I save my hate for Hitler, but getting my hair cut is a close second. Not the actual cutting process - that doesn't bother me at all, and I like to remember how my old high school chum Chris said he loved the feeling of getting his hair cut more than just about anything else - but I (almost) hate the required small talk. The chair chatter. The snip-n'-gossip. That bland, meaningless conversation fills me with this freakish performance anxiety, like I have to be a good customer, I have to be easy, I have to be a delight. Why is it that salon names are so often cheesy puns? It's because hair puns are irresistible: I have shear fear.
(There's also a little childhood trauma connection, if you're into that sort of thing. When I was little sometimes when my four brothers and I needed haircuts, Mom would bundle us up in the station wagon and take us to the barber shop. And the barber was an older dude who was apparently so delighted to have a little girl in his chair that he rubbed his tumescent, uh...hair-dryer(?) up against my little 8 year old arms while he was cutting my hair. And I was too little and shy and self-conscious that I didn't say a word, just shrank my body inward as much as I could. So there's that little nubbin of discomfort that will never budge vis a vis getting my hair did.)
So mostly I go to Great Chopper or Clip Trips or whatever and wait in line with several slightly moist children of varying volume levels and at least one super-intense militia-looking dude who asked for a particular stylist and is now shooting boulders from his eyes if anyone looks his way.
I get what I get and I don't throw a fit. I'm self-absorbed, but I'm not vain, and if my skull fur looks creepy for a bit, who cares? It'll grow.
This morning, after realizing that while I have a LOT of grey, there's still not enough of that thicker, lovelier-than-my-other-dryer-lint-colored-hair that if I grow it long the resulting ponytail will be thick enough to need a big girl scrunchie instead of the baby-size hair ties I've always had to use. It's a dream of mine. I had errands to run, checked the Clippity Bippity app and saw the one closest to me had a 0 minute wait, checked in, and headed on over.
It was early, but they'd been open an hour and there were no other customers, just three stylists sitting on their chairs waiting for heads to cut. The one closest to the door got to me first - he was an older man I'd never seen there before, and he asked if I wanted a particular stylist. I said "nope" and he led me over to his station. If he told me his name, I didn't hear it, but will heretofore refer to him as Mr. Haircut Guy.
He had to walk around a bit to find scissors, and then went on a journey to find a water bottle, and he was humming oddly the whole time, but all my scalping-qualms disappeared when I showed him the reference photo of the cut I wanted (which I've been using for, like, 15 years now?) and he said "Oh, sure" and started spraying and stacking my hair. I went to set my phone on the workstation so he could see the photo again and he said "Oh, you can put that away. I've been cutting hair for 50 years, there's nothing I haven't seen or done."
Dear dog in heaven, I thought, give me even a quarter of the confidence of an old white man.
He was wearing a blue blazer over black cargo pants. He had glasses on over his eyes and sunglasses up on top of his head and a black face-mask. I do not understand how the backs of his ears could accommodate all of that, but I also can't tell you what kind of shirt he was wearing, so perhaps I blanked those parts out.
But it was freaking heaven - I didn't need to say a single word. He carried that conversation like Molly Pitcher hydrating all those shot-up boys at the Battle of Monmouth. I made heartfelt sounds of encouragement a few times, but otherwise, he just held court while snipping away.
He's 71 years old. He grew up in KC, but has been all over the country and some overseas. He used to work on the Plaza (KC's upscale shopping corridor). He worked at a salon in Beaumont, Texas that had some weird punny title that I can't remember, but it was staffed by theater people, so when the customer walked in, stylists on three levels would turn and sing a greeting into their clippers - but, PSYCH!, those weren't clippers, they were MICROPHONES. So they'd sing and cut hair. Six stylists on three levels. I want to Google it to see if it's real but I'm resisting. I don't want the magic to die so soon.
Mr. Haircut Guy doesn't just do hair (but I'm not changing his pseudonym). He's also a visiting caregiver to five individuals. Or they might be a gang. In poor health, all of them. They all know one another. "They're a real criminal element," he confided. But two of them sign their social security checks over to him as payment for his care, so at least they're a gang with good problem-solving skills.
But he's also in the process of learning how to make dentures so he can move on to a sit-down job. 71 years old, he reminded me. He said the word 'retire' a couple times, but somehow even though I only saw him for 10 minutes, I don't picture him ever stopping. Ever.
I didn't ask if the denture-making-classes were accredited by someone or, like, an independent study situation.
The first of the five clients was an "old" woman he met in a convenience store, and because I think she might be real, I'm not going to use the name he called her, but will instead use "Magdalena". She's in her 50s. (I made a soft growl about the "old" = 50s thing, but it rolled off down my cape onto the floor along with crescents of my shorn locks.) Magdalena is an old hooker who is semi-retired as a gang boss, but apparently still has enough clout that Mr. Haircut Guy gets safe passage through their gangland, and so they call him Stylista Magdalena. And he does all their hair.
Magdalena speaks all seven dialects of Spanish (which reminds me of the time I was on a bus in Ann Arbor, MI and minor local celeb Shakey Jake was on the bus talking to some young woman, inviting her to come over to his place to eat, and he was listing all these things like potato salad and pudding and steak and green beans but the list got so long he just said "ALL FIVE FLAVORS OF FOOD" and I think about that more often than I probably should, but I digress.) All seven dialects of Spanish, and Mr. Haircut Guy was just certain she could make bank as a translator, but, you know, meth. I agreed that was a damn shame.
Magdalena, by the way, weighs 360 pounds and will throw down with any man. There was some intimation that one of these throw-downs took place at the convenience store, but I didn't get to ask if it was the same one where he'd first met Magdalena. Maybe that's where they all live. I don't know.
He asked if I'd ever heard of Vidal Sassoon. He asked if I remembered the brown Vidal Sassoon hair dryers, and said that VS had been the one to introduce those into the American stylist's arsenal. I bowed my head in thanks while Mr. Haircut Guy took the buzzy clippers to the freakish hairline at the back of my neck, inherited from my mother who always had hair long enough to cover it, but didn't last long enough to go grey, dammit.)
He transitioned from blowing my hair dry to blowing all the hair off my cape and hands, and neither of us lamented that it wasn't one of the Vidal Sassoon brown dryers of yore.
I gave him an outsized tip because, dear god, what a treasure. He asked if I wanted my receipt, and I gave myself the gift of saying no thank you, knowing that the receipt would have his name on it and I DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW IT, I was so cherishing the mystery. Because, people... this absolute wizard, while delighting me with his stories, gave me the best freaking hair cut of my entire life. And I didn't even notice until I got home.
I know he was a phantom. I know I will never see him again, and if I call the store right now they'll deny any man was working there this morning. Weird flex that this is my Christmas ghost, but we wear the chains we forge in life, right? Here's to Mr. Haircut Guy and his beautiful hairy chains.
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