-like basement apartment, three girls on the first floor, a gaggle of ladies jammed into the second-floor apartment like a can of somewhat bitchy and styleless sardines, Mary Beth and me with the run of a three-bedroom duplex apartment on the third floor, and Philip and a motley assortment of American students across the hall from us. In short, Mary Beth and I had lucked out, and for a sweet springtime semester, we shared an apartment that resembled a penthouse in one of the nicest neighborhoods in London.

Two of the three girls on the first floor were nice, albeit a bit serious and prudish. Those two attended a women’s college and seemed to find Mary Beth’s and my energy and antics barbaric. We were interested in London nightlife, and we went on dates with British and Greek guys—we had fun and met new people, while the women’s college ladies mostly hung out with other Americans who they knew in London. I wanted to tell them to chill out and have some fun, would ya? We’re on a six-month vacation during which we have to crap out a few papers—eat some curry fries and loosen up!

Those two women’s college girls were sweet, though, which is a whole lot more than I could say for their third roommate. She hailed from California and was crazy thin, super pretty, insanely snobby, and completely intimidating. Her holier-than-thou attitude covered many areas but seemed rooted in the fact that she hailed from the birthplace of Vince Neil and porn. She was so stiff and unfriendly that around her, I felt like an adolescent boy with a crush—I’d stumble on my words, get dry mouth, and freeze up. As I’d try to talk to her and flail around, I’d think to myself,
Selena! You are not a sixteen-year-old guy trying to get into a classmate’s pants! You’re just trying to coexist with the snob downstairs—calm down! Mouth, let’s get some moistness back in here, OK?
She resembled Posh Spice with her inexplicable ability to pull off a (universally unflattering) pixie haircut and somehow make it work. I guess that a skeletal frame can pull off any haircut, no matter how ill-advised. Her color was fantastic, though; light-brown base with expertly painted golden-blonde highlights. The kind of color that is achieved either with a lot of luck or a lot of money. Her wiry body somehow supported a normal-size head, which gave her that lollipop look made famous by the (allegedly) anorexic cast of
Ally McBeal,
circa 2000. Because of this lollipop look, Mary Beth and I nicknamed her “Lollipop Guild,” despite the fact that this is a name for friendly dwarves from
The Wizard of Oz
. Who doesn’t love a good mixed pop culture reference?
48

During my British brunette era, I had a relatively light schedule (because “study abroad” is mostly “abroad” and not so much “study”). Four days of the week I had classes, and one day midweek I enjoyed a totally free day during which Mary Beth was in classes all day. Time for me to receive college credit for hours spent tea-drinking, McVitie’s-eating, and BBC1-watching, followed by some late-afternoon London exploration and pub-hopping. I love education!

One such morning, Mary Beth and I were both hustling around the apartment. She headed out for a long day of engineering classes while I cleaned up the apartment and finished a quick load of laundry. I went down to the lobby to transfer my clothes from washer to dryer, letting the apartment door shut behind me. I was busy staring at the British currency and wondering if I had enough five-pence coins to ever get my clothes sufficiently dry and fluffy. (I would later learn that British dryers simply don’t do “dry and fluffy,” and you’re lucky to achieve “kinda damp but semitolerable.”) I stuck coins into the dryer, thinking about how this foreign currency felt like Monopoly money, as I still wasn’t totally familiar with the exchange rate just yet. Once the dryer was shaking, I trudged back up three flights of stairs and thought about my day of relaxation at home, only to find the door to my flat closed and locked. I jiggled the handle, but it was sealed tight shut. The door and door frame were in an embrace tight enough to seem vacuum-sealed. This is a door, not a can of nuts that you want to keep fresh—why such a snug seal!? This door wasn’t budging, that was for sure.

The apartment building, while beautiful and in a gorgeous London neighborhood called Kensington, was also ancient and required large keys at every door. Even worse, construction over there is actually made to last, so I knew there was no way that I could pick the lock with a credit card.
Why can’t this be crappy American construction?
I thought, staring at my closed apartment door.
If I were in a slipshod McMansion in the States, this door would be made of faux wood boarding, it would be completely hollow, and it would pop open if I so much as thought about it. But noooo—construction in England has to be sturdy and well done. Ugh. How come the Brits can’t transfer that level of craftsmanship from carpentry to dentistry?
My dreams of flimsy construction and a credit card break-in were useless. Not that I had anything on my person—no credit card, no cell phone, not even a way to escape. That antiquated building required yet another giant old-timey key to get in
and
to get out. Yes, we lived in a complete firetrap.

And so began a long and painfully boring day during which I was trapped alone in a stairwell and small lobby area for six hours. It was even more of a mind-numbing time suck than R. Kelly’s song “Trapped in the Closet” (though with a bit more leg room, I suppose). It was just me, the pudgy and brown-haired fish out of water; a washer and dryer tucked beneath the stairwell like a robot Harry Potter; and hours of solitude staring me in the face. To make matters worse, the lobby area where I was confined was absolutely freezing because Britain doesn’t believe in heating buildings, so my hours of boredom were punctuated by the chattering of my (straight white American) teeth. I wasn’t prepared for a full day exposed to the elements—I was dressed in ratty sweatpants, socks, and a crummy T-shirt from my college improv comedy troupe, Yodapez.
49
Every year my troupe would receive a generous grant from the college and what money we didn’t spend on strange comedy props like tricycles, kiddie pools filled with ketchup, and matching unitards for all members, we’d spend on troupe T-shirts—the weirder, the better. That year, we had designed T-shirts with photos of frightening-looking criminals that we’d pulled off the Internet, from FacesOfMeth.us. Each T-shirt was emblazoned with pictures of these weirdos positioned in
Brady Bunch
–like tiled format, with one team member’s name below each photo. From above “Selena” stared out an emaciated vagrant woman with no teeth and a cigarette dangling out of her mouth. The best part? The T-shirts were the color of urine. Well, urine if you are a mildly dehydrated human.

My full day of forced isolation made me feel like Tom Hanks in
Cast Away
, only without the tropical temperatures, tan, and volleyball companion. All I had for “entertainment” were the local real estate catalogs that cluttered the mail area. That day, I read every single one cover to cover and gained a better appreciation of the insane prices of real estate in the Kensington neighborhood of London. I guess the royalties from such hits as “Rock DJ” and “Millennium” were treating Brit pop god Robbie Williams pretty well, as he lived in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, an appreciation of overpriced flats doesn’t keep you warm when you’re locked out of your apartment and stuck in an unheated stairwell for a full day.

I had so much time to myself that I unknowingly entered into stage three of the Kübler-Ross grief model: bargaining. You’re probably not supposed to pray for a different hair color, but I needed to put this problem in the capable hands of a higher power.
Please, God, make me wake up a blonde. Just take me back to where I was before I became hell-bent on being a brunette. Please—let me just wake up blonde tomorrow. I’ll never complain about missing the Tube ever again. I’ll stop making fun of the odd characters who live in this building. I’ll even stop visiting that pub down the street most nights of the week—I’ll get it together. Just please, PLEASE, God, let me wake up and open my eyes a centimeter and see a head of yellow, brassy hair.

After hours of solitary confinement, I finally heard the sweet sounds of help—a key in the front door.
Yes! Freedom! Whoever is there will help me,
I thought.
At least I can go sit in an apartment and warm up a bit, maybe have some food, and wait for Mary Beth to come home and unlock our flat.

The door opened a crack and a normal-size head peeked through, followed by an emaciated skeleton body. Fucking Lollipop Guild.
Of all the building residents who could come home right now, it has to be her. Dammit!
I thought. I huddled in the chilly stairwell as she entered, and I was painfully aware of how disgusting I looked in my urine-colored T-shirt and ratty sweatpants. Plus, I had brown hair, which made me look exhausted and brunette at all times.

“Hey,” Lollipop Guild said flatly as she walked by me to go open her front door.

“Oh my goodness, I’m so glad you’re home!” I said as I thought to myself,
Why the hell am I acting like she’s friendly or we’re friends at all? She’s a jerk, and you’re punchy from having no human contact for too many hours. Stop being so needy, Coppock!

“
Get this—I locked myself out of my apartment this morning! About six hours ago! I’ve been trapped in this friggin’ freezing stairwell all day!” I rambled on, while thinking,
Selena—please stop saying “friggin’ ” in front of people, OK? We aren’t at a Celtics game with Sully and Quinny.

Lollipop Guild swiveled her giant dome until she was looking directly at me, her highlights glittering in the hallway lamplight. The blonde streaks taunted me, as if to say,
Selena, you should have followed the advice of your mom’s colorist, John, and eased into brunette life. You could have gone for light-brown hair with blonde highlights, and you probably wouldn’t be in this lockout mess in the first place.
Bad things come to those who go too dark brown, as the old saying goes.
She looked at me blankly.

“Huh. Where’s Mary Beth?” The monotone of her voice revealed her indifference to my plight. Her affect was so flat and unsympathetic that Lollipop Guild seemed like a bad actor just phoning it in on a sitcom that she’s ashamed to have been cast in but she needs the paycheck. I’m painfully aware of my proclivity for spazz-like behavior and more than one ex-boyfriend has said that I am “too much,” but Lollipop Guild was a bad actor
in her own life
. As if the stakes were never high because there were never any stakes. As if every interaction in her life was as unimportant as, say, choosing vanilla or chocolate ice cream if you enjoy both equally. Lollipop Guild was simply a skeletal body with
zero
emotion.

Lollipop Guild looked me up and down and her eyes lingered on the photo of “Selena” (the filthy, smoking, vagrant version on my pale-yellow T-shirt) while I silently cursed myself for wearing such goofy shirts to bed. Desperate for a warm place to sit, I barreled forward in my pleas for help.

“Mary Beth is in class all day. I had a whole day planned—walking around, getting some coffee, exploring . . .” I yammered on, while thinking,
Again, Selena, all of this is too much information—Lollipop Guild doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the adventures you had planned for the day!
Her idea of a great free day would be spent sucking on ice cubes, working out in a raincoat, and staring at a map of her beloved Golden State.

“But I got locked out of my apartment . . . and locked into this stairwell, so I’ve been stuck in here all day. . . . It’s like I’m in a weird carpeted jail . . . that’s just small jail areas on multiple floors . . . and the clothes are better than orange prison jumpsuits, I suppose . . . and we have nice windows . . . and I’m not stuck with anybody else here . . . no other prisoners . . . except for my own thoughts and boredom.”
Good God, Selena!

Lollipop Guild stared at me blankly, whispered “Whoa . . . sucks,” then walked into her apartment and shut the door. As her door slammed, stage four washed over me: depression.
Why does nothing go my way?
I thought.
I’ll be stuck with unflattering hair and trapped in this stairwell for the rest of my life. There’s no way out. I’ll never leave the entryway of this Brit building. My college pals will graduate from Hamilton College without me, get married, have kids, and I’ll still be here reading real estate catalogs. The London police department will find my corpse here when I’m ninety. I’ll still be in this weird college improv troupe T-shirt. I’ll have a head of horrible roots. I won’t even be able to play it off like I’m doing an ombré look, those roots will be so bad.