"What he doesn’t say is that if you don’t trust him or respect his artistry, he’ll either announce that the karma’s not right and refuse to cut your hair or forge ahead, testing you. He’s not afraid of what you’ll think—and if he senses that
your fear is going to get in the way of what he thinks best, watch out. ...
"Men in this society, Donnal continues, “take medicine, spray, anything to hold onto their hair as long as they can. So my job sometimes is charge them $100 for haircut and buy them razor and tell the wife to help them shave their head. It’s not about $100, it’s about who has guts to tell you to shave your head.”...
“I realize I don’t have to be in New York to be a great artist. St. Louis people just don’t know the art. So I have a heavy-duty job here. I won’t say Midwesterners are stupid, but they are used to letting somebody decide for them—and then telling that person what to do! It’s not the people’s fault. Artists try to earn the money easy to please the people. The designer gets paid to do the job but doesn’t do it; the client pays the designer to do the job but doesn’t let him do it. And if I address this problem, I am the number-one Hair Nazi!...
“Midwest women have a tremendous problem: They love to copy people,” he adds. “Very dangerous. Because that is the first failure for the confidence. St. Louis people do not like to taste differences, they do not like challenges a lot, because they are very comfortable. The reality, the environment, doesn’t pressure them. It’s very family-oriented—so very easy to lose who they are.
“I have a very hard time to make people trust me here,” he adds. The old craze for highlights, for example: “A highlight is all bleach. Bleach is not a color. A lot of white-skinned clients have a different tone of white skin. But Midwesterners don’t accept any kind of tone because their eyes only understand one color: bleach!”
“My job,” he says abruptly, “is very mean. First time people walk in the door, I’m watching. Personality, background, job, earrings, watch, material of the hair, height, body shape, the way they talk, the attitude—if the nails perfect, the shoes shining, they sit very straight, you know who they are. They cannot lie to you, because if they didn’t like something they would not wear it. So I hate myself sometimes, because I have to have very strong judgment. But the judgment comes from who they are.”
And who is he? “I love that I have a very confident attitude all the time,” he confides. “I was born in a country where no matter how intelligent you are, you are just a little piece of grass in the yard.” And his greatest weakness? “I would love to find out my greatest weakness,” he says—sincerely. He’s silent for a moment. “I never ever in my life have been loved,” he says. “Only my grandma. If I can live all over again, I’d rather have love than anything.”
"
Original Gangster" - St. Louis Magazine By Jeannette Cooperman
