Hatecut.
A little off the top. Shorten the sides. Keep a natural line in the back. I’ve given these instructions to about half a dozen barbers over the past few years as they’ve their draped heavy, vinyl aprons around my neck. The results have been mostly the same, sometimes my hair looks more like John Stamos’s, others more like Jason Priestly’s. I’m happy with both outcomes, and was wondering which kind of poof my hair would take with the new barber I was seeing.
Just trying to make a little small talk, I told the new guy that I was going to the Senate in the next week. If you see the President, he said, let him know he can get a free cut here. Obama already has a barber, Zamir or Zariff or something, I told him. I don’t get one named barbers. Even Jose Eber used his last name. Ridiculous one-named barbers, I mutter.
While I was talking, the barber was spinning the chair away from the mirror, and the hair was raining down. A lot of hair. The floor looked like Slash’s face.
By the time he finishes and twirls me back, my hair is buzzed. This is not the little off the top I asked for. As I pay the man, I ask myself what did I do to deserve this butchering. And then he answers my question without saying a word. Written on his card, in a heavily sariffed font, is his lone name: Tamir.
