A hairy lesson.

My hair stylist is a fabulously chubby, suburban, flamboyant and gay twenty-one year old Caucasian, who - having grown up under the thumb of a very conservative mother - most likely is not using his given surname. To protect the innocent, we shall call him Stefanba. (Translated into the secret twin language of Jenna and Barbara Bush, courtesy of one of my top 10 favorite SNL skits of the 21st century.) I entrusted this youngling Stefanba with my locks under the assumption that no twenty-one year old could possibly have what every other stylist had enough of to send me flying out of the salon with wet hair and a refund: foot infections, track marks, disappearing acts mid-cut and ex-boyfriend drama. Stefanba has styled my hair a total of 3 times now, all of which have been mini-adventures in the latter, and a new first for me. Two words, eight consonants, four vowels, a lot of wrist action and hair spray.

I explained that I was attending a soiree and wanted something glamorous, sleek and wavy. "Absolutely! We'll part your hair down the center and do these beautiful ocean waves!" He motioned like a pelvis-rocked water bed down the sides of my face and shoulders. I smiled back at him in the mirror. "Exactly!"

While sectioning my hair for the blow dry he mentions among a slew of other subjects that his next client is a stripper and "She wants big, big, teeeeeeeeeezed sex-hair." My neurons couldn't even process the statement into a thought, an opinion, anything, before he started telling me about his latest ad for casual encounters, his astrology chart, that he's giving his little sis a keratin treatment this weekend, that his lack of cash flow is directly related to the fact that he cannot turn down an invitation to dine out...

Then the comb comes out and it goes upside down beneath a section of my hair and moves violently in the opposite direction it should have. After teasing the roots of my entire scalp, giving me aerosol lung, curling, applying wax down the part and at my crown "to prevent flyaways" he whisked me around in the chair to reveal that one topic never really escaped the conversation. Stefanba then threw his hands in the air like someone pinched his cheekies mid-revelation, squealed "I know what you need!" and disappeared. He returned in full skip from the other side of the salon and before properly introducing me to the fully loaded product in his hand he had fired a reflective mist into my coif. "Gold glitter!"

Imagine, in slow motion if you will, my hands raising up over my head, my inner eyebrows lifting into the center of my forehead, my lips forming an "O" and my voice taking on a steroid-esque moan when I whaled with horror. Stefanba and I had reached a new height, quite literally.

On the drive home I was able to transfer most of the gold glitter to my jeans via the palm of my hand that was also working diligently to undo the poof beneath the armor of hairspray and curls. This annual event called for "hot summer chic or cocktail" attire. Stripper hair was not on the menu.

I succeeded in undoing the do and around 8pm Weasel and I caught the train to the museum district. We confirmed with the registrar of the swanky hotel that we would be consuming $250 worth of hors d'oeuvres, cocktails and margarine topped zebra patterned cupcakes and then entered a lobby full of well accessorized middle aged men. I tugged on Weasel's coat sleeve and whispered behind the back of my hand "Are we sure we're in the right room? I think this is a father-daughter dance." Dangling from their arms were bronze sticks with beating hearts in haute couture 1/3 of the average male age.

After sizing myself up against all the silicone and layers of MAC, it occurred to me rather quickly that I was not only the only twenty-six year old not on a date with grandpa - or the only natural brunette or the only natural anything for that matter - but I was also the only one...without stripper hair. My curves in an eggplant colored satin strapless Calvin Klein dress with black patent pumps and handbag could hold their own in a lineup of bone-filled Cavalli but in a room of fluffed, pinned, teased and sprayed hair, my long fallen waves were in a league of their own. I spent the better part of the evening powdering my nose, aka, trying to redo the do I had undid.

On the way home and one too many G&Ts later I asked Weasel what he thought about the women; prefaced with how I felt in a room full of them: unsure of myself. He reminded me, "But you're the Elle."

Those four words have echoed in all of my words and movements through the morning. I am the Elle. I am in a league of my own. And the fact of life is that we're all in a league of our own. But sometimes we choose to join other leagues, to play on other teams where stripper hair is hot summer chic.