Airport Clippers by Deke Cutter

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It was one of those days where I had too much time on my hands, waiting for my flight half-way across the country from DCA, just outside Washington, DC. The airport was constantly reconfiguring the restaurants in the gate areas. This time, they had created something like a home breakfast bar that you could sit at on a stool. There were sockets and plugins for computers and phones. You ordered around on the other side of the booth and your number would be called. I had ordered a breakfast sandwich and was sitting next to an older man who was drinking black coffee and a young guy, looked to be maybe in his mid-twenties. The young had a very tight haircut, shaved high on the sides with the top cut short and just an inch bumper waxed up in the front. The older guy, with a pretty standard regular cut turned to the young guy and said, "you in the military or do you just like the haircut?"

I thought, "oh boy, this could go two ways."

But luckily, the young guy smiled, rubbed his hand on the back of his head and said, "well, since you asked." He then explained that he had been in the military right out of high school and had become used to having military short haircut. Then he got out, started college and just didn’t feel comfortable around all the guys with high-priced tight fades with fancy styled pomps on top. "So I just grew my hair out to a sort of shaggy style that I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about. When I graduated, I got a nice clean business cut, like you see on a lot of the young TV news reporters on the networks and cable channels. I told my wife I really didn’t like all the folderol that went with my haircut and was wishing I could cut it short like I had when she first met me, while I was in the service. My wife is great and just said to not do anything that would impact me at work. She thought I looked good either way. Then, out of the blue, my boss called me in and asked me how I would feel about a two month assignment in the field, teaching some of our latest communication technologies at several military bases. I jumped at the chance. It will be great for my career. I figured while I had the boss on my side I said, to him that I had been thinking about getting my hair cut really short, like I wore it when I was in the Army. He said he thought that it would go over well with our military clients. Right after work, I went to a barber shop near the Pentagon and got this. And I really love it."

The older guy was a veteran and the two of them talked some more about being in the service and their jobs. I finished my breakfast and moved over to find a seat near my departure gate. But I couldn’t get that conversation out of my head. I took out my phone, opened the camera and turned it around so I could see myself. My hair is thick and dark brown. I wear it all brushed back and it tends to form nice waves on the sides and covers my collar in the back. It’s a pretty low maintenance style for me, all things considered. Still, that guy looking so clean cut and self-assured that it made me wonder if I would have the courage to do what he did. Once my flight was called, though, and I was seated and buckled up, my mind turned to the work I had ahead during the trip, and I didn’t think too much about it. When I got home, though, I saw on the calendar that I was due to make an appointment for my every 6 weeks haircut. My guy was a "master barber" and he charged the high prices they get. I raised with my girlfriend the idea of me getting a radically short haircut. "Like a buzzcut or something," she asked. I told her I was thinking about something more like a really tight fade with the top cut pretty short.

"Lots of skin would be showing on the sides and back," I told her.

"Why don’t you wait until we take out trip to Thailand," she suggested. "It will be very hot there and you would have a good reason to give people if they want to give you a hard time. I think you would look good with short hair, you have the right face shape for it. Let’s face it, you are still young enough to get away with it and successful enough that it won’t cause any waves at work. Mention to friends at work that you are thinking about doing it, right before we leave in January."

That is what I did, the Saturday one week before we were leaving, because I knew I would be too busy all week to get in to a barber. I checked out various shops that were around any of the DC area military installations and where I saw guys in uniform going in. I got close to going into a shop that looked very much like it was an ‘no nonsense’ kind of place. But, when push came to shove, I bottled it! I just couldn’t do it. I got back in my car and headed to a fairly new shop close to our condo. I went in and was greeted by a receptionist who informed me that one of their barbers had a cancellation if I could come back at 5:00 PM. I knew my girlfriend was expecting me to come back with my hair cut short, so I had a couple of hours to kill. I went to one of those home repair superstores. I know of no better place for a guy to waste time. I even caught a demonstration on turning wood with some kind of fancy lathe. I still had enough time to grab a coffee at a shop just down from the barber shop. Needless to say, I was unobtrusively checking out guys’ haircuts. I even ‘joked’ with an employee in the superstore that he looked like he had just got out of the barbershop. He said, "yeah, I really got scalped. I went to a shop over by Fort Myer in Arlington. I didn’t realize a lot of the guys that participate in the funeral ceremonies there and at Arlington National Cemetery go there for their haircuts. I asked for a high fade with a little off the top, and I ended up being inches on top from a bald fade." I told him it suited him. "The barber said he though I said leave a little bit on top. But he said it with a sneer that suggested that he just wanted to be ‘a Richard,’ if you know what I mean." Needless to say, that made me feel like I had made the right decision.

I returned to the shop, just as the barber was finishing up his last customer. This must have been fate, the guy had a high fade, left long on the top and styled as a combover. The slanted bangs reached his eyebrow on the left and wasn’t cut at too much of an angle. It looked good. The barber combed it over and the bangs were nested nicely on the other side of his head. He paid and left and before I knew it, I was in the chair and caped up.

"I’m Dennis," the barber said, what are we doing today?"

"I’ve been wanting to try a shorter cut. Do you think I could pull off the cut you gave the last guy?" The barber took a comb from the jar of blue ‘barber juice’, (that always reminds me of the last episode of "the Adventures of Pete and Pete) and combed through my hair.

"The high faded sides and back are no problem, but your hair seems to prefer being combed straight back. Let’s see what we can do. It might be better to keep the combed back look unless it will just stand up straight if we cut it back. Have you ever had a brush cut or a flat top, that might tell us something in advance."

"No, I’ve never really had a short haircut. But since I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve tried parting my hair and it seems to take to it, it just shows more waves on top."

"That is good information. We can see how it goes. If you don’t like the waves when we cut it, we can always use the thinning shears to have the hair on top lay flatter."

To say the next 15 minutes were harrowing was to put it mildly. Clippers of various sizes with various guards, and eventually no guards at all were applied to the sides and back of my head. Sheaves of my beautiful hair were falling on to my shoulders and rolling down on to the cape in front of me. Seeing my ears without hair around them was a real surprise. They were ‘good’ ears in that they didn’t stick out and they weren’t too big. But still it seemed strange to see neither hair, nor sideburns around them. When he shut the clippers off, I saw him walk over to the lather machine and I thought, oh boy, here we go. But he just cleaned up where my sideburns had been and edged around my ears and neck. The foil razor seemed to have got the sides close enough for his liking. "Okay," said Barber Dennis, I am going to wet down the top now and get started on it." He did and then combed all my hair forward, combed it over to the right, then combed down again. "With most of the bulk and length taken from the sides and back, already, I’ll really be working on getting the blend right on the right side and seeing what works with the bangs.

That first snip, seeing daylight instead of hair in front of my eyes was a surprise, but from there, he worked efficiently, snipping across a line make the diagonals symmetrical, repeat. Then he combed the remaining hair over and did a little clipper over comb work on that right side. My bangs were about as long as that last guy’s. He showed me that I could let the bangs sort of flop forward if I wanted to be ‘informal.’ Then he took some kind of gel and covered all the remaining hair into the new style. I looked at myself and was of two minds. This was a great haircut. But the top was still pretty long. The sides had the crisp military look to them, but the top was very stylish. He showed me the bare, clean back of my head, just a hint of where there had been hair. I thanked him, tipped him well, and left the shop.

When I got home, my girlfriend absolutely loved the cut. I said, ‘it’s not as short on top as I was going to go, but it looks good, right?"

She replied that I never had a better cut and she couldn’t wait to hear what people at work said. Well, Monday came and the office was "abuzz" about my major haircut. Almost everybody loved it and urged me to keep it short. That week went fast and we were on the plane to Thailand before I knew it. After about three days of our holiday, I was looking in the mirror and was a little disappointed to see how fast the sides were darkening. You don’t notice it with long hair, but you do see it when you are going from nearly nothing! We took the courtesy bus from the resort into town fairly early that day. We were having a great time tasting local food and looking at all the shops and temples. It seemed that everywhere I looked, though, I was noticing barbers, street barbers, barbers working out of stall, and full blown barber shops. My girlfriend is very observant and said to me, "you are checking out every barber we pass. Do want to get your haircut shorter. I don’t mind, this is your vacation too, you know."

I replied that I didn’t necessarily want it shorter, but I was thinking of seeing if I could get the sides and back cleaned up. We decided that she would go back to the resort and get a massage while I sought out a local barber. I re-traced our walk and finally decided on a shop that had advertising in English and Thai. I went in and asked the barber if I could get the sides cleaned up, motioning with my hands like a clipper going up the sides and back. He said in heavily accented English, "I give you good clean cut. You will like good for American guy, but he pronounced the "g" softly like in ‘George." He gave me a price that included a face shave and head massage that was less than I would have paid for a trim at home!

After he caped me up, he combed my hair down. As I was waiting to hear the hum of the clippers, instead, he was in front of me with his comb and scissors and proceeded to chop my bangs off high ton my forehead and before I could even catch my breath, he was reducing the length on top to maybe an inch and a half. "See," he said, good Guy haircut. "Oh shoot," I said to myself, "he isn’t saying ‘guy,’ he is saying G.I.’ He thought I was military and would like a short military cut. It was too late now, so I just sat there and enjoyed the experience. He shaved the sides and back with a new blade and the top ended up looking like that guy I had seen back at National Airport, white walls and a waxed bumper of hair up front. The face shave was exquisite and the head massage really stimulated my brain. I thanked him, gave him a big tip, and asked him about the wax. He gave he a tube for about one dollar, American. I hailed a taxi and couldn’t wait to see what my girlfriend would say.

"Well," she said, "you finally went for it. It is severe, but you look so hot, I want to jump your bones right now." And she did. As the vacation continued, I came to really like my new haircut. In fact, the last day, I went back to the barber for a fresh Thai haircut. This one took folks some getting used to. I finally let it grow in to a short "regular" when the weather gets nippy, but once the Cherry Blossoms bloom in DC, I’m back at the barber getting my "short, tight Ivy." In fact, we named our first daughter Ivy when she came along in December after that first Cherry Blossom Season cut.

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