I’ll take one of each, thanks.
When I was a kid, I was an insufferable bootlicker. My brother, older and smarter, was socially inept and often difficult in public, and thus despite my slightly dimmer mental prospects I was often the Golden Boy in the sense of being relatively well-behaved in public. For example, at the barbershop, where my brother fidgeted and complained and generally made it a torturous experience for all involved. Knowing that he’d fallen short of the mark, I made an extra effort to be the perfect little kid in that barber chair with the kid booster. I sat rock still, responding like a puppet to the whispery touch of the barber as he positioned my head.
The fact that we have to occasionally trim back our horrifying, disgusting bodies has always bothered me in the same way the fact that I have to spend 1/3rd of every day unconscious bothers me. It’s curiously intimate, to the point where I’ve spent a lot of energy in my adult life seeking out a person who will cheerfully cut my hair without speaking a word to me. Being a captive audience while some jackass with a pair of scissors insists on small talk is a terrible thing, and I’ve burned through a ton of barbers in my search for the Glorious Silent Barber.
Between sitting on that booster seat and my Gloriously Silent Barber, I’ve had plenty of haircuts. I suffered through haircuts as a teenager where my barber not-so-subtly rubbed his crotch against me as he strained to reach the top of my head. I’ve endured a savage, brutal act of hair vandalism when I took my longhaired college mullet to an old Italian barber and asked for a “trim”; his disdain and dislike for me resulted in a haircut that took five seconds and left me looking like I’d recently jammed my head into some sort of terrifying machinery. I’ve spent plenty of awkward hours in SuperCuts resisting their incessant effort to upsell me hair product and shampoos, conversations that usually started with a gaslighting campaign regarding the awful state of my hair in terms of health and appearance, leading to a heartfelt endorsement of some bottle or other guaranteed to make me look like a normal human being again.
I’ve spent my time in the hair trenches. Which is why haircuts fascinate me; I tend to announce them on social media, and I write about the experience more than is normal, which is to say at all.
Socially Acceptable Weirdness
Getting a haircut is a strange experience for a guy who, you know, isn’t exactly a fan of being touched by strangers, much less touched on the head. It’s weirdly intimate. You might not mind, or even enjoy the experience, jetting off to head-touching orgies in Ibiza and the like, but to each their own, and my own does not include a weird old man putting his sweaty hands in my hair.
The other aspect of a haircut is the forced socialization. In every aspect of my life I aspire to having zero conversations with any of you people. Ironically, the only people I do want to have conversations with are the people who also don’t want conversations; the moment that changes I lose my will to speak with you. So making small talk with someone while their sweaty hands are in my hair is possibly the worst experience known to man. If anyone is ever going to spontaneously develop the ability to teleport themselves, it’s gonna be me, through sheer force of will, while some barber is telling me about his weekend.
Being Alone with Yourself
So what does all this have to do with writing? Nothing and everything.
There’s precious little time in the modern world to just sit and be alone with yourself, to have a conversation with yourself. To meditate in some sense. Yes, you can make that time, but there’s something special and creative, in my experience, with the sudden and surprising moments when you’re prevented from distracting yourself. Getting a haircut is, for me, one of those moments, because I am sloppy and pay little attention to my grooming. So my haircuts are always spur-of-the-moment things.
And then I’m sitting there, and if the damned barber will shut up I have a half hour of just staring into the void while I am groomed like a dumb animal, and I do some good thinkin’ under those circumstances. And some occasional napping. Hell, I fall asleep when I’m at the dentist. The barber has no chance.
Perhaps you need to find a new establishment. For a long time I lived near a barbershop run by three fairly attractive women who wore blue jeans and looked like an all-girl country and western group. There was also a large labrador retriever named “Fred” sleeping in the corner. So, no splendid isolation, but the scenery was better. And I think most of those haircuts-R-us places are more on the distaff side. So if someone is going to mess with your head, at least it’s not some sweaty old man. And in my limited experience, female barbers are less interested in making small talk with their male clientele, than gossiping with each other and I find that much easier to tune out. Just making a suggestion.
Appreciated. I do like the place I’ve found, though, b/c the barber (female) is 100% silent like she’s actually a ghost who cuts hair instead of haunting people.
The barber I go to is on the outskirts of Chinatown here in Oakland, and is himself of Korean origin. Has very limited English, and uses almost none of it, once he determines what I’m looking for. And since my needs are pretty minimalist (#3 clippers, and go nuts!), it works well.