Gary Cartwright
Hostile Makeover
Could the beauty technicians of Dallas improve on decades of careful neglect?
(Page 2 of 2)
At a salon on the sixteenth floor of the W Hotel, just south of downtown, I changed into a robe and flip-flops for a facial, a manicure, and a pedicure. This was uncharted territory for me, as I suspect it would be for many men. In the three salons and spas I visited during that unforgettable day, I did not encounter a single member of the male species. I wonder if I was the first man ever to set foot in that perfumed sanctuary where people talked in soft voices and the only sound was “Greensleeves” lilting almost imperceptibly from hidden speakers. Sophia, a nail technician, assured me that that was not the case. “More and more men are coming in,” she said. “If they are embarrassed, I tell them we have a back door.”
I asked how business was. Sophia looked around to make sure our conversation was not being monitored. “Awful,” she whispered. “A year ago I’d be busy all day Saturday. Now I mostly sit and wait.” Born in Cambodia, Sophia escaped the killing fields in 1979, at age six, and went to New York, where she learned to do nails. She arrived in Dallas five and a half years ago. “I’m just so happy to be alive,” she told me. “I love America.”
While enjoying the Hot Milk and Almond Pedicure, I watched the Fox News Channel on a flat-screen TV. Soon Sophia began taming back the knives that grew wildly from my toes. Very much the professional, she resisted the opportunity for sarcasm: Oh, I see you’ve been killing and disemboweling small mammals and fowl, sir. How wise in these difficult times!
Speaking of difficult times, the pedicure and manicure together cost $90. I didn’t ask the price to have my nails lacquered pink, but I’ll bet it’s a pretty penny.
The best part of the day was the facial, which I’m fairly certain I slept through. “Slept” is not completely accurate. It was more like an opium dream. I was able to hear questions from my aesthetician, an attractive Cuban American named Candance, and mumble responses, but there were long lapses when the only sound in the warm, dark room was the brittle rasp of what I believe was my own snoring. The magic of a really good nap is that you know you’re napping and the knowing doesn’t interfere with the doing.
The Homme Improvement facial, as this particular treatment was called, costs $160. It takes about 75 minutes and is amazingly soothing and nonthreatening. First Candance analyzed my skin type and applied some sort of peel to remove dead skin cells. This was followed by the application and removal of various creams, lotions, medicated gauzes, and hot and cold towels. I asked a few questions, and I recall Candance answering with phrases like “glycolic peel,” “enzyme peel,” “oxygen wrap,” and “calming balm.” I had no idea what she was talking about, much less what she was doing. The delicate scent of grapefruit—or was it peach?—conspired with another exotic odor, which Candance identified as shea nut butter. Covering my eyes with a mask of pulverized cucumbers, she gently massaged my face, fingers, and toes. Using an instrument that looked like a small perforated spoon, she scooped blackheads from my nose. Toward the end of the treatment, she sprayed my face with solutions of vitamin A, vitamin C, and vitamin E. The last time anyone treated me like that I was in diapers.
Wobbling back to the men’s locker room on legs that had forgotten their purpose, I saw in the mirror that my skin radiated a nuclear glow, as though it had been backlit for a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting. At the same time, I was shocked to discover that the fancy coiffure I had acquired from Olga had been totally wrecked by the workover my scalp had endured for the facial. Wild sprigs of hair now shot off in all directions. Conan O’Brien had been upstaged by a comic character with his toe caught in a wall socket. I wet my hair in the sink and tried to tamp it down with a comb and the palms of my hands, but the hairdo was history. On an impulse, I found a razor and some shaving cream and scraped off the shaggy patches of facial hair that I had allowed to grow in recent months. This would be my personal contribution to the makeover, which, I could see now, was going to need all the help it could muster.
For the final act, I headed to the Victory Park Lane store of Duncan Quinn, a menswear designer who also has shops in New York and Los Angeles. Quinn, I’d read in a Manhattan-centric fashion magazine, is a British corporate lawyer and unabashed dandy whose shops have been likened to “a kind of stuffy suit department on acid, where hip downtown salesmen in eye-popping patterns impart the kind of unimaginable knowledge of stitching you’d expect to find further uptown, if not across the Pond.”
Quinn wasn’t in Dallas this particular day, but we were met at the door by a sharply dressed salesman named Corey who had selected from his rack a handmade, meticulously tailored blue-gray wool suit that retailed for $3,250. He paired the suit with a $295 light-blue shirt with French cuffs, sterling-silver cuff links with red ruby insets that cost $295, and a red-striped tie that went for $165. The stylist did her level best to fluff up my damp, limp hair, but it was a lost cause. The Quinn-fitted fops that I’d seen photographed in the magazine had posed with English bulldogs at their sides and one leg propped on the bumper of a Jaguar town car. But Corey handed me a freaky motorcycle helmet and an umbrella and stood me against a neutral backdrop, in a far corner of the shop. I focused on looking dangerous but ultimately decided instead that my best hope was to concentrate on not looking goofy. I don’t think it worked.
A fortnight after my “day of beauty,” as I put the finishing touches on this column, I can safely report that the makeover seems to have done no permanent damage. My hair is as untamed and pillow-whipped as ever. The radioactive facial glow has dulled, and a slovenly stubble of beard has taken root over my familiar bag of wrinkles and flakes. My nails have never looked better, but I must confess that I miss being able to shred a chicken with my toes. Oh, and the $3,250 suit and other fancy duds? Had to give them back. It was a Sarah Palin deal.
As for the lawsuit, I’m torn. I keep studying the before and after shots, wondering if I should call my lawyer or leave well enough alone. What do you think? If anyone out there has a strong feeling about my new look versus my old or knows of an island in the Bahamas that the owner would be willing to swap for a successful regional magazine based in Austin that I may soon acquire in court proceedings, let me know.
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