And now, for no good reason at all, an article scheduled to appear in The Inner Swine Volume 15, Issue 3/4 (Winter 2009):

HITMEN WEARING MUZZLES

HESITATE YOU DIE

Haircuts and Me

Darlin’ don’t you go and cut your hair
Do you think it’s gonna make him change?
“I’m just a boy with a new haircut”
And that’s a pretty nice haircut
Charge in like a puzzle
Hitmen wearing muzzles
Hesitate you die
Look around, around
The second drummer drowned
His telephone is found[1]

–Possible lyrics, “Cut Your Hair”, Pavement

PIGS, let’s talk haircuts.

Why? Well, I could come up with some justification, I suppose. I could link haircuts with marriage, or I could come up with some theory about how haircuts reflect the world we live in. I could do that. Or I could say that I needed to fill a few pages in this zine and I just got a haircut and thought I could milk the subject for a while. Which are you more likely to believe? Don’t answer. I know what a bunch of bastards like you will say. You don’t deserve better. That’s why you get articles about my haircuts.

Still, it’s a fascinating subject. It’s one of those moments, like open heart surgery, when you’re completely in someone else’s hands, and frankly, I don’t like it. A stranger, or—worse—an acquaintance, touching your head? Weird, man. Under no other circumstance in my daily life do I invite strangers to touch me. I don’t even get examined by a doctor until I go unconscious and start bleeding from the ears, for god’s sake.

I won’t take another trip down Hell’s Memory Lane and discuss my own haircuts specifically, though. Let’s face it, I have had exactly three hairstyles in my life:

1. The unfortunate bowl-like thing I sported in high school (inexplicable by modern science—you couldn’t recreate that bowl if you tried)
2. The rockin’ mullet I cultivated in my freshman year of college for reasons best left buried under the years
3. The current bedhead-slash-alcoholic mash I get from the local Supercuts.

This is not exactly riveting material, I don’t think, unless you’re writing your PHD thesis on how a supernaturally hot man can elevate even the most horrible of haircuts to socially acceptable levels.

No, I think instead I want to explore that curious social contract between the haircutter and the haircuttee. I’ve let fat old Italian men, gum-smacking college-age chicks, thickly-accented and thickly-waisted middle aged women, and more than a few gender neutral men attack my head with sharp blades and (shiver) product. Even though it has absolutely nothing to do with my stated theme for this issue, let’s climb inside that dark hairy tunnel and try to figure out why I’m required to get my hair cut in the first place, and what are the rules and social norms that are supposed to protect you once you strap yourself into an elevated chair, facing a mirror.

AND JESUS SAID, DUDE, GET A HAIRCUT, HIPPIE

The question of Why Haircuts has haunted me my entire life. I’ve developed a jaundiced eye towards all things grooming, to be honest; so much of what we put ourselves through seems so pointless. I grant that basic hygiene transcends societal norms; I’m not now nor will I ever advocate skipping a daily shower, or not brushing your teeth. I might argue that pants are unnecessary tools of oppression, but let’s not get sidetracked: The question is, why do I have to get my hair cut, and how often is the least acceptable number of times a year I have to do it?

Now, you might argue, as my wife The Duchess does (assuming you consider slapping me in the face until I do what she wants to be “arguing”), that spending a total of three hours a year keeping the hair from growing through your desk and trapping you in your office is not a terrible burden, and you may be right. But there’s a lot of pressure on haircuts. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for women; for me I can feel the Judgment being handed down on me when I walk around with a particularly bad haircut.

See, I despise getting my hair cut, and so I try to keep the experience as short and painless as possible. This means I take the haircuts I’m given. I don’t argue, even if I see my barber going down a frightening road—fades, perhaps, or Oingo Boingo 1980s hair. I just let them do it so I can get off the elevated chair and get on with my life. As a result, I’ve had some very unfortunate cuts, and believe me: People treat you differently when you have a bad haircut. It’s like a Sanity Meter on your head: The less sane you are, the worse your haircut is.

Which, now that I think about it, might have a grain of truth to it.

When I was a wee lad, of course, Mom took care of scheduling, transportation, and other details when it came to haircuts. She drove us to the barber, sternly admonished us to sit still, and then we were rewarded for good behavior. Back then I didn’t think anything about my hair. If Mom wanted to waste good money cutting mine, it was fine by me. Today, two irresistible forces inspire me to get a haircut: Society, and my wife.

My wife, of course, is the more dangerous of the two. Society’s disdain I am prepared to endure. My wife’s left hook, not so much.

BARBERS I HAVE KNOWN

As with dentists, who spend their days with their hands in other people’s mouths, you have to wonder who wakes up one day and decides they are going to slop through greasy locks of hair every day for the rest of their lives. I know in the movies there are people who have a bizarre love of hair and dream of styling it, but in my life I have never met anyone like that. It’s a mystery.

When I was a kid, there was Italo, a cheerful Italian man who wore smart suits and who I easily imagined goose-stepping next to Mussolini in the 1920s. Italo prosecuted his business with a level of enthusiasm you wouldn’t expect for a barber, but this may have had nothing to do with hair at all; he loved talking politics with anyone who could stand him, and I think his little shop was more of a club where he happened to cut hair instead of a business, to him.

When I went to college I let my hair grow out in a truly unfortunate way, and upon my return from my freshman year I was too ashamed to face Italo, so I went to his rival down the street, Nunzio. Nunzio was at first delighted to shave off my hippie locks, but when I asked for a mere trim he grew angry and decided to teach me a lesson via his scissors. That remains the most unfortunate haircut I’ve ever received, but I hold no animosity towards old Nunzio.

When I was still trekking into Manhattan every day to go to an office, I tried a taciturn Spanish barber who was just a few houses down from me in Hoboken. It was strange; he only worked by appointment but the place was always empty. He gave a good haircut, and even finished off with hot lather and a straight razor around the edges. They were possibly the best haircuts I’ve ever received, but the difficulty in making appointments and the eerie, stony silence in which he worked freaked me out, so I sought other arrangements. I found a tiny barbershop a few blocks from my office, owned by a jolly, fat Serbian fellow named Boris. Boris and his largely silent protégé were good barbers, they worked fast, and they were cheap ($9 in 2007). I loved Boris.

Sadly, when I started working from home it became too difficult to take the PATH train into Manhattan just to get my hair cut, so I started looking for someone new. I used to have a pretty firm rule of going to actual barbers—you know, men in white coats with spiral signs outside and ancient 1970s glamour shots of male porn stars forever fading in their windows, guys who had never been asked to do anything but a square-back, sides over the ears, part on the left kind of cut—but once I was in Hoboken full time I started eying the local Supercuts simply for its sheer convenience. I was suspicious of any place that catered to ladies or Disco-Stu types, but on the other hand I figured the worst that might happen is a perm or something, so I took a chance.

It’s been a mixed bag. There’s a lot of turnover and you get the feeling the folks cutting hair in Supercuts are not exactly old-world professionals like Boris or Italo—the fact that I specify the length of my hair via a number system (as in, “I’m a 3”) kind of hints that these folks watched a video that morning in lieu of training—so I haven’t had the same person twice yet. But the haircuts, according to my own minimal standards and the slightly more demanding ones of The Duchess, haven’t been too bad. I don’t know if the Supercuts folks dream of graduating to their own salons or if they’re just earning lunch money while going to law school at night, but their quick efficiency and avoidance of the more intimate scissors in favor of the industrial and impersonal electric razors makes me like them, strangely enough. You’re in, you’re out, and the actual touching of your head is minimal. Huzzah!

PRODUCT, SHAVING, PERSONAL QUESTIONS, DISAPPROVAL, AND SHAME

For the most part, the folks who have fondled my hair have been professionals, eager to please their customer and get a new ass into the chair. Every now and then, however, I’ve run into a haircutters who have some strange ideas about personal space and the Rules of Polite Society.

One of my general pet peeves about getting your hair cut is the incessant push for product, which is the bizarre term used for goop you put in your hair. Am I the only jackass in the world who doesn’t put shit in his hair? Research suggests I might be. Every time I get my hair cut, someone is absolutely shocked that I don’t want any fucking product in my hair and, no, I don’t want a tub of product to take home and put in my hair in the privacy of my own home, in secret shame. Why is this so hard to understand? I’ll stipulate that I look like a squirrel made a nest on my head most days, but the next time someone tries to get me to use product, I’m going to burn their business down.

Only once, though has someone just gone ahead and larded me up with loathsome product without asking, as if hair stiff as a piece of plywood and bent in all sorts of unnaturally natural-looking ways is what everyone wants, without question. It was a shocking moment. One second I’m sitting there in a light doze, staring at myself and wondering when it was that my face got so fat, and the next someone has put their wet hands on my head and is massaging me.

For a second, I thought, hmmmn, not bad, I should have my head massaged more often. Then, sudden horror when I realized I was going to have to take about four showers to get this shit out of my hair. I probably should have returned later to burn the place down, but I was afraid my own hair would catch fire and send me screaming into the night with a bright blue flame lighting the way.
Finally, personal space is a difficult issue with barbers, since they’re required by their profession to hover over you with their hands on your head. Still, I think there are rules, one of which ought to be do not shave your customer without asking, and I know at least one employee at Supercuts who does not understand this. I swear, I was just getting a standard sort of hair cut. I hadn’t shaved that day, true, but I didn’t ask for or pay for a shave. She was working on my sideburns, and suddenly she just took the razor and started shaving me.

ME: Uh. . .what are you doing?
HER: Just a little. It’s not perfect.
ME: Sweet lord, woman, I am meant to be scruffy.
HER: You want product?

I may never comprehend this woman’s motivations, but I’m fairly certain she crossed a line. I can understand to a point a certain frustration when a man who looks like he’s been auditioning to be the Unabomber walks in and wants a haircut with no shave—it must make the edging process difficult. But this is no excuse for trying to shave someone when they’re not paying attention, right? Right?

So there you go: Haircuts. They said I couldn’t write 2000+ words on the subject of: Haircuts, but they were wrong, and I win. Sort of. Since I actually did write 2000+ words on the subject of: Haircuts, I can’t really claim to have won, per se, can I? Shut up.

[1] Do we have time to investigate the mystery of Pavement lyrics? We do not. You whippersnappers may not be aware of Pavement: They are inscrutable. No matter what you think of their twangy, off-scale songs with their jazzy chords and unexpected sharps, their lyrics remain one of the great mysteries of man. Someday Superior Lizards will invade the Earth and sift the ashes of our civilization for clues, and they will find Pavement lyrics, and despair.