When I was 15, I decided to cut off all my hair. In that moment, I also inadvertently signed up for a lifetime of awkward moments in salons and barbershops.

As a teenager, I was suddenly filled with a sudden need to free myself from the shackles of long hair. Michelle, the local hairdresser, had other ideas.

“How short?” she asked me.

“Very short,” I said, presenting a picture of lesbian icons Tegan and/or Sara, their cropped hair tousled just so.

“Won’t your mum mind?” she checked, stroking the two plaits either side of my face with scissors poised.

Michelle worked down the alley from my mum’s office, so I assume she was afraid I’d skipped out on my vacuuming duties for the day, deciding instead to punish my own mother through the cruel and criminal channel of shortening my own hair.

The reactions to my new ‘do were varied. A friend repeated to me that someone from my hockey club had remarked, “one second she was running around with pigtails and the next minute she chopped off all her hair and looked like a full lez.”

Charming.

People asked if I was OK. It was as if I’d had a picture of a turd tattooed on my forehead. Or admitted to everyone that I was making bread from my own natural yeasts. It’s just hair, I wanted to say, it’ll grow back.

As well as the comments, having short hair comes with the occasional stares from strangers. Particularly, as I discovered (over a decade after my first “short” haircut) in the countryside of Tasmania. Here, people stared at me as if it was their only matter of business that day. If I had a single tooth in the front of my mouth that I used to puncture cans of beer like an alcoholic beaver, I could slink from Hobart to Cradle Mountain without so much as a sideways glance. But arriving in Tassie with a fully shaved head was considered distasteful to say the least. Much like in Sydney we consider it distasteful to fashion a xylophone made out of dead relatives’ teeth.

People are very protective of their hair. I asked Maggie at work if she’d shave her head for a million dollars. She said absolutely not, her hair is a part of her identity. I said I couldn’t think of a single thing I wouldn’t do for a million dollars.

Likewise, bald people have it tough. Especially women. I once commented at the work Christmas party that Margaret’s hair always looked so great. She was flattered. The style was always changing, I said, and they all suit you so well.

“You really put your foot in it Sian,” Heather told me after. She was whispering aggressively, rendering all whispering ineffective, “Margaret’s bald. They’re all wigs!”

“How did I put my foot in it?” I said, “It’s not like I ripped the wig from her head and put my actual foot in it.”

“You’re awful,” Heather said.

If it wasn’t for you, I should have said, I wouldn’t even know she wears a wig! How am I awful?

“Does she have cancer?” I asked instead. Confirming, I guess, that I am pretty awful.

The tricky part, I found, was finding people to do the actual haircut I actually wanted. In a women’s salon, they’d listen intently, nodding and making “mmhm” noises. Then, when left to their own devices, they’d do a “girl’s version” of what I’d described. At a men’s barber, though, they wouldn’t serve me at all. The result was a lot of bad haircuts, a lot of hacking bits off in the mirror with kitchen scissors afterwards. At one point I had a red rat’s tail, a lone tuft just behind my ear. I had a blonde faux hawk. I had black devil horns. I had a pink Ace Ventura inspired wave. I had half of it shaved. I had lines put in. At one point all I had was a fringe.

On a trip to Byron Bay as teenagers, a friend and I decided to do messy streaks of blonde through our hair. We would look like we were in a band. People would think we could skateboard. We ate hash cookies sourced in Nimbin and drank cans of pre-mixed vodka. Then, rather than carefully choosing strands from here and there and securing them with tin-foil as planned, we drunkenly grabbed handfuls of hair and slapped bleach on them as if we were pie-ing each other in the face but missing the cake-hole. The consequence was somewhat Dalmatian-like, if a Dalmatian had been used as a rug and trampled on for centuries. When I returned to work at the caravan park cafe, Nechelle (whose hair resembled Sideshow Bob’s and whose name was Nechelle) simply asked, “what the hell happened to you?”

If Nechelle wasn’t happy, how could I be?

In my uni years, I had not learned my lesson and continued to take matters into my own hands. I invested in some clippers and routinely buzzed a number two around the sides and sliced at the top with a razor. I started cutting all my friends’ hair too, but I really only knew one style. It was as if my role in life was to perpetuate the lesbian stereotype of asymmetrical hair.

Countless pony tails lost their lives in the bathroom of my share house on Keira St. Corkie got swine flu while I shaved her girlfriend’s hair in the next room. Sam, TJ, Annie and Jasmine. They were all buzzed here and there; a fresh cut for a night of schnitty and beers at the Steeler’s Club.

We felt bonded through the shared experience of a lifetime of bad haircuts and re-awakened by wearing a uniform style that united us all. This must be how skin-heads feel, I thought.

Before my 21st birthday I decided to let my hair grow out for a few months. The rationale here was to have enough length so as to let a professional craft the exact hair I had been dreaming of. It was 2007 and I decided to bring back a slice of the 1950s. I sat in the chair, ready for my first professional haircut in years and told the woman, “I want it like James Dean.”

Looking back, I probably should have checked that she knew who James Dean was. At the very least I should have asked if she had ever handled a pair of scissors before. I removed my glasses, rendering myself blind, and she got started.

When it was over, I put my glasses back on and stared into the mirror in horror.

She had shaved into my hairline - like a moat all around my head. Right down to the skin. At the sides, she left a bob, barely taking any length at all, but stopping sharply, like a ledge over each ear, accentuating the moat she had carved in. At the top, she hacked away months worth of growth into a small spikes. Then, as her pièce de résistance, she shaved a triangle out the front of my head as if I was receding.

“That makes it a neater haircut,” she said.

If there’s one word I would not use to describe the shit-show that she left me with, it was neat.

I sat in my girlfriend’s car, staring in the little mirror behind the visor and tugged at what was left, hoping it would uncoil more hair from within, as if my head was a massive dental-floss dispenser. No such luck.

I shaved most of it off and left some tufts at the top. But with my 21st birthday party in just a week, there was no saving it. I wished I’d chosen a party theme involving a hat but it was too late for that. All I could hope was that someone would throw up, fall in the pool or die, just to take the attention away from my head. At the party, Alicia Dawson backed her Corolla off the side of the neighbour’s driveway and became stuck in a ditch, but nothing could distract from the rumour that someone had run over my head with a lawn mower.

When I moved to Sydney in 2010, a new problem emerged. Finding a barber to cut my hair.

There were many times I was told no - we only do men’s hair. Other times I slipped through the cracks and, not knowing what gender I was, they just cut it from sheer awkwardness. There were many up and down looks, many sideways glances and comments in languages I couldn’t understand. Once, I entered into a dispute with a barbershop owner who told me he didn’t have the equipment to correctly cut and style women’s hair.

What the fuck?

I wrote to him voicing my displeasure. I explained that gender roles are over. There is no such male-only bullshit anymore. We all have the same hair.

He responded by saying, “Go for a walk, clear your head, go for a dance with some friends.”

With my hair in this state? I don’t think so!

Finally, I tried a place called Diamond Scissors. I sat awkwardly, hunched forward to conceal my boobs. I noticed how tenderly the barber put the cape around my neck, placing it just so, like a kid floofing a dress out around themselves in a field of clovers. Had he done that because he knew I was a woman? Or were they this sweet with all their clientele? Unusually, I felt comfortable to go back a second time. And a third. And soon I was met with “Ah! You’re back!”

There were three barbers. First, there was Joe who owns the place. His English was the best, so if he was busy with another cut, he would come over and calmly explain exactly what I wanted to one of the others. Then there was George, who shook while he lifted cigarettes to his mouth and then magically steadied himself just in time as the scissors zig-zagged towards my eyeball. If George was busy, or sleeping in the spare barber’s chair, there was Suhail.

Suhail’s eyebrows are wild. He grins like he’s always about to laugh. He keeps a comb in his top pocket. He has one gold earring. You could perm his arm hairs.

He soon became my favourite.

“Number 2?” he asks each time, “and don’t touch the top!”

He says it as if he’s imitating me, letting me know that I didn’t need to tell him every time.

He then attaches the blade to the clippers and says, “Here we go, Number 3!”

He cracks himself up.

Sometimes I get gifted a small can of passionfruit soft drink while I wait. Sometimes I get a lolly or a biscuit or an extra friendly hello if it’s been a while. One time, Joe offered me a chocolate. As I reached out to take it, he pulled the box away and cried out, “You are sweet enough already!”

He then offered one to the Asian man getting a shave and added, “These chocolates are same colour as you!”

Sometimes, when the men who are waiting stare at me, or look awkward getting their nose hairs waxed in front of me, Suhail calms them by shaking my hand, patting me on the back or singing a song to make people laugh. I can’t be sure if it’s on purpose, but it seems to be. He never calls me darling, love or ‘she,’ so in the absense of this age-old social classification technique, I have no idea if he knows I’m a woman - or if he even cares.

Sometimes, as I wait for Suhail, he talks to his daughter over Skype.

“She’s in Cyprus,” he once told me.

I wait for him because he knows my hair the best. This 60 year old man who I can barely communicate with is the best hairdresser I’ve ever had. He’s my accidental feminist hero. I’ve trusted him before job interviews. Dates. Mardi Gras. He combs my hair in a wave across my head, his other hand following the comb closely behind, offering support. Then he says to me, “And no put on your hat!”

He holds my head safely beneath his chubby hands. And then, every time, he places my glasses softly onto my face lifts a mirror behind me and raises an eyebrow to ask, “Ay?”

“Good,” I say, “perfect.”

He sets the mirror down and drops his two hands onto my shoulders with a thud. He claps once, in the air, like a man who’s just flipped a pancake and says to the room, “Bea-u-tiful!”

Last time I went, Suhail was there, talking on the phone. Joe was busy cutting a young boy’s hair. George was asleep. I was happy to wait and took a seat amongst the month-old Telegraphs.

Strangely though, there was a woman there. She seemed to be supervising the haircut of the young boy. She must be his mother, I thought.

“No wait, no wait,” Joe said, ushering me into the barber’s chair.

The woman approached me. I smiled at her in the mirror but also sent her telepathic messages to back off - this is my barber shop, I told her. I don’t even know what the hell you’re doing here, lady, but this is a man’s place and we don’t want you here. And if you’re planning on making small talk, I added silently, I’m not interested.

Closer she came, reaching into the bum bag that was strapped around her waist. She revealed a pair of scissors. I panicked. What was happening? Was a woman was about to cut my hair? A woman!

I thought about pretending to faint. What the fuck was she even doing here?

“Number 2,” Suhail called out from the back - still on his phone call, “and no touch the top!”

She started cutting and I cursed her all the way through. Her clipping was too rough. She hadn’t even checked if I wanted squared-off edges or natural sides. How could a woman possibly know how to do this right? Were they even allowed to employ a woman here? I mean, sure, I come here, but she is blatantly a woman. At least I have the sense to be somewhat incognito. I’ve never asked if Suhail knows I’m a woman and I never will!

His phone call was finished - too late.

“Your daughter?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, “sorry.”

“That’s ok,” I offered, although it was far from ok, “how is she?”

He paused, looking for the words in English.

“She very happy,” he said, crouching down in front of me and leaning towards my face (while the maniac with no respect for male-only spaces likely carved a penis into the side of my head).

I smiled at him.

“Her husband make her happy,” he said, “so I happy too.”

We were inches from each other now.

“You must miss her,” I added.

“Yes,” he said, sniffing. His eyes were wet. He blinked.

He reached up with two fat fingers and tenderly removed a stray hair from my face, his thumb lingering just long enough to brush my cheek.

Our eyes met again, mine no doubt glassy too.

“Yes,” he said again, “I miss her.”

He knows, I thought to myself. He definitely knows.