Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Clip Joint
I think the guys are mexican but it feels like sicily in there. A hole-in-the-wall - or maybe even that’s too grandiose a phrase. Five unmatched chairs, one wall of mirrors, the rest crudely panelled and then wallpapered with promotional materials and magazine and newspaper cutouts. The peppermint stripe pole didn’t rotate; boxes that once held groceries and hair products 10 or 15 years ago had been filled with a stunning assortment of random papers, tools and containers, empty and full, of every description.... The guys ran from 35 or so up to one who seemed to be in his late 70s. They all had a profound similarity to each other in the way they stood, sat, shrugged, talked, listened… like a wildly disparate group of brothers. Their short sleeve shirts (not matching) were all unbuttoned to midchest, revealing verdant jungles of pectoral hair. They all looked similar physically, though not actually alike - broad chests, pot bellies, wiry hair with a tendency toward losing it, muscular arms, heavy chins. Okay, one guy looked philipino and he had a different physique, but his style was the same.
I walked in and the senior partner hoisted his heft out of his chair. “Now! Here! Come! Sit! Hello!,” he commanded me; I obeyed and sank into the stiff slick green leatherette. “How you like today boss,” was ritually uttered and responded to as he draped me with a plastic tarp and collared me with a strip of tissue. He was about to start clipping when she walked in.
She stood out, and not just by virtue of being the only woman - the only vaguely feminine thing - in the crowded clutter of the room. She was a big woman, tall and broad, her black hair straightened into a majestic bouffant, her 49’ers warm-up ensemble set off with thick and complicated gold-colored jewelrey. She wore a lot of strongly-scented makeup and smiled broadly, shifting her weight frequently from side to side, foot to foot.
He looked at her from under his prolific brows. “Ay, ya come back here, eh?” He made as if to start on my head, waving his arms in vaguely preparatory exercises, as if freeing his elbows from cobwebs. She started talking, and spoke at length. Where he had been hard to understand through his gruff, fraternal grumble, she was nearly unintelligible. She had very big teeth, which seemed to interfere with her words and by extension with her thinking process, such as it was. She mumbled and swallowed her words and laughed inappropritely when she spoke.
He looked askance at her over my shoulder; I could see it in the mirror in front of me. His arms were crossed, as he hove a sigh his gleaming saint’s medallion on its thick braided chain rose and fell on his chest. She was sorry. She was late. She represented an indeterminate number of other people, possibly ladies. She wanted till Tuesday but she did have some today. “How much?,” my barber barked at her, forearms bulging with sinew and slightly glistening in the witchhazeled haze of the room. She giggled and stammered, could not say how much. “You go on and figure out what you got for me and then we can talk. As of now, you paid nothing. Due by sunday, gametime. Come back when you know what the hell is going on. You on for sunday? Raiders?”
She smiled and nodded, her teeth eclipsing her face, and she left the small room. My barber made a sour face as her cloying perfume slowly dissapated in the stale male air. Another barber, a guy in his 50’s, sturdy, jovial, cool in a Tom Jones style, started belittling my barber as impotent, cuckholded, superannuated. My barber shot a few back about genital inadequacies and mental deficits. I got a decent haircut and that woman didn’t come back. Not while I was there, anyway. She really felt like a visitor from another planet.
MORAL: Heavy gold jewlery with a warm-up suit before 2 pm? I don’t think so.
