The Drunk, Gay Barber
I was living alone in a new place, a weird, lonely place, in the middle of nowhere, where my small apartment was surrounded by nothing but strip clubs and sex toy shops. Ever since I got fired from my remote coding job at Facebook for deliberately making a “dog’s dinner” (to quote my manager) of my last B.S., busywork project, I’ve been drifting. I let myself go. Stopped working out, stopped even going outside. Used to be cut, and I was still big, but I had become totally soft at the haunches. Stopped talking to people. No texting, no phone calls. Nosedived my most intimate relationships. And the crazy thing was, I didn’t realize any of it was happening.
One day I woke up and decided to take a small step to get things back on track. Sometimes that’s all it takes. I’d been thinking for a few days that I could use a haircut, so I set my mind on taking a walk that morning and finding a decent barbershop. I don’t know about you, but a shave, a haircut, it always brings me back. It’s something you can always rely on to get yourself some juice, some mojo. I didn’t know the area well, but didn’t think I could go too wrong, and picked a random barbershop on one of the many touristy streets near my dismal apartment.
“Howar joo too-day?” The barber said as soon as I walked in. I swear I smelled the liquor on his breath before I saw his face. He grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me into a seat. The place was totally empty. “Loose like I’m bissy today!” He laughed, wrapping me in a black cape and spinning me 180 degrees toward the mirror.
“Please stop,” I tried to say, but the words died in my throat. He was already all over me. Of course I could have still gotten up that very moment, apologized firmly, and walked out, but some inexplicable force kept me weighed down in that chair. “Jour hair is fut up!”
The scissors were already out and he was going to town on me. I couldn’t do or say anything. “I know juss what joo need,” he kept saying. Despite very clearly being drunk, he spoke with such bombast and moved with such speed and apparent dexterity that I actually began to relax. Guy was probably just a great barber. Eccentric, sure, but that was just a mark of confidence you wanted to see.
That’s when he first grabbed my head and humped it.
He didn’t really hump it, but that’s effectively what happened. And it kept happening. Every time he needed to adjust the position of my head, he bounced it against his stomach as if humping it. “You wan somefin to drenk?” He said, gesturing toward a refrigerator filled with spirits. “I got Grey Gus.”
“You wash gamatronz?” He started to shout through the chaos a little later.
“What?” I shouted back.
“Gamatronz! Iss my favarit.”
“What?”
He then started pointing toward a dark back corner of the room which had a huge, tattered poster for HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”
“Oh,” I shouted. “I haven’t seen it.”
“Washu said?”
“I haven’t seen it!”
“Joo makin me WORK today!”
My hair was ruined for 5 months and 2 haircuts after this encounter. By the time my hair went back to normal, I had made great progress in turning my life around. Crazy how a few months can fix things. In the Spring you could feel like you’re at the end of your rope, and by Winter everything’s starting fresh again.