Cool medium brown

Hair dye, Kierkegaard, and COVID

© Chris Raymond

I think it was about May 2020, aka the 94th of March. I was single, working from home since March — home being a supposed 785-square-foot one bedroom apartment with my office an Ikea table masquerading as a desk in the living room. It was well past the time when we had hope of just a few weeks of isolation, but well before we stopped washing our groceries. I sewed my first two masks.

I’d settled into the routine of dragging my ass out of bed at the butt crack of dawn to walk over to the grocery store for senior hour, my glasses fogging up from my mask. My hair had grown increasingly raggedy, to the point that I bought an electric trimmer to trim butcher it. I silently offered thanks that I didn’t have to see the back of my head, bushy enough to provide a small bird a home.

When I saw the CVS was having a sale on Clairol Nice ‘n Easy, I masked up and trudged the four blocks to scout for my go-to color, which had become increasingly hard to find anywhere. I suspected it had been discontinued; either that or a lot of other women were equally in love with Natural Cool Medium Brown 117D.

I scanned the shelf. Success!

The last time I’d colored my hair was when I was laid off in 2018, a woman of a certain age looking for another job in tech, an industry that…