Long, luxuriant, disastrous, my hair hasn’t met scissors in five fluffy months. My last haircut was December 20, and I now look like an MLB pitcher, curls Rapunzeling out of a ball cap, or maybe a roadie for Metallica. Either way, the locks are a pox and I need, at minimum, a healthy trim, one that will take no fewer than two and a half hours. Or four. Or six. I could be in the chair through June.
That’s up to my barber, Miles, who works woolly wonders at Classic Man Cut & Shave, a hiply vintage-style barbershop paneled in wood, adorned with giant mirrors and lined with chubby leather hydraulic thrones. All that’s missing are crinkled copies of Sports Illustrated and Playboy and lollipops for the little ones invariably getting buzz cuts.
I don’t get a lollipop, because I eschew buzz cuts. Oddly, razor ‘dos are five dollars cheaper than scissor cuts here, which I surmise is because razor jobs are all sculpt and shave, using a swath-plowing electric doohickey, while scissor cuts require skill, finesse, a little effort, snip and snazz. In other words, my cut is more of an ordeal than yours.
Miles has my back. And hopefully my front and sides. I see him in a week, and, oh, will he be aghast. At the sight of me, I picture his meticulously groomed face registering fear and dread and an irrepressible urge to acquire a John Deere and a blowtorch.
It will not be pretty, this inexcusably belated trip to the barber. I can see the polished wood floors as he cuts, slowly carpeted in fleece and follicle, all because of my Covid fears, bald laziness and rash experimentation. I should really help him sweep up.
But no. Miles isn’t sweeping. He’s clipping away at my hirsute noggin, silently wondering what in the hell he can make of the mutinous mop. I hope he doesn’t get all clever on me. Haircuts jangle me enough; I don’t need any tonsorial flourishes. Put the razor down.
Miles once dubbed his venue a “cathedral of cuts” — for real — and it’s considering this sentiment that I will solemnly sit, firm and nervous, a watchful eye on the snipped hair tumbling down my shoulders, and do what one does in a cathedral: pray.
GNASHING. 