I have very few requirements for a barber. I like him or her to go about the business in a quick, quiet manner, leaving anything containing blood unbreached. I like to pay no more than nineteen-dollars, which in my opinion is fair compensation for fifteen minutes spent attending to head, brow and beard. Did I mention that nineteen-dollars includes the tip? When I hand over a twenty, I like getting something back.
I like to conduct this barbering business no more often than once a month. When I get home, I like to see approval in the wife’s eyes and to hear, “It looks nice, Dear.” It’s not asking a lot, these requirements. But considering the problems I’ve had, you’d think I was asking lead to change itself into gold.
A near riot was my first clue to what to expect, when I started searching for a new barber after moving to a new city. Being short of time and urgently needing attention after a two-month hiatus, I ignored my better sense and went to one of the national salons that feature posters of hip young men and women who – and I know this for a fact – wouldn’t be caught dead in any of the places that I frequent. The receptionist and I got into a tiff when she insisted that her computer needed all kinds of information about me, and I kept insisting that I just wanted a haircut. When I started to walk out, some women all but pushed me into a nearly backless chair that nearly toppled me into a sink full of pink curlers and some other stuff that I didn’t recognize and that I don’t want to. This time, I did walk out, followed by “my barber,” who was probably eighteen and crying hysterically that I was going to get her fired. Remembering it now, everyone looked exactly like everyone in every one of those posters.
Tattoo and Mumbles were my next attempt. I’d researched the neighborhood and had discovered what I thought was my kind of place: Tidy, two-chair shop. Man-sized wooden benches. Plenty of car magazines to read while waiting. And no computer. The haircut was one of the best of my life, probably because the guy who gave it to me – all six-foot-four and three-hundred tattooed-from-head-to-toe pounds of him – had learned to get it right the first time while in prison. But upon my second visit, he informed me in no uncertain terms that I would be getting my haircut from his buddy, a still-pasty ex-con if ever there was one, whose “Hi” sounded like rocks in a hubcap. The man spent one hour above my head, never shut up, and to this day I don’t have a clue to what he said. And his haircut stunk.
I Skin You To The Bone was next. He looked like somebody’s eighty-year-old grandfather. Come to think of it, maybe he was eighty and hard of hearing. Because I asked for it “short,” and he nodded “Just leave it to me,” and ten minutes later I walked out looking like a Nazi storm trooper. Which is how I discovered that I’m really, really, really scary looking without hair. Two cats had a head-on trying to get out of my way. A little old lady tried to jump off the sidewalk into traffic. A seeing eye dog bit its master to get his glasses. And it went on and on.
Not every barbering experience was disastrous. I found a fellow who was about my age, could hear, had human skin tones, and was in every other way ordinary as the day is long. He was an excellent barber, too, and we got along great. In fact, there was absolutely nothing wrong with him. But one Saturday he told me that this would be my last visit. His shop was in a very wealthy area that is home to many rich corporations, and because so many of his customers were executives in those companies, he’d been getting free business advice for years. He was retiring…a millionaire!
I have a really, really good barber these days. She’s a gal, younger than me but not too much so. She’s courteous, quick and quiet. Her shop is a two-chair affair. There are several long benches for waiting, and numerous magazines of every sort to keep a man occupied while doing so. I don’t think she even owns a computer. I came home the other day after visiting her and the wife gave me not only the “It looks nice, Dear,” but a little smooch to boot. In short, she’s the perfect barber. So I know it’s only a matter of time before she redecorates her shop, covers herself in tattoos, loses her hearing and strikes it rich at the Indian casino.