Cruising for A Cut by Deke Cutter

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My hair. I mean, if I thought it was an issue, a really big issue, I would have done something about it long before this, but holy cow! How did it come to this? My dad has always been a conservative kind of guy. He’s a businessman and he has been good to my brother and me. He’s a kind man. He adores my mother, and she adores him. He is pretty much a traditional guy too. Baseball and the NFL are his sports of choice. Mass on Sundays, though he was really shaken by the abuse scandal. He knew the monsignor who ran our diocese day to day, and he had several very intense meetings with him about that. But in the end, dad said he would leave that one up to God.

Dad didn’t particularly care for crazy fashion trends in clothing or hair. He didn’t go for mohawks or purple hair. Frankly, moderation tended to be his preference. So, he was not too happy with my brother, the jock when his little league team grew mullets during their championship season, but one of his Kiwanis Club friends was the coach and talked him around to letting him keep it until the end of the season. Same thing when I made the cross-country team and all the guys and long flowing hair. As long as the barber was the first stop the day after the banquet, all was well.

This brings us to what happened today. I got accepted to a very good college that is going to cost a lot of money. Everybody knows how much student loans put you into debt so I started thinking of ways that I could avoid that. My brother had received an athletic scholarship to a state university, but it didn’t cover everything, and I had a feeling, he wouldn’t cut it on the team for all four years. I didn’t want mom and dad to feel like they had they extra burden of both of us. I had been in a couple of school musicals and knew I had a pretty good voice. I heard about these gigs singing in these reviews on cruise ships for wealthy older folks. I investigated it and with no real overhead expenses, I could probably do well. I asked the university if I could delay my admission until the Spring Semester and they agreed. So, I said goodbye to my folks and headed to Miami where the adventure would begin.

It was hard work and I was glad I knew some basic dancing steps from those school shows. I was also glad that my wavy hair grew pretty fast because the director wanted guys that could pull off that wild kind of "Harry Styles" look or a more cool "latin" look for some of the routines. It was interesting and a very different world than my suburban upbringing. One of the girls who I hit it off with and dated when I first got down there had warned me that even in this day and age, there would be older guests on the cruises who would be looking for "overnight companions." She said that management discouraged it, and so did she. At the very least, make it known that that you are straight and that you are not interested. You’ll still get tips, but they’ll be for honest reasons. It turned out to be good advice.

By mid-December, I looked forward to going home and getting ready for college. Other than emails and occasional phone calls, my only real contact had been when one of dad’s recently retired coworkers and his wife showed up on one of the cruises I was appearing on. I didn’t realize it at the time, but he had taken some pictures of me in stage makeup with a frilly shirt and my long hair looking like Harry Styles when he first left One Direction behind. I had no idea my folks had seen anything like that. When I sent pictures home, I usually tamed my hair down or had a hat on. I planned on showing them my hair and then getting it trimmed and styled before Christmas.

I was surprised when my parents sent my cousin to pick me up at the airport. I was glad to see him. We were the same age and pretty close, but it seemed strange. "Dude, your hair is wild," my cousin said. Uncle Johnny is going to freak."

"It’s cool man, I just wanted to show them before I get it cut. I had to have it like this for the shows. Hey, I take it my brother’s not home yet?"

"No man, the team plays tomorrow, if they win, they play on New Year’s Day and he won’t get home until after that. But if they lose, he’ll make it home."

"So, dad’s hoping they win and mom’s hoping they lose, right?"

"That’s what it sounded like. Hey man, do you need help with your stuff, if not, I’m not going to stop. I still have some Christmas shopping to do. Catch you later."

Can there be anything like that first time returning home? For me, it was walking up the driveway and around the corner of the house and opening the kitchen door. My mom was there, her back to me, looking in a cookbook. She heard me drop my bags and turned. "My darling boy, you’re home!" We hugged and laughed, and she kissed me about a hundred times. "Honey, your dad wants to see you and it’s not good. Keep calm and please, please do whatever it takes, promise me."

Knowing my mother, I knew that something monumental was about to happen and I knew she would not throw me to the wolves without reason, so I promised and headed into the lion’s den, or more literally, downstairs to my dad’s man cave.

Dad was in his recliner, but the 60-inch plasma screen TV wasn’t on. There was a glass of single malt in his hand. And what looked like some pictures in the other. He looked up at me as I came down the stairs. "Welcome home, son," he said." He handed me the pictures. Walt Fredrickson, you remember Walt, he’s the man who gave me my position at the firm, he sent me these from his cruise. He said you even comped him a drink, so I guess you did remember him and weren’t too ashamed."

The pictures made me look like some kind of low-rent gigolo from a 1949s movie or perhaps a disco dancer from Studio 54’s heyday. A couple of the more flamboyant male dancers appeared to be learing at me and my female dance partner had been cropped out of one of the more salacious shots. My hair, of course, was flying out in all directions in several shots. And as dad put it, looked like some kind of ‘glam rocker’ in others.

"Son, I have always tried to be a good father. I want to believe in my heart that you are a good and decent person. I want to hope that the precepts of our faith that mom and I have tried to teach you and your brother have not been in vain. But I look at you, with that ridiculous hair, the one thing you know I find so hard to accept for it’s show of vanity and disrespect for me, and I ask myself, what am I to do. You are my son that I love more than life itself and you are now a man. You took on a task to earn money that you did not have to do, and in so doing, your actions did bring shame to us. Walt has shown those pictures to most of our mutual friends. I know, that is my own hubris and failing for caring. Son, I will ask this only once, will you let me take you to the barber and have him cut your hair as I would like to see you look?"

By now, I was barely holding it together. This man, this rock, this giant who had never asked anything of us, asked this one thing of me. And after I had seen what kind of people there were out in that real world for the last six months. I got down on my knees next to the recliner and said, "yes, dad, yes."

So, here we are at dad’s barber. We didn’t talk much on the way over. I wondered if dad had talked about this with Dominic or if he was going to point to a picture or just describe what he wanted. He introduced me to Dominic who remembered me from childhood. Dad explained that I had been away earning money for college for the last 6 months, working as an entertainer on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. Unfortunately, Dad explained, that meant, I had to have a ‘certain look,’ while entertaining that was antithetical to the real authentic me. So, even though it was going to be much shorter than I usually wore my hair back in high school, I had agreed with dad to get back to basics with this haircut to make sure people saw the real me and not that entertainer. "Nice and short on the sides and back, tapered close and just leave the top so it lays down with a nice side part. Maybe finish it with the razor to tame the waves if you need to. He has a good face and doesn’t have big ears so (he pointed toward the top of my ears) let’s take sideburns up."

The haircut was like nothing I had ever experienced. Dominic made dad a cup of coffee and sat him down at a little table where some of the customers played cards when it was a slow day. Dominic whispered to me, ‘you are a good son.’ Then he said, I’ll take some of the bulk off first," He proceeded to take about 6 inches off around my head, uncovering my ears and my collar. Combing my bangs down, he cut the hair that reached my mouth to just above my eyebrows. Then came the clippers and the real changes in my appearance started. Dominic was a wizard with the taper, and he knew exactly how high he needed to go with each setting to make the taper look flawless as it went around the head without dark spots, shadows or nicks. He left about an inch below the part line on the left and was very careful with the way he tapered the back and the right. The shop had mirrored walls on both sides so I could see the transformation. I was looking like a younger trimmer version of dad. All the dancing had given my face more definition and the short hair was an asset to my appearance. He started drastically reducing the length of my hair on top. I couldn’t believe how quickly he got it down to a few inches. Then he thinned it just a bit with the thinning scissors before switching to razor and comb in the old style that dad liked. When he was finished with cleaning me up around the ears and neck with shaving cream and combing my hair in place with a little modern pomade, I looked like a different person. It was a very clean-cut look. I thought that it didn’t detract from my looks, and I did not feel uncomfortable walking out looking this way. I knew it would be a hard haircut to keep on top of at school, but that was a worry for another day. The look on dad’s face made this all worthwhile for now. As I got out of the chair, I thanked Dominic for the haircut.

I turned to my father and said, "well dad, what do you think?"

Dad said, "this is the best Christmas present ever."

If my brother makes it home for Christmas, he too may face a visit to Dominic’s. I’m wondering if this cut will become my default summer and holiday cut when I come home.

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