by Phyllis King
I was first introduced to the concept of People Skills on my third day of school. My fellow first-years and I hung up our spiky setting rollers and tail combs for a textbook and pen. The tiny room was stark, with a few out-dated hair posters carelessly pinned to the walls. Laminated tables and plastic orange chairs formed a U-shape around a television trolley. The room was stuffy, the air-conditioning set too high. I began to yawn immediately and wondered how I was going to stay awake through a dull video on ‘People Skills’.
We’d all scoffed at the idea of an entire subject devoted to something that was supposed to come naturally to hairdressers. What a waste of time.
Most of us had spent the last six months learning how to give the ultimate shampoo. That’s the easy part. Not sending a torrent of water down someone’s back to their underpants is the hard bit. Believe me, it happens to us all - hopefully only once. If you haven’t got the People Skills to talk your way out of that one, you shouldn’t be in the job.
Hint: You can never apologise too much.
Always accept the blame. There is no such thing as a neck that’s too skinny or a spine too stiff to fit into a hard, plastic neck basin. Even if the client sits up unexpectedly, it is always your fault.
So you could say the opening sequence of the video took me by surprise. Actually, it was more of a WHACK! Ka POWEE! As in the old Batman television show.
The perfectly-coiffed presenter explained with perfectly rounded vowels that we belonged to an elite group of professionals who touched other people. I don’t mean sentimentally, I mean literally, as in the physical.
Doctor; dentist; physio; hairdresser. There’s only a handful more. We allow, or by the very nature of these jobs, demand physical touch. Humans don’t usually like our personal space being invaded, part of our animal instinct. The intimacy freaks us out.
It was the most startling thing I learnt in a four-year apprenticeship. It also explained a hell of a lot personally. Like my whole life.
As a kid, I didn’t realise there was anything different about me. I thought everyone had weird and wacky names like mine. I also thought it was normal to feel other people’s emotions.
I’m an Empath.
That much I’d figured out long ago. I’d read the New Age books, I’d trawled the Internet, searching for a name, a definition to what I felt. What I didn’t understand, until that day at trade school, was my trigger. From my research I’d learnt there are all kinds of Empaths, that is, people who feel the emotions of others. Some Empaths are extremely sensitive, hardly daring to venture out in public lest they take on the emotions of someone on a major downer. They might only have to walk past them in the street, or make eye contact on a crowded train and the poor Empath is drowning in contagious despair.
Others don’t even realise there’s anything unusual about themselves. They just naturally trust their instincts and how they feel about others. The whole ‘There’s just something not right about him, but I can’t put my finger on it’ type of Empath.
Me, I’m somewhere in between.
Luckily, I don’t take on other people’s moods. I just feel them, physically, on my skin.
When I was little, I could only differentiate between three emotions: happy, sad, angry. They’re probably the most obvious anyway - written all over the wearer’s face.
No big deal, and no realisation back then that there was anything unusual in what I felt. I thought everyone experienced the gentle tickle of butterflies against their skin if they were with someone happy. Anger is not as nice, and gives me instant pins and needles in my feet and hands. I tend to stay rooted to the spot in the presence of anger, not moving to avoid the pain. Sadness is worse though. It’s a cold, wet towel draping my shoulders, heavy as it clings. Sadness takes the longest to shake off, so to speak.
Adolescence and puberty brought a lot more than the usual hormonal issues with them. I began to recognise a whole tumult of new emotions. Imagine being able to actually feel when someone dislikes you. Prickles of little black ants run through my scalp to my neck. The intensity varies from uncomfortable for mild dislike to downright painful bull ant bites for hatred.
Hint: This is not very nice when you have no choice but to spend nearly all your time with nasty, hormonal teenage girls.
On the other hand, teenagers spend plenty of time in love. Feeling a warm, fluffy dressing gown, just out of the dryer, envelop your skin, magically sends the ants away.
All emotions are different and I learnt quickly which was which. Depression is like sadness, but so much heavier that my limbs ache. Sympathy is a tender hand stroking my arm. Guilt is a cold, metal object pressing against my chest.
What I couldn’t figure out was why some days were like being bombarded in a game of dodge ball, and others were calm. Until that day in the People Skills class. Touch! It was such a simple answer.
I only felt it when I touched someone. I’ve got no idea why I hadn’t been able to connect the dots until then. Maybe because, even when I do touch, I don’t always catch the emotion. Sometimes people are too busy thinking to be feeling. Study, work, concentration; they all get in the way. Calmness and daydreams don’t show up on my radar either. Unless, of course, the daydream evokes more than mental time-out.
So why did I choose a career that forced me to be hit with a new emotion time and time again on a daily basis?
That’s easy. I like it. I like having a little insight into my client’s true self. I like the game I play, figuring out how to make them happy. Every day I’m trying to beat my personal best. The sadder the client, the more I have to challenge myself to bring them out from under the towel. It’s an eternal search for butterflies.
I also like the hairdressing, the creative play. It helps to make my own mind wander. But that always comes second. My strength is in my People Skills.
My clients often tell me how special they feel after an appointment with me. They always seem to get just what they wanted, even if they hadn’t realised they wanted it.
Funny about that.
The secret to a successful salon lies just as much in getting to know exactly what your clients need as it does in technical skills. No-one would pay the most gifted hairdresser a penny if they were treated with hatred and contempt. Being treated like the most important person on the planet, even just for an hour, is priceless. There is also nothing like the satisfaction you get after lifting someone out of the doldrums and making them feel spectacular.
To be able to distract my client from the awfulness of their life is intoxicating. It’s my drug of choice, my compulsion and need.
My success comes down to picking up the uncomfortable emotion, asking the right questions, then listening.
Hint: The best People Skill of all is to be a great listener.
You don’t have to be an Empath to try it. Everyone likes to feel as though you are truly interested in their life, dreams and theories on climate change. The trick is in finding the key that gets them talking about themselves.
For example, trying to find a clue as to why the tender skin behind my knees is suddenly freezing with remorse is not easy. You have to build up to it. Imagine asking someone bluntly why there are fingers of grief wrapping around my neck, slowly suffocating me? Grief hurts, but you would be amazed how many people try to hide it.
You need to find the right questions. You have to make that someone trust you, know that they can tell you anything in confidence. You have to let them in, to know you in return. That’s what you let them believe, anyway. I always give my clients just enough of the personal me for them to open up. Once their souls are bare, it’s easy to find the happiness, however deep it’s hidden.
These days, the system works well for everybody. My clients have a friend who truly cares about them, and they pay handsomely for the privilege. I get to travel overseas each year on the bounty of my caring, as well as pay the mortgage on my little apartment. I also get the ultimate high when I drag their hidden butterflies to the surface. Ye
s, the system works well for everybody - especially me. But it wasn’t always like this.
Thursdays are my favourite day. My morning is crammed full with the same ‘mature’ ladies each week. Every 40 minutes I visit with a different ‘best friend’.
All older people carry the wet towel of sadness in some form or another. It’s the degree of weight that varies.
Mrs Matthews, my 9 am, only wears it lightly. She’s in her eighties and still has her husband - and her marbles. Her light load of sadness comes from the inevitable loss of siblings and lifelong friends.
Nine-forty brings Marjorie Joan. She’s a spinster in her sixties and positively gleeful. Her mood prepares me for the rest of the day. Glee is similar to excitement. They both send more than the gentle tickle of butterflies over my skin. There is nothing gentle about glee. It’s short, sharp and astonishing. It’s hundreds of beetles in flight, all beating their metallic wings against the roof of my mouth, the skin between my toes, every part of me. It is instant and frantic and very hard to hide my reaction. Glee makes me want to squeal with its infection.
My third client of the morning is Miss Clarissa Barnes, or Miss Lola, as she prefers to be called. Miss Lola is almost blank to me, other than an underlying whisper of butterflies that never fluctuates. I assume this is due to the Alzheimer’s disease that has rampaged its way through her mind. I cherish the forty minutes I have with her, I can relax completely. She takes nothing of my own self with her, and leaves me refreshed and settled after playing with Marjorie Joan’s glee. Unfortunately, I’ve only had the pleasure of Miss Lola’s company for a year now. I wish she had walked through my door three years earlier - that way, I would never have met Nola Bruce.
I teased and pruned Nola Brace’s hair for three very long, painful years. It’s not that I didn’t like her personally. Quite the opposite in fact. She intrigued me. On the surface she was all bright and shiny like a new Japanese car. She was warm, kind and friendly with a saccharine smile you couldn’t help returning. Her manners were impeccable. She knew all my staff by name, even Amy, my apprentice. She brought flowers on my birthday and good wine at Christmas.
But every Thursday morning, when I sat her down for a consultation and ran my fingers through her fine, 78-year-old hair, all I wanted to do was vomit. You see, Nola Bruce was what I call a show-bag. Like the sort you get at the Royal Melbourne. All fun and sparkles on the outside, but when you look inside - there’s nothing but cheap, nasty crap.
Grief, guilt, remorse, depression, they were all there in spades. Along with a good dose of hatred, fear and, her strongest emotion of all, bitterness.
Bitterness is brutal. It hits my jaw like a white-hot cattle brand. Scorchingly acute, it almost brings me to my knees if I’m not expecting it. The simmering fury of bitterness moves swiftly from my jaw to my teeth. The cattle-brand morphs into claws: feral and unrelenting, they grasp and pull at my teeth. Striking first at my back molars, they spread with each flick of my fingers through her hair to the next tooth, a stampeding cancer in overdrive.
So why didn’t I just palm Nola Bruce off to one of my staff, even an apprentice? Put simply, I couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
She had this weird attachment to me and refused (always politely) to let anyone else do her more-than-basic round-brush blow wave. If I was sick, she’d cancel. If I had holidays, she’d cancel. If I tried to make her appointment for another day or time, she would oblige. If I purposely ran late, she didn’t complain and I would just bugger up my timing for the rest of the day. If I tried to make her booking with someone else, she just refused. Only I could do her hair properly. Talk about driving a girl to drink. Or drugs. Or both.
The physical pain I felt when I did Nola Brace’s hair was not what I dreaded the most. It was the total and complete absence of happiness. Everyone has a tiny increment of happiness - it’s how I get my kicks, dragging that increment to the surface where I can touch it. Everyone, that is, except Nola Bruce. She was just so filled-up with all the bad stuff, she’d forgotten about butterflies all together.
I tried everything to find them. Every angle I knew. I put every People Skill I ever learnt to work, probing, prying, searching for the reason her happiness had taken permanent leave. She disturbed and fascinated me. She was my greatest challenge, my own private Everest. I’d do anything it took to get my hit from her.
Hint: They say love and hate are the most powerful emotions.
I beg to differ. Ask anyone in a 12-step program. Although not technically an emotion, addiction triumphs over all her competitors.
I began researching Nola Bruce in earnest after a year of living with this torture. I made notes at the end of each Thursday morning appointment, gathering together any information she offered. Never once did she blankly refuse to answer one of my incessant questions, but she didn’t offer anything up without prompting either. This is what made her so different to anyone else I’ve ever touched. People like to talk about themselves. She did like to ask me questions in return though, kind of a quid-pro-quo sort of deal.
I knew she was a long-time widow. I knew she’d also lost her only son in early childhood. I knew she was highly educated, with two degrees to her name. I knew she lived alone and hadn’t travelled outside Australia.
In turn, Nola Bruce knew Cyrus and I grew up with a slightly crazy mother, and an absentee father. She knew I hated the smell of fish, but loved a good meal of garlic prawns. She knew I didn’t date although I never told her why. How do you explain that you can feel your blind date just isn’t that into you? Even worse, that they are so consumed with lust my earlobes break out in a sweat - not to mention the other side effects lust has on me.
I gave Nola Bruce as much of my personal self as I dared. But she still didn’t give me all of her. She didn’t give me the opening or opportunity to ask the direct questions I needed to. Of course I knew that much of the sadness and bitterness would be from the loss of her family, but I didn’t know any details of their deaths. I was sure this was where the secret to her misery lay. I just had to figure out how to unlock it.
I decided to try a different tack. Maybe if I couldn’t catch a milligram of happiness from her, I could create it for her artificially. Even if there was a lone, solitary butterfly hiding within this damaged soul, I was going to find it. I knew that it would be the best I had ever encountered. I endured so much pain in searching it became my obsession.
I made sure the apprentices pampered her with extra-long scalp massages. I insisted she try out the latest conditioning treatments, free of charge. I surprised her with cupcakes and a few free highlights for her birthday. On the outside, she was so appreciative, so charming and grateful for the special attention. On the inside there was not a beat, nor a tickle. There was no happiness at all in Nola Bruce.
I became more and more obsessed. I knew it, was conscious of the fact that I was turning my search for her happiness into my personal quest. It was my Holy Grail, a seemingly unattainable crusade.
The happiness-hits I received from any other clients, my staff and brother became insignificant. Even Marjorie Joan’s glee didn’t seem to quite do it for me anymore. For three long years I endured weekly pain, both physical and mental.
The answer finally came easily and obviously one evening after a bottle of good white. Mulling over the information I had gathered on Nola Bruce, I realised I had not looked in the most obvious place of all, the Internet.
I will never make a detective — surely that should have been the first step in my investigation?
There were exactly 23,104 results on Google for the name Nola Anne Bruce. My Nola Bruce. The fact that I had wasted three years for such a simple answer made me want to spit. But maybe that was the point? Maybe it had been the thrill of the challenge all along? I knew immediately what I needed to do. I could taste the syrup of victory already.
The morning after my revelation was a Wednesday. I woke happy and contented, if a little hung-over. I’d slept better than I had for three
years. Wednesday is my day off, it makes up for working late on Thursday nights and Saturday mornings. That particular Wednesday, I enjoyed a leisurely breakfast of crumpets, fruit and yoghurt. I took a long shower and then got out of my apartment for the day.
I had things to do and it was time I gave myself a treat. I bought a cute summer dress and ruby-red ballet flats. I dropped by Cyrus’s studio to pick up some things and invite him out for lunch. We ate dim-sims and chips on the Esplanade and laughed until our bellies ached. For the first time in so long, I made my own butterflies that day.
Thursday morning brought both excitement and trepidation. I was finally going to find Nola Brace’s happiness. The day was going to be warm, so I celebrated by wearing my new dress and flats.
Mrs Matthews was as lovely as ever, giving me a small brush of butterflies as she left, happy with her shampoo and blow-wave.
Marjorie Joan’s gleeful beetles were in full swing, and I was more than a little grateful for their energising jolt. I was in such a good mood that I made sure both she and Mrs Matthews were treated with our new luxury conditioning mask. Their 10-minute scalp massages sent the sweet scent of honey and almonds wafting through the entire salon.
