Dear Christine, (part one)

I received a Q&A request from a fave reader (shout-out to fellow Kentuckian and librarian! Holla!), but I’ve been too sick to answer. Turns out I had an infection and it was giving me a fever. Not that I’m trying to use the Q&A as a bitch session, but just wanted to update why I’ve felt so crappy and haven’t been blogging. Two rounds of antibiotics later, I’m feeling much better.

From Jason:

i've been following your hair chronicles online. what's the process for getting dreads? i'd always heard, "let it get really nappy. don't wash it. maybe pour some coca-cola on it." i saw your flickr pics, but i still don't understand what the hairdresser does. care to explain (either on the blog or in an email) professionally-done dreads? i'm just curious.

also, tell me about your job.

Well now, for question one, Jason, let’s start with a visual aid:

Sumner has delicately partitioned my hair into agreed upon segment size and locations. He then used a very fine toothed metal comb and back-combed my hair while occasionally twisting the hair slightly. You’re a boy, do you know what back-combing is? It’s also what girls would call “teasing” the hair, basically. Back-combing is combing the hair in reverse direction toward the scalp to intentionally knot or tangle the hair together. In that picture, Sumner is pushing my hair toward my scalp while hanging on to a foundation piece of hair to give it something to knot to.

After six hours of this tedious process, my neck was exhausted from the constant tension of the pull on my hair. But I was not nearly as exhausted as Sumner, whose hand was numb by the end of the day.

To complete the dreadlock-ification, Sumner used a special beeswax blend to put into my hair and help it take shape. He put a little wax on his palms, which heated it up, then rolled each dread in his hands, just like the way your kids will soon roll Play-Doh into strings.

Dreadlocks are washable. Sumner didn’t recommend a particular brand, but said chemical and conditioner-free shampoos were the way to go. Nothing that would leave deposits on the hair. I first chose Dr. Bronner’s Castille Soap in Baby formula for its absence of perfumes and dyes. Plus I knew from experimenting with that soap before that Dr. Bronner’s dried out my hair and made it stick together. I didn’t really dig it though for washing the dreads. Just didn’t feel right.

I turned to dreadheadhq.com for products. I ordered the beeswax balm Sumner used, the leave-in locking spray that encourages knots, and, my new favorite, dreadlock shampoo. I love the shampoo more than I love the other products. I feel so clean after I use it, even better than Dr. Bronner’s. My scalp feels fresh and my dreads smell like nothing but clean hair.

As you know, I’ve been on bed rest for the broken leg for a few weeks now. I got my locks nine days before I broke my leg, and bed rest has not been kind to my locks. They look pretty scraggly. It takes at least three months for the dreadlocks to really lock and not look crazy, but bed rest has set me back by about three months, I think. I have a penumbra of loose hairs all over the place. In a ponytail, I just look scraggly. Hair down, I look homeless and possibly insane.

I’ve never heard the “pour coke on it” urban myth, but in high school when I first wanted to dread my hair, everyone said linseed oil. Can you imagine that? That’s a freakin wood varnish. In college, not knowing what I was doing, I tried to dread someone’s hair. We started out with wee tiny braids and then he didn’t wash his hair at all. He got dandruff from the pressure on his scalp from the braids, and it turned out he had oily hair so the braids kept coming out anyway. We abandoned that after a pretty short time. I don’t know how everyone in the world gets dreads, but so far the only results I have seen have been from back-combing. And Sumner has quite the portfolio of clients.

I would also conjecture—not based on experience or fact at all—that not washing your hair and letting it get nappy wouldn’t work. It seems like oily hair isn’t that good for dreads since it ends up lubricating the hair, thereby relaxing the dread knots. Plus, the dreads would have no rhyme or reason as to size and location and would look mighty silly, in my opinion.

I hope that answers question one enough. As for question two, I’m typed out and I’ll get back to that one. Or that two.