Haircut: a short piece of writing...

Hi folks,

On the 'Utopia' thread, much has been said about getting haircuts or going to the hairdressers.  Many people, myself included, are never very comfortable with this.  Being stuck in one place with a stranger.  Having to try to make chit-chat.  It's never been easy for me.  One day, years ago, I was getting a haircut when the woman doing it started moaning about foreigners, and stereotyping them all as crooks.  I became enraged, but had to let it pass.  I couldn't just walk out with my hair half-done.  And if I'd remonstrated with her, she might have made a mess of it.  I didn't tip her.  And I never went back.  Now, I have my haircut at the Turkish barber around the corner.  He doesn't speak much English, so there's no pressure to speak.  And he does a good job, too!

Anyway... by the bye.  The comments reminded me of a piece of writing I did a few years ago.  It was part of my novel about a man recovering from mental illness.  It was heavily autobiographical.  In one chapter, he goes for a haircut.  I thought some of you might identify with the situation....

MONDAY

            After work this morning, I went for a haircut.  I hadn't been for months, and I wanted to look smart for the inquest.  It was curling up from my neck and tufting out around my ears.  A parting had formed - the start of a quiff, like dad had.  It needed brushing again.  I keep trying it long, like I used to have it when I was younger.  But it never lasts.  Years ago, it looked good that way.  Now, it makes me look ragged and untidy.  It makes me look older.  It makes me look old.  I don't enjoy getting it cut, though.  In the spotlight, unable to move, with a stranger right there, touching my head.  I find it too intimate.  It leaves me exposed.

            I sit in the chair and hold my breath, looking at my face as she snips away, reframing it.  The tiny tucks at the corners of my eyes.  The lines that run from the sides of my nose to the corners of my lips, looking deeper in the slanting light from the window.  The jowls beginning - like a pattern beneath that was starting to emerge, to redefine.  The hair falls down my front, soft and grey as ashes - tumbling, settling.  Something of me that is no longer me.  Dust and ashes.

            The face.   Dad's face.  The curve of the brows, the shape of the nose, the eyes.  Even the ears - one sticking out more than the other.  A feature we all shared - Karen, Michael.  Even Karen's children have it.  Chris and Adam.  Natalie.  I never really noticed it until the first time I had my hair cut really short.  Like it was cupped.  I checked all the photographs to make sure.  All of mine and all of theirs.  There it was - like a cup handle.  Like a shell, opened up. 

            Observing the sounds of the world.

            "Day off today?"

            The questions.  I dread the questions.  If I give the wrong answer, will she drive the scissors into my neck? 

            "Yes."

            "Not very nice, is it.  Cold."

            "It is, yes."

            I feel the need to say something, but I never know what.  I'm always at a disadvantage in this situation.  I don't do this kind of thing.

            The pieces keep falling, like feathers.

            The phone starts ringing.  The other young woman, sitting behind me, doesn't move.  She sits with her magazine.  There's no one else.

            "Sorry... excuse me a minute."

            She goes off to answer the phone.  Someone for an appointment.

            "I'll just get the diary."

            I bring up my hand from under the cape and take some of the hair in my fingers.  So fine.  I rub it between my fingers.  It feels like grains of salt.  I hold up my fingers and watch it fall in silver scintillas, gently settling in the folds of the cape.  Dad's was the same.  He was white at 50 - his hair like tufts of cotton, except for the orange streak from the cigarettes.  The orange in his hair.  The orange on his fingers.  On the ashtrays, the window ledges, the basin rims.  The marks in the paintwork.  The marks on his lips.  The tang of it, wherever he went, whenever he was near.  In his clothes, on his breath, in his rooms, in his hair.  In his laugh.  In his cough.  In his voice.

            "Sorry about that."

            "That's alright."

            She's noticed what I was doing.

            "It's a lovely colour, your hair."

            I look at her in the mirror.  She looks at me in the mirror.  We look at each other by looking away from each other.

            "Grey?"

            "Yes... but it's a lovely shade.  And you've got this dark band at the back.  It's really black.  It must have been your natural colour."

            She picks up a hand mirror and holds it up to the back of my head.

            "See?"

            I see.

            "Yes.  It was my natural colour."

            "It, like, fades into it.  Very grey.  Then dark grey.  Then black."

            "It used to be further up."

            "That's how it goes.  It's working its way down.  In a few more years, it'll be completely gone."

            "I suppose so."

            She carries on snipping away, her eyes tightly focussed.  She has a nice face.  Round and well-featured.  A small nose and hazel eyes.  Pale lips.  Smile lines.  About 30.  She glances at me in the mirror and I shift my eyes back to me.  She pushes her fingers into the hair on the top of my head and pulls it up, like she's kneading it.  It feels like a playful thing.  Like a parent would do.  Or a lover.  She combs up a length and starts to snip it.  The soldiers, all in a row, cut down.  Watch them go.  Snips of my hair cling to the front of her jumper, where it rises.

            "Did you start going grey young?"

            "Yes.  19 or 20.  I dyed it for years."

            "Don't dye this, will you."

            "I won't."

            "It never looks right on older men."

            I raise my eyebrows.  She sees it.

            "On any man, really.  It's always obvious."

            "I know what you mean."

            "All those film stars.  Tom Cruise.  Nicolas Cage.  And Bono and that.  When their hair's in the light, you can see it."

            "Right.  Al Pacino."

            "Oh God, Al Pacino.  But who cares with him.  I wouldn't."

            "They don't all do it.  George Clooney.  Richard Gere."

            "Oh no.  It suits them.  It suits men.  Men more than women."

            She picks up her clippers and begins to trim my sideburns.

            "At least you've got plenty of it.  You'll never be without it now.  My boyfriend's only 27 and it's nearly all gone from the top of his head."

            "Saves having to brush and comb it."

            "He'd sooner have it back.  Even if it was grey."

            She switches off the clippers and picks up the mirror again.

            "How's that?"

            "Lovely.  Thank you."

            I always say that, however it looks. 

            "Anything on it?"

            "No thanks."

            She brushes down my face and neck, then removes the cape.  My hair is in piles on the white-tiled floor.  Grey, with some black.  When I was a kid, mum had some grey squirrel-skin gloves dad had bought her once for a birthday present.  I used to take them out of her drawer and put them on, and pretend to be a bear with huge furry paws.  I loved the feel of them - soft and fine.  I used to run them over my face, smelling her perfume in them.  I loved the colour of them.  Grey, with black.  Grey, fading into black.

            I put on my jacket and go to the till.  She looks different.  Smaller.

            "That's nine pounds fifty, please."

            I give her a tenner.

            "Keep the change."

            "Thank you very much.  You take care now."

            "I will.  You too."

            "Have a good day."

            "And you."

            "See you soon."

            "Bye."

            Back home, I take down his photograph.  The hair dark then.  Regulation length.  Greased and neatly parted, with the quiff.  He looks like Clark Gable, without the moustache.  18 or 19.  In full dress uniform, his sword at his side, his parade helmet tucked in the crook of his arm.  A fine-looking man.  You can see what mum saw in him.  Yes, you can.  Him as he was.  Knightsbridge Barracks.  1944, thereabouts.  The country still at war.