Barber Shop Pleasantries

I really should get more sleep, the man thought, his gaze lingering on the dark patches under his eyes. His tousled, shoulder-length hair augmented his perpetual look of weariness, especially what with the odd angles some sweaty strands of hair had chosen to hold themselves at. His hand moved of its own volition to smooth the offending strands before he could remind it that such a movement was impossible, because, as it well knew, the cloak they had strapped onto him effectively restrained the hands.

Stupid hand.

He also reminded himself that the overly bright halogen lamps were what gave his face the acutely shadowed, rugged look and that in reality, there were virtually no bags under his eyes. And his cheeks did not look that round.

The man's eyes stalked back to the awfully long hair, his hand twitching in powerless frustration as another clump of it freed itself from the painstakingly styled whole. It really had been high time to visit a hairdresser.

“So, how short?”

The hairdresser, Ali, had returned from wherever he had gone off to. As with his departure, his second coming was deemed to be as natural as you like, to be accepted without explanation. His lips pursed slightly as he took in the mess that sat upon the man's crown. Whether in annoyance or interest, the man could not cipher.

“Er,” the man said, fighting off the instinct to ruffle his hair, “I'd actually like to keep it fairly long. So, ah, mostly cleaning it up a little. Well, quite a lot, really. Oh, and making it... what's the word. Eh. What I mean is – umm.”

He grinned a nervous grin as Ali gave him a blank look. The man tried making vague motions with his hands, but the stupid cloth was in the way. It's weird how stunted one feels without one's hands, he thought. So he shrugged instead.

“Not so thick,” he finished lamely.

Ali nodded once, distractedly, eyes fixed on the man's head. “Ears exposed? Or half-exposed?”

“Half,” said the man. “Definitely.”

Ali nodded again. He then walked up to the mirror and grabbed a smaller, hand-held variant. He held it up behind the man's head.

“This is your current length of hair,” he said, and the man winced. Ali held up a finger about two inches higher. “To here?”

The man thought frantically, weighing options for no reason he could summon to mind (I mean seriously, he's the expert and I'm just deluding myself with a ridiculous farce of a choice – how long does an inch look anyway?) before saying, “A little more, please.”

Just to be safe, he told himself. And definitely not so that I come off as if I actually know something.

Ali slid his finger half an inch higher, grunted at the man's nod, then clasped his hands together. “Alright, let's get this washed. Up we get.”

The man let himself be lead to the wash basin even though he had been there a dozen times, and could have probably found it in his sleep. It's protocol. So you just do it. And hey, it prevents the workday from becoming too exciting. Whatever it takes to roll the day into one easily forgettable, easily acceptable dullness.

The man had learned, through acute humiliation, that before leaning your head back at the sink, it is imperative to decide whether you were to keep your eyes closed or if you would fixedly stare at the ceiling. Anything else builds up a strange tension onto the moment, what with the hairdresser having to watch your eyes open and close depending on how he was touching your head. No. One sticks to either firmly open or firmly closed. The man opted for closed, this time.

As he rested his head back onto the padded dent in the sink, it dawned on him that the darkness under his eyes might not have been any trick of the light. His eyelids fell like rich velvet and it didn't even occur to him to answer when Ali asked him if the water was alright. The soothingly hot water sluiced down his scalp, and he could feel it slowly kneading the knots out of his hair.

A moment later, Ali's fingers traced the curve of his skull, and just as the water sorted out the man's clustered hair, so did Ali's fingers something else. The man was damned if he knew what, but boy, did it feel relieving whatever it was.

The shampoo. Rinse. The conditioner. Rinse. The brisk toweling. The man sat through it all, stiffly holding off the smile that wished to spread across his face. Because that sort of thing is just plain creepy between two strangers of the same sex.

“There we go,” said Ali.

The man said his thanks as he got up from the chair, uncluttered, fighting the clamminess of his eyes. His face hurt. A yawn threatened to bubble to his exterior.

He shambled back to the bench as Ali dug in his tool pack for a comb and a knife with a ragged, spiky edge. Ali pumped the chair up a couple of notches. The man grinned at his reflection.

“Heh, I should've become a salesman.”

Ali grimaced and began combing the man's hair out of its lanky mullet.

“At least it would be easier. Less time spent at the hairdressers.”

Ali nodded. “And more time for me to have lunch.”

“Exactly.”

The man and the hairdresser then fell into a mutual silence. It wasn't a silence of tension, or eagerness, or even discomfort. It was one of necessity; Ali cut and the man allowed himself to be cut.

“A silence of professionalism, some might say.”

“Hmm?”

“Oh, nothing, nothing. Just thinking.”

Ali shrugged and set his knife to the man's wet hair. The odd knife shredded off excess hair in clumps, the comb acting as a guide for the precise destruction the serrated edge caused. Comb, shred. Comb, shred, shred, shred. The man watched as Ali's face slowly lit up. The curve of a smile tugged at the hairdresser's lips as his hands went through the familiar motions, one setting the premise, one executing.

“Superb knife skills. I don't think I've ever seen anyone that brisk,” the man ventured into the concentrated silence.

The hands faltered and the man cursed himself, but after a momentary pause Ali swept up another chunk of wet hair.

“Now you make me sound like some rogue from the allies.”

The man met Ali's gaze in the mirror to find him grinning. The man chuckled and let Ali get back to work, feeling pleased with himself. Strands of soggy hair rained down on the swept floor and the man found himself drumming a beat into the foot rest. Ali switched to a buzzer after a couple of minutes of gently ripping off half the man's hair in order to focus on his side burns. His face was scant inches from the man's face and it occurred to the man that anywhere else, this nigh-contact would be frightfully awkward.

As Ali made his way to the man's neck, the buzzer biting into the fluff that always grew at the very base, the man asked, “Do you remember any of the people that come here?”

“Sometimes.”

“Hmm.” The man thought a little, gaze to his lap, then, “Doesn't it feel weird when people recognize you, and you can't remember them?”

The buzzer hovered at his neck; the man flicked his gaze back to the mirror. Ali had pursed his lips in thought. “I guess so,” he said after a moment, returning the buzzing edge to trim the last of the fluff. “I mean, I remember some, when they've come enough times, or if they were funny - or horrible. Probably the weirdest is when it's someone very interesting, and I wonder how I cannot remember them. But that's more about me being disappointed by myself.” He blew on the man's neck, then gave a satisfied nod.

Ali walked around the chair to ditch the buzzer, picking up a pair of scissors and a comb. He set back to work on the top portion, cutting at crisp diagonals to dispel the boxy look.

“I suppose it's not that different from when clerks don't remember you at the store.” Ali said, then, with a small laugh, “Now that I think of it, it makes me feel like a minor celebrity.”

The man nodded through it all, or nodded as much as someone with a blade hovering around his head could nod. He matched Ali's laugh.

“I'd say that hair dressing is different than clerking, though. Cutting someone's hair is much more intimate. I mean, come on,” he added to Ali's raised brow, “I've read somewhere that your hair style amounts to around 70% of the factors that make up your overall style and attitude. And judging from how different I look now to when we started, I'd be willing to go up to 90% on that.”

“And I'm the guy who's responsible for it. Yeah, I see where you're coming from. The sides okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Perfect.” Never criticize a man with a razor, the man thought to himself.

Ali gave the man's forelock a couple of more snips, then brushed his hands on his apron-thing. The man looked himself in the eyes and was stricken by the change. His look of weariness had mutated into something much lesser, something that could even rightly be called 'peachy'. His jaw looked more pronounced, and his blue eyes felt all the more striking now that they observed the world unobstructed. The cut was shorter than he had been going for, but it wasn't bad at all.

“I know that look,” said Ali. He was holding a mirror to the back of the man's head. “Not what you were looking for?”

The man shrugged. “It's a good dresser who can give a customer what he wants,” he said. “But give a man not what he wants, but what he should want, and you are a great dresser.”

Ali laughed. “Not many would sign that.”

“Point is, I would. And have. So thank you, the new hair's perfect,” said the man with a smile.

“You're welcome. You want some wax in it?”

“Sure,” the man said. “I make it a point to wear the hair-do you guys come up with for the rest of the day, at least.”

Ali warmed up the wax in between his hands, a wicked gleam to his eye. “You shouldn't have told me that, my friend.”

“Do your worst,” said the man, laughing. “Can't be much worse than what I had before.”

Ali did.

It was.

Afterward, the man paid him, scowling at Ali's grin. The man left the sputtering hairdresser to deal with his next client, his hands itching to slap the stupid sideways mohawk down.

On that day, the man vowed to never get on a hairdresser's bad side.

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A/N: Nothing like a little slice of life writing to get out of a long, long break. This is just stuff that occurred to me while visiting the local hair dresser. I hope it doesn't read as clunky as it felt when I wrote it. Thanks for reading. ^^