Since my punk rock days, I've had my hair done up fifty ways to Sunday. Trust me, you don't want to know the gory details, but if you're a black girl, you're already familiar with them.

So of course I didn't think that it was any big deal when I got RENT and signed a hair rider--until I read the fine print.  My hair was short anyway, but they wanted me to go platinum blonde at the tips, with black roots.  Why not red or something else? I thought.  Isn't there any other color that makes a black girl look "alternative"?

Of course all of it fell out, in clumps. I was upset, but what could I do? They could do whatever they wanted (within reason) with it--and they did. A frightening thought.  The monetary compensation hardly softened the blow.  I was forced to let it grow out naturally or risk some kind of chemical meltdown on my scalp. By the time I left the show, I had a pretty healthy head of thick, black, ultra kinky hair with blonde tips here and there. I had no idea what to do with it.  I knew I didn't want dreadlocks, though.  Too permanent.

Then one night, I had a dream I was onstage goofing off in a silver lame gown. My hair sat in tiny Bantu knots arranged in neat little squares all over my head, like Hellraiser. I looked like an elegant pickaninny. I was sitting in the audience, watching myself, enjoying the show when all of a sudden I had an epiphany: I've always looked like an elegant pickaninny. Even in my baby pictures.

So I woke up the next day, found Michelle at a place called Locks 'N Chops, did the deed and never looked back.

Don't get me wrong--I have nothing against perms. I mean, really.  It's just hair.     I didn't like being told (subliminally) that I wasn't "right" without straight hair, so I don't even want to say the same now that I'm standing on the other side of the fence, no matter how nice I think it is over here.  (And it isnice.)  One thing is for certain: when it comes to hair, no one thing is for everyone.

All I know is I looked in the mirror one day and realized that the nappyness released something within me as a black woman that nothing else could. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, but I could see it in the faces of the black people who passed me in the street. They would look at me with such pride. Sometimes they would stop to tell me so. Addressing me formally, they would call me Nubia. Black men never say obscene things to me.  They smile.  They wave.  They nod to me cryptically, calling me Queen in respectful tones.

Now how do you suppose they know my name?