Few acts of intimacy between oneself and one's partner can compete for sheer sensual joy with the giving and getting of a haircut. Though you may begin the practice out of parsimony, you will continue it out of love.
A haircut from your sweetheart speaks volumes. You carry it with you all day like a badge of Cupid, more public than a ring. And whatever little imperfections, razor burns, racing stripes or asymmetries you sport-unless your lover actually lops off your ear-will endear you to others because of your obvious tenderness of heart. It's like homemade cookies-they would have to be very burned and very dry indeed not to taste better than any commercial alternative. Even your closest and most candid friends will eat them with a smile and tell you they're delicious, even if you omitted the sugar. Whatever is done with love is done well.
It's less common, I think, for men to cut the hair of their darling than vice versa. My career as a coiffeur began about five years ago, after my wife had discovered the joys of baldness during a chemotherapy regimen and vowed never again to have enough hair to make a swishing sound. That first time was memorably nerve-wracking. When her downy post-chemo pilosity began to yield to the usual thatch, she sat me down one day and, with a sober countenance, slowly withdrew a pair of cheap electric clippers from a K-Mart shopping bag.
Our eyes met and locked. "How hard could it be?" I thought.
"No worse than tying a bowtie."
And I smiled. Oh, vanity of vanities! Haircuts, I was to learn, require the most perfect concentration; they are a test of merit, patience, skill and the ability to lie well to your spouse.
So now we go through a monthly ritual whose elements include an old sewing table chair of just the right height, a long pair of scissors like the ones Lucretia Borgia used on her sixth husband and the extension cord that goes with my 3/8 inch drill. It is a kind of mating dance, though it ends differently, especially if blood has been spilled.
The male bobs and weaves, moving back and forth in rhythm, squinting, brushing, stooping, cocking his head to one side,as the female sits motionless on a hair trigger, her eyes following every move, alert to his tiniest frown or to the beginning of an apology just forming in his throat.
I cannot leave this subject without mentioning the Dreaded Oops. We have all encountered one or two in our relationships, perhaps near the end. We experience Dreaded Oopses while washing the female's prized crystal too late at night, or after working overtime on a forgotten anniversary or when discovered eating the last piece of chocolate while we thought we were alone.
Mine came one day as I was minding my own business and humming a cheerful tune while I whisked away my spouse's supererogatory plumage. "That's odd," I remarked. "The gleam of the overhead light off your head is blinding me. You don't suppose I used the wrong-oops."
She turned on me then, she who had invited-nay begged-me to shear her, and she remained unmoved by the well-chosen quotations from Ecclesiastes, the Buddha and Kojak I had been carefully stockpiling against such an hour.
That day there was more hair than usual to be gleaned.
What do barbers do with hair? They might stuff pillows or weave bookmarks, but I think it may wind up in the landfill, shucked off as though it had not once been part of what made us whole-a part upon which considerable time and money may have been lavished in its day. I considered having ours made into a shirt I could wear after an Oops, but Hair Services, downstairs in West Union, claimed not to know how-which smacks of false advertising. My God, now there's a marketing opportunity: You can't even buy a good hair shirt anymore.
Nor could I bear to throw away a piece of my love as if it were common trash. Birds, happily, are always in need of organic building materials. You can now spot highlights of our marriage atop trees and phone poles throughout our neighborhood.
Saint Francis merely fed them; I help house them.
Paul Baerman, Fuqua '90, is a Durham resident.
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