At a certain point in it’s growth, my hair becomes not just unruly, but downright malicious. While driving around with the wife yesterday, working on a never-ending list of errands, it started to creep into my ear. I think some tendrils actually snaked their way past the tiny labyrinthine parts of my inner ear (the hammer, the anvil, the stirrup, the princess phone, the rubber-chicken with a pulley in the middle, etc.) and reached my brain, because I started having all sorts of pro-hair thoughts.
I began wondering if perhaps I should pick up some expensive conditioner while I’m out. I mean, the beauty store is only a few miles away and I could pick up some hot oil treatment while I’m there…
“Chris, you’ve missed the offramp,” my wife pointed out as we sped along. “Are you alright?”
“Scissors… baaaaaad…” I moaned. She reached across the car and brushed the hair back from my ear. “I’m sorry, what were you saying?”
In an emergency like this, I used to know exactly whom to turn to. I used to have my own hairstylist, a gifted individual who wanted only what was best for me, coiffure-wise. His name was Kevin and he had long strawberry-blonde hair. He was effeminate and remarkably helpful and I tipped him like he was a blackjack dealer and we were in Las Vegas. One day he vanished without a trace, though, and I’ve been leaving it all up to chance since.
I whipped the car off the next offramp and found the closest hair-cutting establishment (Great Clips) and ran inside.”Help me. My hair has reached a mind-controlling length. I fear for myself and those around me, especially those who use cheap shampoo…”
“I’m sorry?” said the nice goatee’d chap behind the front desk.
“I mean, one haircut please.”
“There’ll be a ten minute wait.”
Sigh. “Alright. Put me on your list, then. I guess.” This would never happen with Kevin because I would have called ahead to see when he was working and then made an appointment.
As the wife and I took a seat in the waiting area with a few other individuals who looked to be in even more dire need of at least a good clipping, if not a great one, than myself, we browsed the magazines on the low, glass table in front of us. Well, she did anyway.
I was trying to figure out who would be cutting my hair, based on who seemed to be further along with with their current haircut and how many people were waiting. Would the small elderly Asian woman finish trimming up that teenager’s mop-top before the stout blonde woman with the strong jaw finished shaving that old woman’s neck? What about that young man with the shaved head (always a sort of worrisome trait in a person who cuts hair for a living, like an anorexic chef or a ghost-doctor) who’s sweeping up in back? No, I think he’s done for the day.
I had just come to a pretty decent conclusion when an unknown variable asserted itself into the equation: a man poked his head in and asked how much longer until he got called up.
“You’re up next, Steve,” goatee-guy replied.
Well, effing hell. It could be anyone now, I thought.
The wife, not seeing any suitable magazine on the table in front of her, walked over to a wooden magazine rack hanging from the far wall. As she walked over to peruse the periodicals, I called out for her to bring me back something.
“Like what?”
“That golf magazine, I don’t care.” I said. I just wanted something to look at to distract me.
“Are you serious? You don’t even play golf.” I realized at this moment that we’d been having this conversation across the whole lobby. The two people who had been quietly reading their magazines looked at me. The hairstylists had stopped cutting hair and were waiting for my reply. My wife, still trying to pick out a magazine, hadn’t realized that everyone was now hanging on our every word.
“I’m… thinking of taking it up.” I said quietly to the room. My wife returned with both issues of Golf Magazine.
A few minutes later I was called up. The haircut was uneventful, save for the fact that the small Asian woman who cut my hair was completely silent. Eerily silent, actually. She had asked me initially how I wanted it cut and I responded by pointing to a poster on the wall of a smiling middle-aged man with a clean, short haircut and saying “Like that one”. She must have taken my few words as a sign that I didn’t like talking during my haircut, so she was quiet for the fifteen minutes it took to cut my hair. Too quiet, even. She was… ninja-like. It was peaceful. So peaceful that I wrote a haiku in my head.
Stylist is gone.
Stillness broken only by
A small snip-snip sound.
After it was cut, she wordlessly handed me a mirror to check out the back. I nodded my approval and grunted in a positive manner. I think she may have bowed in return, I’m not sure. If she did, it was almost imperceptible. I bowed slightly in return, not wanting to offend.
When I dropped by my parents’ house, my brothers were there. My oldest brother commented on my haircut in a brotherly way, meaning that he told me how crappy and long it looked before. Then he told me about this barber that used to cut his hair, over on the other side of town.
“He got it just right, you know?” my brother said, his voice taking on a sort of wistful dreaminess. “It’s like he knew how to cut my hair so I would look the best on me. He was kind of, you know, effeminate, but I never got a better haircut than from him. Nice guy. Then, one day, I went to get my haircut, but he was gone…”
No effing way.
“Was it the Hot Cuts over near Coddingtown?” I asked.
“Yeah, it was. Why?”
“And the guy had sort of reddish-blonde hair, right?”
“Yeah!”
“That was Kevin! We went to the same barber for years!” What are the odds? My brother and I have been going to the same barber for years and never knew it. I mean, a lot of people probably went to him, the man was truly gifted. He was the Van Gogh of hair.
“Yeah, I heard later through a friend that he got fired for coming to work high on meth and accidentally clipping off part of some guy’s ear.”
Whoa. Well, not surprising, really. What else might you expect from the Van Gogh of hair then an ear getting lopped off, eh? Dodged a bullet there, but it was worth it.
In my mind, I imagine Kevin roaming from town to town, up and down the coast of California, chased by his own demons, a sort of hairstyling cowboy. Wherever split-ends rule the land, wherever curls run untamed, and wherever hair has fallen flat, lifeless, or uninspired, he’ll be there.
Just don’t ask him to take a pee-test.
Bonus Links: Hair That Looks Like Animals, Stolen Hairstyle, Why Is This Guy Popular?, The Fro
