On The Mark

I keep my hair short. It’s ironic, because in the 70’s, I wanted to grow long hair like other kids, but my parents wouldn’t let me. It was a source of teasing and tweenage angst. Eventually they relented, resulting in some of my worst hairstyles ever. Don’t ask about the afro phase and the black-fist pick I carried to fluff my fro. If the term “cultural appropriation” existed before this “age of offendedism,” I was in the thick of it.

A foofy coiffure is a liability because riding a motorcycle requires you to cram a fiberglass shell of beer cooler material down over your tresses and fasten it with a nylon strap. My metalflake half-helmet with the snap-on bubble visor did things to my hair that no amount of work with a pick or pitchfork could put right; consequently, I had to walk around all day with a misshapen head that looked more like it belonged in the pages of an Anthropology text than a yearbook.

I eventually realized helmets and hair are natural enemies. There are a few who make them coexist: Dangerous Dan’s wife can wear her blonde “do” in a punky, spiky way and when she removes her helmet, the spikiness is intact. She must have hair gel that would make what Cameron Diaz used in “Something About Mary” pale by comparison. I have never had that luck and when I remove a helmet, my hair is plastered to the sides of my head like I just spent hours with my head in an oily vise.

Rarely, I see a television commercial where a model removes her helmet and shakes her lovely tresses to have them fall perfectly across her designer jacket and I call “BULLSHIT!” Wearing a helmet makes you look like a wet dog that escaped the groomer mid-bath. I’ve tried a few solutions but the most expedient remedy is a haircut. At sixty, no one expects my personal hygiene to be at the top of its game, so a few cockeyed locks are as par for the course as my white Adidas golf shoes.

I now like haircuts and I use old-fashioned barbers, people who still practice the clipper, snipper, and shave cuts from my youth. One of my barbers ran a red-hot card game in the back of his shop and if the place was empty, I’d peek into a back room, where he’d look up from his cards through the miasma of smoke, and say, “You’re not in a hurry, are you?” I’d say, “Joe, if I was in a hurry, I wouldn’t have come here.”

The first time I ever went to his shop, the place was full, so I started looking for a seat when he popped the apron and said, “C’mon handsome, you’re next!” When I glanced around at all the people, he said, “They’re just here to bullshit!” and bade me sit down. Sometimes he’d be alone, but would say, “You’re not in a hurry, are you?” and we’d go next door so he could have a cup of fresh coffee and a cigarette. Joe gave some interesting cuts, but the humanity was good.

Getting a haircut is intimate. There’s the courting of combing, followed by a delicate dance between clippers and scissors. There’s a soft placement of a hand on your head to position it in exactly the right place for the artist. The gentle sweep of the powdered brush takes hairs from your forehead and nose: Bob Ross would have envied their technique. The loosening of the apron and tissue allows access to the fine hairs at the back of your neck. The warm sweep of shaving cream around your ears and neck allow the straight razor to do precision work without ravaging your skin.

I like a denouement of a hand lightly kissed with tonic of just the right smell being run through my hair: it’s a good memory and it fights the slight wet dog smell of a helmet. There’s a peace from having someone care for your head that way and I have had haircuts that were so good that I didn’t want them to stop. Suzi at Naval Air Station Whiting Field used to finish with a brief shiatsu head massage that was heavenly.

There’s not much you can do with the sparse crop atop my skull. One of my barbers will jokingly hand me a mirror…with the shiny side facing away from me. I’ll hand it back, saying, “I guess you did the best you could.” We grin, shake hands, I give him some money and say, “See you next time.” He’ll reply, “Tell mama I said ‘Hi.’” Some of the haircuts are better than others, but at least now I don’t get helmet head.