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The stylist runs her fingers through my hair. "So, you want to go blond?" she asks.
"Yes," I reply. "But not too blond. And I don't want chunky streaks. And I don't want it to be orange, or gold, or any shade of yellow that could be discerned as orange. And" I continue to babble as the stylist's eyes glaze over. I feel bad, but I explain to her: "I've just had a lot of bad hair experiences."

She doesn't believe me. Not really. They never dountil I start telling stories. You see, I'm an addict. My vice? Hair color. You think that sound ridiculous? Don't say I didn't warn you...once you start, it's impossible to stop.

My natural hair color is light brown. When I was 17, it was still a lighter, mousy beige. That non-brown non-blond color that defies definition. As soon as I was 17 and therefore old enough to care about things like hair, I wanted to change its color. It's been an roller coaster ride ever since.

When I was a teenager, there weren't as many hair coloring choices in the drugstore as there are today. The semi-permanent hair dye had just come on to the market, and I embraced it with joy. That hyphenated word seemed so innocent: semi-permanent. Not forever. Just for a little while! I gave my hair a slightly reddish hue, a slightly brownish hue, a slightly golden hue. I changed my hair color every few months. Then, the first disaster struck.

My boyfriend at the time was enamored with the goth lifestyle. He dyed his hair black, and often mentioned how much prettier I'd look with black hair. Being an insecure 17 year-old, I took this to heart. I bought a box of Black Cherry semi-permanent hair color and went for it.

It. Was. Horrible. Since my hair is naturally beige, so are my eyebrows. Black hair. Beige eyebrows. Blue eyes. Not good. Also, I did this 2 weeks before an expensive family portrait was to be taken. 4 generations of my family, and only one with glossy black curls. The smiles in the picture are big, but the tensions were running high. I think my mother would have killed me if it were legal.

4 months later, the boyfriend dumped me. In a blaze of self-righteous anger, I conned my roommate into helping me strip the black dye from my hair. I bought a box of Color Stripper and we set to work. Except, I have a lot of hair. And we, being liberal arts majors and not hair colorists, applied the mixture to my roots, then the rest of my hair. The result? White roots that stepped down yellow, dark yellow, orange, dark orange, brown, to my black ends. I cried.

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