When I was in the 6th grade, I starred in my class's production of "Santa and the Silly Elf". I, of course, was Santa. Being the star, I took my responsibility to carry the production very seriously. I attended every rehearsal, diligently memorized my lines and spent hours rehearsing in my bedroom after the lights were out and I was supposed to be in bed. On opening night (well, there was only one performance, but still . . . ) I appeared in my fake white beard and the Santa suit my mother had made for me, ready to light up the stage. During most of the play, I did okay – which is to say that I don't remember doing badly, which means it must have been okay. However, in one particularly crucial scene where I was supposed to be pissed off at an elf who, as I dimly recall, had fucked up the year's production of toy soldiers, I went blank and completely forgot my line. My gaffe, written clearly in deep lines of mortification across my face, was apparent to all in attendance. After the show, several parents approached me to offer consolation.
When my dad asked me later how I though I'd done, I confessed that I'd messed up, and was sick about it. "What," asked the old man, "did you mess up?" I told him that I'd forgotten the line. "The only thing you did wrong," my dad said, "was showing the audience that you messed up. Had you just faked your way through it, no one would have noticed but you."
"Dad," I argued, "it wouldn't have matter what I did, everyone just knew that I messed up."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
Of course, he was right. With a quick patch of psychic duct tape and a little double talk, I could have faked my way through the mess and no one would have been the wiser. Instead, I panicked, and brought the production to a halt.
While I still make bigger deals of things than they really are, and worry too much about what goes on behind the scenes that no one ever needs to see, I am far better at this now than I was when I was a kid. In fact, there are those that would argue that my father created a monster with his words, and that I care far too little about the means I embrace to achieve a certain end. The "as long as the hat fits, it doesn't matter how you skin the raccoon" approach drives some people crazy, but for me, it's become a way of life.
"Are you sure?"
The day Christine arrived from Toronto I left work early to take care of several errands. I could have addressed many of these over the previous weekend, but I am a procrastinating nitwit and so, didn't.
There are those for whom the universe is an ordered, well-structured place where the principle of cause and effect is not a curse, but rather, tools that make their lives easier and more pleasant. For these ordered souls, "to do" lists are indispensable lifelines to happiness and the failure to look forward, anticipate, plan and then execute are sure prescriptions to inner turmoil and despair.
I am not one of these.
I prefer chaos, and find inner turmoil and despair deeply motivating. I am suspicious of structure, and reject a concept of universe where the inevitable consequence of stepping on the tines is a rake handle between the eyes. While to some, I may seem a slovenly, ill-prepared bum who richly deserves the penalties of his procrastination; I prefer to think of myself as a wondering infant who delights each day in discovering his toes anew and cherishes an innate sense of optimism that insists, "Maybe this time it'll be different and the toes will finally lactate."
While I had spent the previous week getting excited about Christine's vacation, it didn't occur to me to actually prepare for the visit until around 11:00 am on the day of her arrival. Specifically, I was in a meeting to discuss our approach for a cost accounting system implementation at our facility inCorona
I stood outside in the sweltering heat, adding my cigarette smoke to the undissipated cloud of smog that has hung over Corona since the summer of 1966, and contemplated the merits of our revised approach to BOM's and rounters as I stared absently at my reflection in the window. As is the way of an occupied mind, I watched myself without seeing, dimly aware that the features staring back at me were mine but otherwise, oblivious to the totality of my own impression. For reasons vague to me now, the image suddenly solidified and it occurred to me that the abstract reflection floating in the glass was really me. This was how I actually looked. This was how other people saw me. This was how Christine would see me when I met her at the airport.
I gasped.
Over the previous couple of months, I, for various reasons not worthy of discussing, had gone native on issues of personal grooming. My most recent haircut was over four months old, and I could not remember the last time I'd trimmed my beard. The face staring back at me from the glass was not mine, but rather, that of Ted Kazinski, the Unibomber. A nightmare vision flashed through my mind of me, attempting to kiss Christine through the matt of hair that had grown over my upper lip as a bat poked its head out from between the folds of my beard.
I was appalled, and recognized that immediate action was necessary. The "to do" list, which I should have formulated a week earlier, quickened in my mind and I resolved to get the hell out of the office and make short work of my tasks before Christine's plane touched down at LAX.
My first stop was the Cerritos Mall to visit Nordstroms and buy a pair of brown Rockports. Rockports are my shoe (I find them slimming), and as I wanted to look my best for Christine, I decided to pick up a pair before she arrived. Several weeks earlier, I had worn my old pair without socks and then left them on the floor beside my bed when I went to work the next day. Sweaty feet smell and leather was evidently too much for this man's best friend, and when I got home that evening, I discovered that Lester had made the left shoe his new favorite chew-toy. When a mastiff attaches himself to a toy, his adoration is absolute, and he does not rest until the object of his affection is reduced to atomized shards of trash. (This little lesson cost me a radial artery, but that's another story).
When I arrived at Nordstroms, the one sales clerk on duty was tending an overweight man in a green Polo shirt whose wife could not seem to decide which of the twelve pair of shoes brought for inspection would go best with "the pants". The pants were apparently a big deal – she referred to them often, and I got the impression they might actually be his first pair. I surveyed the scene, noticed four other overweight men in Polo shirts seated in the Men's shoe area waiting for their turn. They looked grim, but determined, and I reckoned it could take quite a while for the sales clerk to cycle through them all. I was hungry, and so decided to hit the food court for some Mongolian Bar B Que and return later to Nordstroms.
On the way back to the department store, I passed a hair salon. As getting a haircut was the first item on my ad hoc "to do" list, I paused and thought about going inside.
I'm typically a Supercuts kind of guy. I like Supercuts - I like the speed, I like the price, I like the 3 clippers, but most of all, I like the working class rough-neck hair stylists who look like they would be as comfortable unloading containers at the Port of Long Beach as they are cutting my hair. Supercuts is not a hair salon. Supercuts is a hair factory. Supercuts is one of the few service establishments in the universe where I actually appreciate being made to feel like a widget.
Hair salons, by contrast, frighten me. While intellectually I understand that most hair salons are unisex institutions that gladly accept cash from either gender I can never quite convince myself that men are welcome. The vibe of a typical salon is so overwhelmingly feminine that I always feel like an unwelcome interloper . . . a boorish, testosterone-oozing, trench coat-wearing brute who has barged his way into the elfin glade to flash a squad of young, sassy, tattooed, silicone-enhanced sugarplum fairies. I always feel unkempt entering a hair salon; like I should get a haircut before I go inside.
I probably worry more about this than I ought to.
I dithered outside, weighing the burden of my personal insecurities against the convenience of a hair salon in the hand. Reasoning that Christine would prefer me to be on time for the airport pick up, I resolved to face my fear, ignore my resemblance to Charles Manson and step in amongst the English.
After some brief preliminaries at the reception desk I was escorted into the inner sanctum and led to an available stylist. She was a young, dark-skinned Latina with prominent breasts and a stylish slash of pink accenting her short, sassy hair; her clothes fit skin tight, and the deep neckline of her top displayed ample cleavage. She had a tattoo of some sort on her right boob, but I, convinced that I looked like the kind of man who has a half dozen teenaged girls locked away in a dungeon underneath his barn, was so compulsive about always looking her in the eye that I never got around to admiring (much less, identifying) the artwork.
"Hi, I'm Penelope," she announced with a broad smile as she offered her hand.
I was immediately suspicious.
"I'm Bob." I answered, returning the handshake.
As an afterthought, I smiled.
Penelope escorted me to a small room and handed me a smock. Why it should be necessary for me to don a cover in the room became clear only after she gave me to understand that I was supposed to wear the smock instead of my shirt, and not over it. At Supercuts, it's first come, first served with respect to smock availability, and no one ever wears the smock instead of their street clothes. She provided me with a hangar for my walk-in garment and politely left me to figure out the smock, with its snaps, buttons and ties, in solitude. I emerged from the room a few seconds later, reasonably certain that I had the smock on backwards, but determined not to care.
She led me to a sink with one of those recliny chairs that slide out from under your ass when you sit on them. I've never been comfortable with those chairs; either I sit too far back, so that when I recline my shoulder blades rest over the sink groove where my neck belongs, or I sit so far forward that upon reclining my ears are pinched in the groove and only the crown of my head is available for washing. After stumbling through two iterations of the seating ritual, I suggested that maybe I wasn't smart enough to get my hair washed. She laughed, . . . which is not to say that she disagreed. On the third attempt, I erred in the "ass too far back resulting in head resting on the spigot" direction. She took matters into her own hands by shoving on the top of my head until my ass slid forward on the chair and my neck dropped with a thump into the sink groove. Thus positioned, she reached down, found the lever underneath the seat and, "kachunk", deployed a footrest.
"Comfy?" she asked.
"Oh, fuck yes," I said.
At Supercuts, they only wash your hair if you ask them to, and then, only AFTER they've cut your hair.
During the hair wash, it dawned on me that perhaps the salon choice was not going to be the big time-saver I'd thought it would be. She ran my hair under a stream of tepid water ("Good?" she asked) and then applied a fair quantity of faintly scented shampoo. This was all fine until, with my hair nice and soapy, she reached under my neck and began slowly massaging the base of my skull. Of course, it felt wonderful . . . which I resented. I was on a timeline. I needed to keep my edge by focusing on the clock and maintaining an appropriate level of countdown panic. I did not need a brain full of massage-induced endorphins. When she began kneading my temples I think my eyes crossed and I groaned.
With the massage completed, she coaxed me out of the cursed recliny chair and guided me to her station in the salon.
After swaddling me in a plastic shawl-thingy (this was in addition to the smock), Penelope asked if I would like a cup of coffee or tea.
Okay, this is the one upside to salon vs. Supercuts.
"Coffee," I said, enthusiastically.
She returned a few minutes (yes – minutes) later with a hot cup of coffee in a porcelain cup. Like . . .wow; porcelain . . . not Styrofoam. The coffee smelled delicious! Unfortunately, I was bound in a cocoon of plastic shawl so that to actually drink the cup of coffee would have required me to free my hands, lurch forward in the chair and grab the cup.
As I sit here, trying to explain how I was stymied by a cup of coffee, I find it necessary to repeat again just how uncomfortable the whole hair salon vibe makes me. The environment makes me feel simultaneously small and clumsy giant huge; like I've woken up naked on the set of the Oprah Show and then asked to cross the stage for the studio audience on a pogo stick. Okay, that isn't quite right . . . but it's damn close. The point is that from the moment I walk through the doors of a hair salon, every fiber of my being screams at me to keep a low profile and not make any loud noises or sudden moves that might draw attention to myself.
Since childhood I have suffered from mild, congenital hand tremors. It's not a big deal, but I find that activities requiring precise hand movements are best left to others. The doctor explained it to my mother this way, "Your son can live a happy, productive life, but he should probably avoid becoming a surgeon or drinking coffee from porcelain cups in a hair salon." As I stared longingly at the cup with its tendrils of steam rising in a "come hither" fashion from the inky liquid, I imagined what I would have to do to actually enjoy a sip of coffee. First, I would have to wriggle free of the apron like a psych ward inmate trying to free himself from his straight jacket. Then, I would have to reach across the four feet of open space between the chair and counter, grab the dainty little cup handle between my trembling thumb and forefinger and reel the cup to my lap. Once there, I would then have to grab the cup in both hands, negotiate the lip underneath the overhanging foliage of my moustache, and, assuming I hadn't already spilled the cup's contents onto the floor in one of the previous steps, sip.
"C'mon ladies, let's give Bob a hand. Isn't he wonderful? What do you think, Tom?"
"Oprah, I think he looks ridiculous . . . but I want to get back Scientology for just a minute and explain how my religion . . ."
Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing.
Bound by a straight jacket of plastic and social ineptitude, I sat longing for the coffee as Penelope prepared my hair for cutting. At Supercuts, the technician quickly jerks a comb through your hair, asks you what size clippers you like, and then begins to mow. Penelope, however, undertook a painstaking process of first partitioning my hair into manageable quadrants (my head looked like a water polo ball when she was done), and then slowly clipping away at each quadrant with a pair of scissors.
It went something like . . .
Clip . . .
Clip . . .
. . . . . .
Clip . . .
I mentioned, in my most casual, neither-here-nor-there manner, that at the other place that I sometimes go, they use a number 3 clipper on my hair. "Oh," said Peneloe, "we don't use clippers here." She somehow managed to crinkle her nose in distate while at the same time, look sympathetic . . . a virtuoso performance that I otherwise would have admired were the minute hands on the clock not spinning like fan.
Clip . .
. . . . .
Clip . . .
"You have good hair," she announced.
I was loathe to encourage her, and so, remained silent.
She was laboring away at the lower section of quadrant 2 when I noticed that the pace had slowed. I wasn't sure how such a thing could be possible, yet there was no denying that the pauses between clips were clearly more frequent, and longer. As I watched her nibble away at individual follicles in front of my left ear, I suddenly understood the problem – she was trying to layer the fine threads of sideburn hair into the tangled mass of my beard.
"Look," I said, "Item four on my to do list today is to shave off my beard, so you don't have to spend a ton of time working on the sideburns."
"Wow, you're really doing a makeover today, aren't you."
You see, there . . . right there . . . that's why I am so uncomfortable in a hair salon. They use words like "makeover" with a straight face. I didn't set out for a makeover. All I wanted was to buy a goddamned pair of shoes, and if Mr. Ijustboughtmyveryfirstpairoflongpants and his wife, Maude, hadn't resolved to examine every pair on sale at Nordstroms, I'd have new shoes AND be sitting at the Supercuts across from PetCo having my "good hair" sheared by Rosie the Riveter.
"Oh," I said, "I wouldn't call it a makeover exactly. I like to think of it more as . . . well . . . a haircut."
"What's the occasion?"
Here's where I made my fifteenth tactical error of the day. I told her that I was going to pick up my girlfriend fromToronto Vancouver
Vancouver
I wanted to scream . . . which is exactly what you'd expect Ted Kazinski to do under similar circumstances . . . but didn't.
People who are rude to their waiters amaze me. You see this from time to time in restaurants; people who speak to their servers with the abominable discourtesy of the French nobility on the night before the revolution. This lets-give-the-hornets-nest-a-good-poke mentality that says "let's do everything we can to earn ourselves lugie in our soup" baffles me. When I have a problem with a waiter, I always find it wiser to wait until he clears the plates before I complain. The same concept applies to brain surgeons and barbers – you just don't want to piss them off as they're in the middle of doing their thing.
With this in mind, I forced myself to sit quietly as the minutes passed and Penelope wove.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Penelope was satisfied with the hair-cut proper, and produced electric clippers to trim the down of extraneous hair on my neck. I was surprised and delighted that she even had clippers, and thrilled that she had finally reached the point in the production where their use was appropriate. She quickly ran the clippers over the back of my neck and used them to clean up the edges. As she worked, it occurred to me that I might be able to win back some time if I could get her to use the same clippers to remove my beard.
She blanched, and looked nervously in the mirror at a woman hovering near the reception desk who I think, was her boss. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not allowed to trim beards. . . . but," she lowered her voice ". . . I can loan you the clippers and you can trim it off in the bathroom after we're done." I was thrilled with this suggestion. Given the speed with which she'd trimmed my neck I was reasonably certain that a Penelope-supervised debearding would go swiftly, but the notion of using the clippers on myself eliminated any residual concern about the time it would take.
She finished off the last of her trimming and excused me to the restroom. As I left her station, she slipped the clippers into my hand under the smock and whispered, "Put a towel down over the sink." Her conspiratorial vibe was infectious, and I found myself looking left and right over my shoulder as I made my way through the salon to the little restroom at the back of the shop. Inside the crowded little crapper, I set myself up in front of the mirror, fired up the clippers and began to cut.
I'd finished most of the left side of my face down to my chin line when I realized that I'd forgotten to put down the towel over the sink. While I have "good" hair on my head, I think my beard hair is less impressive; it is wiry, curly and orange-red interspersed with gray. I don't care who you are or where you're from, curly hairs in any part of a public restroom are simply repulsive, and I realized that good manners compelled me to remove all trace of them before I continued. I had scooped most of the hair out of the sink, and was wiping up the residual mess with a wet paper towel when someone started pounding on the door.
Lay low in the hair salon – that's my motto.
In my mind, I pictured Penelope's boss and three mall security guards in body armor gathered outside of the bathroom door. Behind them, a fourth guard restrained the brave Penelope: bruised, bloody but ultimately broken during the course of their harsh interrogation. A SWAT team was en route and over the mall, news helicopters from all the major networks hovered with cameras rolling.
I considered answering the knock, but one quick look at my half-shaved face convinced me that I needed to press on.
Lay low in the hair salon.
"Just a minute," I shouted through the door.
I plucked the last of the curly reds from the drain catch, quickly laid the towel over the sink and resumed my shave. After another three minutes of frantic buzzing, the result of six months of neglect lay in mottled clumps on the towel and the face that looked back at me in the mirror no longer hinted of arson, drug addiction or a bad experience in the Viet Nam War.
I was positively kissable . . . well, except for the smock.
I quickly emptied the contents of the towel out over a trash can, did another quick inspection for errant beard hair, and then opened the door. The manager and her four henchmen had evidently grown tired of waiting, and had stood as guard a nervous looking woman in a smock similar to my own. Her smile was both polite and embarrassed, and as I stepped past her out of the room, I noticed in her the tell-tale bounce of legs characteristic of someone who is desperate to pee. I was groomed, shaved and so, magnanimous as I stepped aside and allowed her to pass.
After removing the smock and changing into my street clothes, I returned to settle accounts with Penelope. She did a double-take as I approached her station, apparently surprised by the transformation. While I was both kissable and no longer in my smock, she somehow managed to resist the obvious temptation represented by the new, madeover me, and instead escorted me to the cashier with a bill and an arm full of hair care products that she thought I might like to purchase.
They charged me $ 35 for the haircut.
The coffee, it seems, was free.
When my dad asked me later how I though I'd done, I confessed that I'd messed up, and was sick about it. "What," asked the old man, "did you mess up?" I told him that I'd forgotten the line. "The only thing you did wrong," my dad said, "was showing the audience that you messed up. Had you just faked your way through it, no one would have noticed but you."
"Dad," I argued, "it wouldn't have matter what I did, everyone just knew that I messed up."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
Of course, he was right. With a quick patch of psychic duct tape and a little double talk, I could have faked my way through the mess and no one would have been the wiser. Instead, I panicked, and brought the production to a halt.
While I still make bigger deals of things than they really are, and worry too much about what goes on behind the scenes that no one ever needs to see, I am far better at this now than I was when I was a kid. In fact, there are those that would argue that my father created a monster with his words, and that I care far too little about the means I embrace to achieve a certain end. The "as long as the hat fits, it doesn't matter how you skin the raccoon" approach drives some people crazy, but for me, it's become a way of life.
"Are you sure?"
The day Christine arrived from Toronto I left work early to take care of several errands. I could have addressed many of these over the previous weekend, but I am a procrastinating nitwit and so, didn't.
There are those for whom the universe is an ordered, well-structured place where the principle of cause and effect is not a curse, but rather, tools that make their lives easier and more pleasant. For these ordered souls, "to do" lists are indispensable lifelines to happiness and the failure to look forward, anticipate, plan and then execute are sure prescriptions to inner turmoil and despair.
I am not one of these.
I prefer chaos, and find inner turmoil and despair deeply motivating. I am suspicious of structure, and reject a concept of universe where the inevitable consequence of stepping on the tines is a rake handle between the eyes. While to some, I may seem a slovenly, ill-prepared bum who richly deserves the penalties of his procrastination; I prefer to think of myself as a wondering infant who delights each day in discovering his toes anew and cherishes an innate sense of optimism that insists, "Maybe this time it'll be different and the toes will finally lactate."
While I had spent the previous week getting excited about Christine's vacation, it didn't occur to me to actually prepare for the visit until around 11:00 am on the day of her arrival. Specifically, I was in a meeting to discuss our approach for a cost accounting system implementation at our facility in
I stood outside in the sweltering heat, adding my cigarette smoke to the undissipated cloud of smog that has hung over Corona since the summer of 1966, and contemplated the merits of our revised approach to BOM's and rounters as I stared absently at my reflection in the window. As is the way of an occupied mind, I watched myself without seeing, dimly aware that the features staring back at me were mine but otherwise, oblivious to the totality of my own impression. For reasons vague to me now, the image suddenly solidified and it occurred to me that the abstract reflection floating in the glass was really me. This was how I actually looked. This was how other people saw me. This was how Christine would see me when I met her at the airport.
I gasped.
Over the previous couple of months, I, for various reasons not worthy of discussing, had gone native on issues of personal grooming. My most recent haircut was over four months old, and I could not remember the last time I'd trimmed my beard. The face staring back at me from the glass was not mine, but rather, that of Ted Kazinski, the Unibomber. A nightmare vision flashed through my mind of me, attempting to kiss Christine through the matt of hair that had grown over my upper lip as a bat poked its head out from between the folds of my beard.
I was appalled, and recognized that immediate action was necessary. The "to do" list, which I should have formulated a week earlier, quickened in my mind and I resolved to get the hell out of the office and make short work of my tasks before Christine's plane touched down at LAX.
My first stop was the Cerritos Mall to visit Nordstroms and buy a pair of brown Rockports. Rockports are my shoe (I find them slimming), and as I wanted to look my best for Christine, I decided to pick up a pair before she arrived. Several weeks earlier, I had worn my old pair without socks and then left them on the floor beside my bed when I went to work the next day. Sweaty feet smell and leather was evidently too much for this man's best friend, and when I got home that evening, I discovered that Lester had made the left shoe his new favorite chew-toy. When a mastiff attaches himself to a toy, his adoration is absolute, and he does not rest until the object of his affection is reduced to atomized shards of trash. (This little lesson cost me a radial artery, but that's another story).
When I arrived at Nordstroms, the one sales clerk on duty was tending an overweight man in a green Polo shirt whose wife could not seem to decide which of the twelve pair of shoes brought for inspection would go best with "the pants". The pants were apparently a big deal – she referred to them often, and I got the impression they might actually be his first pair. I surveyed the scene, noticed four other overweight men in Polo shirts seated in the Men's shoe area waiting for their turn. They looked grim, but determined, and I reckoned it could take quite a while for the sales clerk to cycle through them all. I was hungry, and so decided to hit the food court for some Mongolian Bar B Que and return later to Nordstroms.
On the way back to the department store, I passed a hair salon. As getting a haircut was the first item on my ad hoc "to do" list, I paused and thought about going inside.
I'm typically a Supercuts kind of guy. I like Supercuts - I like the speed, I like the price, I like the 3 clippers, but most of all, I like the working class rough-neck hair stylists who look like they would be as comfortable unloading containers at the Port of Long Beach as they are cutting my hair. Supercuts is not a hair salon. Supercuts is a hair factory. Supercuts is one of the few service establishments in the universe where I actually appreciate being made to feel like a widget.
Hair salons, by contrast, frighten me. While intellectually I understand that most hair salons are unisex institutions that gladly accept cash from either gender I can never quite convince myself that men are welcome. The vibe of a typical salon is so overwhelmingly feminine that I always feel like an unwelcome interloper . . . a boorish, testosterone-oozing, trench coat-wearing brute who has barged his way into the elfin glade to flash a squad of young, sassy, tattooed, silicone-enhanced sugarplum fairies. I always feel unkempt entering a hair salon; like I should get a haircut before I go inside.
I probably worry more about this than I ought to.
I dithered outside, weighing the burden of my personal insecurities against the convenience of a hair salon in the hand. Reasoning that Christine would prefer me to be on time for the airport pick up, I resolved to face my fear, ignore my resemblance to Charles Manson and step in amongst the English.
After some brief preliminaries at the reception desk I was escorted into the inner sanctum and led to an available stylist. She was a young, dark-skinned Latina with prominent breasts and a stylish slash of pink accenting her short, sassy hair; her clothes fit skin tight, and the deep neckline of her top displayed ample cleavage. She had a tattoo of some sort on her right boob, but I, convinced that I looked like the kind of man who has a half dozen teenaged girls locked away in a dungeon underneath his barn, was so compulsive about always looking her in the eye that I never got around to admiring (much less, identifying) the artwork.
"Hi, I'm Penelope," she announced with a broad smile as she offered her hand.
I was immediately suspicious.
"I'm Bob." I answered, returning the handshake.
As an afterthought, I smiled.
Penelope escorted me to a small room and handed me a smock. Why it should be necessary for me to don a cover in the room became clear only after she gave me to understand that I was supposed to wear the smock instead of my shirt, and not over it. At Supercuts, it's first come, first served with respect to smock availability, and no one ever wears the smock instead of their street clothes. She provided me with a hangar for my walk-in garment and politely left me to figure out the smock, with its snaps, buttons and ties, in solitude. I emerged from the room a few seconds later, reasonably certain that I had the smock on backwards, but determined not to care.
She led me to a sink with one of those recliny chairs that slide out from under your ass when you sit on them. I've never been comfortable with those chairs; either I sit too far back, so that when I recline my shoulder blades rest over the sink groove where my neck belongs, or I sit so far forward that upon reclining my ears are pinched in the groove and only the crown of my head is available for washing. After stumbling through two iterations of the seating ritual, I suggested that maybe I wasn't smart enough to get my hair washed. She laughed, . . . which is not to say that she disagreed. On the third attempt, I erred in the "ass too far back resulting in head resting on the spigot" direction. She took matters into her own hands by shoving on the top of my head until my ass slid forward on the chair and my neck dropped with a thump into the sink groove. Thus positioned, she reached down, found the lever underneath the seat and, "kachunk", deployed a footrest.
"Comfy?" she asked.
"Oh, fuck yes," I said.
At Supercuts, they only wash your hair if you ask them to, and then, only AFTER they've cut your hair.
During the hair wash, it dawned on me that perhaps the salon choice was not going to be the big time-saver I'd thought it would be. She ran my hair under a stream of tepid water ("Good?" she asked) and then applied a fair quantity of faintly scented shampoo. This was all fine until, with my hair nice and soapy, she reached under my neck and began slowly massaging the base of my skull. Of course, it felt wonderful . . . which I resented. I was on a timeline. I needed to keep my edge by focusing on the clock and maintaining an appropriate level of countdown panic. I did not need a brain full of massage-induced endorphins. When she began kneading my temples I think my eyes crossed and I groaned.
With the massage completed, she coaxed me out of the cursed recliny chair and guided me to her station in the salon.
After swaddling me in a plastic shawl-thingy (this was in addition to the smock), Penelope asked if I would like a cup of coffee or tea.
Okay, this is the one upside to salon vs. Supercuts.
"Coffee," I said, enthusiastically.
She returned a few minutes (yes – minutes) later with a hot cup of coffee in a porcelain cup. Like . . .wow; porcelain . . . not Styrofoam. The coffee smelled delicious! Unfortunately, I was bound in a cocoon of plastic shawl so that to actually drink the cup of coffee would have required me to free my hands, lurch forward in the chair and grab the cup.
As I sit here, trying to explain how I was stymied by a cup of coffee, I find it necessary to repeat again just how uncomfortable the whole hair salon vibe makes me. The environment makes me feel simultaneously small and clumsy giant huge; like I've woken up naked on the set of the Oprah Show and then asked to cross the stage for the studio audience on a pogo stick. Okay, that isn't quite right . . . but it's damn close. The point is that from the moment I walk through the doors of a hair salon, every fiber of my being screams at me to keep a low profile and not make any loud noises or sudden moves that might draw attention to myself.
Since childhood I have suffered from mild, congenital hand tremors. It's not a big deal, but I find that activities requiring precise hand movements are best left to others. The doctor explained it to my mother this way, "Your son can live a happy, productive life, but he should probably avoid becoming a surgeon or drinking coffee from porcelain cups in a hair salon." As I stared longingly at the cup with its tendrils of steam rising in a "come hither" fashion from the inky liquid, I imagined what I would have to do to actually enjoy a sip of coffee. First, I would have to wriggle free of the apron like a psych ward inmate trying to free himself from his straight jacket. Then, I would have to reach across the four feet of open space between the chair and counter, grab the dainty little cup handle between my trembling thumb and forefinger and reel the cup to my lap. Once there, I would then have to grab the cup in both hands, negotiate the lip underneath the overhanging foliage of my moustache, and, assuming I hadn't already spilled the cup's contents onto the floor in one of the previous steps, sip.
"C'mon ladies, let's give Bob a hand. Isn't he wonderful? What do you think, Tom?"
"Oprah, I think he looks ridiculous . . . but I want to get back Scientology for just a minute and explain how my religion . . ."
Boing. Boing. Boing. Boing.
Bound by a straight jacket of plastic and social ineptitude, I sat longing for the coffee as Penelope prepared my hair for cutting. At Supercuts, the technician quickly jerks a comb through your hair, asks you what size clippers you like, and then begins to mow. Penelope, however, undertook a painstaking process of first partitioning my hair into manageable quadrants (my head looked like a water polo ball when she was done), and then slowly clipping away at each quadrant with a pair of scissors.
It went something like . . .
Clip . . .
Clip . . .
. . . . . .
Clip . . .
I mentioned, in my most casual, neither-here-nor-there manner, that at the other place that I sometimes go, they use a number 3 clipper on my hair. "Oh," said Peneloe, "we don't use clippers here." She somehow managed to crinkle her nose in distate while at the same time, look sympathetic . . . a virtuoso performance that I otherwise would have admired were the minute hands on the clock not spinning like fan.
Clip . .
. . . . .
Clip . . .
"You have good hair," she announced.
I was loathe to encourage her, and so, remained silent.
She was laboring away at the lower section of quadrant 2 when I noticed that the pace had slowed. I wasn't sure how such a thing could be possible, yet there was no denying that the pauses between clips were clearly more frequent, and longer. As I watched her nibble away at individual follicles in front of my left ear, I suddenly understood the problem – she was trying to layer the fine threads of sideburn hair into the tangled mass of my beard.
"Look," I said, "Item four on my to do list today is to shave off my beard, so you don't have to spend a ton of time working on the sideburns."
"Wow, you're really doing a makeover today, aren't you."
You see, there . . . right there . . . that's why I am so uncomfortable in a hair salon. They use words like "makeover" with a straight face. I didn't set out for a makeover. All I wanted was to buy a goddamned pair of shoes, and if Mr. Ijustboughtmyveryfirstpairoflongpants and his wife, Maude, hadn't resolved to examine every pair on sale at Nordstroms, I'd have new shoes AND be sitting at the Supercuts across from PetCo having my "good hair" sheared by Rosie the Riveter.
"Oh," I said, "I wouldn't call it a makeover exactly. I like to think of it more as . . . well . . . a haircut."
"What's the occasion?"
Here's where I made my fifteenth tactical error of the day. I told her that I was going to pick up my girlfriend from
I wanted to scream . . . which is exactly what you'd expect Ted Kazinski to do under similar circumstances . . . but didn't.
People who are rude to their waiters amaze me. You see this from time to time in restaurants; people who speak to their servers with the abominable discourtesy of the French nobility on the night before the revolution. This lets-give-the-hornets-nest-a-good-poke mentality that says "let's do everything we can to earn ourselves lugie in our soup" baffles me. When I have a problem with a waiter, I always find it wiser to wait until he clears the plates before I complain. The same concept applies to brain surgeons and barbers – you just don't want to piss them off as they're in the middle of doing their thing.
With this in mind, I forced myself to sit quietly as the minutes passed and Penelope wove.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Penelope was satisfied with the hair-cut proper, and produced electric clippers to trim the down of extraneous hair on my neck. I was surprised and delighted that she even had clippers, and thrilled that she had finally reached the point in the production where their use was appropriate. She quickly ran the clippers over the back of my neck and used them to clean up the edges. As she worked, it occurred to me that I might be able to win back some time if I could get her to use the same clippers to remove my beard.
She blanched, and looked nervously in the mirror at a woman hovering near the reception desk who I think, was her boss. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not allowed to trim beards. . . . but," she lowered her voice ". . . I can loan you the clippers and you can trim it off in the bathroom after we're done." I was thrilled with this suggestion. Given the speed with which she'd trimmed my neck I was reasonably certain that a Penelope-supervised debearding would go swiftly, but the notion of using the clippers on myself eliminated any residual concern about the time it would take.
She finished off the last of her trimming and excused me to the restroom. As I left her station, she slipped the clippers into my hand under the smock and whispered, "Put a towel down over the sink." Her conspiratorial vibe was infectious, and I found myself looking left and right over my shoulder as I made my way through the salon to the little restroom at the back of the shop. Inside the crowded little crapper, I set myself up in front of the mirror, fired up the clippers and began to cut.
I'd finished most of the left side of my face down to my chin line when I realized that I'd forgotten to put down the towel over the sink. While I have "good" hair on my head, I think my beard hair is less impressive; it is wiry, curly and orange-red interspersed with gray. I don't care who you are or where you're from, curly hairs in any part of a public restroom are simply repulsive, and I realized that good manners compelled me to remove all trace of them before I continued. I had scooped most of the hair out of the sink, and was wiping up the residual mess with a wet paper towel when someone started pounding on the door.
Lay low in the hair salon – that's my motto.
In my mind, I pictured Penelope's boss and three mall security guards in body armor gathered outside of the bathroom door. Behind them, a fourth guard restrained the brave Penelope: bruised, bloody but ultimately broken during the course of their harsh interrogation. A SWAT team was en route and over the mall, news helicopters from all the major networks hovered with cameras rolling.
I considered answering the knock, but one quick look at my half-shaved face convinced me that I needed to press on.
Lay low in the hair salon.
"Just a minute," I shouted through the door.
I plucked the last of the curly reds from the drain catch, quickly laid the towel over the sink and resumed my shave. After another three minutes of frantic buzzing, the result of six months of neglect lay in mottled clumps on the towel and the face that looked back at me in the mirror no longer hinted of arson, drug addiction or a bad experience in the Viet Nam War.
I was positively kissable . . . well, except for the smock.
I quickly emptied the contents of the towel out over a trash can, did another quick inspection for errant beard hair, and then opened the door. The manager and her four henchmen had evidently grown tired of waiting, and had stood as guard a nervous looking woman in a smock similar to my own. Her smile was both polite and embarrassed, and as I stepped past her out of the room, I noticed in her the tell-tale bounce of legs characteristic of someone who is desperate to pee. I was groomed, shaved and so, magnanimous as I stepped aside and allowed her to pass.
After removing the smock and changing into my street clothes, I returned to settle accounts with Penelope. She did a double-take as I approached her station, apparently surprised by the transformation. While I was both kissable and no longer in my smock, she somehow managed to resist the obvious temptation represented by the new, madeover me, and instead escorted me to the cashier with a bill and an arm full of hair care products that she thought I might like to purchase.
They charged me $ 35 for the haircut.
The coffee, it seems, was free.
The air-conditioned breeze felt bracing on my clean-shaven face as I rushed through the mall towards Nordstroms to buy my slimming Rockports. My initial delight at finding the Men's Shoe department empty of patrons quickly turned to frustration as I came to realize that sales staff was equally absent. Determined to tolerate no further nonsense, I simply walked past the displays into the "employee only" shoe storage area and called for assistance. The young man who had earlier struggled to match shoes with pants for the wife of the overweight man in the polo shirt emerged from behind a shelf, surprised that anyone would dare to breach the inner sanctum. While I am nervous inside a hair salon, I am not similarly afflicted in Men's Shoes and so, dragged the young sales associate out to the appropriate floor display and bade he fetch me these (pointing to my beloved Rockports) in size 9.
He returned some minutes later and informed me that I was apparently holding the only size 9 Rockport in stock, and that if I wanted both a right AND a left shoe, the closest he could offer was in size 11. I'm not sure of my exact words, but I think they went along the lines of "FUCK!" While a shoe salesperson is neither a brain surgeon nor a barber, the lad was spared an agitated upbraiding by my good breeding and the fact that, by my estimation, Christine's plane was just east of theRocky Mountains – if I wanted to be at the airport on time, I could not waste a second.
I bolted to the parking lot and rushed to the Westminster Mall, which was a little out of the way, but was the next closest shopping center likely to have a store that carried Rockports. I don't go to the Westminster Mall often, and am not particularly familiar with the stores there. I thought it had a Nordstrom's, but as it turns out, I was wrong. Desperate, I found a Macy's on the southwest corner of the mall and decided to try my luck.
The Men's Shoe department at Macy's in the Westminster Mall is on the second floor next to Home Furnishings. This was evidentially new information to the woman at the cosmetics counter near the escalator as she directed me to the third floor where, had I been prepared to wear a set of frying pans on my feet I would have been well serviced.
I finally located Men's Shoes, and found there on the display the very Rockports that had become the Alpha and the Omega of my existence. Of course, the sales person, an older Indian woman (dot/not feathers) was on duty, tending the shoeish needs of an overweight man in a polo shirt, and his wife. Throwing all courtesy and good manners onto the trash heap of desperation, I approached the saleswoman with the sample shoe, and, although she was currently helping someone else, asked her to bring me a pair in size 9. Fortunately, the couple she was tending had several pairs to work with, and so she slipped out to bring me the requested shoe. She returned quickly with two boxes and informed me that they had no size 9's, but did have 8 ½ and 9 ½, and would I like to try those?
While the size 8 ½ fit my circumstances better than my foot, I reckoned them close enough to tolerate, and waved the woman over to finalize the sale. She packed the shoes in a box, escorted me to the cash register, had to reenter my credit card three times in order for it to be accepted (the computer system had been fussy all day, she informed) and sent me, delighted, on my way.
Around the time Christine's plane crossed theGrand Canyon , I emerged from my shower smelling like cucumber and lemon . . . my daughter's preferred shampoo fragrance. I threw on a clean pair of pants and shirt, found (oh wonder of wonders) clean sox and sat on the edge of the bed to put on my shoes. Lester approached, apparently intending to give the shoes a good sniff, but after I made it clear to him that he was, under no circumstances, to approach the shoes, he retreated, contrite. Clean, scrubbed, shaved and slimmingly shod I took a moment to look at myself in the mirror . . .
I looked marvelous . . . a madeover man!
But there was something . . . some subtle something . . . that just wasn't right. My hair looked good, my face, clean, I smelled fragrant and my clothes were clean and appropriately sized. Still, there was something wrong. It was my shoes. There was something wrong with my shoes. The left shoe felt odd, tight. I looked down at my new, hard-won shoes and, slimming as ever, they looked fine; but they felt wrong. I walked back into my bathroom, and with every step, the wrongness of them became more apparent. I looked again, and again, they looked fine.
It was time to go, and I needed to be on my way. I walked around the house gathering my keys, wallet and cell phone, but the farther I walked the more annoying became the shoes. Finally, I just couldn't stand it anymore and, although I was rushed, stopped to sit and conduct an examination. I checked the laces to make sure they were equally snug, checked the tongues to make sure they sat correctly against my foot, checked the soles to make sure nothing annoying had stuck that would disturb my stride. I checked all, was satisfied with all, and yet I could not escape the feeling that the right shoe was looser than the left. Finally, I ripped the shoes off my feet and checked the sizes.
I went into Macy's to buy a pair of size 9 Rockports. They only had size 8 ½ and 9 ½.
Somehow I managed to walk out of the store with one of each.
While I can't remember exactly what I said, I think it went along the lines of "FUCK!!!!!!!!!"
Christine's plane arrived early. I was early too, but as I'd gone to the wrong terminal, I missed her as she came out of the gate. She had suffered a minor catastrophe of her own as she deplaned, and in light of the circumstances, my tardiness was hardly noticed and quickly forgiven.
We hugged.
We kissed.
We were happy to be together again.
After the initial froth of our reunion settled and we were in a position to talk like reasonable human beings, I held her hand and took a step back.
He returned some minutes later and informed me that I was apparently holding the only size 9 Rockport in stock, and that if I wanted both a right AND a left shoe, the closest he could offer was in size 11. I'm not sure of my exact words, but I think they went along the lines of "FUCK!" While a shoe salesperson is neither a brain surgeon nor a barber, the lad was spared an agitated upbraiding by my good breeding and the fact that, by my estimation, Christine's plane was just east of the
I bolted to the parking lot and rushed to the Westminster Mall, which was a little out of the way, but was the next closest shopping center likely to have a store that carried Rockports. I don't go to the Westminster Mall often, and am not particularly familiar with the stores there. I thought it had a Nordstrom's, but as it turns out, I was wrong. Desperate, I found a Macy's on the southwest corner of the mall and decided to try my luck.
The Men's Shoe department at Macy's in the Westminster Mall is on the second floor next to Home Furnishings. This was evidentially new information to the woman at the cosmetics counter near the escalator as she directed me to the third floor where, had I been prepared to wear a set of frying pans on my feet I would have been well serviced.
I finally located Men's Shoes, and found there on the display the very Rockports that had become the Alpha and the Omega of my existence. Of course, the sales person, an older Indian woman (dot/not feathers) was on duty, tending the shoeish needs of an overweight man in a polo shirt, and his wife. Throwing all courtesy and good manners onto the trash heap of desperation, I approached the saleswoman with the sample shoe, and, although she was currently helping someone else, asked her to bring me a pair in size 9. Fortunately, the couple she was tending had several pairs to work with, and so she slipped out to bring me the requested shoe. She returned quickly with two boxes and informed me that they had no size 9's, but did have 8 ½ and 9 ½, and would I like to try those?
While the size 8 ½ fit my circumstances better than my foot, I reckoned them close enough to tolerate, and waved the woman over to finalize the sale. She packed the shoes in a box, escorted me to the cash register, had to reenter my credit card three times in order for it to be accepted (the computer system had been fussy all day, she informed) and sent me, delighted, on my way.
Around the time Christine's plane crossed the
I looked marvelous . . . a madeover man!
But there was something . . . some subtle something . . . that just wasn't right. My hair looked good, my face, clean, I smelled fragrant and my clothes were clean and appropriately sized. Still, there was something wrong. It was my shoes. There was something wrong with my shoes. The left shoe felt odd, tight. I looked down at my new, hard-won shoes and, slimming as ever, they looked fine; but they felt wrong. I walked back into my bathroom, and with every step, the wrongness of them became more apparent. I looked again, and again, they looked fine.
It was time to go, and I needed to be on my way. I walked around the house gathering my keys, wallet and cell phone, but the farther I walked the more annoying became the shoes. Finally, I just couldn't stand it anymore and, although I was rushed, stopped to sit and conduct an examination. I checked the laces to make sure they were equally snug, checked the tongues to make sure they sat correctly against my foot, checked the soles to make sure nothing annoying had stuck that would disturb my stride. I checked all, was satisfied with all, and yet I could not escape the feeling that the right shoe was looser than the left. Finally, I ripped the shoes off my feet and checked the sizes.
I went into Macy's to buy a pair of size 9 Rockports. They only had size 8 ½ and 9 ½.
Somehow I managed to walk out of the store with one of each.
While I can't remember exactly what I said, I think it went along the lines of "FUCK!!!!!!!!!"
Christine's plane arrived early. I was early too, but as I'd gone to the wrong terminal, I missed her as she came out of the gate. She had suffered a minor catastrophe of her own as she deplaned, and in light of the circumstances, my tardiness was hardly noticed and quickly forgiven.
We hugged.
We kissed.
We were happy to be together again.
After the initial froth of our reunion settled and we were in a position to talk like reasonable human beings, I held her hand and took a step back.
"Does anything look odd to you," I asked.
She cocked her head in that cute, inquisitive way that I love, looked me over and finally, shook her head, "No" she said.
I placed my right foot forward, just a nudge . . .
"Are you sure?"
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