The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Don’t ask me why, but every year or so I get this sudden impulse to get my hair cut. I hate getting my hair cut so about any excuse in the world not to get it cut works to dissuade me from the scissors and comb torture. My last trim was so poorly done that even after a mere six months it was driving me crazy. I avoided the bathroom mirror, I kept my hat on more than usual, I thought about taking a whack at it myself. So when I was picking up a plaque I’d ordered at Mr. T’s Trophy Shop in Mt. Vernon yesterday, I noticed a shabby building next door with the barber pole outside and walked on over. One chair. One barber. Old school before the SuperCuts and Hairmaster chains rolled in.

My new barber, a fellow named George was sitting in the half dark and I asked if he maybe had time for a haircut and he said sure, come on in, Bro, take a seat. We bantered a bit and then we got down to it, how much off, how short, behind the ears, all that barber lingo and I said I wanted a lot off, behind the ears, trimmed any way he thought worked, I didn’t much care. And I didn’t. It’s a new day in America and maybe a skinhead look would be appropriate in the Trump regime. Can’t beat em, join em. My barber George looked like he already had.

But we didn’t talk politics. Instead he launched into a story about a buddy his age, about 50, I’d guess, who had met a woman, “a ‘fine’ woman, Bro, about 30, who had a fantasy of making it with my friend in a barber chair.” The very chair I was now parked in. He said it was okay with him so long as he kept everything clean afterwards, but he had one request, he wanted the girlfriend’s panties left behind when they were finished acting out their little barberchair bucket list item.

I know, I know, you might’ve considered leaving about then, but I had made my mind up about getting my hair cut and that urge might not come again for many months, best to get this thing done right now, sex story or no sex story. “So next morning I come in,” George is saying, snipping like Trump tweeting at my locks, “and sure enough, the place is spic and span and there (he points at the table in front of us) is a pair of pink panties. My wife never comes in the shop here in the morning, but of course that morning she does and first thing she sees is that pair of panties on a bottle of hair tonic and she asks who do those belong to? I tell her they’re not hers so mind her own damn business.”

I know, I know, but it’s kind of late to be quitting mid-trim. And anyway, maybe you didn’t notice, but this is a new age in America. No more political correctness.
Those days are relegated to the same place my shorn hair will soon be deposited, the wastebasket. George snips and cuts and says, “I saw the video they made. She was fine, Bro, fine.” I said, “They filmed it?” “Oh, yeah, the whole thing. It was something. Something, Bro. I watched it twice. But later things went bad, you know, like that movie, you know the one? Where the woman won’t let go and things turn ugly? What’s that called? Fatal attraction, yeah, that’s it, fatal attraction. Turned ugly, Bro.” George shook his head sadly, handed me a mirror and asked what I thought. “Works for me,” I said, too nearsighted to see the back of my head and in no mood to care anyway.

You don’t get this kind of banter in Great Clips, let me assure you. This is barbering when barbering was a man’s world, not a salon, not a styling studio. Hunting magazines on the table, not People and Us. Playboys, not Women’s World or Good Housekeeping. Hell if I know whether I’ll ever go back, but I know this: if Donald’s making America great again, George will do just fine. Know what I mean, Bro?

Hits: 75

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 26th, 2016 at 4:48 pm and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.