I Miss Haircuts What I wouldn’t give for a shape-up
he first time I walked into a barbershop was like a first kiss. I was nervous, but thrilled. I felt square trying to be smooth; self-conscious, giddy with anticipation. I was also 25.
When I was nine, I drew the haircut I wanted on a Post-it note and brought it with me to the hairdresser. I was not very good at drawing, so I labeled the sides “shaved” and the top “long.” If you know what Jonathan Taylor Thomas or Devon Sawa looked like in the ’90s, then you know what I was shooting for — super hot. I was in search of a mushroom, but I always walked out with a bob. A lot of bobs have been forced upon me — almost always by strangers or those who did not know me well — yet none successfully remain. My hair, like the rest of my body, will not conform.
Hair is essential to queerness and it always has been, but I don’t want to type out the history. Anyway, right now, “essential” means something entirely different. When my wife offered to cut my hair with the hypercolored clippers I bought online, she asked if I’d be mad if she messed up.
“No,” I said. “It’s only hair. It’s not life or death.”
Sometimes, I get tired of having to provide context for everything I do to the outside heteronormative world. I just want to speak without translating. I want to share without couching. I want to talk and act like a protagonist, a mane character. Let’s see if I can.
Whenever a Friday afternoon rolls around, I think about my old routine — my walk to the barbershop, on hold, maybe forever.
As I walk from the East Village to the Lower East Side, it is always a sunny day. I like the way the sky opens up on Houston Street — there’s so much more sky downtown.
If you know what Jonathan Taylor Thomas or Devon Sawa looked like in the ’90s, then you know what I was shooting for — super hot.
The walk is my walk. It belongs to me the way all of New York City belongs to all of us — only as a construction of specifics in our minds. It’s like owning the ocean: You don’t. The city is massive, beautiful, unforgiving, and it does not care about any of us, ever. Not because it’s mean, but because it is a force of nature. A redwood doesn’t care about the warbler, though it offers a magical if indifferent home.
My barber’s name is Josh. He has a PhD. His dissertation is called Place-Making by Black and Latinx Students in Predominantly White Institutions: Participatory Design and Meaning Making Through a Social Enterprise. He is also a Master Barber. He was the first guy to do the handshake to bro-hug with me. He knows about place-making.
Through the front window, I see a row of men in hydraulic chairs deep in conversation with the man in the mirror — watching themselves and each other. When I walk in, I wait in a chair by a plant. Sometimes I have a beer. The smells crash like a wave but dissolve into a mist: Pinaud’s talc; eucalyptus from hot towels; new wood of the display cases; beeswax, peppermint, sage, and citrus from the pomades; waxes and clays; sweat, salt, vetiver, and rum from candles and cologne.
I sit in the chair and Josh says, “What are we doing?”
“Short on the sides, longer on top.”
The lack of imagination is mine, but somehow my hair always looks fresh. Depending on how warm it is outside, my sides will take a guard size of a one or two. I feel the rolled-up cloth on the back of my neck and the coolness of the drape.
We pick up where we left off. We talk about our families, new movies, what we’re each going to have for dinner — but also childhood, hopes, and plans. Josh has cut bits of my hair through moves, marriages, career changes, and kids.
I like to watch my hair fall. I like to feel it being pushed in different directions, like it’s getting tested. I like to watch the thickness be thinned by scissors and the overgrowth tamed into shape. Sometimes, after I come home, I get a mild headache from the strength of the clipper’s vibrations on the scar tissue by my ear. But that’s just my body telling me something happened.
Whenever I randomly sit behind a stranger at a concert or on the bus, I cut their hair in my mind. I like clean lines. There’s nothing like a shape-up.
I miss my walk and my shop and my barber. I miss the routine. Routine is everything. When you weren’t allowed to have it for so long, for 25 years, the mundane is novel. But I am happy to wait for it now. I’m good at waiting for things until it’s safe.
The warm shaving cream and straight razor on the back of my neck feels thorough and otherworldly. At the end, Josh and I share a look of agreement in the mirror. Then, the hot towel snaps me awake and provides a definitive conclusion.
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