Lifer

Only one hairdresser ever inspired the loyalty in me to return time after time for over five years. She was a single mother of a teenaged son, a multitalented artist, and a downright beautiful and genuine human.

During one appointment, we chatted about Las Vegas, as I was looking forward to my first Vegas trip. She told me I would have a blast. "There's nothing as fun as girlfriends," she said. I didn't mention that I was traveling alone and meeting up with some people I had never met before. "One of my girlfriends is a lifer, like me," she said. "We went to Vegas and joked that we should get married. I really think platonic marriage should be a thing."

Not being very well informed on her personal life, I had to turn her words over in my mind long after I had left the salon. I was stuck on the word "lifer"—what did it mean? What former circumstances would have prompted this attitude?

Her idea of platonic marriage also intrigued me. It shouldn't be a foreign idea, but it is. You don't realize how hyper-sexualized the world is until you spend time as a single. Everything seems to be focused on romantic relationships and families: advertising, media, social activities, conversations, tv and music and art. Anything that doesn't elevate romance is only the more conspicuous for the steadfast avoidance, and comes across as the resentful thought-child of some spurned being. As a single, you feel out of place, unnatural, terribly visible, like a bright red actor in a black and white film. All this fixation on relationships and romance creates an issue in your life, where a nonissue once stood.

Maybe that's one facet of what some of us singles are—spurned beings. But if so, it's a small facet. To think that a person's life experiences doesn't make them evolve to be larger than any label or category is a rookie mistake. Experience and time will teach you otherwise. More and more, I'm getting to understand what being a 'lifer' means to me, and how it is isn't an oppressive label. Rather, it's an open door of life opportunities, and emotional and physical freedom, and optimism.

Last year, she went on sick leave and never returned. I haven't found a stylist since then who can measure up, and more importantly haven't found one with such genuine wisdom.