"Take a seat please, sir."
I meander towards the coat rack, shrug my jacket off and in one move swing it round and up onto the hook. I feel my feet slip a little on the thin layer of human hair that lies slick on the tiled floor. The humus layer of the hairdresser's salon. My nostrils wince from the constant sensation of sniffing the tip of a bottle of shampoo.
The leather chair is too low for me, and it takes a couple of awkward shuffles in the seat to get comfortable. It's slightly clammy from the previous occupant, having been vacated only seconds before, and my jeans stick a little as I moved around. The leather lets out a pained groan.
The top I'm wearing zips up to about halfway up my neck, just gracing the bottom of my hair at the back, and the Man comes over and wordlessly unzips it by about six inches, folding the collar down into a V-neck.
"Arms out, please!"
I catch a glimpse of the baffled look that contorts my face in the monstrous mirror facing me. As I slide my arms into the plastic tent that will shield my crotch from the cascades of falling curls, my mind registers that I need to remove my spectacles. The tent is pulled tight around my neck - so tight that I let out a little gurgle of shock.
"Just a bit off the length please, and sort of smartened up around the sides."
This is pretty much word-for-word exactly what I have said to any person about to use scissors to decimate my horrendous white-man-fro in the last 10 years. And yet this time, the Man looks at me as if I've just asked him to shove two cabbages up his jumper and pole dance to a CD of Ukrainian electro-funk. I return his facial puzzlement in kind.
"I need to wash your hair first. The hair, it is too curly and I think you have hair gel in that will stick to my scissors."
I try to hide my embarrassment at what is clearly his disgust for my dirty hair. In actuality I washed it a little over an hour ago, but I acknowledge that the hair putty I liberally applied yesterday may have lingered and could cause problems. Maybe I smell.
"Erm, well only if you think it really needs it..."
His eyes narrow.
"It's not going to cut very well without it. I need to put some conditioner in."
I'm trapped, so emotionally pinned into this chair that I may as well be handcuffed to it. I feel like a kid who's grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, being forced into admitting culpability for a crime he didn't commit. A crime of fashion - a crime of curly hair. It would be absurd to leave now, and yet the Man has all but told me that if I don't pay the extra to get my hair washed that he's going to be reduced to lopping it all off with the sort of industrial shears usually reserved for sheep.
I admit defeat and agree. Only then do I noticed the sink in front of me. This is the first time I've ever had the wash-n-cut treatment, so I'm not quite sure how this is going to work, but I'm fairly confident it will involve some sort of rotation mechanism being brought into action. I will leisurely recline and take the chance to reflect on an article I just read in The Economist about a recent coup in Madagascar. Maybe even pick up the magazine again and have another quick browse.
"Lean forward."
With a snap I realise that I've been living in a fantasy world. The Man's instruction is laughably simplistic - far more than having to lean, I have to arse-wiggle my way to the very tip of the chair (the leather moans with each squirm), and gingerly tip my head over the sink. I'm fairly certain that my underwear is showing at the base of my spine above my jeans.
A large, rough hand grabs the back of my head and shoves me face first right into the sink, so that my nose is mere centimetres from the plughole. Around it congeals the remains of whichever poor sod last had this treatment. A ginger, by the looks of it. I try to escape from my current predicament by imagining the terrible bullying this poor ginger must have faced as a child, similar perhaps to my own torment as a curly.
The next few minutes are a hazy blur, a collage of sound and darkness, but afterwards I recall a warm wet sensation, a lot of rubbing, the dizzying smell of freshly-cleaned public toilets and a vague sense of violation. My eyes sting, as does my sense of pride and English reserve.
"Tissue."
I'm flung back in my seat as the Man massages my head and growls perversely.
"I love your hair."
As he begins to cut, I settle into my more comfortable hair-cutting rhetoric. Oh yes, I say, you may love this curly hair but I guarantee you wouldn't if it was yours. I try to point out the horror of having to contend with a monstrous, wilful mass of wiry curls that scream defiantly from your scalp, laughing in the face of any hair-product / comb / rage based offensive. The Man banally mutters some unlikely annoyance at having straight hair, his outrageously well-controlled coiffure cackling in its pointy fascism at my ever-depleting Brillo-pad mop.
"Is your mother Asian?"
Sans spectacles, I can't tell in the mirror whether a look of dry irony has painted his face, so I try to suppress my puzzlement and explain that I get my curly hair from some long-forgotten Scottish ancestry. His only response to this is to brutally shove my head to the left (a twinge of whiplash) and start cutting, a little too close for comfort, around my ear.
This goes on for some time, with intermittent conversational niceties invariably being interrupted by an unexpected assault on my spinal column. At one point he helpfully points out that I should get myself a nice London girlfriend, before puffing out his cheeks and blowing the detritus of my former fringe into my reddened eyes.
Eventually the agony is over, and I'm invited to put my spectacles on to feast my eyes on the new me. As the world blinks back into focus, I stare expectantly at my own head in the mirror. The hair is a fair bit shorter than I wanted, revealing rather too much of the bulk of my obese cranium. It's far shorter at the sides than at the top, and has been slicked back by the Man's strong hands. The net effect is somewhere between Will Smith circa the early nineties, and Christian Bale in American Psycho. I feel slightly sick.
"Yeah it's great, thanks. New man!"
I stretch my mouth into a smile, which is reciprocated.
"Hair gel?"
I shake my head kindly.
"No, thanks."
His eyes sparkle. A smile plays about his lips. I hear his stomach rumble as he prepares to administer the coup de grâce.
"Chili sauce? Mayo?"
It takes me a second to realise this is a joke. I try not to look like I'm about to spew my lunch all over the plastic tent covering my knees, and reject the offer through a judder of nervous laughter.
"No, thanks."
I get up from my seat as a previously unseen hair monkey (read: trainee) scuttles out, apparently from under my chair, to snatch the plastic cover off me. We make our way to the cash register and I pull my wallet out of my jeans. The Man meets my eye and smiles.
"Hope to see you again!"
I grab my coat off the rack. No longer do I notice the coating of human hair across the floor, nor the acrid burn of shampoo in my nostrils.
"I'm sure you will."
I shove ten pounds into his outstretched hand, the scissors still hanging off his little finger, and sharply turn and walk out the door. The breeze is cool on my scalp, and I quickly pull my hood up round my ears.
I meander towards the coat rack, shrug my jacket off and in one move swing it round and up onto the hook. I feel my feet slip a little on the thin layer of human hair that lies slick on the tiled floor. The humus layer of the hairdresser's salon. My nostrils wince from the constant sensation of sniffing the tip of a bottle of shampoo.
The leather chair is too low for me, and it takes a couple of awkward shuffles in the seat to get comfortable. It's slightly clammy from the previous occupant, having been vacated only seconds before, and my jeans stick a little as I moved around. The leather lets out a pained groan.
The top I'm wearing zips up to about halfway up my neck, just gracing the bottom of my hair at the back, and the Man comes over and wordlessly unzips it by about six inches, folding the collar down into a V-neck.
"Arms out, please!"
I catch a glimpse of the baffled look that contorts my face in the monstrous mirror facing me. As I slide my arms into the plastic tent that will shield my crotch from the cascades of falling curls, my mind registers that I need to remove my spectacles. The tent is pulled tight around my neck - so tight that I let out a little gurgle of shock.
"Just a bit off the length please, and sort of smartened up around the sides."
This is pretty much word-for-word exactly what I have said to any person about to use scissors to decimate my horrendous white-man-fro in the last 10 years. And yet this time, the Man looks at me as if I've just asked him to shove two cabbages up his jumper and pole dance to a CD of Ukrainian electro-funk. I return his facial puzzlement in kind.
"I need to wash your hair first. The hair, it is too curly and I think you have hair gel in that will stick to my scissors."
I try to hide my embarrassment at what is clearly his disgust for my dirty hair. In actuality I washed it a little over an hour ago, but I acknowledge that the hair putty I liberally applied yesterday may have lingered and could cause problems. Maybe I smell.
"Erm, well only if you think it really needs it..."
His eyes narrow.
"It's not going to cut very well without it. I need to put some conditioner in."
I'm trapped, so emotionally pinned into this chair that I may as well be handcuffed to it. I feel like a kid who's grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, being forced into admitting culpability for a crime he didn't commit. A crime of fashion - a crime of curly hair. It would be absurd to leave now, and yet the Man has all but told me that if I don't pay the extra to get my hair washed that he's going to be reduced to lopping it all off with the sort of industrial shears usually reserved for sheep.
I admit defeat and agree. Only then do I noticed the sink in front of me. This is the first time I've ever had the wash-n-cut treatment, so I'm not quite sure how this is going to work, but I'm fairly confident it will involve some sort of rotation mechanism being brought into action. I will leisurely recline and take the chance to reflect on an article I just read in The Economist about a recent coup in Madagascar. Maybe even pick up the magazine again and have another quick browse.
"Lean forward."
With a snap I realise that I've been living in a fantasy world. The Man's instruction is laughably simplistic - far more than having to lean, I have to arse-wiggle my way to the very tip of the chair (the leather moans with each squirm), and gingerly tip my head over the sink. I'm fairly certain that my underwear is showing at the base of my spine above my jeans.
A large, rough hand grabs the back of my head and shoves me face first right into the sink, so that my nose is mere centimetres from the plughole. Around it congeals the remains of whichever poor sod last had this treatment. A ginger, by the looks of it. I try to escape from my current predicament by imagining the terrible bullying this poor ginger must have faced as a child, similar perhaps to my own torment as a curly.
The next few minutes are a hazy blur, a collage of sound and darkness, but afterwards I recall a warm wet sensation, a lot of rubbing, the dizzying smell of freshly-cleaned public toilets and a vague sense of violation. My eyes sting, as does my sense of pride and English reserve.
"Tissue."
I'm flung back in my seat as the Man massages my head and growls perversely.
"I love your hair."
As he begins to cut, I settle into my more comfortable hair-cutting rhetoric. Oh yes, I say, you may love this curly hair but I guarantee you wouldn't if it was yours. I try to point out the horror of having to contend with a monstrous, wilful mass of wiry curls that scream defiantly from your scalp, laughing in the face of any hair-product / comb / rage based offensive. The Man banally mutters some unlikely annoyance at having straight hair, his outrageously well-controlled coiffure cackling in its pointy fascism at my ever-depleting Brillo-pad mop.
"Is your mother Asian?"
Sans spectacles, I can't tell in the mirror whether a look of dry irony has painted his face, so I try to suppress my puzzlement and explain that I get my curly hair from some long-forgotten Scottish ancestry. His only response to this is to brutally shove my head to the left (a twinge of whiplash) and start cutting, a little too close for comfort, around my ear.
This goes on for some time, with intermittent conversational niceties invariably being interrupted by an unexpected assault on my spinal column. At one point he helpfully points out that I should get myself a nice London girlfriend, before puffing out his cheeks and blowing the detritus of my former fringe into my reddened eyes.
Eventually the agony is over, and I'm invited to put my spectacles on to feast my eyes on the new me. As the world blinks back into focus, I stare expectantly at my own head in the mirror. The hair is a fair bit shorter than I wanted, revealing rather too much of the bulk of my obese cranium. It's far shorter at the sides than at the top, and has been slicked back by the Man's strong hands. The net effect is somewhere between Will Smith circa the early nineties, and Christian Bale in American Psycho. I feel slightly sick.
"Yeah it's great, thanks. New man!"
I stretch my mouth into a smile, which is reciprocated.
"Hair gel?"
I shake my head kindly.
"No, thanks."
His eyes sparkle. A smile plays about his lips. I hear his stomach rumble as he prepares to administer the coup de grâce.
"Chili sauce? Mayo?"
It takes me a second to realise this is a joke. I try not to look like I'm about to spew my lunch all over the plastic tent covering my knees, and reject the offer through a judder of nervous laughter.
"No, thanks."
I get up from my seat as a previously unseen hair monkey (read: trainee) scuttles out, apparently from under my chair, to snatch the plastic cover off me. We make our way to the cash register and I pull my wallet out of my jeans. The Man meets my eye and smiles.
"Hope to see you again!"
I grab my coat off the rack. No longer do I notice the coating of human hair across the floor, nor the acrid burn of shampoo in my nostrils.
"I'm sure you will."
I shove ten pounds into his outstretched hand, the scissors still hanging off his little finger, and sharply turn and walk out the door. The breeze is cool on my scalp, and I quickly pull my hood up round my ears.
