The first time I met Jim was at his downtown salon in the Carew Tower. My sister, Beth, had made the appointment for me because I had serious hair issues. This was around 10 years ago, and I've never let anyone else do my hair since.
At the time, I was having a lot of surgery on my head. On the back right side of my head was a spot where doctors had tried around five times to remove a tumor. The problem with head surgery is that you only have so much scalp. Because of that, every time they operated on the right side, they would shift my scalp and put a skin graph from my leg on the left side. At the height of my illness, the back of my head was around 75% skin graphs. The thing about skin graphs is that they don't grow hair, which didn't seem to be a problem when the same skin was on my legs, but, OK, whatever.
So, Beth made this hair appointment at this fru-fru salon, to which she escorted me. I think she knew that I didn't realize how bad it looked. Actually, that whole day with her is a post all in itself. I love my sissy.
Jim is the most talented hair stylist I have ever met, not to mention smart, funny, and handsome. He taught me how to pin it up in the back, and that dark hair shows scars more than light hair. Most people never even knew what a mess I had going on back there. He saw my head at it's worst and never cringed, and let me come to his house to have my hair done when my head was so bad I was embarrassed to have it done at the salon.
One day, a few years ago, I was at the fru-fru salon having my highlights done. Jim was multi-tasking, working with me and another client. He finished putting the foils in the other clients hair, and had started putting the foils into mine. We were chatting away when I glanced up at Jim in the mirror. He was looking at something, with just the strangest look on his face. When I looked to see what it was, I saw black liquid running down the white wall from the ceiling.
After some investigation, we learned that the art shop directly above us was on fire and that we had to evacuate immediately. Unfortunately, Jim had just finished my foils and the other client still had her foils. After asking a nearby barbershop if we could use some water, and getting rejected, we hit the streets of downtown Cincinnati.
There we were, a couple of beauty refugees, walking the streets of downtown with foils in place and plastic capes a flying. Jim was our beauty ambassador and led us on our journey to relief.
We ended up at the salon in Saks Fifth Avenue. That kinda cracked me up, because usually when I go into high end stores they watch me to make sure I don't shoplift. Thank God they took us in. Jim got the chemicals out in time and our hair remained to shine another day.
Best part was that he didn't charge us. Don't worry, I tipped well. So there you have it.
