Dye Job 2: Paint It Black
When everything changed during my freshman year of college.
Spring 2006
34 years old
Rinna’s brow furrows as she looks at me—looks into me. I’m not sure what she’s searching for, but when she finds it, she shakes her head. “Dang, girl. I mean…dance totally saved you.” In that blunt way she has, she doesn’t hesitate to voice what’s got her face all screwed up in disquieted awe. “Without it, you’d probably be dead. Wouldn’t you?”
My eyebrows lift, even though I shouldn’t be surprised by now. We’ve been friends for over a decade and lived with each other for a year. After a second, my brows lower, along with my gaze. My jaw is set. Hard.
I inhale. Exhale. Then I meet her eyes straight on again. Just as bluntly, I tell her, “Yeah. There’s a very good chance of that.”
I don’t clarify my statement—the fact that I am not only speaking literally. That even if I’d still kept choosing to grudgingly circulate air and blood, without dance I wouldn’t be truly and fully…ALIVE after what happened.
She knows both me and these types of scenarios well enough to know exactly what I’m saying.
If you’re not co-subscribed to my artsy-fartsy, nature, elements, and dance publication, you may not know that I’ve started detailing the origins of my 30+ year dance career lately:
Which means you probably haven’t read about how being cast in my freshman year of college as a “Polynesian Dancer” in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night led me to the discovery of the style that would change the trajectory of my dancing.
It would change my whole life.
And yes. You read that right. Polynesian dancers in Shakespeare. I shit you not. Check it:
So why did I carve out vast chunks from that shiny, geeky Tinkerings Tale and move them over here? Because that story took place in 1992, just as I was forming gobs of repressed memories from the most pathologically abusive, violent, and predatory relationship I’ve ever been in. I buried nine months of memories while I was with Martin Burns.** Otherwise it would have occurred to me to leave him. And to file police reports on him.
If you missed DYE JOB - PART 1, this is who I was just before I met him:
Dye Job 1: Pink, Gold, Berry Blush
I had known that the magical holiday reconnection with one of my oldest flames was not a rekindling of our teenage romance. Part of what had made it so special was the fact that Nick and I hadn’t tried to make it into something it wasn’t. We threw ourselves whole-body, hearts on fire into each other’s arms for that night.
Afterwards, I would have been thrilled for a repeat. I figured it was bound to happen eventually, since we were still casual friends who chatted here and there.
But not for long.
Because Love-Bombing is an overwhelming force, especially when it’s backed by subtle-but-steady isolation tactics, grooming, and psychological warfare. A mere two nights after Nick and I celebrated New Year’s together, Martin Burns hit me like a riptide on the dance floor. This gorgeous Casanova Cowboy swept me off my feet and into treacherous waters before I could make sense of what had happened. One day, I looked around to find no familiar land in sight. Lost and in over my head, I was just…
Gone.
I don’t give specific trigger warnings very often. Except for things like the times when I’ve been gaslit, violated, assaulted, mind-fucked, and convinced that I’m so awful that I became suicidal.
Oh. You’d rather get back to pretty-happy belly dance? Yeah. Me, too. I won’t blame you if you push the Eject Button on this one.
Of course, if you stick around until the end, you’ll get to see me drool over a bunch of fringe and jingly coins as I finally discover that—nope, I wasn’t an Ugly Duckling. I wasn’t even a Swan, like I’d always hoped. Turns out I was a very different type of creature.
And I have glorious, powerful wings after all.
April 1992
19 years old
Professor Linnell chats at me in her snappy voice as she works behind me next to the sink in the Costuming Department. In order to be cast as a Polynesian Dancer, I had to agree to dye my hair black, since it’s long enough for the character. Emily’s two inch spunky spike will require a wig, but mine has almost grown down to the middle of my back.
I’d always wanted long hair as a kid, but my mom wouldn’t let me have anything other than the boy’s bowl-cut until I could start styling it myself. Now it’s the longest it’s ever been, and I love it!
I would have never let them touch it, if they hadn’t had an option for only dyeing it semi-permanently.
All the other girls have gone to a salon, but as the head of the Costuming Department squirts cool liquid onto my scalp, she growls off her tale of frustration. “Since blue-black dye will pull silver highlights under the lights, I told them specifically, ‘Make sure it has red undertones, not blue.’” She pauses to lock eyes with me in the mirror. Hers flash. “They both came back with auburn hair.”
“Ugh,” I say with a roll of the eyes.
“I had to send them back for a redo. Then the exact same thing happened with the second pair of girls. When I sent Mary in yesterday, the salon was so pissy they used blue-black. She’s going to look like an old hag dancing under the lights.”
Now that’s an exaggeration. Mary is the top-ranked senior in the Dance Department, the Swan Princess herself, as well as a wiz at Modern, Jazz, Tap, Musical Theater—everything she does. She is my dance mentor and heroine. So encouraging, so inspiring. It would be impossible for her to look anything short of fabulous when she dances.
But I get the point, and snuffle out a commiserating scoff. “What a drag.”
Prof. Linnell finishes squirting the dye down the full length of my sun-gilded curls, spouting all the way. “I was so angry that I cancelled your appointment. I guess it’s true. If you want something done right…”
With another sniff, I say, “No kidding.”
She stuffs the now-empty, nozzled bottle into the box and slams the whole thing on the counter. I glance at it.
And do a double-take.
I squint to read the label of the product she used: Clairol Nice-N-Easy. Auburn-Black.
Permanent hair dye.
Permanent…permanent…permanent…
The blood rushes through my ears. My heart races. I feel a little sick to my stomach. I have never dyed my hair. Ever. I really didn’t want to, but when I didn’t get cast in a speaking role, I really, really wanted this part.
So now, the only dancer who had checked the semi-permanent box on the audition sheet was the only dancer who got permanent black.
I could just wanna die.
May 1992
Five weeks later…
I stand inside the closet space of my dorm room. My hands grip the counter as I stare into the mirror. Unblinking. Am I breathing? I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here. The sunlight is fading. I haven’t turned on a light.
My eyes drift closed. Open again. Stare even longer.
I don’t recognize the person looking back at me.
The remnants of that Twelfth Night dye-job still stain my hair. It isn’t quite black anymore. Now it’s just an icky dark brown. It makes my face appear sallow. I’m afraid to bleach it, after seeing the way Colleen’s black mane turned to an orangey-yellow mess of straw she had to hack off.
If I don’t want to do an impression of jaundice, I have to wear makeup every day. People ask me if I’m sick otherwise. I’m not. But even with the makeup, my eyes look hollowed out in that mirror. They match the shadows beneath them. And under my cheekbones. Here in the closet, with the sun on the other side of the building, I look almost skeletal.
Haunted.
I feel haunted. I don’t understand why.
I have the perfect boyfriend and I’m pursuing my favorite arts. I’m getting cast in plays, musicals, dance pieces, and I’m finally out of that hellhole high school, so I have no idea why I want to bash my fist into the face staring back at me.
Who are you?
I have no idea who that is in the mirror. I only know she is hideous. Not merely ugly. She is disgusting.
Oh, sure. Lots of guys ogle me when I pass them in the hallway. At parties I can tell that a lot of people think I’m one of the “pretty girls,” just like every time our team went to an away-game where I could escape the opinions of my hometown. They’d called me ugly since before kindergarten.
But this…thing staring back at me through the ever-deepening shadows…
What is that?
Because I’ve never seen that face in the mirror before.
A click sounds at the door. My roommate comes in. Bonnie. She’s such a sweetheart. She’s worried about me. About how many nights I don’t come home and how many classes I’ve started to skip. How much I drink. How often I’m pissed off or mopey. She says I’m not eating enough.
My cheekbones would agree.
Turning away from the mirror, I exit the closet just as she flips on the light switch. She jumps and squawks at the sight of me, then heaves out a sigh with her hand on her heart. “Oh, you gave me such a fright!”
“Sorry.” I paint the smile across my lips and lie, “I was just coming over there to turn the light on. Had my hands full when I walked in.”
She laughs and puts her bag on the bed to pull out her books, setting them on our shared little table that divides the room and houses the phone. “Have you gone down for dinner yet?”
I shake my head, still standing there, watching her with my arms hooked around my ribcage, two fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt.
She smiles at me. Such a warm smile. Genuine. Affectionate. She’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever known. I really should hang out with her more. “Would you like to go together?” she asks.
I nod.
Her smile grows bigger and she looks relieved. “Great. We haven’t gotten to catch up in so long.”
My head moves up and down again.
How long has it been since we ate together? Well, Martin and I started dating just after New Years, and I often eat with him at his campus apartment in the trailer court, so…
I blink hard as I do math.
It hasn’t been that long, has it? No. Can’t have been…
But I can’t remember the last time Bonnie and I went down to the dining hall together. After the first few months at the all-you-can-eat-buffet, I gained the classic freshman pounds. Not fifteen, but at least ten. Then I went on the pill at the end of January and that made everything puffier.
In the last…month…month-and-a-half? I’ve lost all those pounds and then some.
I’m just…not hungry. But I go down to the cafeteria with her anyway. Absorb some of her warmth as she tells me about the exciting things she’s been up to. I answer her questions. Sorta. Pretend to chirp. Pick at a little food. I push the rest of it around on the plate until she’s ready to go.
But I can’t stop picturing that ghoul in the mirror.
UP NEXT:
DYE JOB 3: WINE, BLOOD-RED, TEAL - Don’t drink the Koolaid.
Since a bunch of y’all are bingers, I’m gonna load this series pretty quickly.
Related Post:
Damsel To Dangerous
Obviously I’m not a mental health practitioner. I only live with this crap, and try my best to deal with it and heal. As such, especially if it’s the super-bad place, I’m not the person to ask about this stuff.
These people are:
988 SUICIDE & CRISIS HOTLINE—Repressed memories or dissociative amnesia
—How trauma and dissociation interrupt your ability to form memoriesThe main trauma therapy I did for mine: EMDR. Really research this before giving it a try. It’s a very intense therapy and there is a big difference between someone with basic training versus the full certification when you’re dealing with this caliber of dissociation.
—8 signs you may be traumatized—One of the best books I have ever read in my life: The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind & Body in the Healing of Trauma
—Don't want to read the book? Here's the basic premise of what trauma does to the body and why talking about it, even in therapy, so often doesn't solve the problems: Short Version. Or Long Version by the author himself
—Manipulation & Sabotage Tactics of Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Psychopaths
—Supertraits - Beyond Empathy and Codependence in Survivors of Pathological Abuse—The profile of the conscienceless predator’s preferred prey - why it’s often not someone who starts out as the codependent, cowering doormat. Sandra L. Brown M.A and the Institute for Relational Harm Reduction.
—Your Reality - an award-winning short film on gaslighting. Yup. That’s what it’s like.
Unacknowledged Rape: the sexual assault survivors who hide trauma - even from themselves.
—Campus Sexual Violence
—The Stages of Narcissistic Sexual Abuse
—Persistent Suffering: The Serious Consequences of Sexual Violence - this study was done specifically about women and girls. Obviously there are many cross-overs with all the other demographics who experience this crime, as well as the demographic-specific issues the others do not face. But I was a girl the first times it happened to me, and a woman during the last times so…yeah.
—Til It Happens To You
**Let it be known that I have never dated or been abused by somebody named Martin Burns, whose buddies all called him Burnsey. I named him that because he is my Martin Burney. Neither have I ever had my hair dyed black by a professor named Linnell, so that makes this a work of fiction.
Based on episodes of my life that are not.
© 2020 Hartebeast