And so it was Friday, and it was time for a haircut. I won’t lie: I was dreading this. In fact, I hadn’t cut my now shoulder-length hair in nearly ten months, the last six of those having been during my return to living in my hometown. Part of my 60’s appearance was due to a general laziness in the area of personal grooming (an on-again-off-again beard helped attest to this), but I would be remiss if not to acknowledge the role of my hometown in this ludicrous escapade. You see, for years – years, I tell you – I had been getting the worst of haircuts here in my hometown, on the north side of Los Angeles. It really was nobody’s fault but mine, but nonetheless, it was traumatic. In the beginning, I went to the barber that I got driven to. I was eight years old, for goodness’ sake. Back then I didn’t rightly know what a bad haircut was; even in later years I had no fashion sense (some things never change). My defense began to wane, though, as these later years went by. By the age of thirteen or fourteen I had free range of town, via bicycle (“free range” being as far as chicken-skinny legs would take me), and that certainly encompassed at least a few barber shops. Still, though, I frequented the same old dive, getting the same old haircut. By sixteen I could drive, and in turn my choices were further multiplied, yet still, inexplicably, I returned to the same, joyless haunt.
And what a place it was. Non-descript in every way, only modern art could elicit fiercer boredom. There was some photo-realistic painting of a WWII-era bomber, in flight, on the wall. It was colored a bright red (only now does this seem odd to me) and it bristled with domed, glass portholes and gunning stations. Through every damned haircut it was there, right across from my chair. There were four other chairs, of course, but I never sat in any of them. To think of the other paintings I might have been able to recall! But I digress… The shop was, otherwise, exceedingly drab. It had all the barber shop necessities – chairs, mirrors, those odd cylinders of bright, blue embalming fluid that the combs sit in – within its stark, white walls, hung with shiny, plastic vines. There was a glass case filled with a sparse assortment of fancy hair products, not one of which, I am sure you can imagine, I ever considered buying. I recall, also, a battered old “treasure” chest, in the best pirate-barber tradition, filled with lollipops. They were there for the youngest patrons, to assuage their haircut-related trepidation (they were only passed out after the haircut), and although my aspirations to adulthood prevented me from asking for one by the time I was ten or so, I still wanted one after each cut until I was at least sixteen.
And, oh, the haircuts. Its only fair to admit, here, that my hair is notoriously difficult to cut. Oddly mirroring my internal uncertainties, my hair is both straight and, in some spots, slightly curly. It’s a bit wavy, too, and thin and fine on top, yet coarse and full on the sides. Its dotted with what my mother always called “cowlicks” (perhaps I should check with Webster on the validity of this term), which are spots where small coalitions of hair decide to band together and forgo the status quo, sticking out at horrendously unattractive angles and mocking all the conformist hair around them. So it is with this inherent disadvantage that my barber, Paco, started each foray into beautifying my head.
I think Paco did his best to satisfy my request of “shorter, please.” Unfortunately, the end result was never really very good. He always cut my bangs too short, giving me a Frankensteinian forehead, and he always left the sides too long, allowing rogue cowlicks to become miniature angel wings over each of my ears, making me look a bit like The Flying Nun.
He parted my hair on the far right side of my head, perhaps in a bid to volumize its flatness, but it always ended up making my head look lopsided. As my hair grew in, all of these problems were intensified, leading me to believe that another haircut was surely in order. Thus did the damnable cycle flow, cut to cut, disapproving look in the mirror to disapproving look. Why I never endeavored to find a new barber, or at least to coach Paco through the haircut, is difficult for me to reckon. Perhaps it was partly my timid demeanor, partly my belief that my hair was simply incorrigible, and partly my uncertainty over what to do with it other than what was already being done. So went my haircuts, contributing heavily to a robust collection of baseball caps.
At the time I forgave Paco, based on this seemingly insurmountable “bad hair” issue, though I have since found, as an adult, that a competent barber can, indeed, save my hair from itself. This was only discovered, however, after I moved away from my hometown, was free from its habitual grasp, and was forced to find new barbers. Like a man rebounding from a long, bad relationship, I slept around. From barber to barber I went and, in short order, I found that most people could actually make my hair look acceptable. It was a long-coming revelation. And so, many years later (about six months ago), I finally returned to my boyhood home, equipped with new hair-cutting expertise and self-esteem. The old worries, though, kept creeping into my mind. The landscape of my hometown, as memory-filled as it was, conspired on every corner to reestablish my sixteen year old self, and with him, an unreasonable fear of haircuts. So my hair grew and grew, until I was finally overwhelmed by my own, transient appearance and committed myself to remedying the haircut issue.
I sat there, Yellow Pages in hand, steadfast in my resolution to break the retrogressive cycle. I would get a haircut, but damn it all if I would set foot in Paco’s Barber Shop! I acted cautiously – oh, so cautiously – calling each barber shop on the telephone list, trying to judge whether the voice on the other end belonged to an old fuddy-duddy (more likely to cut my hair however he saw fit) or a hip, young, fashion-institute graduate (more likely to make me look like someone from a FOX Channel reality show). One, two, three down the list, crossed off in order. Then came Tony’s Barber Shop. This one sounded good. An Italian guy probably cuts hair well, I figured. I called. He sounded normal, reasonable even! So it would be Tony’s where I finally would make my stand.
Although this may seem embellished, I hereby swear that all of the following is, much to my chagrin, totally true.
Twenty minutes later I was walking into Tony’s Barber Shop. It was a fairly standard barber shop and this pleased me. A guy who must have been Tony – the only other person in the store – greeted me and asked me how he could help me. Kind of a silly question to ask a guy with shoulder-length, ragged hair who just walked into a barber shop. I was tempted to answer sardonically, but refrained, and was shortly led to a chair. Tony, or whoever he was, threw the apron-thingy over me, secured the neck piece…and proceeded to sit down in a chair on the other side of the shop to read a newspaper. He intercepted my question, simply stating “He’ll be out in just a second.”
In this interminably complex jigsaw universe, there are many cruel puzzle pieces. Here enters one. As I turned my head to the left, a curtain covering a door-less entrance way parted, and out walked Paco. I don’t know exactly how to convey the convulsion of emotions that shot through me, but suffice to say that my psychological legs were swept out from under me. There he was, old Paco - his own self! His light, white hair was cut and combed as crisply as ever, though I could detect the past 10 years, in which I hadn’t seen him, in the lines on his face. His smile was, as always, undaunted, as he strolled up to my chair. I realized that he didn’t recognize me. The combination of my long hair and the ragged scruff of a half-beard, neither of which he had ever seen on me, combined with 10 years of absence, must have made me a stranger. I silently praised this windfall as I realized that, set in my chair and ready to go, against all odds, and despite my willful intention to avoid it, Paco was about to cut my hair.
“So how are we cutting this today?” Paco asked in his heavily Spanish-accented English. It took me a second to respond as I gathered the strength to push back old habits, and I pulled a folded, print-out of myself wearing my last decent haircut from my pocket. “Like this, if you could,” I responded. Knowing my adversary, I added “If anything, a bit longer rather than a bit shorter.” And so, as I briefly closed my eyes, Paco set to work. All was quiet in the near-empty shop for the first few minutes before Paco broke the silence. “I’ve never cut your hair when it was this long.” Something inside me stammered. “Are you still driving that red Jeep?” he asked. I was dumbstruck. So began our re-acquaintance. Over the next ten minutes of conversation I discovered that Paco had closed his own barber shop three years earlier, due to increasing rental rates, and he had found new employment at Tony’s shortly thereafter. He reminisced about how consistent a client I had been before I moved, and he lamented our long separation, a sentiment I silently refused to share. Old habits reemerging, I foolishly concentrated on our conversation, ignoring the large mirror we were reflected in as my hair grew steadily shorter. Too late did I look up to see my changed visage, bangs too short, sides too long, part in precisely the wrong spot. I tried – really, I tried – to avert disaster, but it was too late. I took the comb and showed Paco how I wanted to part my hair and he quietly, masterfully, repositioned it to the wrong spot. Something inside me broke and my mind languished, wondering if this shop, too, had a chest full of lollipops somewhere. Other patrons started to walk in and take seats in line and I began to fret about how silly my hair was looking as they gazed upon me. Then, suddenly, it was over. I stood up and Paco smiled as I brushed some stray hairs from my shirt. I paid my twenty dollars (Twenty dollars?! What was this, a salon?) and thanked Paco, just like the old days. “So good to see you again, my friend!” he said as we parted. I walked out, running my hand through the remnants of my hair, fully, self-consciously, sixteen years old again. And here I sit, tugging at my bangs, wondering how my forehead has once again become so large, preparing to look in the mirror, two or three weeks from now, and wonder if its time for another haircut.
There's something strange at work here. Some evil gives speed…and sets its will against us.
