2003-11-02 - 1:35 p.m.
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Saturday at the Barbers
So it appears that when you have to walk around a wedding, pretending your from the National Enquirer because it's your boss' daughter's wedding, you have to go get a haircut when your head looks like a dirty mop attached to an ugly stick. So I did, but it was probably the craziest haircut I ever have gone through.
The final result is not crazy. My hair actually looks nice. But the experience? guuuuuuuuuuuuuh.
Up the block from my house, this Russian guy named Eddie opened up a barber shop. It's been there for a few months and he seems to be starting out well enough. Seeing as I was given this "assignment"...
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Let's discuss this. I have been working at the Mortgage Press, a newspaper dedicated to the mortgage world across the nation, in about 37 states. It's an odd job, not like painting fences and screwing in lightbulbs kind of odd job, but more of a nothing I've ever seen kind of odd job. My first priority appears to be selling advertising for the paper. I do this more than anything. My second priority is to be shipped out to random conventions and cover them reporter style. I do this significantly less. Lately, however, my job description has expanded into "every thing anyone can even think of". I've written the handbook for my job, a handboook for FTP uploading, updated the homepage, assisted in a mass mailing and as of late I've been a whipping boy for one of my bosses, Russ. His daughter is getting married in...oh...2 hours from now and I have to be there, camera in hand, ready to rock the candid shot style. Before this happened, I was editing an entire fake newspaper for the wedding, with stories handed to me from various family members who have no idea what is going on with these stories. So, I basically have put together all forms of media for this event: pre, during and, possibly, post. This is only the first month I've been here. Literally. A month ago yesterday, I was in the Borgata, on the first day of work, walking around a hotel casino for the first time in my life, taking pictures and jotting down notes for the article I wrote. My first article in a publication, might I add. It's been a busy month...
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I needed to get my hair cleaned up, because it was big (like I like it) and it would have looked bad at the wedding (which I wouldn't have cared about). So I walk in there at 4ish yesterday, ready to get cut up top. Eddie finishes the person he's doing and I get into the chair.
Let me tell you a little about Eddie. Eddie has a VERY heavy accent, which is clouded behind stuttering and a very poor understanding of the English language. He's a younger guy, probably only 7 or 8 years older than I am. He has cut hair in Manhattan, supposedly right next to a police station (so I've been told) and he looks like a chubby Andy Kaufman. Which makes me laugh immediately.
He's a cool guy though. I don't want to make it look like I think poorly of the guy. If I thought he was an absolute tool, I wouldn't have let him anywhere near my hair. I'm not vain or anything - I just need to trust the man who's about to chop the shit out of my hair. So he's kick ass.
But I think he's a bit crazy.
He has a TV going with COPS on. COPS plays for an hour, with two half an hour episodes going back to back. EVery time the show came on, he sang along to the theme song, which made me laugh inside, but you don't laugh at the man with scissors in his hand ready to dish you out a haircut.
He starts to go to work, buzzing shit here and there, cutting down the bush on my head. There's a few times I wanted him to stop because I thought my hair looked good. This always happens when I get a haircut. There's moments in time where I go "you know, that looks really good" and I've actually stopped the person before and told them "You know what, that's fine right there." Then, a week later, I've got to come back in because it looks silly, so I let this guy do his shit. He's a friendly guy, so he's talking a bunch. About how business is going well, but lately it's been a little stagnant (definitely not his word). Then he turns to me and starts talking to me about the cops he's fucked.
This came out of absolutely nowhere. I was sitting there and he goes "...you know, cops? They are good in bed, you know?" And I told him I didn't know, because personally, I've never fucked a cop. I've never been fucked by a cop either, so he could have been talking to me about a terrible ticket he got and I still couldn't relate to him, so forget trying to be like "oh yeah, after this I'm going home and jumping into a big cop orgy. What's your favorite part about having sex with a cop? Mine's the handcuffs." It just wouldn't happen.
But he had. He had been with a few (or so I've been told) and he started to tell me about things no barber should ever discuss with the guy whose hair he's cutting. I don't mind people talking to me about their sexual exploits, because honestly, it's interesting to hear what people do when the lights go out and things go nuts. Not in a perverted kind of way. I'm just interested in seeing how people treat sex, which I consider the single most personal thing a person has.
This guy is talking about fucking this cop and fucking that cop, picking up a state trooper who pulled him over and taking her out on a date and so on. He even says how easy they are to screw, because even though they have a tough exterior and have to be strong on the job, they aren't like that in bed (or so I've been told).
As uncomfortable as you are right now hearing me TELL you this, imagine me tell you this while I hover over your head with scissors.
Then he tells me he drove a cop car around for a while. This is when my skepticism light shot on and I just smiled. I would have nodded as well, but he was cutting my hair and that wouldn't do. He tells me about how he was on this date with this cop and she must have been out with the car (which I am uncertain as to how legal that is in the copworld) and they were driving around and some guy came driving up and shot her ON THE DATE. HE got her in the chest and the arm and she shot back into the guy's arm, rendering him incapacitated. Eddie, always the gentleman, had to handcuff the guy and took the both of them to the hospital, where the guy who shot the cop was chained to the wall or something with his wounds. While the cop was healing in the hospital, Eddie drove her car around for her WITH HER PERMISSION. Not only that, somehow, Eddie got a fake badge and was listed as this cop's partner, despite only being a barber. I think if you fuck a cop, you're allowed to do this. I also eat random things I find on the ground.
I started to feel uncomfortable. What do you say to some sweaty Russian guy stumbling through a story that smells as bad as his armpits when he reaches over your head to cut your hair? You say absolutely fucking nothing, that's what you say. You say "wow man, that's fucked up. Wow, really? You drove her car around for 2 weeks man? Holy shit! That must have been fucking awesome!" I wasn't trying to talk down to him like he was retarded or something; just trying to pass through conversation and get out without having to shave your head when you get home.
That was the last ounce of reality I got for the rest of the haircut.
A commercial for the rerelease of Alien in the theatres came on and he looks at the screen and then at me and goes "do you believe in that shit?"
There are two ways to ask this question. "Do you believe in a race of aliens who grow out of your chest and bleed acid and fuck shit up?" or "Do you believe that somewhere there's the possibility of aliens?" So I tell him there's got to be something out there because the universe is possibly infinite (or so I've been told) and the idea that something out there like that exists couldn't be far off.
Then he tells me "No, that shit's true." There's two ways you can say this. "NO, that shit about aliens who bleed acid is true" or "No, there are aliens and I fucking know it." So I tell him I guess it might be so and he reaffirms "No, there ARE aliens" meaning, yes, there are aliens out in the universe and I fucking know it." He then tells me about this lady he knew in Russia, whose land was huge. She didn't live on that land - she just owned it and one day she found these huge markings on the ground, which I guess meant crop circles or some scorched area somewhere in Russia. There were studies done and the lady was told that the markings were not from this world (or so I've been told).
I would like to point out that everything I've said up until this point has been told to me by a man who cuts hair across the street from a church up the block from my house and I can only guess to the validity of anything I've passed on to you, but the fact remains that it's most likely false but could be possibly true and at this point, it doesn't really matter. When there are sharp metal things cutting your hair and someone is telling you these things, you just smile. But don't nod.
So I ask him to give me a shave too, because I felt like it and never have had a barber shave before. He lathers my face up and drops the hottest towel I've ever felt in my life on my face and begins trimming my stubble into less stubble. As he's working over my face with this razor, it becomes apparent that his pinky nail, which is hanging over my face constantly, is particularly long and that none of the other nails are.
My barber has a cokenail. I wondered if the tingling from the talcum powder meant it was something more than talcum powder when he was done, but I guessed it was just that he butchered the shit out of my face and it was stinging me. Having never done coke before, I'll never know.
So I paid the man a bunch of money, walked out the door and laughed my ass off the whole way home, because I had just experienced the silliest hour of my life at the hands of a Russian barber full of stories that may or may not be true while rocking a cokenail.
My hair, however, does look better.
Time to go to work.
BMC
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
