Hair Cut

Every five weeks or so I go to the barber and get a hair cut. The shop I go to is in my neighborhood, very close to my apartment building; it is actually a unisex place of the Punk variety.

I've been going there for years -- since I last lived with a woman. My last live-in girlfriend would cut my hair. She had a pair of electric shears. It is too much trouble for me to cut my own hair. I did it a few times. It makes a huge mess and there was always a fist-sized spot on the back of my head, right side, that I couldn't get.

Last night I ducked into the shop on my way home from work. I sat down in the chair. The owner, a large woman with multicolored dreads and tattoos, draped me in a cutting cape and asked me what size blade she should put on her shears. I told her, "Two all the way around."

She set to work.

I asked her how she had been. She proceeded to tell me about how she had moved to an adjoining town and how her car had died and how now she was forced to take two buses back and forth and it took a long time, like three hours a day.

While she spoke I faced myself in a large mirror. It was an unpleasant surprise. The person I was looking at was not the person I imagined myself to be. The person I was looking at was old and tired. His hair was almost entirely gray; his eyes had dark circles. This guy seemed beaten, meek; no gangsta lean there. "Wow," I thought. "Things have gotten pretty bad."

I tipped my barber and paid the cashier. I walked outside into a sunny evening. Next to me, waiting for the traffic light to change, was a tall healthy young woman in nylon jogging shorts and a sleeveless runner's top. She bounced in place on the balls of her feet. The light changed and off she went looking beautiful.

"I am not in the game anymore." -- That was my realization.

"The clock on the wall I can no longer fool," to quote The Lemonheads from "Ride With Me," the fourth track off the band's major-label debut, Lovey (1990).

I've been walking around for years thinking I'm still in the game, but I'm not.

But, hey, it's okay. I'm thankful for what I've got. Believe me.