Tuesday, August 25, 2009
He Comes By It Naturally
Back when I was getting haircuts, I took them fairly seriously. A couple really bad experiences, a couple really good ones… I could see how much was riding on both the haircut, and on the haircutting - the actual experience, my subjective enjoyment of the process. When I left the chop shop, did I truly both look good and feel better? Mene sano in coiffure sano?
It was thus with gratitude and relief that I did actually find excellent haircut places here in my neighborhood, and I proudly patronized them back in the day. It’s been hard enough as I’ve relocated over the years to find one place that made a decent job of it; to have found two just a few blocks from my home verged on excessive good luck. Grand Opening Haircuts and International Dick’s Haircuts both served up a decent trim and a relaxing experience. These guys even did rubdowns, for god’s sake. Not some new age chakra-tickling nodal stimulation, either, but an honest-to-god rubdown from a single strong hand to the back of which a plug-in oscillator had been firmly strapped, tough fingers kneading the vibe deep into tired shoulder muscles and numb, newly-nude necks. It’s a very refreshing end to a workmanlike, attentive, well-executed dry haircut. It’s how dudes like to do things, every other month or so. A ten-spot got me out the door, too. One of these places would have been enough for me, and I had two. It was enough to make me proud, a little. And that was enough hubris to bring me the hairy eyeball, though it took till now to happen.
Used to be, I’d chat with Paul at Grand Opening, or with International Dick, during my haircuts, and we’d nod to each other in the street. We had a “local neighbors” sort of friendship. International Dick felt like an ally, though perhaps of an unusually inconsequential sort. He could give you a good haircut. That’s significant, I knew full well, but it’s been five years now since I’ve needed a haircut at all. I manage my own scalp, tyvm, and on the one occasion that I brought it, stubble-ridden, to the barber for a shave, he didn’t do such an all-fired great job of it, so I’ve stayed home for the self-ministration regimen.
Some mornings now, though, I’ll find myself out walking past International Dick, of International Dick’s. It’s right here in the ‘hood, after all. It would be weird if I didn’t run into him every so often. And sometimes when I see him he doesn’t see me - he’s busy with a customer, or talking to someone. And it does seem that he’s doing a decent business. But it’s for absolute sure that he’s not getting anything off of me; it’s plain as the nose on my face that I’ve pulled my trade from the marketplace. And on those occasions I happen past him when he’s just out smoking and watching the world, waiting quietly for someone to summon him back to his hydraulic chairs, and our eyes meet through that smoke, and I smile and nod to him, he just looks at me. No nod. No smile. Just dark eyes tracking my progress, quiet, expressionless, watchful. Nada. It chills my blood, really, the barber’s hairy eyeball, his mute reproach.
It’s not like he’s going to make me change my mind, stop shaving and return to the fold of his patrons. He’s going to glare at me and I’m going to have to grow a spine and ignore him. But if anybody would be predisposed to crankinng out a seriously hairy eyeball, wouldn’t you figure it would be a barber?
cellphone photo - sidewalk, 18th Avenue at Geary