The Long-Haired Customer by Deke Cutter

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The beginning of this story is true, I was the kid waiting for a haircut. But the long haired fellow didn’t wait and get a haircut. So, most of this is pure fiction of "what if the long haired guy had stayed.

It was a late afternoon in the winter and the skies were already starting to darken. The year was 1967. I had been doing the young teen boy thing of trying to avoid haircuts so that I could look cool like the in-crowd. My mother had finally laid down the law and ordered me to "get it cut today, or I’ll take you to get a "teddy bear" tomorrow. "Teddy bear" was a colloquial term my mom used for a boxy flat top. It has pretty much disappeared as a term today. Anyway, I headed to the barbershop, just a few streets away.

The man that had cut my hair for most of my young life had seen the changes coming and sold his shop, moving to Florida. The new barber, I’ll call him Frank, but I cannot for the life of me remember his name, was very good and would give a trim if requested, but did not like "long hair," (i.e., over the ears and collar long bangs-whether swept back or hanging in the face). Looking back on it now, I think he got a good year or so in after he took over from Tony, but more of Tony’s clientele were getting fewer haircuts and his business must have suffered.

Anyway, I was in one of metal armed chairs with the seat and backrest covered in that red plastic material. I was reading something from one of the magazines that the shop always had. It had gradually become dark, as I waited for the Frank to finish the haircut of the gentleman ahead of me. The door to the shop opened and a man with swept back black hair came in and asked how long a wait it would be. Frank pointed to the man in the chair and then to me and said, maybe half an hour. I saw by the look on the man’s face, that this was too long, so I spoke up and said, "Frank, he can go ahead of me, I have plenty of time before my dad gets home and gets cleaned up for dinner. Frank asked if I was sure, I shook my head affirmatively and the man removed his trench coat and sat down. Frank finished up the typical men’s haircut on the man in the chair and called the long-haired man to the chair.

"I have to get this hair trimmed and neatened up a bit. My boss has been on my to do so. He threatened me with a suspension without pay if I don’t arrive tomorrow with a haircut."

Frank caped him up and then said to him. What’s your name? You live around here."

My name? Its Jeffrey, Jeffrey Conroy. I live way on the other side of town, but I pass here on my way to work."

"First of all, you come in here with hair that long, Jeffrey, I charge you ten dollars." [That was twice the price charged and upwards of $90 in today’s money.] The man looked surprised, but Frank wasn’t done. "You long hair guys come to the barber less, your hair takes longer to cut, barbers are closing all over the place. You come to my barbershop; you get a real haircut. if you leave now, you won’t get to another barber before they close for the night."

I was watching this over the top of my magazine and thought the guy might get up and leave. "Look sir," the guy in the chair said, "please, I only really need a trim to satisfy my boss. The guys at work will all make fun of me if I come in with a short haircut."

"Oh, you think I am going to make you look so funny people will laugh at you?" He pointed at me, "You think he, his father, his brother, his uncles come to me for funny haircuts?"

"N-n-no sir, that is not what I mean."

"So, what do you mean? You think long hair like this is manly? You think our boys fighting in Vietnam have long hair like you? Did you serve in the armed forces?"

"No sir, I am 4F. my bone spurs meant I could not serve." [4F is a Selective Service Classifications that means the person is unfit to serve.]

"Bone spurs! What happened, did your father get some fancy doctor to write you that diagnosis?" The young man’s blush, turning his entire face bright red, confirmed the barber’s inference.

Frank removed a comb from the jar of blue Barbicide and began to comb the long hair straight down giving the man in the chair a comical appearance. The forelock fell almost to his chin. Turning the chair so that if faced the front window of the shop, without further ado, Frank cut the long bangs, straight across at the mid-forehead level, mumbling what sounded to me like ‘I’ll give you bone spurs.’ Before his client had a chance to react, Frank had cut around the fellow’s head, completely uncovering his ears. He continued his monologue saying ‘perfectly good ears, they don’t stick, not too big. These should be on view.’

I could only see the Jeffey’s side view, but it looked to my eyes like tears were welling in his eyes. The damage done to his hair was beyond repair. Finally, in a whining voice that even annoyed me, he said to Frank, "please not too short, I am begging you."

Frank must have seen what I saw and said to Jeffrey, "are those tears? You big sissy, it is just a haircut. Buck up or I will give you a baldy sour!" This caught my attention because my best friend had been convinced by his barber to get a baldy sour two years ago at the start of little league football season. He’s blonde and looked completely hairless with the cut. The client took in a breath and said, "I’m sorry, I’ll do better. I just didn’t want to have short hair."

"Well, ‘Mr, Draft Dodger,’ I am going to give you a cut that will help you grow up. You are getting a haircut like I give young men who joined the National Guard. They live their lives very well with short haircuts and manage to survive any nasty comments they may hear. This haircut will toughen you up." Frank then put his shears down and picked up his clippers. He began the process of tapering Jeffrey’s hair, taking the taper midway between the top of the ear and the part line. Similarly, the taper reached above the ears in the back. Frank then went to work on the longer top hair, using clipper over comb to both shorten and thin the hair out two inches behind the front hairline. He then switched to his thinning shear to lessen the density of the bangs. The coup de grace was cutting the wispy remaining bangs on an angle. I couldn’t believe that I was seeing this. This was almost as good as when one of the guys at school’s mother forced him to go from a Beatles cut to a crewcut for punishment for not doing chores and I was there to watch it. The next day, walking to school I ran into him, and he said, "Hey, it’s the last guy to see me with long hair."

Jeffrey’s sideburns reached the bottom of his ears. I noticed Frank hadn’t cut them off yet. This was about to change with "the unkindest cut of all." Frank removed the guard he had last used and proceeded to obliterate each of the Jeffrey’s sideburns to just even with the ear opening. By now, Jeffrey sat with a dejected look of resignation on his face. Frank then cleaned up the edges with warm shaving cream and a well-stropped straight razor. He then combed the short, neat haircut, making sure the part on the left was razor straight and the shortened hair on top lay flat against his scalp. Frank turned the chair to face the mirror and said, "Jeffrey, this a good haircut for you and I expect you back monthly or else, I might have to contact the draft board about those ‘bone spurs." That is one of the weakest excuses I ever heard. One of my customers told me that they are so desperate for soldiers that the the hearing test he got at his physical involved a sergeant on one side of the room yelling ‘hey.’ If the recruit looked in his direction he passed. The eye test had the same sergeant wave at a recruit and if the recruit acknowledged the wave, he passed. You know why they have to do things like that? Because guys like you get "bone spurs deferments."

Jeffrey got out of the chair, staring morosely at all of his former glory littering the floor around the chair. He gave Frank ten dollars and a one dollar tip and left the shop, looking like he was in shock.

Frank then turned to me and said, "OK kid, your turn in the chair." My head was in a whirl. I was still very much embarrassed by my interest in short haircuts. At 14, I didn’t even know the word ‘fetish.’ I did know, however, that I had this kink. I also knew that there were already girls at school who were parsing me into the uncool group because of my conservative clothes and hair on the shorter side of long. So much changed in an instant. The girls at the pool last summer didn’t seem to mind my haircut, but they liked my cool jams that I wore to the pool. But in the fall, when school started so many of the cool guys had grown their hair over the summer. Not an option for me. After watching poor Jeffrey get scalped, I was torn. Boy, would I like to get a shearing like that, but I knew better than to voluntarily commit Junior High ‘social suicide.’ However, I knew I’d be working for my dad in the summer, and I could have an excuse for going pretty short. But for now, safe rather than sorry.

"I just need it cleaned up around the ears and back and just take a little off the top."

Frank asked, "how’s your father?" Then he combed my hair, straightening the part that was a bit wonky, and then sprayed my hair with some water and combed it again. He was soon into his routine of cutting my hair and asking and answering questions, bragging about his friends who were ‘hairdressers and barbers to the stars.’ He would be sure to tell me to watch a particular show because his friend would be in the credits. My haircuts didn’t take very long because, as I’ve stated, my hair never was allowed to get very long. But, as I said, Frank did a good job and I left with a haircut that would not get me into any kind of big ridiculing at school. When I got home, neither parent reacted negatively, so I was safe.

Four months passed and the end of the school year was near. I had managed to stretch my haircut visits to 6 weeks or so and convinced Frank to go easy on me. It was a week before school ended and my mother told me it was time for a haircut. I was going to be her to let me wait until school ended but decided to go ahead. I had seen a tv show the night before that had a diver on. He had discovered some old Spanish shipwreck and found a fortune in it. He had an unusually short haircut for the times. It was something like what we might call an Ivy League cut, but the sides did not show a lot of skin, though they were clearly clipper short. The top was about an inch and a half long with a bumper brushed up in the front. I desperately wanted to get that cut after school was out but didn’t want to wait until the middle of summer, if I just got my ‘regular’ today. I headed to the shop, not sure what I would do.

When I arrived, Frank’s chair was open so, I sat down. As he was caping me up, I asked him if Jeffrey had returned to maintain his short haircut. Frank laughed and said that he had, right on schedule. "He even had to thank me. He said his boss liked the haircut and told him, he expected him to keep it like that in the future. He told me I probably saved his job. It turns out, his boss was so happy about the haircut that he came to see me and told me to keep Jeffrey looking neat. So, just the usual for you today?"

"Well," I gulped, I was thinking of getting a shorter haircut for the summer. I’m ‘gonna’ be working for my dad three days a week after school gets out and you know, it hot sweaty work. Dad really likes short haircuts on young guys, so I thought I might surprise him. I pointed to the ‘Princeton haircut’ on the chart and said, sort of like that." I was expecting some pushback because he was known to ask kids if their father knew if they asked for a change. But instead, he just went to work. I could not believe all the hair that came off the sides and back as he moved the clippers around my head. He was pretty gentle and precise on top. He cut the length down but left the bulk because my wavy hair wasn’t that thick. The trim of my bangs was a little scary because they were cut shot enough that there would be no going back from this style for over a month, I figured. But I hoped it would grow enough to be back to ‘normal’ for school in September. I couldn’t really grow very convincing sideburns yet, so he just cleaned up the sides and back, didn’t exaggerate the arches or anything. He was good like that. When I looked in the mirror, I liked what I saw, but dreaded going to school for the last week before Summer. My dad loved the cut on me. He was really thrilled.

Strangely enough, my mother was less effusive. In fact I heard telling our neighbor, "most people are dealing with long hair," and pointing at me across the backyard, I am dealing with this." I just ignored it and put it into my mental filing cabinet for when it came time to grow it during school. There wasn’t as much negative feedback at school. A couple of other guys came in that week with even more significant haircuts than me because they had summer jobs and their parents forced them to get ahead of it. One kid said to me, "so have you given up the fight too?" He always had a vey neat short regular haircut. I explained about making my dad happy. He replied that even though most kids thought he stood out with his short hair, he liked not getting the hassle from his father. And that was basically it. I loved that haircut. Of course, I did not keep it. My hair grew out nicely and I went back to a slightly fuller, slightly longer haircut. It wasn’t until another year passed that as I faced another summer in the hot sun, that I went to another barber and got another summer scalping. That was to be my last short haircut for decades!

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