1. HAIRCUT COWARDICE
I got a haircut on Wednesday.
I’ve had a string of toxic relationships with barbers, —and I ain’t talking the Barbers, my next door neighbors growing up (for whom I do harbor vitriol).
For a while my mom cut my hair and that came with its own fear, pain, and anxiety, but I would leave the torturechamber of the kitchen chair feeling relatively good about what was on my head.
In college it got really bad.
One day my freshman year, after an aimless uniformed meander, I saw a sign for a barber shop on high street.
I opened the door and it turned out to be an endless stone staircase leading down into blackness.
I should’ve been keen to the hellish signals all around me: the dark descent, the sulfuric reek, the distant diabolic buzzing… but I hadn’t even read Dante yet.
Thus I ended up at a minuscule barber shop, leagues underground.
I knew it was a bad sign that the place was plastered with dustcovered Nascar memorabilia; that chatless silence reigned; that the customer waiting next to me was trembling with fearful anticipation.
But I was already in there. And remember, my family crest is emblazoned with the motto: submersi sumptus fallacia.
My barber (I never got his name) was a man in his 60s with glasses whose several-inch thick lenses magnified his eyes bugly, grotesquely.
In our three year relationship, we had two conversations. Not because I didn’t wanna talk; he’d let my amicability-attempts shatter on the ground unanswered.
The first conversation was after I asked him, “how long you been doing this?”
And he said, in a diction and cadence that evoked Elmer Fudd, “only a year or two. I was a teacher for a long time, but my dream was to be a barber. Everybody said I couldn’t do it because I’m legally blind. But here I am!”
His lack of experience was evinced by the fact that he could only do a single haircut: a mean Ellen Degeneres. He never asked me if I wanted otherwise.
The second conversation wasn’t much of a conversation.
The room was filled with pre-Big-Bang levels of silence, and he goes, “I’m sorry.”
I said, “what?”
He said, “I farted. So if it smells, I’m sorry.”
That day I left his shop and I cried. I screamed to the heavens, “I don’t wanna look like this anymore!”
And I’m happy to say I only went back twice after that.
I do have a bit of a cowardice problem that requires serial over-coming, —and I don’t mean ejaculating over Captain Crunch.
In New York, I had one bad barber.
He used to cut my hair with one hand while using the other hand to hold his phone and yell at his girlfriend while rolling his eyes at me in the mirror bitches-be-crazyly.
(ASIDE: I was walking around with Gaby and saw a few men getting barbered by women, and I said, Why would a man ever let a random woman cut their hair?, and it occurs to me now that doing so might preclude happenings of the variety illustrated above.)
Thankfully, I ghosted that barber before we got too enmeshed.
For years I avoided walking by his shop because I was sure he would say something to me. I even floated the idea of getting a massively long wig to make it seem like I just hadn’t cut my hair in the years since I left him.
Ethan said, “you’re such a narcissist, he doesn’t even remember you.”
But I walked by, three years after our final moments together, and he stepped out of his shop and said, wet with sardonicism, “Hey! Nice haircut.”, and laughed scornfully.
2. YO AMO CARLOS
Now I have Carlos.
I love Carlos! Ethan recommended him to me, and now I’m finally in a healthy relationship.
Carlos is a neurotic, sensitive, Mexican dude from California. He has a second chair in his shop that is intermittently filled until the guy “fucks him over” which happens like clockwork.
Carlos turns on people fast and we had one little rough patch.
Last year when I was refusing to cut my hair or shave for several months as a protest against a life that ends in death, he happened to sit by me on the train.
I was reading, and I was gonna wait to talk to him when we both got off at the same spot which was imminent. But he noticed it was me and literally got up and fled to the other side of the train.
Later on he told Ethan, “man, I saw Harold, he looks like a crazy homeless guy.”
Ethan’s stock was really high with Carlos at one point because he was dating men, but ever since he’s been living in sin with that uptown shrew (female), Carlos turned on him.
Every time I see him he complains, “Ethan’s just so conservative now, man. He comes in with these little conservative outfits and I just think, man this isn’t you. I think it’s that girl who’s dressing him.”
I said, “tell me about it.”
And Carlos said mockingly, “and now he’s doing that corporate lesbian haircut”, as if he wasn’t the one who suggested it.
I said, “my old barber was great at that cut”, but stopped talking because Carlos winced jealously.
But Ethan lost his job, so when I met him for a beer before he got his haircut on Friday, I was wondering what he would be wearing.
Sure enough, he had on his $3000 suit and $425 Bruno Magli shoes he’s always bragging about.
I shook my head, disappointed. But there’s a reason why his family crest ports the motto: vanitas bona est.
3. YES I WANT A LITTLE EXTRA SYMPATHY WHEN I’M ILL, IS THAT SO FUCKED UP?
I was struck down suddenly by an illness Tuesday night.
I got dinner with Eric on Monday and I think he poisoned my General Tso’s Chicken.
My fortune cookie did say, “Caution: there are snakes in your grass.”
I can be a bit of a pussy when I’m sick, or so I’m repeatedly told.
After my haircut, I went to see Gaby, looking for some sympathy.
Beggarlike, exteriorizing my pain for bonus, I put on my worst outfit: A thin, striped, possibly-counterfeit Polo shirt I got at the Steubenville Goodwill for $4, 3XL grey unbranded basketball shorts that I stole from my father, and mismatched socks with my beat-up stinky Air Force 1s.
My hair was also drenched in oil because Carlos doused me post-haircut and told me to keep it in.
Gaby opened the door and said, “oh my God.”
I groaned, “ugghhhhh.”
After I laid on the ground moaning and oaning for many several minutes, she convinced me to go for a walk in the waning sunshine.
She put a ballcap on my head to mitigate the greaseballity and we went walking.
She was telling me about an interview she had for a new job.
I’d been reading Schattenfroh all day and I wanted to talk about the Crucifixion of Jesus because it’s a big part of the book.
I said, “do you realize how physically painful the crucifixion of Jesus was?” feeling some kinship, painwise, with my tummyache.
She said, “I was in the middle of a sentence.”
I said, “you were?”
She said, “yeah, and you interrupted me to talk about some irrelevant shit.”
I said, “Irrelevant? Baby, the crucifixion of Jesus is the most relevant thing that ever happened! You think your job is more relevant than that?”
She said, “yeah I do, I don’t give a shit about Jesus.”
I said, “GABY!”
And we went on like that.
Later on at her house, I was eager to watch TV, ailing as I was, unable to drink beer as I was (due to tummyache); after Gaby had offered me a slice of pineapple pie and I had snapped, “haven’t I been talking about how my stomach hurts!?”, and Gaby starts asking ChatGPT about what her salary is going to be after taxes if she takes this new job and I was annoyed so I yelled, “stop that! I’M ANNOYED!”
She didn’t like that, reader, and it evolved into a spat.
I eventually apologized, but she became punitive, and it soured our TV-time, so I went home.
4. BRUH, THAT PUTS THE HUMPTY IN DUMPTY
The next day, I was feeling much better tummywise.
Gaby and I met up to go to this off-broadway play Humpty Dumpty at some little theater on 36th street.
I apologized to her for being mean, and she apologized for being punitive.
I said, pushing for more, “it’s funny we were talking about the crucifixion of Jesus earlier that night because, you know, you kinda crucified me.”
And for the rest of the night I would occasionally grab my wrist (where Jesus was nailed between the ulna and the radius, not thru his palm as popularly depicted) in agony.
Gaby would say (the first time, subsequently she’d roll her eyes), “what is it?” and I’d say, “it hurts from when you crucified me.”
We had time to kill on grimy 36th street.
There was a passerby urinating in front of a DVD shop. When he walked away I said, “Why don’t we go in there?”
We were both nervous because even though it wasn’t overtly pornworld, it was giving those vibes.
There was an unduly long and fluorescent hallway that might’ve been the entrance to a space ship if not for the ominous signs admonishing, “NO HOODS!”
Ain’t no clerks in there when you first walk in. Just this little ante-chamber full of regular DVDs. Not regular as in watchable movies you’ve heard of, just non-sexual movies.
But once you browse thru the thousand chaste DVDs you reach a doorway, and voila, Pornworld!
The clerks were waiting at the threshold Charonlike.
They were two guys, one in his 30s, one in his 50s.
Their eyes were bloodshot and droopy, as if they’d spent all night evaluating the merchandise. They were way too happy to see us, I’ve never seen such big smiles from retail workers.
But the nature of their work renders their minds pornframed; they’ve seen this movie before, a young guy and a girl walk into the DVD store guess what ensues:—gangbang.
You know intuitively that a lot of people participate in pornography, but it’s shocking to see the pure proliferation in DVD format.
As much as I have a Catholic altarboy’s attitude to the whole enterprise, if you’re gonna porn, doing it via DVD is an intentional, commendable way to do so, I think.
We picked one out, and as we were checking out, they were giggling like schoolgirls, and I said, “sorry clerks, no gangbang, we got a play to catch.”
Humpty Dumpty was excellent. I think it’s got a good chance to be the second best work with that title of this decade.
5. THE CORNER
Saturday I was cornering a fighter at Church Street.
I kept telling that to people and they balked at the word “cornering”.
It just means I was acting as the fighter’s coach. I was in his corner. Literally and figuratively.
People must’ve thought I meant I was following a fighter down a dark alley and pushing him up against a wall threateningly, making it hard for him to escape. An understandable interpretation.
Last time I was supposed to corner someone I made a humiliating error. There’s only one thing you need and that’s an up to date passbook from USA Boxing.
I was missing one certification and I didn’t realize it. And the lady who runs USA Boxing in New York is stern, no-nonsense, and terrifying.
I got to the event late, flubbingly, and as my fighter was getting ready to enter the ring, I showed the lady my passbook and she said, “this isn’t right.”, and just walked off, leaving me stuttering, “b-b-b-but.”
Thankfully, that night, my fighter had a coach who was duly prepared.
This lady from USA Boxing indirectly got a Coach from the gym fired.
This old serbian dude, Peter, his brain was a bit scrambled from an over-long career, and he was always snapping off crazy in the group chat in a nearly incoherent texting style.
He didn’t know what the fuck was going on, to a comic extent.
Someone texted something about the USA Boxing lady and Peter goes off saying this fat cunt this, this bitch that, she needs to suck a dick.
Reader, I know we work probably work in different industries, but imagine your co-worker texting stuff like that to the whole company.
Our head coach Mike was kinda going, Hey Peter chill out, you might get fired if you keep talking crazy.
But Peter valued freedom more than a paycheck.
He did get shit-canned, unfortunately.
But this time I was ready, my passbook was good, everything was good.
I cornered this dude, Louis, with my twin sister, [name redacted], who if I was allowed to write about her I would say that despite our often tempestuous, acrimonious, and complicated personal relationship, I have an excellent working relationship with, but per her request I’m not allowed to say any of that.
Louis, I thought, fucked the guy up, and won at least the first two rounds convincingly.
But the judges in amateur boxing matches are hopelessly hapless and you’re often left scratching your head wondering, What???
In my career they were right every single time I won, and wrong every single time I lost.
6. PRANKED!
I went to Gaby’s house on Sunday and we popped in the DVD we got from the porno store, Regininha Poltergeist, which we got from the brasilian section.
The movie was fucking weird as fuck. It was black and white and people walked around in the rain. For HOURS. Doing NOTHING.
We were like, When are we gonna be able to start jacking off?
After literally almost eight hours, the movie was over and nothing sexy happened.
But when I looked at the DVD, it turned out the clerks replaced the tape with the 1994 classic Sátántangó!
Well played clerks, well played.
Baby, the crucifixion of Jesus is the most relevant thing that ever happened! You think your job is more relevant than that?” 👍
We were like, When are we gonna be able to start jacking off? 😊
Told me not to come any more for some grope chat