I’m not sure if this is a new concept or not but I am going to try to document a progression in haircut adventures as I’m experiencing them. Since I just came up with this idea, there will be some catching up to do to bring the story current. I would also invite you to give me suggestions and ideas of what to do next…

 

It wasn’t the best of ideas… I had just finished a wonderful day of sex play with my girlfriend and was heading home for the evening. She had been sick with this horrible H1N1 virus for some time and had finally mostly recovered. Because of the flu we had tabled our normal Christmas and New Year’s time together and this January 2 was to be the “make up for lost time” day.

We had most certainly made up for lost time with a Mimosa and sex filled day so when it was time to go home I was still a little tiny bit tipsy and was experiencing a euphoric adrenalin/endorphin high. How, how, how could I extend this feeling and keep the high going? Ah yes, the Vietnamese barber shop was on the way home. Just for background, this was the shop where I had experienced several flattops, one high and tight and even a head shave.  The one and only definite guarantee about the lady barbers in this shop is the promise that your hair will always come out shorter than you planned.

A stop at the Vietnamese barber shop was just the thing to keep the day’s roller coaster going for just a little longer. But there was a problem… My girlfriend had wanted me to keep my hair a little longer for some time now and it was just getting to the length she liked. To make matters worse, earlier, in the heat of sexual passion, I had all but promised to let my hair grow until my girlfriend told me a haircut was OK. My little compulsion was just about to run me down the tracks to a train wreck with my girlfriend’s wishes. This is not usually a good thing if I wanted her to do the things I like her to do… Some of those things are in bed, but one of the big ones is keeping her hair short and letting me direct how it’s cut.

I almost managed to pass by the shop and avert a possible disaster but at the last possible minute I made the u-turn and swung back into the parking lot.

The shop was normally open till about 7:00 on Saturdays and my watch told me it was almost 6:30. Maybe they would turn me away, saying that they closing up because it had been slow that day and all their tools were already put away. No such luck…

You have to understand that the pull of a possibly unknown outcome at the barber shop is one of the most irresistible forces in my universe. Once the tractor beam locks on I am drawn like the proverbial moth to a flame. Opening the door of the shop I noted that it was completely empty except for the barbers. The scent of the shop was intoxicating; Clubman talc and hair tonic, clipper oil, etc. One of the ladies was working on some kind of ledger but the other one beckoned me like a Siren to the rocky shore of the barber chair. I was completely helpless to resist. I managed the 5 shaky steps, climbed up and settled in to meet my fate, whatever it would be.

“How you?”, she said. “Hair looks pretty long!” As she unfurled the drape around me and fastened it tightly at my nape I knew it was too late to turn back. The cape felt like so many ropes tying me to the chair and sealing what was to happen next.

“What you want do today?” “Just a trim”; I answered.

I kind of expected that she would use the scissors but instead I heard the snap of an Oster 76 blade change, the click of the power switch and the distinctive whir of the motor. “Head down;” she said and the clippers touched metal to skin at my nape and lifted up into the thick brown hair there. The first clump fell from the blade teeth and rolled down the cape toward the floor. As I watched the hair I knew I was in deep trouble. My heart was pounding and I was cursing my compulsion to myself. For those of you who have never felt them, the Osters have this wonderful soothing sensation of skin tingling vibration that just feels way too gentle to be stripping the hair away like they do. They also seem to have some kind of cooling mechanism that gently blows air as they move through your hair. She proceeded to mow the hair from the back of my head like a championship green on a golf course. I could feel the tingle of the short clippered hairs as she ran them over and over the same spot to make sure every hair was uniformly clippered. I could feel the air on my neck that I hadn’t felt when I walked into the shop.

The clippering of the back of my hair seemed to go on forever. The delicious yet stomach turning sensation of the hair being systematically stripped off and falling on my shoulders, into my lap and onto the floor. She stopped briefly to turn around and change blades and I quickly reached out from under the cape to feel the area she had worked on so intently. “Oh shit!;” I thought to myself. This was going to be a seriously short haircut. How am I going to explain this to my girlfriend? “We cleaning you up real good;” she said.

I suppose at this point I could have minimized the damage but truthfully I was hypnotized by the sensations of the haircut I was getting. The rhythm of the hair being clipped and falling on the cape and then rolling off onto the floor was intoxicating.  “We get this hair off your ears;” she said as she mowed a bristly path right around my left ear.  After several passes to make sure no long hairs had escaped on the left, she switched to the right side and dumped a mound of hair into my lap. Glancing up I could see a little trace of whitewalls poking through on the sides and thought of my girlfriend again. Crap!

She finished off the sides quickly and put down the clippers in favor of a comb and scissors. She began to spray my hair down with water and then comb it straight back. And then starting at the front she began to gather it up in the comb and proceeded to reduce the 5″ by half. Hair rained down all around punctuated by the snick, snick, snick of the scissors. I heard the clumps of wet hair falling onto the cape. Crap, crap, crap!!!

After she had reduced the top to a nice, neat 2 ½” she turned to the counter and picked up another of her favorite tools. That’s right, the thinning shears! She flew around my head lifting with the comb and slicing into the remaining hair and thinning it to blend the clipper line with the scissor. An amazing amount of hair was still falling and what was left behind was lying pretty flat and lifeless. I was speechless and completely frozen in the chair. I was in the throes of a wild roller coaster of emotions that had indeed extended the flow of adrenalin and endorphins.

She ruffled her fingers through my hair and used the blow dryer to blow away as many of the loose, cut strands as she could. She then began to comb through my much shorter hair and I could feel how much of it was gone. There was little resistance to the comb as she made a circle around me checking her work.

She took the Clubman Tonic from the counter and dashed a generous amount in her hand. The air filled with its scent as she applied it to my head and proceeded to give me a rough scalp massage. It felt great. Too soon that part was over and she once again went to work with the comb wrestling my new “short back and sides” into a serious right part with a little quiff at the front. Oh man my hair was short! My stomach did a flip as she removed the cape and the tissue from around my neck letting what looked like a whole head of hair tumble to the ground. I followed her numbly to the cash register and paid for my $8.00 haircut with a $10.00 bill while managing to croak out; “keep the change.” I know, I know, why would I give a tip to a person who had completely ignored my instructions? Just think how much I would have paid at the local amusement park to get the same rush!

As I
got into my car, I reached up and felt the newly tapered nape of my neck… bristly short… I picked up my cell and dialed my girlfriend. “Hi, I wanted to let you know that I stopped at VietNam (our name for this barbershop) and had a trim up (liar, liar).” “Ooohhh you are in trouble now;” she said. (Just wait till you actually see it, I thought to myself)

To be continued…