Short Cuts

Along with my second year at university commencing soon, living in a new house with new people I decided that I should get my hair cut. It had grown far too long to control, resembling a secret garden; To comb back ones fringe one could see a small gate and a disabled boy learning to walk with assistance from a rather pushy girl. It was high time to get my hair cut. I have always tended to get my hair cut when I wanted a change. I sometimes feel that something has to give and it is only then when I decide that I should let someone else loose on my curls and square me up a new look.

This morning bought me to Johnny, a tattooed guy in blue shirt working in a three year old, retro barber store. The store looked nice, he was not too bad so I thought things should go ahead ok.

I sat there while he quizzed me on English, assuming I take an active interest in my degree to the point where I am well versed in all literature, hair fell over my face and to my lap and Johnny learnt nothing he didn't already know. When conversation dried up I found myself falling into a horrible trap. Yet again I have some how managed to structure a question where there was no way I could stop asking it or not offend him. "Have you ever started cutting someone's hair and feel that nothing is going right, the more you cut the worse it goes." Could I have offended him more? The whole time I was asking I was just thinking more and more that I was possibly talking about what he was doing to my hair. I extended the question, including lines like "In you whole time as a hair dresser" and "that you may have had done to yourself" However he was near the completion of my hair and I kept looking at mine. I feared that he would be thinking that I was projecting that question in the case of me thinking that his cutting skills were not up to much.

Admittedly, I was thinking that I was looking a little bit too much like Dr Spock for comfort, I was two pointy ears away from being from a galaxy far far away. I just didn't want him to think that I was talking about his skills.

Having defended himself whilst looking a little more the offended, the conversation hit a sticky point. I tried to more it on talking about my own hair experiences. Most of which in hindsight I wish I had had the confidence to turn around and tell these hair dressers that I looked like a dick.

This got me thinking. I started to wheel back through the distressed faces found commonly in Jehovah's witness promotional leaflets depicting people looking for answers. The faces that looked back at me in the mirror, unable to comprehend what had materialised on my head.

I think back to when I was at secondary school and I had gone to a hair dressers in the city that seemed to look all hot and was always busy. I had recently gotten an earring put in my ear to make me look a little alternative, however I had long curly hair down to my shoulders. The woman who cut my hair must have only ever experienced cutting women's hair, women who are, well, lets say, no longer thirty. I left that hair dressers at a pace, having parted with twenty two pounds sterling in exchange for a bob. It curled neatly round at the ends to just below my chin. Very pretty for a girl at bible class, but for me, it looked like I was suffering some sort of gender identity crisis.

I often found that hairdressers are often a good prediction for how the hair they cut will turn out. Take last year for example. Lulled in by the 12% student discount I found myself looking at the mirrored image of a fatty muscled tattooed beast of a man, whom at some point had had to breath through a tube through his neck. I kept having visions that the hole would open up to blow the hair away from my ears as he trimmed round them. The resulting hair cut is what was branded as the new look for hedgerowsexual monthly, I looked like I had had myself taylor made to look like I had been dragged through a hedge row backwards. Minus a few twigs and greenfly, I looked a treat.

As a kid, I waited over an hour in the barber store, waiting to have my hair cut. The bloke to have his hair cut before me has the most horrible scaly flakey scalp which could be seen dusting a trail behind him. Hair seemed to break through the skin like a weed through poured concrete, leaving that trademark destruction in the upper demis. Having seen this destruction aggravated by a comb and a pair of scissors followed my clippers, I felt very sure that I really did not want to have my hair cut there. Only when I had the hair catch-cloth draped around me, sitting on the highchair, looking like a hobbit, did I say 'I don't really want to have it done'. Distress from my farther. Disappointment from a lost sale from the barber. I allowed my hair to grow out nicely down my back and refused to have it cut for three years.

The difficult thing about getting ones hair cut is that you have to get it done at some point, unless you are terrified of loosing your strength. It is a task you can not do yourself and the result is something you have to live with for at least a month. Its putting your life and reputation in someone else's hands and one misguided comment can lend itself to you looking outlandish. There are some things in life where you wish you could just cut it out.