On Haircuts and Lab Rats

To get a haircut is always an adventure and a source of suffering, hesitation, anxiety and procrastination for me. I always try to talk myself into taking it easy and not worrying too much about it, but the truth is that I don't believe my very own baby talk on that particular matter. By the end of the third week after getting a haircut, I always start talking myself into making room in my already empty agenda to go and get my red hair mown, and I always end up showing up at the haircut place by the end of the sixth week. Which was *finally* today.

It is a source of anxiety because my red hair has been falling off my head like leaves from a tree on a windy October afternoon. My once upon a time incredible amount of red hair is just a bad joke compared to the few hairs that still struggle to attach themselves to my ever less populated skull. To know that one day I'm gona end up like Kojak, or worse yet that I may let my hair grow in one side of my head so that I can comb it in a way that covers my shining head has me cursing to right and left. I suffer everytime I get a haircut because I see less and less hair, and that's the reason why I proscratinate for almost two weeks before showing up at Supercuts.

But I'd say the greatest source of anxiety are those people that work at Supercuts and that I refer to as "the scientists": always experimenting with your hair. Those who got straight Cs and perhaps a couple of Ds at the haircut school are the ones who end up asking me "so, how do you want it today?". Those people that got their diplomas in the mail after a long distance course of "Haircutting Made Very Easy" are the ones who end up working at Supercuts and taking care of my very few red hairs.

I was lucky for a period of almost one year, because I ran into a very nice and very talkative woman who grew up in South America, the land where I come from, and who became my very own personal hair dresser. She would greet me with a kiss on the cheek and would make whoever had been waiting for a haircut, wait longer because I was her cliente favorito. I would listen to all her stories, laugh with her, curse her lovers when it was time to curse them, and I would always ask her if she had lost weight since the last time because she looked "very nice". At that point I'd get my second kiss on the cheek and ten more minutes of stories, which started to focus more and more on how much she missed California and the life she had over there. It really doesn't take a genius to figure out that North Carolina, and particularly Charlotte, is just a hole in the wall compared to more lively and exiting cities around the country. And she discovered it within the first couple of months living here and knew that it was just a matter of time for her to head back west.

Time finally came for her to move out of the Bible Belt, heading westwards and not looking back, and leaving behind her cliente favorito in the hands of only God knows who.

It's been almost seven weeks since the last time I saw her and I was in desperate need for a haircut, so I went to meet my fate today. It came in the form of a dude with gold teeth from NOLA and heavy limbs who had never seen a red-haired Latino before. He was very nice and talkative, but I believe he got more Ds than the rest of his peers in "Hair Mowing School" and for a moment I thought that he was gona charge me for the hour, because it took him almost sixty precious minutes of my time to leave me almost like a soldier and with a headache due to all the cutting and trimming that his heavy handed style allowed him to do.

I always gave Martha, my former hairdresser, a six dollar tip on top of the $13.95 that it usually costs. I always want to keep happy whoever has a pair of sharp scissors close to my brain, but I handed only two bucks to this guy as I don't expect to see him again. He's more suited to handle a fucking chainsaw and an axe than a comb and a pair of scissors.

I have documented extensively my experiences with Supercuts here here here and I've always vowed, haircut after haircut, that this was "the last fucking time I set foot in this damn place!". But in Charlotte you can either get a $13.95 haircut at Greatclips or Supercuts, or a $45 dollar one at one of the upscale places that have covered the city. I'm not a math person but the numbers are cry$tal clear to me.

Today that Russian Roulette that Supercuts is had a full load and had left me with more words for this post than hair in my head. . . and I swear this was the last fucking time I go to fucking Supercuts! You damn scientists go and practice on another lab rat because this one is fucking done with y'all!

$%@&@#!!!!!!!!!!