Is Being Hot?

It is a slow Sunday afternoon. I have been sitting out on the patio of my parent’s house—my house—for the better part of the day. The sun is shining here in Mexico City. Earlier today, I sat in the sunshine, trying to turn my arm hairs gold again (with the help of hydrogen peroxide). There are two black cats sitting on the fence between our house and the neighbour’s, peering at me through half-shut eyes. Sometimes, they close their eyes entirely and take a little snooze. They coordinate their naps such that there’s always one asleep and one awake, a partnership that makes me feel a tinge of envy. Every so often, the wind picks and pushes hair off my face. I had to run upstairs to grab a sweatshirt because the breeze has been sneaking through the hammock and in between my shirt and back, sparking a chill. I feel such peace during these indeterminate days before the year ends.

Last week, I got my hair cut for the first time since a trip to Vancouver in May or June. Before Vancouver, my approach to hair was, above all, practical. Once a year, I’d come home to Mexico and lob it all off. Haircuts in New York City and, before that, in Abu Dhabi were expensive. I found it economical to crop my hair down to a “bob” and then let it grow. I could measure how far—how long—I was from home through the distance between my ears and the ends of my hair. When my hair stretched far beyond my shoulders and reached toward the center of my chest, I knew it was almost the holidays and time to start again.

When I cut my hair around Christmas in 2023, however, I didn’t go through with the full ‘bob’. I thought a shoulder length looked nice, especially when matched with fresh layers or what hairdressers like to call “shape”. Without the more dramatic chop, though, by the time summer began, my hair was much longer and heavier than it had been in some time. I went to Vancouver for a surprise “business” trip. I put “business” between “quotations” because I find it hard to believe that I “travel” “for work”. It was the second such trip I’ve ever made. Anyway, after two days of meetings, I had a day to myself. Walking along the back streets of Vancouver’s Chinatown, I realized that I’d been walking since nine in the morning, and, even though I would sit down soon for lunch, I needed—wanted—an excuse to sit for longer. My lower back was aching. I ran through ideas in my mind: it was too beautiful a day to go to a movie theater, and I didn’t have anything particularly good to read. Across the street from a noodle parlour I identified for lunch, I saw a pastel pink-and-green salon with touches of Miami decor. I ran my hand through my hair and felt excited about how much cheaper a haircut in Vancouver might be than in New York City.

My hairdresser, a glittering, jovial young woman, was surprised to see someone choose to cut their hair in Canada over New York. She told me she raised on an island off Vancouver and was happy to give me recommendations for more things to do in the city. In between questions and stories, she nudged me toward the unthinkable: a center part. She also insisted on length—with the corresponding bangs and layers, she insisted I would look great. Overtaken by the laissez-faire spirit of unfamiliar streets, I acquiesced. I walked in as someone looking for a deal and a sit and left other. I had never seen my hair frame my face in soft, long curls. I have had bangs, but those were sharp and bold across my forehead, not swept against my cheek. As I paid, I wondered when and whether the new style might settle beyond my head. Walking away from the salon, I snapped a handful of pictures of myself. The sun struck my camera head-on, augmenting the brightness I felt internally. I stole glances at those photos in disbelief during the rest of the day.

*

Over the last three years, I’ve accumulated a fair number of “small but momentous” changes to my appearance, among which this Vancouver haircut ranks. The first one that strikes me as significant was when I swapped out pearl earrings for modest golden hoops I bought for no more than twenty dollars at the flea market that sets up under Manhattan Bridge in Dumbo. I had worn pearls for as long as I could remember—first plastic white balls from Claire’s with a pearly coating that would peel off after mere months of use, and later a pair of real pearls from Tiffany’s, gifted to me by the parents of a friend who passed away. They were a graduation present they wished they could have given to her. I thought I’d never turn away from pearls, but after that first pair of hoops (which also came with a string of awkward selfies while I assimilated a new vision of myself), I was changed. I have built a strong rotation of earrings, big and small, that I mysteriously keep adding to. I have more earrings now than I might know how to handle. At some point, I lost one of the two gifted pearls.

Beyond hoops and hair, I picked up a square nail shape when I was last in Barcelona after years of round fingertips. I also learned to wear wide trousers in Barcelona, an elegant upgrade over the skinny jeans that have reigned my closet since I was eleven. I don’t remember how or when I picked it up, but glittered eyeliner and eye shadow have become a staple, even though when I was younger, I would snark at the idea of wearing makeup in the daylight. I don longer socks after buying my first pair in the midtown Uniqlo last year after many years of short, themed socks. I also switched out white Adidas Stan Smiths for a pair of off-white Reeboks and now a pair of white Hokas (though they’re all filthy, to my mother’s chagrin). I straightened my teeth (and lost one). I got a tattoo when I returned from Berlin. Ha.

It’s odd to list out all the changes. The previous paragraph makes them all seem larger than they are, clumped together like that, connected by commas and periods. I look at myself in the mirror, and the same eyes look back. I feel changed, certainly, but not unfamiliar. I like to believe that underneath it all, I’m still the same. In those moments, though, I try to remember what it was like to be me, say, a year ago to draw a sharper comparison, and I can’t remember. I wonder whether I only feel familiar because I have forgotten what it was like to be an earlier self.

*

It is a grey Saturday afternoon, and I have been back in New York City for over a week. It snowed a little this morning, but I missed it. I saw traces of snow on the pavement when I walked outside around eleven in the morning, but I first assumed it was rain. The New York Metro Weather account on Twitter told me it snowed when I opened my laptop a few hours later.

Last week, Bad Bunny released a new album. I haven’t listened to Bad Bunny as much as I used to. In fact, neither he nor Rauw Alejandro—gasp—made it to my top artists list on last year’s Spotify Wrapped, as they did in 2023 and 2022 before that. On Monday night, I was lying on my yoga mat after practicing my “dead bugs” and “bird dogs” to strengthen my hips and back, and I decided to listen to the new album for the first time some days after its release. I texted a friend to express my delight? surprise? that the album was good, and she responded, “I didn’t realize how much I missed Benito”.

Instead of Bad Bunny, last year I listened to a lot of Fred Again, which was completely new in my repertoire, the music Spotify associates with him, and ambient classical music by the likes of Nils Frahm and Max Richter. Around October, I “re-discovered” a lot of music that I listened to incessantly in middle and high school: The Killers, of course, and Keane, Snow Patrol, The Kooks, London Grammar, and Coldplay. I remember listing these bands on MySpace and Hi5 profiles under “favourite music” headers and quoting lyrics from their songs in Facebook updates or under my AIM “status” paired with a star wingding. In the back of my school notebooks, I would illustrate the lyrics, too—there was a particularly elaborate drawing of, well, a gun that I made for the Coldplay line, “I’m gonna buy a gun and start a war if you can tell me something worth fighting for.” Rather than feeling tired, the songs felt fresh and familiar but, above all, comforting. Why did I stop listening to all this music? When? I can’t remember. I didn’t realize how much I missed them, too.

*

Before I left for Mexico City in December, I took the subway across the river to Wall Street to make an appointment at Tiffany’s. I’ve spent months telling myself I’d replace the lost pearl, but I never got around to doing it. On the brink of turning 30, I finally felt sufficiently guilty for not completing the errand, so I walked into the vaulted store, deposited a single pearl, and made arrangements to purchase its partner. A few days into the new year, I made the same journey across the river and returned to my apartment with a pair of pristine pearls. I’m not quite sure what they did to the original one (clean it? unlikely, but replace it?), but there’s no difference between old and new.

I’ve been wondering how to end this essay for a few weeks. I started it because I felt very disoriented when I arrived in Mexico. In my childhood bedroom, I felt forced to figure out how to integrate all I lived in the past year. I lay on my bed thinking, rather unimaginatively, that there was one answer; perhaps a final, superior self or that all this change was, and should be, linear. I know logically that’s not true, but I ran through all the accomplishments and events of 2024 with an editor’s mind, trying to craft it into the perfect story, a clean arc that explains the transformation between departure and arrival. It wasn’t until I saw myself wearing the pair of pearls a few weeks later that I understood this was a matter of dimensions; all these Dominiques were here with me and always will be. And, a few days later, when I invariably lost sight of this truth, Bad Bunny returned to remind me that I can, and will be, Hot (even in the depths of winter).

‘Til next time.