SALON SELECTIVE
Thoughts off the top of my head

Everyone likes haircuts -- you get someone massaging your scalp, and sometimes you don't even notice the sharp metal or moving blades that dance lightly along your head and ear and soft, fleshy, artery-ridden neck. I, too, have always enjoyed the feeling of getting a haircut, though finding the time to motivate to go get the haircut has always been problematic. I grew my hair out past my shoulders for a few years in order to avoid having to go to an appointment and come up with answers as to how I wanted my hair cut. After all, I'm no barber, so how do I know how it should go? Eventually, I got it cut short again, as I was tired of people asking me for cigarettes simply because my hair was long.

The long to short cut was memorable, as a small group of friends tagged along, and the upscale barber, also apparently known as a "sylist" or maybe it's "stylist," was as greasy and scented as the junk he put in my hair. Since then, I have reverted to my aversion of barbershops. I'll have friends, associates, prison-release workers, or sharp-toothed animals snip away at my locks long before I will kowtow to the Fellowship of Barbers and Hairdressers Union. The only haircut I actually felt great about was one I received as a child when in Florida (and it is really the only positive thing I have to say about Florida). And much of that good feeling may have been that it was the first professional haircut that I didn't get at the neighborhood barber in Cincinnati, who smoked so much it killed his fish every week. I haven't been there in years, though he's still there.

My latest two haircuts, though, coming nearly exactly four months apart, occurred at a barbershop in New York. The shop I patronized is known for its cruel efficiency in shortening of hair. There is even a painted yellow prison line that leads you to the shears. Still, a cheap haircut is a cheap haircut, and not having to make an appointment is a big advantage for me. I can trick myself into getting the haircut by telling myself that I am actually heading to that neighborhood to purchase a book, or peruse the corner liquor store, or maybe get a tattoo on my face. Quickly I duck into the hair place, and I am seated immediately by the terse greeter.

My penultimate haircut took place in the upper region of the establishment. The barber's name shall be Garth, which is not all that far from what his real name is but still a departure from how you'd expect him to behave if his name really were Garth. It was shortly before New Year's, and it was bitingly cold. I had just landed a new job and had not yet even begun to stockpile my pen collection (which bears not at all on this story), and I was eager to return to the no-frills clipper cut I had been wearing since August. Garth disagreed, pointing out that it was cold out. I allowed that it was indeed, but still I wanted a clipper cut with no part, about an inch long. We haggled for about ten minutes, which is a record for me. As I mentioned previously, I never know what to say to a barber about a cut. "Yes, rounded and blocked and tapered in the back would be fine." Still, I felt that my request was simple enough to honor. As this was not how Garth felt, we struck a compromise: he would cut the hair to 2-3 inches long, and we could continue to shorten it if I felt I really wanted to proceed. Agreed. Garth equipped his clipper with the plastic sizing device, and said:

GARTH: Are you sure now? Because I'm going to start at the top, and there's no going back.

BRADY: Yes, that's fine. I'm ready.

GARTH: You're sure? It's cold out, and winter lasts a long time.

BRADY: Yes.

Garth nods, starts the razor, and runs it from the middle of my hairline straight on back. He mows a second swath right next to it. I am looking in the mirror. I see my own face drop. My hair, you see, is suddenly about as long as the hair of a coconut.

BRADY: Hold it. What length are you cutting?

Garth blinks looks at me as though we have never met and never spoken. As though he is surprised to find me in his chair. As though I were some sort of dog that suddenly managed to speak a few words to the delight and amusement of an audience that doesn't like dogs to begin with. It is possible that I managed to miss Garth tagging out and a doppelganger taking his stead, but I am pretty certain the man regarding me as some sort of charming curiosity is the man who had, not forty seconds earlier, talked me into a longer haircut. He regards the clipper in his hand closely, though disinterestedly.

GARTH: Almost an inch.

BRADY: But we agreed on three inches!

GARTH: Nothing I can do about it now.

Though years of living with my sainted and devoted mother has taught me much about non sequitor arguing and the diligent search for pertinent threads of logic, I fall to silence in the realization that Garth must be missing the Memory Part of his Brain. I could picture him as a foundering man-ling, capable of nothing until some state-funded program put a razor in his hand, forcing him to shave coconuts year in, year out, until pure muscle memory made him capable of haircuttery employment. Maybe that yellow line is not for the patron but to guide him safely in and out of the shop. He finished the haircut, I gave him a dollar tip, and I left.

It was quite a new look for me. Friends I see only occasionally would remark upon my hair length each time, and say, "Hey, it's growing in nicely." Not that it was a terrible haircut, but it was a bit startling. Four months later, my hair was getting shaggy. Someone remarked that when I let the sides flow over my ears, I looked like Prince Valiant. I don't quite consider that to be a compliment. Plus, warm weather was close at hand. Plus, I like no-frills. Plus, I had just seen Donald Trump in the wind, and these magnificent flaps of orangey hair would swing out from the rear of his cranium, sending uncomfortable shivers through me. Time to get it cut again.

I went to the same barbershop. Again, I was directed to Garth. Could it be that people who do not make appointments are carted off to the Coconut Cutter in order to keep his shaving arm in workable condition? He was, after all, wearing the same flour sack with a knotty rope tied about his waist. This time, though, I was prepared.

BRADY: I'd like a clipper cut with no part, about two or three inches long.

GARTH: Summer is short, you know, and Spring is very cold here.

BRADY: I'd like it short, though. However you think is best.

This pleasantry seems to send an electric impulse through some dusty synapse in the dim recesses of Garth's brain. I can almost see him wince happily in a spurt of memory about sitting in a cell by the beach, a pile of unwashed coconuts before him.

GARTH: Leave it to me.

I do, and I get a fairly decent haircut pretty much in line with what I wanted to begin with. Enough to give him a three dollar tip.

So, I feel I've learned something. It's not enough to defer to someone who thinks they know what they're doing; you should do so vocally. Then, feeling magnanimous, they will give you what you want.

I was buying lunch in Queens the other day, and the woman behind the counter recommended their sandwich special. I agreed to it. "Do you want mushrooms?" she asked. Three thoughts ran through my head ("No," "Yes," and "I don't like Queens so much"), and I said, "However you think is best." Just for that, she smiled and gave me extra mushrooms. I ate every one of them, except for the one that fell on the ground and was stepped on by a passing chiropractor. I just don't trust chiropractors.