As I watch Claire Saffitz’s Gourmet Makes videos on the Bon Appetit YouTube channel, I am forced, once again, to watch an ad about the type of shampoo I might need for voluminous hair. After clicking on the ‘Skip Ad’ button, I can’t help but wonder if the employee responsible for targeted ads is having a bit of an off day.
The journey my hair has been on in the past 28 years has been particularly underwhelming. HBO would not pick up a 10-episode arc of this particular story. Through the years, I’ve never given much weight to how my hair looks, as long as it’s neat and I don’t have to do anything with it in the morning. These days, while we’re stuck at home, I’m happy to notice a silver lining about being so emotionally unavailable about a subject; a drunk toddler could cut my hair and I wouldn’t mind in the least. The worst it could do is create a series of irregular bald patches (adding to the regular one I already have) and I’ve already done that, purposefully, in a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible in theatre school. I played Reverend Hale.
I’ve just never been precious about my hair. It’s mostly maintained different shades of short my whole life. I would like to believe that back in the day, at a time when I would have been too young to use that expression, my hair had ambitions to grow. Yet, I just wouldn’t let it. I never reflected long enough to ask myself why? I had certainly seen pictures of my dad’s permed afro, with its curls flowing down to the shoulders, reminiscent of Farrah Fawcett’s better hair days. Perhaps I just didn’t want to inherit the look of a 1970’s Studio 54 Disco Pimp. I refused to imagine what growing hair would look like on me. I wasn’t, what you would call, conventionally attractive and at that point, the prickly stuff on my head was not going to make a difference either way. The best way to deal with this reluctance about letting anything get too shaggy was to stop worrying about it and just shave it off. This is why I never went to a barber shop. There was no point.
Lucky for me, I had my mother. She is a tall, beautiful, and loving French woman, who has always had an eye for fashion and design. She is also one of those people who think they can do anything. A bit of French pretension or as they would call it, optimism. According to her, a lifetime of observation is enough to make any skill a reality. Irritatingly for everyone around her, it was true. Except for when it came to helping me with my Math 9 homework. Desperately repeating ‘bouge le x, bouge le x ’ and erratically repeating the word trigonometry is just not going to help you solve for y. When it comes to suggesting wardrobe choices or how to style my hair, she was, to my great annoyance, right. Aren’t mothers always?
And so, she would shave my head with an electric razor in less time than it takes Uber Eats to arrive on a Friday night. It was usually even and there were rarely any holes. I think back on this sometimes and, just for the fun of it, count all the money I’ve saved on haircuts over the years by doing them at home. Like anti-cigarette ads. Screaming at you to drop the habit and in doing so, assuring you that you’d be a millionaire. Cancer, it turns out, was just more attractive to many. Again with the French pride..I sometimes smoke.
For all its financial advantages, getting a haircut at home was always a bit of an ordeal. It usually took place in the kitchen. I would strip down to my underwear to minimise the amount of hair that would inevitably get everywhere. I’d hop on a cold stool that was always awkwardly placed near a plug because the razor’s cord was comically short. I could have sat on the counter next to the outlet and still, my mom and I would have managed a Laurel and Hardy routine. When she made her way from the back of my head to the front of it, the cold, taught, plastic wire would surprise me and send shivers down my spine. Since she wasn’t a professional but still extremely proficient, the process would take a little more time than it would if done by someone whose career was giving haircuts. For this reason, and if it meant I could have avoided the flash of cold on my ass, I sometimes wish I had gone to a barber, just to see what it was like.
Until sometime in my 20’s, I never had that pleasure. I never experienced the fun elevator chairs as I call them. I never indulged in the smell of wet hair mixed with alcohol-based product so defining of a place where hair is cut. I didn’t have the synthetic gown, worn by thousands of other people, thrust upon me. Nor did I have that weird heavy thing wrapped around my neck. I certainly did not encounter the magical feeling of being shampooed and receiving a scalp massage from a total stranger. Wow! Even though I could imagine many of these situations from watching television or sneaking glances into salons as I walked by them, there was a crucial component of getting a hair cut that I could not understand.
When I lived in London, I saw a beautiful show called Barber Shop Chronicles at the National Theatre. It told intersecting stories of men who attend barbershops in London and in various countries in Africa. It centred on the importance of barber shops in the British-African community (if you need a haircut in London, you’ll never run out of options). It characterised these neighbourhood establishments as places of community and communion, where young and old black men would go to talk about their lives, their successes, and their failures, something not readily done at home. It moved me to my core. There was so much life and truth and hurt and joy and anger emanating from that stage. I assumed that it captured the experience, one that I didn’t know, perfectly. The incredible response of the mostly black audience around me confirmed my suspicions. If I had known about this or if I had been a young black teenager, I would have spent all my time in these shops. I later learned that the barber shops I could have gone to when I was younger were mostly run by old Italian men with thick accents more interested in monologues than in dialogue.
And so, every couple of weeks, during my childhood, I would strip down to my underwear, sit on the stool in the kitchen, and get the Cory special: a 2 all over.
This routine evolved for me when I was 17. Coincidentally, it was around the time of the renaissance (or gentrification) of white barber shops. A renaissance led by cool, tattoo dawning, hipsters charging $35 for a bald head. Bad timing to start getting haircuts. The drastic shift occurred in my own home salon, which is where I learned about my mother’s desire to confront my dad about his infidelity. It came out of nowhere.
I remember it vividly. It took place sometime in the evening. It was already dark outside as we were about to enter the short days of the winter months, a period which seemed eerily appropriate for what was about to be discussed. As usual with these haircuts, I was practically naked, while sharp objects were being wielded around by a woman who was about to admit to her only son the torment and hurt she felt about being betrayed.
To this day, I ask myself whether or not this was the most appropriate place to share this knowledge but since we were in a kitchen, and not a salon, where there was no mirror, this was the only way to have this conversation without having to look each other in the eyes.
Several weeks before this disclosure, I too had suspected as much. Those suspicions were confirmed to me one day when the manager of my usual Starbucks sent me to another local Starbucks to cover someone’s shift. On that afternoon, as I was frothing milk, listening out for that aerating sound conducive to a great Skinny Vanilla Latte, I caught a glimpse of two people coming out of the restaurant next door. My father and his new girlfriend. Again, I too had thought something was going on but the actuality of the event, the serendipitous circumstances of my work shift, and the vague voyeur like conditions, made the situation palpable and unnerving. I vowed never to share this knowledge with anyone.
The haircut with my mom started how I imagined every salon encounter going (before seeing the show in London), perfunctory chit chat, to ease you into the awkwardness of the next hour.
‘How was your day?’
‘Is your cat still full of worms?’
‘Have you seen? Brangelina adopted another child!’
Or something else that was happening in whatever issue of Closer or People was lying on the waiting room table. Now that I’ve started occasionally attending barber shops, my imagination has proved to be spot on, at least for the shops I attend. In my experience, the chit chat is brief, about sports, beer, and whatever plans you have going on during the weekend before abruptly ending, and silencing the next 35 minutes. If it wasn’t for Barber Shop Chronicles, I would assume that two grown men have trouble talking about anything meaningful…
Back to the kitchen, where my life was about to shift forever. The mundane conversation smoothly transitioned into the change my mom had observed in my father’s attitude and schedule. Thinking about it now, I still get nervous flutters in my stomach. I can only imagine the tension my mother had built up leading into this discussion and the relief she must have felt when the truth finally came out.
As soon as my mom shared her suspicions with me, I froze. It was less about the fact that my dad was cheating on my mom, but more about the possibility that I would have to admit what I knew and risk deceiving her. I don’t know if she could have taken any more betrayal from her family. I decided not to say anything and just listen. I’ve never questioned this decision and don’t think much of this moment in my life anymore, but I think I made the right choice.
I remember hardly engaging in my mom’s drawn-out, crying accusations. Slowly and then all at once, tears streamed down my face. The only thing I could think about was how much of a hassle the clean up was going to be on that day. Slightly wet hair is a bitch. I began trying to stifle the sobs by actively fighting the gut-wrenching exhales with long silent inhales. I was at the mercy of the razor, I couldn’t just get up but I also thought about how appropriate getting a screwed up haircut would be. I’d have an excuse to tell people at work the next day.
‘What happened to your hair?’
‘My parents are getting a divorce!’ or if that didn’t fly, I could attempt to float the idea that I was starting a new trend. Which would have been an impossibility if you had met me in my late teens.
Unfortunately, or fortunately for me, whichever way you want to look at it, I sat through it all. As soon as it was over, I tiptoed, as I always did, to minimise the trail of hair, to the bathroom, got in the shower and cried some more. The showers I take after getting a haircut are always longer because I have a routine of scrubbing, soaking, and scrubbing again, to get rid of all the little dark brown wisps. This might have been the longest shower I’ve ever taken as I endeavoured to calm the anxiety rising in my body, in anticipation of the assured face to face discussion which was about to take place.
After getting dressed, I sat on the couch and didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I could have comforted my mom, I could have told her it was okay, I could have taken her in my arms but I just stayed mute. I felt drained from the crying; when you cry long and hard it can feel the same way as the morning after an intense ab workout. She finished cleaning the hair off the kitchen floor and sat next to me. She gave me a free pass. She asked if I would like to go to my friend’s house so that she could confront my dad, and I said yes. I ended up living with my friend’s family for several years after that night. I never asked what happened after I left the house. And probably never will.
I realize now that that night was my very own Barber Shop Chronicles moment. It was a milestone. A slice of life with a distinct before and after period. The true end of my childhood. Who I became after the haircut was not the same person I was when I stripped down to my tighty-whities.