The Brutaliser

"He likes to talk a lot" says my hairstylist in Chinese.

I look in the direction of her eyes and see a huge hulk of male meat batting his eyelashes, and filing his nails, palm facing up, in the manner of general feminity (which I severely lack, apparently). It is disconcerting to see a huge hulk sashay, it is more disconcerting to find out that he's a deaf mute.

It isn't that I have anything against disabled people, in fact, I think it is admirable that the salon hired him in the first place considering the limitations of communication imposed on the unsuspecting customer.

"He can do work, and he has patience", comes the answer to my unvoiced question. I think my hairstylist is psychic, maybe because my thoughts leak through then ends of my hair and enters her fingers.

Still, when your head feels like a watermelon about to be internally pulverised when he shampoos, and when you feel like your head is about to become detached from your neck as he rinses, you learn to take muscles more seriously, at the same time wishing that he wasn't so patient so the pain would be over and done with instead of being excessively prolonged.

Interestingly enought the stylist says that guys like his brutalising but females think he's really rough. (Ha! Finally, evidence to proof that I'm actually female. ) Even more fascinating is the way he tries to initiate conversation all the time. Despite his lack of vocal cords vibration, he occasionally makes squeaky noises accompanied by huge hand gestures and animated facial expressions, some of which I catch, some of which totally escapes me, all of which I smile and nod knowingly at, in an attempt to demonstrate some sort of emphathic understanding. Conversation is difficult to sustain, because can't communicate in sign language. I mimic his facial expressions, in an attempt to see how true last semester's reading on mimicry and understanding being directly related is. And it helped immensely because he stopped 'talking'.

Felt like I was in drama academy all over again.

At the end of the rather tense hour spent mostly in the anticipation of more head jerking and neck twisting, as I got up to leave, he mouthed a goodbye (his hands were covered in hair dye and were embedded in another head), and I realised the look in his eyes is good enough to melt chocolate with.

Chocolate, which is the colour of his skin.

(This doesn't qualify as a racist comment right? )

Kudos to the Yellow Ribbon Project! Speak Good English! Let's be Courteous! Stop Stopping at Two! Get married everybody! Female Graduates: Have more Children! (and don't say we said it, if not we'll lose more votes than we have...(is that even possible?))

Does the active promotion of local campaigns - past and present - earn me brownie points now?