Snip!

As a lesbian, I can talk about scissors. I keep my nails short, and there's that glorious thing covered in Episode Four of Sex Education; but its as a lesbian home-hairdresser that I get truly excited.

At age three, my best friend Harper got himself a mohawk; I wanted one too. Off came the angel curls, and my mum was secretly relieved because I was an absolute nightmare at having them detangled after a day of filling them sticks and mud and knots and bugs. Even when I did let her near my hair, I insisted on her role-playing as hair dresser; but as soon as I figured out how to pull my chair over to stand on and see into the mirror, she was no longer required - my hair was mine!

I felt like a true warrior as I wielded those blades, hearing that delicious snip so close to my own ears. Sure, I needed help to get the mohawk just how I'd envisaged it; but after that first foray at age three, there was no stopping me, and I have cut my own hair my whole life.

In the early years, I was into asymmetrical styles, partly through necessity, but over the years, I grew more deftly adept, and have had some pretty impressive precision cuts, from short bangs to scissored fades; and most recently, a frequently evolving muller that people stop me in the street to complement.

Of course I am also a colour freak, and it is always easy to pick me in my school photos among all the natural hair colours, but my true passion is in the cutting.

When people compliment my hair, and find out that I do it myself, they are open to letting me have a go on theirs, and I am here to tell you that there is DEFINITELY a psychic, or at least intuitive aspect to hairdressing. Don't listen to the words coming out of your client's facehole, well of course, you gotta pretend to, but the hair is what tells me how it wants to be cut. And it is always right.

That moment of tuning in, of feeling the hair, its texture, its weight, its grain and growth pattern, that is a moment of true meditation. Watching how it falls around the face of its host, allowing the visions to wash over me of how it needs to be cut and styled, that is what I live for.

An ecstatic inhale, and on the exhale, I make the first SNIP! So satisfying. And we're away.

Once I have begun, it is like the scissors and I are one, there is no separation, there is no thought, only sensing and obeying. Like Edward Scissorhands, the blades guide me to channel the genius that flows through me. I am doing what I was born to do.

Snip snip snip - there is no greater satisfaction than that deliciously textural momentary union between blades and hair. You may think you have a sense of it from experiencing the sound of it close to your ears, but believe me, I can FEEL the sensation of the metal slicing through the hairs as though my nerves extended through my scissors.

I live to cut hair.

And the best part is, after sitting in my chair and hearing my scissors work their way around their skull; people thank me for it, feel great about themselves, and stand up a little taller - wearing a beautiful smile, framed by the perfect haircut for them.

Copyright 2021 Zoe Xanadu