I looked at myself in the mirror. White, mottled spots of toothpaste, remnants of a sloppy brushing job, distorted my view.

"Am I really about to do this?" I asked myself.

Hell yeah! But what would my parents think? Doubts started worming their way through

the maze of my conscience. My parents had given birth to me, they had to love me and accept me as their daughter no matter what I did, right? Parents are supposed to love their children through thick and thin. So what if they received a call from me at three in the morning needing to be bailed out of the slammer I had been thrown into for smoking pot out of a coke can behind the movie theater with some Rastafarian named Domingo. And why should they care if I wrote a letter home telling them that I'd fallen in love...with someone of the same sex.

Okay, so those events never took place, I've not yet been to jail and I love men, but I have done plenty of things that have probably caused my conservative parents some near coronaries. This was bound to be one of those times.

My image from the mirror continued to stare at me. This girl, this plain, ordinary face was reassuring me. I needed a change, and tonight, in this gloomy cell of a dorm room, that change was going to occur. How would I begin? I was a virgin to the deed that I was about to do and I wanted to perform well!

The first thing I needed was space. However, this dimly lit hole of a room didn't provide me with much room. The bathroom sink and mirror were built into the rooms themselves, not the bathrooms. What was the purpose of this? I don't care how friendly one is with one's roommate, there was no way that I was going to get up in the morning, grab a washrag and scrub my nether regions with my living partner snoring and drooling two feet away from me. So, picture it, a bathroom sink and a bathroom mirror in a bedroom.

I needed room on the dirty sink to perform my outlandish deed. However, my roommate seemed to be collecting as many bottles of lotions and other unnecessary girly crap as she could. The sink was littered with half-used bottles of products ranging from Fairy Foot Scrub, for funky feet I assumed, to Orgasmic Orange Body Gel. Why does one need such products? I quickly picked up the thousand and one bottles and littered them onto Katie's pretty pink Winnie the Pooh comforter. How did I end up with someone so incredibly effeminate? Someone in housing had surely been high when they paired up a chain smoker who likes to listen to punk rock while she studies with Miss Pretty Princess who prisses around campus like she owns it and whores it up at places like the Pinnacle each week, religiously.

I now had enough room to attempt to work my magic. This escapade had been thought out

and was organized. Any tools that were necessary to complete the job were already laid out on my tiny desk, which was unattractively covered in faux wood contact paper, I might add.

I needed my surgical gloves, first. Protection is always important, from sex to car insurance, and those protective gloves were important to me in this situation. Only, they were nowhere to be found. Could I continue, or should I just give up? Inspirational aphorisms popped into my young mind. "Go west young man," "Be all that you can be," "Just say no." The higher being had given me my answer. I was to go on with my devious activity as scheduled. I grabbed the main ingredient from my contact papered desk and began squeezing the cool substance into my hands. It felt as if toothpaste and Vaseline had conceived a child, and this was it.

Onto my scalp, into my hair, onto my face and neck the goo was spread. Okay, so I had done it! All that I had to do was wait, right? Carelessly I wiped my hands off on Katie's precious pink glittered hand towel. It looked as if I had wiped up the remnants of a deadly smurf explosion. She was sure to kill me! But, wait, what's worse is that my hands seemed to be transforming into large blueberries. I considered leaving school and traveling to Vegas to join the Blue Man Group for about two seconds. Not a problem though, right? I mean, it's got to wash off sooner or later.

       I needed to relax. I needed to take a deep breath. I needed a cigarette. With my blue hands, I shakily pulled my lucky cigarette from my half-full pack. Who cares if I wasn't down to my last cigarette, I still needed that lucky one! With a quick peek out my door, I opened the small window in my fourth story room, stood on the avocado green desk chair from 1972, leaned my head out the porthole and took the first, and the best, drag off of that cigarette.

       A few minutes went by, and with an automatic flick of my butt, I leaned my head back into the room and stood in front of the mirror to prepare for the unveiling. It was now or never. I bent down into that dirty sink and washed the Cookie Monster colored goo from my previously golden locks. Before I snuck a look, I quickly covered my hair with a towel. With a deep breath I glimpsed my masterpiece! The most outstandingly perfect electric blue hair shone brightly in my reflection. I was in love! Who wouldn't be able to resist me, a small stick of a girl who now had short electric blue spikes for hair?

        Well, I quickly found that most men were able to resist me, however, I was a favorite for many of the most aggressive lesbians that this institution has to offer.

What had I accomplished? My room was a mess of scattered hair care products and bottles

of crap such as Amy's Itchy Armpit Scrub. My anal retentive roommate's favorite towel looked as if it had either Papa Smurf's piss or Grover's cum smeared onto it, my hands looked like squished berries, and my parents were going to want to strangle me. I realize that I have many stories of my misspent, misbehaved youth. But, really, what could be more fun than the first time that you piss your parents off by dying your hair? The rebelliousness will wash out of me sooner or later.