Will's Moving Haircuts by Deke Cutter

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Will was ready to give up. He had been searching for an apartment with parking so he could get to the train station quickly in the morning for his commute from suburban Long Island into Manhattan to his job with a big financial company. It was 1976 and Will was lucky. He had a degree from a very good school and all the right connections. He considered himself to be a pretty cool guy. He was a real fashion plate and spent the outrageous sum at the time, of $20.00 plus tip to keep his long, feathered haircut looking good. His choice to live in this close-in suburb, rather than in the city, was not a surprise. He was a Nassau County boy, born and raised. He loved the beaches being close by and, even if he had to change trains in Jamaica, Queens to get to work, it was still the best place to live, in his opinion. He had looked for places in Long Beach and other beach communities, but unlike the way it would be twenty years later, Long Beach was still filled with Senior Citizens and some really downtrodden neighborhoods. Gentrification was just a dream. So, here he was in Oceanside, having exhausted leads in neighboring Rockville Centre and Island Park.

This place looked interesting, Will thought. He knew about two-family houses and knew there were basically two types, "the mother-daughter," semi-legal setup where there was one main entrance, and the upstairs unit was claimed to be for a family member. You usually entered to a hallway or foyer that led directly to the living spaces of one family, while a central stairway led up to the second-floor home with a private door at the top of the stairs. Then there were houses like this one, purpose-built, two entrances, one for downstairs and one for upstairs. This house had a driveway wide enough for two cars and looked extremely well-maintained. He got out of his car and walked up to the front doors. As he had been directed, he rang the doorbell. A teenaged boy with a short, neat haircut answered the door. The boy looked him up and down, his gaze lingering on Will’s hair. "You here about the apartment?" Will indicated that he was. "I’ll get my father."

A moment later, a man stood before him. He appeared to be in his forties. He wore his short hair combed straight back, very short on the sides, no sideburns. The man looked at Will with what seemed to him to be disdain. In an accent that Will recognized as Italian, the man said, "I’m Rocco. He then stepped out onto the small top step, causing Will to move down a step. Rocco closed his door and then pulled a ring of keys out of his pocket and opened the adjacent door. Will followed Rocco up the stairs and then waited while he unlocked a second door. The place was spotless. It contained two large bedrooms, a big kitchen, and a great living room/dining room. The place was airy with plenty of windows and thick carpeting throughout. "I like it, Rocco. What is the rent?"

"We go downstairs to talk business" (it sounded like: We go down-a-stays to talk beez-a-neessah). Will followed him downstairs into a living space that appeared similar to the upstairs apartment, but filled with heavy looking furniture, sofa and chairs covered with plastic seat covers. A large photo of a young-looking woman had pride of place over the fireplace. A crucifix was affixed to the wall above the frame. "That is my wife Maria, she die two years ago from ‘the cancer.’"

"My condolences. Is it just you and your son?"
"Him and his twin brother, Michel, and Giuseppe. You say Michael and Joseph, in English. You wanna live in my house, it cost you $250.00 a month. No loud music or noise on school nights. I cut your hair in my shop. No hippy hair in my house."

Will was speechless. Who the heck did this guy think he was? The first words that came out of his mouth were the wrong ones. "I go to that barber salon down on Austin Boulevard…"

"You getta your hair cut like a girl in that place with the mingya mortas? It looks like it. No more, if you live here."

Will really liked the apartment. He needed to get settled and out of his parent’s house. He figured he would let this guy cut his hair once or twice, and then tell him his lawyer said it was illegal. "OK, you cut my hair."

Rocco, it turned out, was nobody’s fool. He opened a folder and took out a typed multipage lease. Will read through it, it seemed pretty much a standard document, except for the clause that stated, "male tenants shall have their haircut monthly, by landlord to standards set by landlord." As directed, Will initialed that clause. Will hesitated, but figured his ploy would still work. This guy was "just a barber" and he talked like an immigrant. Will could outsmart him easily. Both men signed and dated on the last page.

"Come on, now we go to my shop. It is just down the street."

"But its Sunday, I don’t want to disturb…."

"You are my tenant now, you getta you haircut."

So, Will and Rocco walked down the suburban street to a small commercial area near the main road through town. Rocco opened the door, then locked them both in, keeping the blinds closed. Rocco explained, "since they ended the Blue Laws in 1976, if I don’t keep the shades drawn and door locked, people think I’m open. Sunday is for Gesu, and for me." With that, he motioned for Will to follow him to a back room. Here, there was a single barber chair, instead of the 3 out front. "This is where I cut ladies hair and difficult boys. You look like a lady with that hair, and you better not act like a ‘stunad ragazino’ (stupid kid) because I know how to handle them."

"Look, Rocco, I agreed to let you cut my hair, now let’s both act like adults."

"O.K. mister big shot, get in the chair and I put the cape on."

Once he was caped and taped, Will looked in the mirror and started to realize the immensity of the situation he put himself in. Putting on his most commanding business voice, he said. "Not too short, but a good trim up. I think that will be something we can both live with."

Had Rocco not been turned away from Will, putting on his barber smock, Will would have seen a steely determination and a very tight smile cross Rocco’s face. Rocco then turned the chair away from the one mirror in the room and pumped the chair up to working height. He then turned to the counter, picked up his clippers with no guard and pulled a comb out of the blue sanitizing liquid. (As was the case with old barbershops at the time, Rocco’s was called "Rocco’s Sanitary Barber." This was a tradition stretching back 50 or more years that assured men the barbershop and the tools were clean.) Then, he set the clippers back on the counter as he studied the middle parting of Will’s feather cut. He took his atomizer of water and sprayed Will’s hair and then proceeded to give him a side part. The clippers were turned on, and Rocco was running the clippers over the comb that was pushed tightly against the back of Will’s head. As he clipped the hair tightly up the back of Will’s head, Rocco finally responded to Will. "You signed the contract; you live with the haircut I give you." He then place a 2 guard on the clippers, turned down Will’s ear and clipped all the hair that covered Will’s ear, leaving it uncovered for the first time since his father made him get a "boy’s regular" for a family photo when he was 12.

Will was starting to panic, as he saw the hair start to hit the cape. Rocco continued to decimate Will’s hair, removing the guard so that he could cleanly remove Will’s beloved flared sideburns. Rocco then continued to uncover the other ear and leave poor Will with a very tight, very high taper on the sides and a very old fashioned taper in the back. Will now had a white strip of over an inch on the back of his head, and an embarrassingly white outline where his thick sideburns were. After going over the sides and back, one last time to make sure everything was as he wanted it, Rocco placed the clippers back on the shelf. Will sighed with relief, thinking the worst was over. Unfortunately for him, Rocco still had plenty of work to do.

Rocco lifted the long locks on top of Will’s head and chopped off all but two inches, The hair fell behind the chair so Will was not sure what was happening. Rocco then got into his rhythm and continued to remove any styling and length remaining. When he got to the bangs, he combed them forward so that they fell past Will’s nose. Then, snip, snip, snip and the bangs were a thick blunt line falling just above the middle of Will’s forehead. Next came every young man of the era’s worst haircutting nightmare, the thinning shears. Thinning shears added months to any "growing out" phase and took any life or texture out of hair. Will felt the shears banging against his head and gave up all hope. Rocco made sure to thin out the blunt bangs. Then came another clipper over comb session to blend the short sides into the slightly longer hair on top. Will then heard the whirring of the hot shaving cream dispenser and then the shaving cream being spread liberally around his ears, the back of his neck and over the "real estate" formerly covered by his sideburns. When the blade had completed its assault, Rocco then added the coup de grace, a dose of Wildroot Cream Oil. He then combed Will’s hair flipping the short thin bangs back and the hair on top very flat against his head. The ridges made by the comb were clear across Will’s head.

The chair was turned, and Will finally got to see his new haircut. For Rocco, the look on Will’s face was priceless, a combination of shock and embarrassment. Rocco said, "one Rocco special, something we can both live with. I cut your hair again next month when you pay the rent."

The following weeks were painful for Will. He moved into his new home and, while he loved the ease of him commute, but his friends were merciless about his haircut. One of the guys who had grown up in Oceanside told him that Rocco’s Barbershop was the place that when he was in high school, guys avoided that place like the plague. He really had trouble getting dates too. Girls assumed he was some kind of throwback. Even after he got that smelly hair goop out of hair, his hair still looked like he was an out-of-uniform soldier or a cop just out of the academy. The only guy who cut him any slack was his cousin Timmy who was a New York City Fireman. A year ago, the New York tabloids had all had articles on the NYFD’s crackdown on long hair and facial hair. Timmy’s hair had been longer than Will’s but now his haircut was about as short as Will’s. But firemen were a different breed and they all had short hair. In Will’s world, he stood out.

As the 15th of the month approached, Will knew he faced another encounter with Rocco’s instruments of torture. "I know what I’ll do, I’ll sneak over to that new barber salon behind the Bohack’s supermarket." This place was cool, a cute receptionist, and three young long-haired barbers. Will was lucky to get into Sal, the owner’s chair.

"Gee buddy, your hair is pretty short, you a fireman or something?"

Will’s face reddened. "No, nothing like that. My landlord hates long hair. You probably know him. He has a shop just a couple blocks away."

Sal said, "I know you aren’t talking about Max. He does good haircuts and the guys next to the movie theater don’t cut as precisely as your haircut. That only leaves Rocco. Rocco is old school. He hates that I am getting so much business by giving guys that hairstyle they want. Doesn’t he make you get cut at his shop?"
"Well, yeah, but I figured that if I just had you clean me up a little bit, showing him that I was willing to get it cut once a month, maybe he’d let me off."

"I’m not going to turn down a customer, and I hope this works out for you. I’ll tell you what, if this doesn’t work for you, I promise you a free haircut when you do get out from under Rocco’s roof." Sal then proceeded to lightly clean up the edges of Will’s hair, hardly touching the top.

A few days later, Will knocked on the Rocco’s door, much as he had the day he came to look at the apartment. One of the twins, neatly barbered within an inch of their lives, answered the door. "Hi Mike, is your dad here, I want to give him the rent check."

The twin rolled his eyes and said, "I’m Joe. You have to go to the shop. You better get there before he closes."

Will looked at his fancy new Seiko automatic watch and saw that he had 20 minutes. He walked quickly down to the shop to find Rocco finishing up on a man from the neighborhood, giving him a standard kind of businessman’s cut. When the man had paid and left, Rocco, indicated for Will to get in the chair. "Rocco, I just got my haircut. I thought we could skip it for this month."

"It is good that you are getting used to having a man’s haircut, but you signed my lease. I cut your hair, no exceptions. Get in the chair, or you go start packing."

With a great deal of trepidation, Will sat down in the chair. Without further discussion, Rocco caped him and went to work. Will knew immediately that he had raised the ire of the barber. The clippers dug into newly blocked hair on the back of his head. He could not yet see the damage, but it felt severe. As Rocco continued around the sides, stripping all the hair below the part to stubble. He switched the blade from a No. 2 to a No. 3 and started just behind the bangs, pushing the clippers back. He took it all down short and then blended the sides. Finally, he combed the remaining bangs straight up and trimmed then down to an inch and a half. He cleaned to edges with shaving cream and the straight razor. Then, he opened a tub of Butch Wax, took some out and proceeded to rub it into the bangs and over the top of Will’s heads. The bangs were brushed straight up. "Here you go ‘wise guy.’ This is what you get when you go to another barber and come into my shop."

Will learned his lesson. For the next two years, Rocco was his only barber. It took months after his cropping for his hair to "grow out" to the length of Rocco’s original cut. By the time he moved into his first condo, the return to shorter hair had begun. He grew his hair out some, but never to its former glory.

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