A New Man in the House by A recruit

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This was not familiar territory for me. Indeed, I wasn’t sure that I’d ever been to a barber shop before. My mother had always cut my long blonde hair.

It was the summer holidays. I had been staying overnight at a friend’s house, and was on my way home. His father had stopped off on the way, to bring my friend, James, to get a haircut. I went along for the ride.

I had followed James from the car, and found myself sitting in this small shop. A large glass window stretched one side of the room, publicly announcing every customer to those walking by on the pavement outside. Most heads turned to stare into the shop as they passed, checking out the unfortunates waiting to be clipped.

I was surprised at the atmosphere in the shop. Everyone was silent, every face looked serious, all eyes stared down into magazines or to the floor, occasionally taking a short glimpse at the customer in the chair, and almost instantly averting their gaze back to the magazine or floor.

The shop was clean, but its age lent a certain shabbiness and grime to the decor and fittings. Along the length of the shop ran a counter, displaying a variety of bottles and sprays, a card full of combs hung above a sink, and various dated photographs of black and white models were pinned to the wall, each photo was ripped or curling at the edges.

The barber himself was Italian, with thick, dark, curly hair, and a neatly trimmed goatee. He wore a grey nylon jacket, matching the drape he tied around his customers in the shop’s imposing barber chair.

I stared at James, who appeared absorbed in a magazine, sitting comfortably waiting his turn, certainly not noticeably worried about getting a haircut. He was probably well used to it, as he had his hair trimmed regularly every month. He’d seen all this many times before.

I, of course had not, and was finding the whole scene quite enthralling, amazed at the speed the barber worked, and the accuracy of each cut. Intrigued to watch the electric hair clippers whirring away, to create short styles that looked really smart and cool.

I watched the barber create a flat-top, two crew cuts, one rather conservative ivy league and a radical high and tight, lathering the sides and shaving them. It had been an entertaining afternoon.

At last it was James’s turn. He took his place in the chair and was duly wrapped in the grubby nylon cape. The barber exchanged a few pleasantries, and reached for his clippers.

‘Shorter for the summer,’ he said.

James nodded, without hesitation and the clippers buzzed into action. In no time, he was sporting a fresh crew-cut, noticeably shorter than his usual term time haircut. It suited his tanned skin to perfection, not a hair looked out of place. He thanked the barber, and left the chair, handing over money as he wiped away loose hairs from around his ears.

The barber looked around, ‘Next please!’

An older guy pointed at me. ‘I think this young lady was next.’

I reddened with embarrassment at being called a young lady, but I had to admit—for this barbershop my hair was certainly extraordinarily long, and it was obvious that it had been cut by my mother.

James laughed the comment off, and opened the door. I rose to follow after him. When I stood up, the barber assumed I was climbing into the barber chair. He stepped to one signed, cutting off my route to the door. Still humiliated from the girlie comment, I lurched toward the chair, and perched on the vinyl cushion.

I slid myself back, deep into the chair, and tried to relax.

James didn’t break the shop’s silence, but simply resumed his seat on the side bench, and reached for a magazine.

The barber combed my hair, ripping through several knots. He lacked the gentleness of my mother’s hands. He acted as if he was the master of my hair, and it would behave how he wanted it to. My head seemed incidental to the haircut process.

‘You want me to make you into a man?’ asked the barber.

I tried to nod assertively, but achieved a half hearted nod combined with a nervous gulp. I couldn’t quite believe I was doing this, but I was really looking forward to it.

The clippers snapped on, and the room was filled with the familiar buzzing, I’d listened to for much of the afternoon. There was no going back now.

The barber placed the clippers by my left ear, and with a short flick of his wrist, the clippers began the assent up the side of my head. The clippers moved slowly in front of my ear, their tone lifting as the metal teeth chewed away at my hair. As the clippers resurfaced from my hair, a watched a great clump of my fine blonde hair gently roll from the clippers, over the barber’s wrist, roll down over my ear, eventually coming to rest on my shoulder.

As I followed the clippers up on their next ascent, I had started to question the wisdom in getting into the barber’s chair.

The next swathe of hair fell to my shoulders, revealing the whole of my ear. My mother would spend several minutes combing and snipping away at the hair hanging over my ears, gently trimming it to expose my ear lobes. Minutes of my mother’s grooming had been removed, by just a quick pass of the barber’s clippers.

Now I was becoming increasingly nervous about what the barber had in mind for me. I stared at his face, to see if his face gave away any clues. All I saw was his fixed gaze of concentration, as he guided the clippers expertly around my head.

Looking back at myself in the mirror, I could now see my haircut taking shape. Soon there seemed to be more hair resting in the cape than there was on my head.

As the barber exposed my other remaining ear, I waited for the clippers to turn off — but the buzzing carried on, moving the top of my head and my bangs, which was usually precision-cut by my mother to just above my eyebrows. No more. My bangs dropping to my lap in large chunks.

The clippers ran back across my scalp, effortlessly stripping me of my former identity. My long hair was completely gone. Was the haircut done now? I didn't know. It seemed like it was ...

The clippers turned off, and there was an eerie silence throughout the shop, as the barber took up a pair of scissors and began to snip away at my remaining hair. He smartened up the shape, catching a few hairs that had escaped his clippers. He worked, without pausing, pushing my head around as he snipped.

Five, maybe ten minutes after he had started, the barber was satisfied that he had made a man of me. He scooped a pile of my pretty blonde hair up in his hands and threw it on to a pile of hair forming in the corner of the room, each lock shining in the fluorescent lights.

As I stared back at my new masculine image, I realised that only my mother would mourn the passing of her son's beautifully groomed hair. But there was no going back now, ever.

As I left the shop, James smiled, rubbing his own short stubble, and looked at me.

'Looks good," he told me. "You like it?’

I nodded.

We never said anything more about my haircut. To James it was nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary, just another chore. To me it was something, and I liked it. We left the shop to walk back home, to face my mother.

There was a new man in the house.

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