compromise
On Monday evening last week, I went to get my hair cut. I had a phone call from the hairdresser at the weekend, promising me that every precaution was being taken; the stylists would be wearing face visors, all towels and gowns would be washed and surfaces would be sterilised immediately after use, and hand sanitiser would be available throughout. Of course, said the person I spoke to, customers wouldn’t be required to wear masks — but we were welcome to, if we felt the need!
Friends, readers, esteemed comrades: I was the only one who felt the need.
Was it essential to get a haircut? Probably not, by any reasonable metric. I staved off the growing-out process back in May, when I paid a friend £10 to tidy up my undercut with clippers; we walked to the river, sat on the bank, did the whole thing in the open air with gloves and masks and disinfectant wipes. A duck wandered over to us, keeping up a stream of quiet quacks the whole time. I might have tried to do that again, knowing that open-air environments are less dangerous than indoor spaces, and knowing that my friend did a genuinely excellent job under the circumstances.
But it’s ‘international non-binary awareness day’ (which I already got annoyed about on Twitter), so I’m told, so I’ll be forthright about it: I get dysphoric when my hair grows long. I get mildly dysphoric when my roots get too long, even, which I’m sure sounds absurd. When I asked my friend to help me fix my hair in May, it was in a state of considerable panic, because I’d just learned that salons wouldn’t be reopening until July. My mental health was already starting to suffer, for significantly larger and less-controllable reasons than my hair; I thought that if I could sort out my hair properly, as long as I could do it safely, it would be one less thing to experience agonies about. And I was right! The immediate aftermath of the haircut was an absolute joy. I trundled home, washed my hands, put my mask and my clothes directly into the laundry, and resolved to spend the rest of the week in tight lockdown at home; the least I could do was act responsibly toward others after potentially putting myself at risk.
None of this changes the facts. I was the only person in the salon wearing a mask. The stylists had face shields, which I’ve seen staff wearing in the pharmacy throughout the pandemic, so I can’t be mad at that. The stations had all been spaced out appropriately, and while I sat with bleach cooking on my head, I watched the stylists spraying down and sterilising surfaces all around the salon. Clearly the team was taking care. But not one other customer was wearing any kind of face protection — because the way they saw it, they’d been told they didn’t strictly have to.
I do not like wearing a face mask. It superheats the lower half of my face, and no matter what tricks I try, it fogs up my glasses within maybe half a second. But do you know what I like even less? The prospect of a long-lasting unknown quantity of a lung plague afflicting me or someone I love. I sat for two hours in the salon on a warm July evening, my face prickling with heat and discomfort, viscerally wishing I could take off the mask and get just a breath of fresh air. In the end, I took it off only once, for two minutes, so the stylist could wash the bleach out of my hair.
On Thursday last week, I started coughing. I’m usually tired, these days, so I didn’t think much of it until I reported my symptoms via the Covid Symptom Study app, which sent me an email that same day to recommend that I order a testing kit. I woke up on Friday feeling worse, so took a day off work that I couldn’t really afford; the testing kit was delivered that evening. By Saturday — irritatingly enough, feeling better — I had swabbed my tonsils and my nasal passage in front of a mirror, and I had packaged up the finished test for safe return to whatever lab it came from. The whole process was, considering the UK’s usual track record, disconcertingly efficient. I’m waiting for my results as I write.
I don’t think it was Covid. I think it was a blip; a pollen-count issue, maybe. If it was Covid, I am 99% sure I’d still be sick. But I couldn’t afford not to take it seriously. For two hours I was in a closed space with unmasked strangers. What if the brief minutes I spent without my own mask in place were enough for transmission to occur? I live alone; what would I do if I got worse, and needed help I might not be lucid enough to request? What about work? I was terrified. I think I am going to be terrified for a while.
The law is changing, at some point soon; people will be required to wear masks in shops in England. Can confirm: that’s probably for the best.
W