Apathetic Hair Cut
One of the many things that I prefer about living in South America as opposed to the United states is that it only costs six Soles to get a haircut. That’s something under two dollars and if you mentioned that price to Grandpa he’d probably still grumble but eventually I think even he would admit that it is a fair amount.
It’s ten dollars minimum at home. Even if you just get it shaved like I do. Five minutes in and out. Ten dollars. Preposterous.
There is just something about overpaying that ruins my whole day. It isn’t just a greed issue, it is more a matter of resource. I understand that I am going to walk by the store and recoil at the price but then, a little while later, I will fold and go in out of convenience. It is just easier to pay the eight extra dollars. Easier to pay the money that makes all our ridiculous sub-charges and advertising fees possible. I know as I do it that I’m contributing to the all-out blitkreig of propeganda that I’m constantly bombarded with.
I hate that.
Do you know how many meals you can buy for a hungry kid in South America for eight dollars?
I’ll give you a hint, it’s more than ten.
But the thing that is even more infuriating than the price is the fact that the stylists don’t feel any obligation to do it well. You walk in there and they give you attitude like you are demeaning them by visiting their ridiculously overpriced business. You have to slink into your chair and keep your eyes averted downwards. Then you’re expected to tip them when they’re done. I always give a dollar. Sure, that’s not very much, but Jesus, I just get my head shaved. I don’t give them any lip. I don’t complain about the way it looks.
Besides, do you know how many meals you can buy for a hungry kid in South America for a dollar?
And I’ve never yet gotten a good haircut in the US! Amazing. In however many years I’ve lived there. A quarter century of huddling under the irritated eye of some resentful woman who has been trained by the feminists to be mad at all of recorded history, paying my exhorbidant tab, doing everything I can to make it easy, after all of that not one good haircut!
Here in South America, I’ve yet to have a bad one. They smile as you come in, they dust you with baby powder, and they take pride in their work. There’s no assembly line, they don’t give you the once over and send you on your way. They meticulously circle around and around and around and make sure all is well, even when there are people waiting.
My sideburns are always even. I don’t even feel the need to check anymore. Back in the United States I always felt a flush of shame just walking from the barber shop to the parking lot because I knew they hadn't bothered to get it right. You’ve got to be some kind of idiot to not get the sideburns right.
I mean, my god! Come on! I’m paying ten dollars!
There was one time in particular that I remember. I went in to this dusty Cost Cutters or something like that only to meet a young pregnant woman behind the desk. “Hello,” I said, politely. A pleasant and traditional greeting that she couldn’t be bothered to return. She just gave me a smile that, to all superficial apperances had nothing wrong with it, but somehow seemed to contain a touch of barely restrained contempt. I just pretended that I didn’t see it. I remember distinctly the effort of putting it out of my mind.
I realize that being in the hair-cutting business isn’t the best of places to be. It is my policy to not give these people any flack. Both them and waitresses or waiters or anybody in the service industry. Those jobs are bad enough but it is the people that really make it unbearable. I hate the kind of discourtesy that causes some asshole to bring a waitress to tears. Jesus Christ, it makes me want to get up and smack them.
But to say I give them a lot of slack is not to say I just want to walk in and hand them money without any service in return. It isn’t charity. I respect hard work and will do whatever I can to make a bad situation better, but I’m not going to carry anybody out of the hole they dug for themselves. I’ll encourage and I’ll shine a light on the way but I won’t physically do another’s work for them. That’s just another form of oppression. If they make it to the top, they’ll have more pride in the effort if they know they did it all themselves. And even only with all the encouragement in the world, as much as it helps, in the end they still will have done it all themselves.
So this pregnant woman sits me down with a sneer and then just looks at me. She doesn’t ask me what I want, she just stands there, holding the clippers with a sarcastic look on her face.
“Um, yeah, three on the side and five on the top please.” I smile. She rolls her eyes. I wasn’t trying to hit on the bitch, I was just trying to be nice. I don’t know how many times I’ve been in the company of some over-zealous egotistical chick who has misinterpreted my friendliness as an unwanted sexual advancement. There is nothing more demeaning than being labeled unjustly as some kind of lecherous predator.
They love to make a scene, both with body language and with gutteral exclamations. You become guilty in the eyes of whatever people happen to be in the vicinity. This is another experience that my move to South America has totally eliminated. They take it on the surface down here. Friendliness is friendliness, they don’t put on airs of superiority and think they can Sigmund Freud your behavior. They’re content and happy to be who they are and thus there is a dignity in being a stylist or a barber.
“Three and five, easy huh?”
The woman nodded but again with a strong hint of malice. She kept nodding for a long while after it ceased to be appropriate as if she was responding to some inner dialogue.
‘Sure you asshole try to be nice to me. Try to tell me that your haircut is easy and is only going to take five minutes and I’m going to make ten bucks. What the fuck do you know about it? You don’t have any comprehension how hard it is to be me. Look at me you prick, you asshole! I’m pregnant! Who the hell do you think you are to come into my store and judge me and my life and act like it is so easy! Prick!’
So I just sat quietly. The scariest thing was when my eyes met hers in the mirror. They were always so dark, and there was always a smile on her face but it was just plastic. Frozen. She might as well have painted it there with her lipstick so that the real scowl could come through.
I had made up my mind to just sit there quietly and take it when she got done. Again she didn’t say anything, she just stepped off to the side and sort of grunted. I looked at myself in the mirror and sort of recoiled. What the hell had she been thinking? My hair was all bulged out on one side. It was obvious that she had shaved with the three on the left twice as high as she had managed on the right.
Now there were little touch ups that I could do at home but this was something that I couldn’t handle. Besides, it would only take her a second to even out my head. It didn’t seem too much to ask even in that situation. The fault was so obvious I thought she might even be reasonable.
She just stood there, handling the clippers like a pistol, looking coldly in my eye with the anticipation that I would say something horrible.
I worked up my courage.
“Please, do you think you could come up a little higher with the three on the right?” I made a little laugh and tried to tilt my head so that she could see it. I wanted it to be a kind of joke. To show her that she had made a mistake but that I was cool about it and that no harm was done and that it could easily be corrected.
“You see, it kind of bulges out.” I continued to smile.
She just looked at me. That weird smile stayed rooted in the middle of her face. Her eyes stared into mine unseeing, like she was a million miles away. Like she was dreaming. She clicked on the clippers and swung it against my head, refusing to look at the hair at all, refusing to grant me the dignity of even observing that one side might be bulging out.
‘Evil male content to sit there and have woman give you haircut. How dare you? How dare you be dissatisfied with the result? Haven’t you taken enough?’
The clippers hit my head, she just jammed it through once and then pulled them away randomly. It left a big gouge in my hair. A gross and stupid mark that would be impossible to cover. She had made absolutely no effort to correct the problem I had mentioned.
For a brief moment, I became angry, but then I decided to just let it go.
“Thanks,” I said tearing away the apron she had tried to choke me with earlier.
I paid and gave her my usual dollar tip. She continued with that inhuman smile and those dark eyes. I walked off, knowing that she was going to think me a big asshole even though I did absolutely nothing.
She was probably mad at everybody all the time. She probably blamed the whole rest of the world that she was there working in that Cost Cutters. It was somebody else’s fault that she was pregnant. It was somebody else’s fault that she hadn’t been given the opportunity to discover the theory of relativity. She’d been robbed of all her accolades.
She was going to hate me all night and never once take any responsibility for her part in our interaction.
I got home and evened out my sideburns and did the best I could to disguise the gouge she had put there. It would be a month before I went for a haircut again. One month of paying that exhorbidant price was all I could stand. Sometimes I endured for two. I don’t give a shit. I’ll get a little shaggy. I’m not so superficial or insecure as to have to paint myself up perfect all the time.
It was a matter of real stress. This all happened about two years ago and it still hasn’t left me. It played a part in why I left the States. It wasn’t the disease most assuredly, but it was one of the symptoms. It remains one of the symptoms. That colossal arrogance, that lack of accountability. But I don’t know what the simple answer is.
I just know that when I go to get my hair cut down in South America the lady or the man there is going to treat me nice, with dignity and respect. They’re going to smile and be grateful for the opportunity to make a little money. They’re going to take pride in their craft and try to do a good job. And they’re going to be happy, not just while I am there, but after, when they are done working for the day, and they go home to a house that the pregnant woman who cut my hair in the states would call squalor and label unlivable.
They’re all happy down here and they have nothing. Nothing but respect for one another which they tirelessly try to maintain. It is good to be around happy people for a change.
And it is so easy to achieve. As easy as evening out sideburns. You’ve just got to lay aside your apathy for two seconds and reach for it.
The End