I read recently that an average man grows about ten
yards of hair during his life, so I guess I’d look like an Afghan goat-herd if
it weren’t for generations of barbers and hairdressers who’ve washed, cut and
dried my hair.
And what an
incredible cast of characters they’ve been! I can't remember my earliest
haircuts, but the first barber I recall, long ago in the mid-1930s, had a shop
on High Street in our country town in Southeast England, between a pie shop and
a movie house. He was a dapper little man with a neatly trimmed mustache and,
believe it or not, his name was Mr. Tidy.
Mr.
Tidy’s barbershop was always busy. His customers sat in cane chairs along a
mirrored wall, reading newspapers that my father, a staid and serious man, would
never have allowed in our house. These reported little real news, but spicy
stories about society divorces, or bishops running off with actresses. But for
me there were also comic strips and, when I could read, I met Dagwood Bumstead
and Popeye, and Dick Tracy.
Mr. Tidy’s
barber’s chair was a miracle of chrome and leather on a swiveling pedestal that
could be pedaled up and down, and had the words ‘Made in America’ emblazoned on
a panel in its ornate silver filigree. When it was my turn, Mr. Tidy put a wooden
box on the seat and lifted me onto it.
He worked quickly and I watched, fascinated, as the hair clippings fell
on the floor around the chair. When he’d finished, he’d stoop and lift a wooden
trapdoor by its tiny brass doorknob, and sweep the clippings under the floor
boards.
When I was
eight, I was sent to a boys-only boarding school miles from home, and later to
another much bigger one. At both schools, barbers came from the town at regular
intervals, carrying their equipment in black leather suitcases, and set-up shop
in the sports changing rooms. After the quiet orderliness of Mr. Tidy’s shop,
these sessions were rowdy and boisterous. The visitors clearly didn’t think
enforcing discipline was a part of their job, and the older boys fought on the floor and elbowed the
younger ones aside in the waiting line. For the smaller, younger boys, having a
haircut could be an ordeal, and often took a long time.
At
Sandhurst – Britain’s version of West Point – there was a full-time barbershop
among the stables and stores tucked away behind the Academy’s elegant
buildings. Haircuts were free, probably because the authorities thought we’d
mutiny if forced to part with real money to have our hair cropped like
convicts. It was little comfort to know that distinguished former graduates
such as Winston Churchill, Field Marshall (‘Monty’) Montgomery and other greats
had sat in those very same oak chairs.
The
years passed and I suffered the attention of regimental barbers in half a dozen
countries. But at least we were now officers, and could grow our hair slightly
longer and indulge in a little individualism.
Later I left the
army to join a London public relations firm as a trainee. By then I expected to
be able to pick and choose who cut my hair. But on a monthly salary of 41
pounds – today worth about $62 – my choice of hair cutters was limited to men
who practiced in small back rooms behind tobacconists’ stores. The result was
often little better than the clumsy attentions of a regimental barber.
But in 1959, on my wedding day in London, I
had the most exclusive trim and shave of my life. I’d spent my last night of
bachelor bliss at the apartment of a friend of my father-in-law who was shaved
daily at Harrods, the venerable store that sells anything you can imagine at
unimaginable prices to unbelievably wealthy people. In its low-lit, walnut
paneled barber shop, respectful, speak-when-you’re spoken-to experts shaved my
host and me with badger-hair brushes and cutthroat razors. We lay side by side
on what seemed more like operating tables than Mr. Tidy’s chrome, all-American
barber’s chair back in the 30s. There were hot towels and cologne to follow,
and a massage of the neck and shoulders. The faintest sound of baroque music
drifted from invisible speakers.
Nearly twenty
years later, in the late 70s, came haircuts and shaves that were at the same
time a wide-awake dream of fair women and the best barbering of a lifetime.
South East Asia has turned a normally humdrum experience into an all-but erotic
fantasy. Men’s hairdressing shops in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore are a
blend of an Arabian
Nights harem and an Upper East Side beauty shop. It’s not that there’s any
back-room impropriety going on, but simply that – however sexist this may seem –
the dozen or more geisha-like young women in these places are recruited as much
for their beauty and vivacity as for their tonsorial talents. Their deft,
perfectly manicured hands seem not so much to work on one’s head and face, but
almost to caress them, and any full-blooded male pulse quickens with their warm
proximity. I wonder whether, now that I’m past my mid-eighties, their welcome
would be half as seductive.
Nowadays,
accompanied by Lynn, my wife, I take my gray head to her place in Greenwich
Village. The hairdresser is attractive and well-groomed, but the place somehow
lacks the mystical sensuality of the Orient. And, in place of the racy daily
papers with their comic strips in Mr. Tidy’s shop, there are mostly fashion
magazines, and books on hairstyling.
Things have
changed. But so, of course so have I.
oo0oo
