Toastmaster Tom Part 3 by Doug

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Toastmaster Tom Part 3: What I Really, Really Want
When I came in the door, Bill was working on another customer but he looked up, smiled, and said he was glad to see me back in the shop. After a short wait, he had me in the chair and caped again. He swung me around to the mirror and asked what I wanted to do this time around.

"I’d like it to last a little longer maybe, so a little shorter I guess?" I asked tentatively.

Bill already had his clippers in his hand, but he paused and looked at me through the mirror. "Let me ask you a question. When you came in here last time, were you more excited about matching the guy on the album cover or about getting a flattop? Because that’s going to dictate what I’m going to recommend we do today."

I went for broke. "Honestly, I’ve wanted a flattop for a long time, but I thought the one in the picture would probably fit in a little more on campus than something more military. But it didn’t stay crisp very long, so now I’m thinking maybe I should try something more traditional. I don’t know."

"Why did you want a flattop for a long time—what do you like about that style?" he pressed.

"When I was young I had a butch and I loved the way it felt, and when I see guys with flattops I love how controlled everything looks. My hair is always messed up and I’ve got a cowlick at my crown that is always sticking up. I was hoping a flattop would feel great and never be messed up. Hairstyles are getting shorter again and I’ve seen some young guys with a flattop in town, so I’m thinking people won’t think I’m weird if I have one, too." I kind of trailed off—I sound ridiculous, I thought.

But Bill just laughed. "It sounds like you need to worry less about what other people are doing and go for a haircut you want. Now I know what to do. We’re going to go shorter today and you’re going to love the way it looks. I’ll bet you a free cut in two weeks that once I’m done you’ll be so happy that you won’t care what anyone else thinks. And if I’m wrong, you can grow it out for a few extra weeks and we’ll take you back to rock star length. Deal?"

"Okay, sounds like a deal," I croaked back, and the clippers buzzed to life in his hand.

This time the experience was notably different and very satisfying in a freaked-out sort of way. No clipper over combing the sides this time—I felt the heat of the clippers as he started on my right temple and started removing most of the hair in its path. Given the last cut was much shorter than anything I had gotten in years and it had only been three weeks since I was in the chair, I was impressed by the amount of hair falling on the cape. When he came to the back he went so far up past my parietal ridge I was afraid he’d just continue all the way to the front.

I realized I could feel the breeze from the overhead fan as he clear-cutted his way around to the left side. The clippers turned off for a few seconds and I heard him behind me cleaning the blades to a different set. When he clicked that little guy on, it had a tighter, higher buzz to it and he used that to do some final trim work around my sideburns, ears and neck. After he brushed and toweled off the sides and back, he shifted back to his heavier clippers and started clipper over combing the higher parts of the sides. As he moved his way to the back, I could feel his comb lift the hair behind my crown away from my head—including the cowlick that had driven me nuts my whole life—and with a "zip" across the comb, I knew that cowlick wouldn’t be a factor again any time soon.

Now time for the top. He sprayed it down again and brushed it up. The clippers came on and he started lifting and cutting across the comb from the front to the back. Once he had the length down a bit and it had dried, he pulled out waxy stick that looked almost like a solid deodorant and started lifting my hair and rubbing it in. Once he was satisfied with his work, his broad brush came out and he pushed the hair straight up into place, over and over until either he was satisfied or my hair had finally complied enough for his next step—not sure which. This was my first experience with butch wax, and even without seeing it I could tell it had provided my fine hair with some impressive strength just from how the brush felt. Bill then put down the comb and came at my head from the side with the clippers aimed front to back. With an intense stare, he mowed a path down the center. As he reached the crown, I felt him flick down and the clippers briefly touched my scalp. A chunk of fuzzy hair landed and slid down the cape. At that point I realized I’d be sporting the same whitish line down the middle I loved to see when the flatties came up for communion after a fresh cut (even though I didn’t know it had a name). This was going to be a fundamental change in how I looked. I could feel my face flush. Part of me thought, good lord, what am I doing? But the other half thought, good lord, look what I’m finally doing! I sat still and sucked in every second of the sights and sounds and feeling. Bill grabbed his comb again and started blending the rest of the top into his landing strip. He brushed and trimmed, brushed and trimmed, and eventually put down the clippers and came at me with scissors, making tiny corrective snips where needed.

When he handed me my glasses and spun me around in the chair and held a big mirror behind the chair, I was a little shocked and very impressed. My sides and back were clipped close, with just a shadow outlining my sideburns and nape. He had left about an inch in the front, with no more than a dusting at the crown where the landing strip skidded to a stop. The top was tabletop flat, but perfectly blended over the crown. Great transitions from every angle. Other than my typical early-80s wire-framed teardrop glasses, I had 1959 staring back at me in the mirror. I was a time capsule. Unlike his excellent clipper techniques, there would be no "blending" of me into the student body outside a ROTC squad. But even at that moment, I think I was okay with that. How many years had I avoided this inevitability and why?

I got some funny looks and some WTF? conversations with friends over the next few days, but I loved the cut. I loved running my hand up the back and sides—nothing like that tight velvety feeling when you go against the grain. But most of all I loved the fact that my hair was always perfectly in place. Bill sold me a jar of Lucky Tiger Cru Butch Control Wax in all its pink spendor because he said it was better to use every day than the wax stick.

"If you look carefully, you can kinda see where your part used to be. Your hair has been trained to part from the side for the past 10 years, so you’re going to have to retrain it away from that part and to reorient straight up. Get yourself a wide brush and stay on it for the next month or so. Every time you’re in a bathroom, push your deck up and into place. Your hair will eventually give up and obey."

He also warned me that I needed to shift some habits—rinse the hair every day and apply fresh Lucky Tiger, but only shampoo every third day.

"You’re taking care of good bristles now, not regular hair. You’re going for stiff, not soft. You want some build-up in there. Let the Lucky Tiger penetrate and in a few months those bristles will stand up so consistently that I’ll be able to freehand your whole deck for the most part. And it’ll reach the point where your hair only moves where you want it to," He explained. "If you keep washing it every day, it’s just going to sag and then you’ll use too much cream to push it back up and then it’ll look crusty. There’s a trick to this—a good flatty takes some care."

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