Nika

Nika's natural hair color is hazelnut brown. She likes changing it. It is mahagony now. She was blond for awhile to see if guys liked her better. They did, but not the ones she wanted to talk to. So Nika went two shades darker. The first wardrobe change was a fiasko. A red stop sign paled compared to her bright new headdress. 

Panicked she called me and her gay friend Paul, our fallback guy with all things relating men. Paul, a hair dresser in Beverly Hills, always had juicy stories about some Alpha personality who woke up one day and decided to change, starting with her hair. Two hours later she would be in his saloon, crying, asking him to fix the impossible.As Paul worked on Nika’s hair and I stood by for moral support, Nika began telling us about her dating experiences. 

Nika succumbed to an online dating site a little over a year ago. At first she found it thrilling to meet men from all caliber from various neighborhoods in Los Angeles. A surgeon, a prosecutor, a professor, a writer, an aerospace scientist. She dated him for several months, before he decided to trade her in for a blond bank teller with a degree in Animal Sciences. We all received our personal share of Nika’s emotional Mount Everest. Back in the dating business, Nika is feeling a bit more pragmatic. She is open to dating older men now. "LA is full of interesting men, I should be able to meet one",  she chirps in a good mood.

Paul is done: “There you are. Neither blond, nor brunette nor redhead. Mahagony.” A flip of a hand-held mirror, Nika is examining Paul’s work of art carefully, combing through every strand of her new persona. “Now I will finally meet interesting and normal men. I mean mahagony isn't haha-cute blond nor do-not-touch-me brunette, it is keck." Paul, the honest good soul, and sometimes blind as a bat, feels he needs to pass on some additional Marsian wisdom before I can stop him:  “Actually, Nika, the interesting men you are trying to meet work all day and go out at night to party hard. And they like blondes. Or girls with sleek black hair."

I shift my feet nervously. I am bracing for a familiar explosion. Nika is quiet. Awfully quiet. Then she straightens up and in voice allowing no further argument, she declares: “Trust me, I will find a partner. This is the hair, I know it.”

I look at her. I remember a teenager with purple hair, who  - being assured of my absolute loyalty not to tell - confessed that the plumed hair was just the right color for a dance with a star athlete four years her senior, Spence. Yes. After decades of knowing Nika, one thing I know for sure: Life never gets boring with her. 

I wonder what hair color she will go for next.

© Colleen Yorke. All rights reserved.