Men's Haircuts
Like every other time, it started off weird. He put the funny plastic gown over my head, stood back, and spoke to my reflection. “So! What can I do for you today?”
This throws me every time. I thought maybe I’d walked into doctor’s surgery by accident. Then I saw the bottles of pastel-coloured male grooming products (which nobody buys), and knew I was in the right place. “Use your imagination!” I wanted to say. “Look at how my hair looks now, subtract four weeks - now make it look like that!”
Men’s haircuts ought to be pretty simple. Unless you’re a punk. No, I understood. He was afraid that one day I might change my mind. That I might say, “Actually, I’ve turned to organised crime. Shave it all off, and give me a razor-scar while you’re at it.”
I asked for a trim. The barber replied, ‘ahhhh, a trim!’ As if that changed everything. God forbid, if we hadn’t got that straight, he might have gone into left field and given me a tidy-up instead.
I guess it’s all part of the patter. Having something to say to each other during this weird ritual. My barber is pretty friendly. He asks questions about my life. But he’d stop cutting my hair while I was speaking. I was there to get my hair cut, so I didn’t answer his questions very often.
Certainly, men’s haircuts should be pretty straightforward. But there was the other side of the coin. It could also be a ludicrously technical affair, with millimetre tolerances at stake. When asking for a number three on the sides and back, I’d half-expect him to haul out a computer-guided industrial lathe.
Once the negotiations were over though, things didn’t get any easier. I was captive in the barber’s chair, with a mirror straight ahead. I couldn’t move a muscle, for fear of losing an ear. So where should I look? Straight ahead was out of the question: I’d be gazing weirdly into my own eyes. Behind me, was the guy who was waiting. It’d be even more weird to look at him. Attempting to look nowhere in particular made me look all shifty. So, I began to check out the little table in front of me. You know, the little table with all the barbery things. Scissors, and razors bathing in antiseptic, like something a brain surgeon might have. How can there be so many kinds of scissors, I wondered. There was a particularly funny-shaped pair, which looked like they could be used to make crinkle-cut crisps.
Suddenly, the barber yanked my head forward. Now I was staring down at my crotch, while he attended to my neck stubble with a laser-guided guillotine. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Sometimes they give you a free tissue on your way out. Like a souvenir. You only get this in the classier joints, whose coffee tables boast newspapers only two days old.
The best bit for me was the double-mirror trick at the end. The bit where the barber holds up a second mirror, so I could admire his landscaping efforts on the back of my head. Anything involving two mirrors is worthy of respect in my book.
I took one more look at all those scissors and scalpels, and acted impressed. As if this number-two-fade was superior to all other number-two-fades I’ve had. In truth, I couldn’t tell the difference. But the risk of offending a man carrying a cut-throat razor was too great, in my mind.