As soon as Jack Alpert heard the click of the scissors, his heart dropped.
At the Rose Room Salon in Oxford, Alpert sat with a black cloth draped over him. His orange hair, all 15 inches of it, was parted in the middle and separated into two pigtails that extended down his back.
His barber, Kiki, stood behind him and grabbed her clippers. She snipped off the first pigtail and, with it, his identity for the last two years.
“Oh, my goodness,” Alpert said, recounting the moment. “I lost my breath for a second. I just looked into the mirror in disbelief, like, ‘Here we go.