HAIRSHIRT
Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery
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HAIRSHIRT Helping You Get the Most Out of Your Misery |
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Wednesday, November 08, 2006Hold on Tight, We'll Muddle Through
I should be so very, very happy right now. The Democrats did basically everything they had to do, gaining control of the house and getting within a contentious recount away from controlling the Senate, too. Then--the cherry on top of the election ice cream sundae--the evil fuckbag whose policy has gotten so many young Americans killed is forced out of office.
Why, then, you might ask, am I not tap-dancing in a bathtub filled with rice pudding? Well, I'll tell ya: I got a shitty haircut the other day. I'd gone without a haircut since...January? Seriously, it'd been a long fucking time and I was looking pretty shaggy. In fact, I was looking kind of like Shaggy. Zoinks, indeed. So finally, on Sunday, I went to the place I've gone for the last several years, which has always been very reliable. I didn't get my usual guy, 'cause I walked in at the last minute and just accepted whoever they threw at me. I told this guy (we'll call him Stinky, 'cause he had some B.O. going on) that I wanted to keep the length, as my wife always hates it when she's used to me with longish hair and then I get sick of it and hack it all off. I said, "I want to keep the length, but I want to trim it a bit and thin it out so it lays better." That's not too tricky, is it? I mean, really, that's a fairly simple set of instructions. So Stinky straps me into the drop cloth and starts snipping away, leaning over me a few times and very nearly knocking me unconscious with his musky pits. He's making with the lamest small talk I've ever heard. The kind where the guy isn't actually listening to a goddamn thing I'm saying and I could probably slip in something like, "I butchered two nuns last night and made whoopie with their moldering corpses" without him batting an eye. About three minutes later, before I really know what the hell's going on, he's spinning me around and showing me the back in the mirror. (I've gotta stop here to say I'm never a big fan of being given a hand-held mirror so that I can look in the other mirror and see what the back of my head looks like. It just seems wrong, like I'm looking into some fifth dimension and seeing my evil twin.) I'm not, at this point, liking what I see in the mirror, but he's definitely indicated that his work is done and I should leave now. See, most every time I get a haircut, I don't like it when I leave the place. It's different than how it was and it's never precisely what I pictured in my head. And so I nod and say, "That looks great" and I leave and I get used to it. Usually, I end up liking it just fine.  But not this time. This time, the dude did five minutes of work and it shows. He trimmed the back of my hair and that was basically it. He left it long on the sides and the front. He left me basically looking like a One Day at a Time-era Bonnie Franklin. (see right) One time, years and years ago, I stood up for myself at a barbershop. The guy did a sucky fucking job and I said, "That's not good. Please just cut it off." The guy pissed and moaned and griped that he should charge me for two haircuts. And keep in mind the guy is swinging a pair of scissors around my head. Since then, I've always thought twice about saying, "Please sir, I want some more hair cut off." And I've usually been okay in the end. But this haircut goes beyond bad. My wife seems to feel that I look like Emo Phillips. I can't look at myself in the mirror. So now I'm faced with the decision of whether to shell out another thirty bucks to get it done right or to just ride it out until it grows back into a shape I can hack. Neither option exactly appeals to me. I've actually considered just going at it myself with my beard trimmer. Maybe I'll just wear a hat for the next six months. Feh. EDIT: It's now seven-thirtyish on Friday and I can breathe a big ol' sigh of relief. I bit the bullet and went back in to the salon for a re-cut, scheduling it this time with my regular guy. He fixed it up real good and I wasn't even charged. I did pay, though, in mortification, as the guy who'd cut my hair on Sunday was there and recognized me. I was completely embarrassed. I told him that he'd done a fine job, but that my wife hadn't liked what I'd had him do with it. Sorry, honey. I've used you to deflect guilt. It's a major relief not to have to do a shudder-take every fucking time I look in a mirror.
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