The Ambiguously Gay Barber

When the mystery was solved my ego rocketed skyward, a steroidal geyser exploding with arrogance and cocksure bravado. Never had a question embedded itself in my skull for such a lengthy period, wherein its answer changed monthly. There was no algorithmic solution. No pattern in the randomness. No troop of idiot savants to rent for a calculated explanation. Only with the passing of time would the yoke of sleepless nights and unfocussed mornings lift forever.

In those cloudier days, the enigma cloaking my barber’s sexual preference spawned endless debate; dissected asininely as if the balance of the free world lay in its resolution. This was also a topic in which my wife had zero interest discussing, despite my placing it on par with the banking collapse, evolution, or the annoying ubiquity of Ryan Seacrest.

For every shearing administered in pink plaid, the next was performed in handsome khaki. During certain appointments, I mulled sadly amongst septuagenarians, believing that a once sociable barber shop had degenerated into a convalescent beauty parlor, shrinking my testicles with each visit. Other days, I listened to exhaustive analysis of Giants games peppered with masculine bluster. In other words, the man who shaved my sides and thinned out the top, no gel, easily flirted with re-coifed helmet heads and busted balls with sports enthusiasts in alternating breaths. The son of a bitch was purposely keeping me off-kilter. Until I figured him out.

He was gay. Gay as the happiest man to have ever fluttered into Manhattan’s Continental Baths to catch a Bette Midler concert and, on exceptional evenings, a venereal disease. For $15 plus tip, he was (and is) one of the most important gentlemen callers in my life. And despite the uncertain waffling between fabulous geriatric bouffants and utilitarian cut-and-shaves, I was thrilled to have solved the gender preference puzzle. No amount of gridiron banter would ever mask the Saturday morning where my hirsute hero donned, quite bizarrely, a full length silk robe; content to prance about his salon like some oily lounge lizard engaged in bad dinner theater. Yes, the mystery was solved with one egregious wardrobe malfunction. Without coffee, I might have assumed I’d mistakenly wandered into the Playboy Mansion to convene with Hef, receiving a smart trim by the randy mogul while enjoying the pleasures of silicone. Except, of course, this tiny shoebox next to an A&P supermarket is far from a tropical paradise, and the blue haired darlings who comprise over ¾ of the customer base are not the types I enjoy seeing stripped of their house coats.

Things weren’t always like this. The trappings of my first barber shop – an Italian safe house of ersatz wood paneling, splashed with fading posters of outmoded hair styles and Roman panoramas – attracted slovenly Mafioso aspirants who thumbed through The Oggi newspaper and spoke, argumentatively, in loud staccato bursts. If you could tolerate the interspersion of opera and easy listening dreck, took pleasure in receiving subpar haircuts which hearkened back to Wally and Beaver, and enjoyed a few cranial daubs of Clubman tonic, you were welcome to loiter in the cheap plastic seats from breakfast through dinner (or until you keeled over, or got shot, or just plain died of boredom). And if you grew tired of that, the crumbling racetrack – a once thriving establishment of vice and back room arm breaking – was located within walking distance. Of course, if you were wearing a silk robe in that neighborhood, you’d better have been carrying a concealed tire iron.

* * * * *

Addendum: As I learned in subsequent years, my barber was gay, but strictly in the original parlance of that term: merry, alive, exuberant. No ankles had ever been grabbed, no pillows bitten, occasional chickens choked, but certainly not in the shadows of a drag cabaret. In fact, he boasted a wife and kids, one of whom had recently married. The clues were there, and yet they weren’t. Assumptions will often backfire. Stereotypes will disappoint. If I gained anything from my rash misjudgment, it was the knowledge that one can confidently stroll a large town dressed as a pornographic tycoon, yet live a life as mundane as my own, behind closed doors. A little finesse keeps things interesting, at least in the ambiguous sense.

Either that, or his wife fell behind on the laundry.

And When You See My Toupee, You'll Know I'm An Asshole

Me: Once you start thinning up top, you’ve got to cut the hair short immediately.
Friend: That’s what you’d do?
Me: Sure, first I’d cut it short, then eventually shave it off and grow the goatee thicker.
Friend: Really?
Me: Oh, you have to. Without the goatee, people would think I’d contracted cancer.
Friend: Never liked the goatee. You can’t smile with one. If you do, it detracts from the bad-ass look.
Me: Yeah but the comb-over is disastrous. Bald with goatee is the only alternative.
Friend: (long pause) Eh, I think I’d go toupee.
Me: (alarmed) Toupee! Really! You wouldn’t buzz it short?
Friend: (nodding) Nah, I’d definitely go toupee.

The gentleman in the above conversation is educated. Yet he speaks of toupees with great enthusiasm, the kind generally reserved for extolling Prometheus’ gift of fire, the marvel of the wheel, or the delight in watching apes use tools. Tell us, o sage, why any Gen X’er would voluntarily staple, glue, or snap a raccoon hide to his dome without the slightest tinge of hipster irony. It’s less a matter of whether the rodent is half-dead or wounded while it lies atop your skull – sniffing the air while fruitlessly attempting escape – but more an indiscretion of the coif not seen since Phil Spector stuck his licked finger in an electrical socket. Said differently, nothing moves an army of PETA hippies from a cockfight protest to your front stoop faster than a cranial refitting at the taxidermist.

I know what you’re thinking. No one skins a beaver for carpet when they can purchase a synthetic rug, or pave their dome with the real stuff (i.e. a functional weave harvested from the very un-functional fur on one’s ass). But unless you’re attempting coitus in the bathrooms of Atlantic City casino busses, befouling a variety of blue-haired menopausal women who think you’re the second coming of an uber-sexed Tom Jones, anything plugged or stapled to that crown should be shed as quickly as Michael Bolton’s old ponytail. Ranked in the proud company of leisure suits, dickeys, and the Gibb Brothers, the toupee has been passé since the Schlitz-fueled Disco Sucks riots at Comiskey Park. Put simply, the man favoring a faux Blagojevich pelt is the man diddling himself in your supermarket produce aisle. And the man diddling himself is most likely on a sex offender registry somewhere, revving his engine outside schoolyards with a trunk-load of Pez dispensers. To avoid this fate, The Bastard recommends an electric clipper set as an alternative to the child molestation van (the one with the single teardrop window) that you’ll be forced to buy after succumbing to the headstrong fashion sins of 1975.

Of course, toupee amnesty is granted for those at the upper end of the baby boomer spectrum, not to mention the incontinent senior population and those suffering from dementia. If grandpa wants to use the extra Poligrip to fasten a strip of fleece over his head, then he’s climbed enough mountains to have earned that privilege. But you, if you’re watching raccoons scamper across the driveway and thinking “luxuriant wig” instead of “cover the garbage can,” I recommend psychiatric analysis. Or full residency in the casino bus bathroom.

The Return of Licehead

What is it about advertising one’s status on Facebook that elicits the most hackneyed minutiae, drooling from the minds of dunderheads and intelligentsia alike? Somehow the empowering web – once robust tool of educators and military men – has made armchair idiots of us all. Nothing short of a week-long stint in the orgasmatron could presumably trump the joys we hype like, say, “cooking rice” or “watching a slasher flick,” emblazoned in proud bold text on our profile pages. With varying degree, many friends (ahem, acquaintances) slumming in the social network ghetto have felt compelled to tout the banalities of shopping, vacation, neighborhood voyeurism, or whatever; reduced to a class of special needs children struggling with the details of a "getting to know me" introduction.

Approaching this in my congenial manner, I quickly flirted with the shameless MVD Is… “dealing with a terrible pornography addiction,” before mulling over the slightly more muted and relatively concise “smoking crack.” Better sense taking hold – visualizing a potential DEA raid or a Christian fundamentalist torching of this love den – my end result was the comparatively innocuous: “contemplating a shower and full delousing.” Within minutes, several contacts believed (a) I’d been hanging with the dregs of society while rubbing against feral animals and emptying flea traps over my head, and (b) I am somehow proud to have insects living and breeding in my hair as a result of some very poor decisions. If the rumors are even half true about employers scanning the internet for drunken (or naked or breast feeding) photos and imprudent postings, I’m going to have one hell of a time re-entering the working class tagged as some reckless untrustworthy licebag.

And suddenly I’m that child ruthlessly yanked out of class by the school nurse, immediately following the dreaded popsicle-stick hair test. Seconds later, I’ve assumed my seat of shame next to the kid with the stinky locker (the one that reeks like fromage), the chess club (all of ‘em), and the immigrant from some God forsaken backwater who buys his friends with pesos. Yup, this is fantastic company, stewing at that last cafeteria table with a select handful of serial masturbators, and just waiting to get my ass kicked and lunch stolen, again and again and again. Groundhog Day ad infinitum. Good thing I can hold my own in chess.

Even if I did have lice, why the cold shoulder? Would you detest me if I had to soak my head in bleach for four hours a day and burn my clothing, or set ablaze my overpriced home – my pride and joy, shelter to my family for which I slaved mercilessly in the trenches to marginally afford – in the wake of its newfound uninsurable status? What if my wife made me sleep in the car for months? It’s only a coupe. And bad hygiene aside, this isn’t a societal gaffe in the magnitude of Ozzy Osbourne’s crazy train diet of birds, or worse, Kim Thayil’s predisposition to feast on children. Lice happens. Truth be told, I did find my entire online exchange rather humorous until a buddy’s wife reminded me, and might I say quite sternly and publically, that I was “in her car” and “around her children” very recently, thus demanding an immediate admission of infestation, hat in hand. In other words, she was no more than seconds away from trucking over to the 24 hour Costco for a six-pack of RID shampoo. Unbeknownst to them, bathtime for those kids was about to take a dire turn into uncharted waters. And as much as I’d love to keep stirring the pot, to hold that joke in my back pocket for another day, I do like her husband and would hate to hear that he’d been forcibly shorn of all hair. All hair. You see where we’re going with this. Not good. So I came clean.

Oh, and the “soul patch” I’ve grown does not automatically = gay porn, as another poster so broodingly opined. Once again, Facebook exacts its revenge on the innocent. Just so we understand each other completely, if you happen to catch me on your DVR in those less noble of circumstances, (a) please don’t post to YouTube (recall I’m still searching for employment), and (b) stop recording gay porn. Immediately. After all, I most likely know your spouse. Ya damn filthy pervert.

S.O.S. To The World

The 2009 Golden Globes marked the disquieting re-appearance of Sting – master of pretention, occasional jazz bullshitter, and reluctant Police vocalist (yes, money talks) – modeling an uncomfortable beard. Uncomfortable for his audience, it should be clarified. And in fairness, I’m not making comparisons to the questionable panache of Rutherford B. Hayes, who sported a gnarled bird’s nest on his face while proudly serving in the Oval Office, mouth buried beneath years of knotty twine, happily wearing the sandwich crumbs of a decade; but for those who know Mr. Sumner as a fair-haired musician famous for his ode to prostitution, not to mention as an epic sexual deity to be feared by mortals and porn stars, this new adventure down the hirsute highway seemed to raise more than a few eyebrows in the Beverly Hilton.

Bizarrely, the new carpet was dyed a powerful black, along with the rest of his thinning mane. And when I say black, understand that I mean black as fuck, matte finish. As in Just For Men Black As Fuck, or Grecian Formula Machine Shop Blend. You know, the one that requires a haz-mat license at point of purchase (ask for it behind the spray paint cage). Squint hard, and it looks like a tantric fungus is devouring our favorite egotistical bassist’s head. Sweep history aside, and it’s too easy to assume that the Coast Guard found him lying beneath the Exxon Valdez, bottle smashed, message lost.

Fortunately most children were asleep as the network waited until nine before airing the feed, smartly avoiding FCC ire. Now I don’t have kids, but I’d imagine the sight of a wolfen man who looked like he just gargled tar could scare the bejesus out of most kindergartners. Be afraid.