My Hairdresser

 

I have been going to the same hairdresser for 41 years. If, on average, she has cut my hair every two months, it only requires a simple arithmetic calculation to multiply six by forty-one, and arrive at the number of times she has given me a haircut. 241.

Unqualified, she has never aspired to pursue hairdressing as a profession, and styling is of little concern to her, beyond keeping the appearance of her non-paying client tidy enough to avoid him being mistaken for a homeless man who sleeps under a bridge.

Her equipment is basic, consisting of nothing more than a pair of scissors and a comb. The scissors were replaced once, some time ago. She still has the same pink comb she started out with, only it has lost several of its teeth, as I have, as a consequence of ageing and general wear and tear.

When she began four decades ago, I still had a full head of hair, and my beard was long and heavily luxuriant, like that of an Old Testament prophet’s. Over the years, however, my hairline receded so far I was reclassified as bald, and now she has only the sparse growth about temples, ears and back of neck to contend with. As for the beard, it, too, requires less attention. This is because no hair grows von the barren slopes of my left cheek, the area having been blasted by six weeks of radiation at the end of 2022. Surprisingly, nobody has ever asked me, ‘Why is your beard lopsided?’, or, ‘Are you trying to make a fashion statement?’

Her technique is somewhat unconventional. She requires me to remove my shirt, regardless of the ambient temperature, be it a comfortable 25 degrees in summer, or ten above freezing in winter, and seat myself on a low stool without backrest in the centre of the room. Starting with my head, she runs her fingers through what hair there is, and snips of the protruding growth, thus reducing everything to a uniform length. Then she tackles the sideburns, using the pink comb instead of her fingers to achieve a similar but closer trim. Before moving on from the head, she snips off the spiky little strands that dare to break through the naked dome of my skull. With a rapid bouncing motion she dances about on the lunar surface, snapping at wayward tendrils before finishing with a few puffs from her leaf blower. Very funny. I am sure she would regard me as more manly  if I had never been smitten with baldness.

Next, she tackles the moustache, which is inclined to overhang my upper lip and interfere with core functions like eating and drinking. Hanging a shaggy curtain in front of one’s mouth can also restrict the ability to derive shared erogenous pleasure from the lips, which should remain exposed below the double curve of the vermillion border, not known as Cupid’s bow for nothing.

Finally, the beard. She sighs at the daunting prospect of trying to balance the two sides of my face, and sets to work. Who can blame her if, on closer inspection, my physiognomy is so asymmetrical it verges on the grotesque?

When she tells me to stand up for fine tuning, I do so with immense relief, having had to hold an upright posture on that stool for fifteen minutes or more, all the while being told to keep my head up, and to stop slouching, scratching and fidgeting. To alleviate the boredom and discomfort of sitting there, I sometimes engage in desultory conversation with my hairdresser, or I allow my mind to wander. On occasions her close physical presence has led my thoughts and imagination into situations that result in a feeling of incipient tumescence, and I have to force myself to concentrate on mundane tasks that await my attention, like cutting the grass or chopping wood.

As for the fine tuning, this entails turning my head to the left and to the right several times so she can trim a few hairs here and there. She stands back and appraises her handiwork. I am instructed to bend my head forward before tipping it back to expose the throat and underside of chin. Eventually, to complete the outlandish ritual, I must rotate 360 degrees clockwise and 360 anti-clockwise. Only then can I hurry out to the garden, where she cleans me up with a brush from the broom cupboard. Like a shy maiden, I protect my nipple from the sharp ends of the bristles.

I put my shirt back on, thank her for her pro bono services, and declare that my hair and beard feel so much better. For the next day or two I catch her looking at me admiringly. “You look so handsome!” she says, and we chuckle at her choice of adjective.