Crazy Guy Attacks Again by Julian

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Mexico is the barbershop paradise. Full of old fashion barbershops with big red leather chairs. I've been living here for almost 3 years and for the first 2 and a half I never repeated a single barbershop. The excitement of risking my hair every time with a different old guy is amazing.

However for the past 6 months I had gone to the same barbershop. A small place downtown. Imagine a small rectangular room, with 6 barber chairs, three facing the other three. No waiting area. Mirrors covering 3 walls (the other one is the entrance). I got really lucky: an old barber who are not afraid of going really short, who spends at least 45 minutes cutting your hair, who turns you away from the mirror as soon as he asks how do you want it cut, and the best of all: mirrors everywhere so although you are not facing the one in front of you, you get an incredible view of your back. Oh my God, it was amazing seeing how a quite long hair turns in a close tapered back and a shaved neck. It was so good that I went 6 or 7 times in a row.

Today, however, I decided I needed to explore again. I knew it was haircut day so I put on my haircut outfit: old fashion white underwear, white T-shirt and Jeans. All day long waiting for the right time to go and get a haircut. All day long looking at my self in the mirror with long hair, knowing that a lot of it would be gone by the end of the day. Visits to several yahoo haircut groups…. By 5:00 pm I was going nuts!!

I told my family I was going for a haircut. I didn't have much time since it was movie night, so I'll just had like an hour. I had seen an old barbershop in a neighborhood not far from home. With my heart pumping I got into my car and drove to the place. It was a small barbershop. Two red chairs, one barber. No customers in. The barber was reading a magazine. I parked in front of it but didn't have the guts to get down from my car. Two voices inside of me started to discuss with each other. One was trying to convince me to leave and the other one to get into the barbershop. I finally decided to get down. I came into the shop and the barber guided me to the chair.

He put a quite old cape around my neck. No way out now. I was facing the mirror. He combed my hair very slowly and finally asked me "how are we going to cut it?" The crazy guy inside of me was in charge so I said "I want it tapered. Short in the back and sides. Longer on top". He turned me away from the mirror and put a #3 guide on his clippers. I normally get a tapered haircut with a number 2 on the sides and back but not very high. From the middle up, I always get it cut with scissors. Well, this guy took his clippers and passed them from my neck almost to the crown. I panic. I told him to leave it longer in the upper part, but I guess it was too late. Anyway, in 2 or 3 minutes he had taken away the hair around my head. I could see the cape with a lot of hair. Some short locks that I guessed came from the lower part of my head but some quite long ones, from the upper part. I regretted been there. Why didn't I just go to my regular barbershop?

Anyway, he now put the #2 guard and passes it over my sideburns, around my ears and above the neck. He took the scissors and started to shape a huge arc over my ears. I could feel the ends of the scissors against my skin while forming a circle around them and how my sideburns were reduced to half with one fast click. He untied the cape and shook it, covering the floor with the hair I looked at during the whole day. He put it on again and spread shaving cream under my sideburns, over my ears and covering my neck.

Although Mexico is full of old style barbershops, the razors I've seen are mostly the ones that use disposable blades. Well, this guy started to sharpen his razor using a leather belt attached to the chair.

Oh, that shave really felt different. He was very skilled with the razor and I felt how some hair above my ears was shaven. And it wasn't only the feeling; I could hear the hair being removed. The neck was shaved clean also.

He took the scissors again and started to cut the hair on the top. He didn't get it wet so I had the strange feeling of a rain of hair over my face. I had warned him I didn't like it short on top but he took like half of it anyway.

He went back to my neck, working with the clippers finishing the tapering on the base. And that was it. He turned me around to see the results. A quite short haircut. I couldn't quit looking at my ears. They looked really different. 15 minutes ago they were surrounded by hair and now they had a half an inch skin border and my sideburns that use to get to the middle of my ears were quite short, showing pale skin under them.

He took a hand mirror and showed me the back. I have very sensitive skin so I saw a mixture of white and pink neck where there use to be hair. I passed my hand over my neck and felt it naked. Above the shaven part, it was a half an inch section of very short tapered hair, where you could see the scalp and then short black hair from there to the crown.

Since the crazy guy was in charge, I asked if he could tapered it a little bit higher, but he answered that it was a perfectly proportioned haircut and that shorter wouldn't be nice. I thanked him and went out.

It was a good experience. Shorter than I wanted (and the crazy guy inside of me loves that) but it was too fast. The whole haircut didn't last more than 20 minutes, so the crazy guy was still eager of action.

I kept looking at my new haircut while driving, touching the very short hair in the back. Suddenly, the crazy guy came up with an idea: "They are not expecting you so soon at home. If we run into another barbershop, we can get another haircut!!" Of course the other voice started to say "are you crazy? There is nothing else to cut, let's go home". He was right, the hair was very short, but what if I say to the new barber "hey, I just got a haircut but I feel it isn't quite even, wouldn't you check it and fix it a little bit?" In that way I could expand my haircut experience without much risk. So we agreed on that.

I started to look for another barbershop without results. Crazy guy was decided to go ahead with it so he made me stop several times to ask people in the street about a barbershop near by. I was expecting someone to tell me that I had a pretty short hair already but they all tried to help me find a barbershop. They led me to a one that had women inside, I discarded it, of course. Then I went to a neighborhood that didn't have a single one old style barbershop and finally I ended up in real barbershop but with the barber busy. 20 minutes had passed and time was running up. The crazy guy wanted to keep the search but the other voice was winning the battle. It was time to go home. Ok, we agreed: we'll find one more and if it is busy or not really old fashion we'll go home.

I asked for directions again and 3 minutes later I was arriving to the perfect place. A barbershop with one chair and waiting sits around. I stopped my car in front of it. It had no doors so I could see everything from my car… and they could see me. A 10 years old boy was getting up from the chair. You could see his scalp all around. The place was quite full. Beside the child and the barber, I saw other 3 adults in the waiting seats. As soon as the kid stood up, his father sat down.

Well, that was it. Let's go home. The barber perceived that I was about to leave and said "I have only this customer and you are next". I said, "Thanks but I'm in a hurry". He insisted, "It's only 10 minutes" (Yeah, I thought, 10 Mexican minutes could mean 45 minutes!!). "You know, I'm going to the movies and I really can't wait, I'll come back tomorrow". I was ready to turn on the car when surprisingly the guy who was seated, stood up and offer me to go first.

Oh my God, I couldn't believe it. There was no way out. The chair was empty and I had 5 people expecting me to get down from my car and seat there. My heart started to run so fast I thought I was going to faint. I got off and walked into the barbershop. I sat down and a new cape was put on me. I couldn't believe what I was doing. This time I was facing the mirror and all the guys were behind me, looking at my recently shaved neck.

Before the barber said a word I told him that I just had a haircut but that I wasn't sure it was even and that I wanted him just to revise it. The most humiliating scene started: He showed his friends (I discovered that all the guys there were his friends) the back of my head, telling them "You see, these saloon ladies have no idea about tapering. Look this haircut, they tried to taper it and look at the results. I'm going to fix it"

He took his clippers and with the #2 guard he passed it all over the back and sides. Oh, I was crazy. It was already too short with the #3!!! I remembered how I like to feel the short tapering in the neck and the longer hair above it. Well there was no longer hair now. I calculated that I would need at least 2 or 3 months to be able to pull it again.

Then he put the #1 on the clippers. I was expecting this, the other barber didn't use #1. He ran the clippers over my short sideburns, above the ear and from the neck to the middle of my head. Now it was well tapered. It's amazing how such a big change can be made without cutting that much. The cape had a thin layer of hair, but I could see my scalp now. It looked much shorter. "Ok, this is it". I thought. Two haircuts in a row, I'm done.

But the barber wasn't done. He took the guard off and pushed my head a little bit to the front. At the beginning I thought he was going to finish it up a little bit, but then I felt the very warm clippers going up. I knew it had no guard. He was taking it all off. I sensed the guys looking at my back being clipped. I imagined how the skin was showing now, with no hair over it. I started to sweat and I almost asked him to stop, but I knew it was too late. He kept passing the bare clippers over and over the lower part of my back, and every time I felt he put them a bit higher. My heart was pumping so hard that I felt a little dizzy. When he finally tuned the clippers off, he put shaving cream on my neck. I couldn't believe I was going to get shaved again!!

Well, I just couldn't resist anymore. While being shaved, I couldn't avoid playing with my little buddy and just when he finished… I did too.

In that second, the crazy guy inside of me disappeared and the other one got really mad. What in the hell was I doing. There I was, with my hair too short on top, my scalp showing in my sides, a huge skin arc over my ears and half of my back bald!!

He put a mirror behind me to show how he had fixed my haircut. I could saw what the other guys were looking at before. Half of my head is clipered so short that you can clearly see my scalp, below that you see the skin and you can guess there was some hair there before, and getting to the neck, clean shaved. Only one hour before, my hair touched the collar of my T-shirt. Now, you have to go 4 inches before you see some hair!!

I was so disappointed with my self. I thanked the barber and left, feeling like naked on the street. Three hours later, I'm writing this, so exited, that I'm ready to explode… again.

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