Hair-raising streets of Makati

Let’s get the obvious out of the way.

I don’t know Makati well. Even when I started working there, I never really wanted to find out more about it than I absolutely had to.

Are there enough convenience stores. Answer: Yes, they’re all you can see for miles.

Can you be legally punished for spitting on the sidewalk. Answer: Not if you’re careful.

Do most people you meet there obey traffic/ pedestrian crossing rules. Answer: Yes, sometimes it’s all people can talk about.

Do you risk running into a celebrity stranger along Ayala who grabs people’s hair if you make the critical mistake of getting within hair-grabbing length?

Answer: Do you what?

Now, see, I’m not intuitive with street survival questions. If I had been, maybe I would have asked around if there were celebrity strangers in Makati who would kick your scrotum if you were within scrotum-kicking range. The idiot I am, it took me this long to realize these were questions all self-respecting workers in Makati must ask themselves.

I was walking along Ayala Saturday morning when this was made painstakingly obvious. Two women were walking ahead of me, minding their own business, then BAM. Another woman just stopped and pulled at woman A’s hair. And by pulled, I mean tugged, with the force ancient Egyptians used to raise blocks for pyramids. And by hair, I mean all two million three hundred fifty seven strands of it.

There tug-of-war fan had no goal, as far as I could tell. She didn’t kidnap the woman’s hair for ransom. I really doubt somebody was mean to her hair when she was a kid. Seemed, she just felt like pulling, and that’s all there was to it.

When the hair-assault aficionado let go, woman B calmly said to her then hair-challenged friend “Kaw kasi, di ka lumayo sa kanya eh.”

And in my head, I’m going: What? You can assume these things will happen?

But I was young and naïve. It was wrong to think that. Evidently, the true streets of Makati belong to the dark lair of hair-intrigued, and all who pass by are just borrowing a rigid piece of their space. The hair-pull organizations own the streets. The streets own Makati. We are slaves to their bidding in wait, and all we can do is watch our hair with the passion of commercial models, and hope the streets aren’t also curious about kicking our nads.