Psychology of a haircut reloaded (1672 hits)
Category: Business & FinancialLabels: psychology
Rating: 1.58 on 37 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by AJ <uberaj.at.gmail.com> (View user info) at 2006-02-07 22:42:08 EST
http://ubersite.com/m/61440
I need a haircut. I say this to no one. I know it's time. There's a home show coming up again and I have to try and sell some stuff and nothing's changed enough to where rednecks want to buy from hippies. So haircut it is. I leave work after everyone's long gone for the night and I'm still working on things. It's going to be a busy weekend and I have a ton of stuff to do and I have to get a haircut. Not for me of course, but for everyone else.
It's cold as hell and I know my head's going to be even colder once I get out of the haircutting place but it needs to be done. A lot has changed in the past eleven months, but I still hate it when my head's cold. I'm still the same me. I change my appearance from time to time, change the way I interact with people to try and arrange for more favorable relationships, change my routines, change vehicles, places of residence, change girlfriends, change guy friends, change everything but me.
I look in to the haircut place to see if the gal who usually does it is there. She isn't, but that's okay. Functionality first. It's not the same place I used to go. I didn't like it there so I stopped going. I tell myself it's because I moved and this one is less out of the way than the other but in actuality I drive past both to get home. I just don't like the way the other place is. Same national chain, same uniforms, same products and posters and mirrors on the walls, same cookie-cut girls waiting to snip and quip for a tip. But this one's different. I tell myself it's different so I make a subconscious effort to make it so.
So I go in and give the girl at the counter my phone number and sit back down and read through some sports magazine and of course get bored with it because I can only read and hear the rehash of the same story so many times before I start to get a little bored with it. I don't care about Sidney Crosby because hockey is dead. At least to me anyway.
So my name gets called and this girl I've never had before sits me down and asks me which guard I use on the back and sides. They must keep a file on how someone gets their hair cut so that if their usual person isn't there they can still get it done the same way. It creeps me out a little bit. Even more than a stranger calling me by name. This chick I've never met knows how I get my hair cut. What else does she know? Does she know how I do my hair in the morning? Does she know the frequency with which I come in and buy product and even tip? Is she going to get my schedule honed in so well that she one day shows up at my house with product and scissors and a comb and some clippers and a spray bottle with a smile and sit me down in a chair to rob me of my locks? No, I don't think so, but it's still weird.
So I tell her which guard and she grabs it and I can already tell this chick's different. I'm not a big fan of different, but I'm a big fan of observing different. No ring on the finger. My usual gal's married. I know this because it came up in conversation. Not the hey-I'm-looking-for-a-tip-be-my-buddy conversation, but actual real personable conversation. She starts in on the cutting and I start in on the noticing of the differences. She makes attempt at conversation with the old "so how are you tonight?" and I rebuff it by stammering and telling her I'm tired and it's been a long week even though it's only Tuesday and tell her I think I'm coming down with something and she kind of keeps her distance after that.
It's a good way to fuck with someone. Masseurs, chiropractors, dentists, haircutters, anyone who has to be in close proximity to you for an extended period of time. Tell them you're sick and they'll stop fucking around and get you out of the office as quickly as possible. So I look in the mirror and see someone else sitting in the chair. Well, it's still me, but it's a repulsing me. Leper-me.
So now I'm trying not to laugh because I'm picturing me as a leper walking into the place and starting all over from scratch with the transaction. "What's your phone number?" I don't think lepers are supposed to have phones. Not that they can't, but who's going to call a leper up for a round of tennis and a dip in the country club pool? So I skip that visualization because it's making me smirk even more as I picture an open-sored pale-skinned 6'8 leper standing there shrugging its shoulders as if to say "we don't need no stinking badges." I picture the leper sitting down in the chair and "how do you want it cut?" Then the leper says just to take a couple inches off because really you can't buzz a leper and expect anything good to come of it. And I picture the chick going through her routine where she tries to sell add-on products. Asking questions about how maybe the leper should change their technique in shampooing so it doesn't dry out the scalp as much or try this new product that just came out. Then the chick turns into a spanish or italian or mexican announcer with a gravitas voice that says "LAVATE! The revolutionary new shampoo for lepers. Available for home delivery because we don't want you out in public. LAVATE! Ask about it today!"
So I decide to stop fucking around in my head because even though this chick is paying attention to the haircut she's obviously going to notice if I start laughing that something's up. But she's different. Backwards. She cuts the hair differently than any other haircutter I've had. So for the first time I actually look at her. I think she's trying to be different. She's got a tattoo of a blue butterfly on her wrist. I've seen about a million girls with blue or weird colored fucking butterflies or frogs or some other cutesy fucking animal tattooed on them without ever seeing the animal of inspiration. They should just carry pictures. All the people that get "Mom" and "Donna" and all that type of sentimental hogwash on their arms or legs or chests or right above the ass areas could avoid a whole lot of pain and money and agitation if they just carried a snapshot in a wallet or handbag. Maybe they could even tape it to their foreheads. But this isn't about the psychology of tattoos, it's about the haircut, and how different this chick is doing it.
So I keep looking but not really looking because I don't want to look like a skeezy pervert especially when I'm wearing work garb and she's leaning in close to cut my hair. Maybe I should move my hands out from under the cloth before she gets the wrong impression. Nose stud. I chuckle a little bit at that. I'll give someone $100 if they start wearing a livestock tag in their nose rather than those silly little studs that aren't even really visible. 100 points for originality in an unoriginal fashion trend.
But she's still different. She cuts with more contact, she doesn't care how far into the sick and grumpy and hostile-looking leper guy she leans, she's going to get the haircut perfect. She's got layered hair that's colored red but has highlighted blonde streaks at the front. Losing more points for originality and differences from mass America but she still somehow manages to be different in the way she works. Someone needs to tell these girls that difference is in DNA but I'm not the one to do it because it'd sound too out of place for me to say it. Maybe Clint Eastwood or some other old-man-river-type guy. But she's really paying attention to detail. And then I notice that with each snip she's got another little quirk. She sticks her tongue to the inside of her lower lip and almost looks like she chomps down on it at each snip.
I wish everyone would just come right out with whatever it is that makes them different and celebrate it. I'll start flexing my left calf over and over again and hold my pantleg up while I do it to lay all that shit out on the table. No fucking around. Haircut chick can bite her tongue/lower lip, and everyone else can be free to do whatever else it is that sets them apart. But this isn't about the psychology of quirks and foibles.
I stop paying attention for a second because I feel like a pervert staring at her weird little mannerism in action. I glance out and see my car outside the window. Did I lock it? Yes, I'm sure I did. Did I double-lock it? I don't know. I hate the car. I realize this now with almost certainty. I don't hate the car so much as the way it makes me appear. There's nothing more annoying than the cunts that get outside their car and hit their remote locker twice and make it beep and flash the lights. They walk faster when they do it because they want people to notice that they're the ones that just clicked and beeped as if to say "you see that? I didn't just lock it, I double locked it and that means that if you fuck with it then I'll know because it's got an alarm on it and it's better and newer and fancier than god the devil and anything in between and I'll know if you try to steal something so don't you even think about it." So I try not to double-lock it if I can help it.
The car has an annoying turn signal too. I can't even begin to describe how it sounds. It's almost like someone with a broken elbow bending it back and forth and making quirky clicky noises. I'm going to figure out a way to disable the beeping double lock noise and the breaky elbow click turn signal noise so help me god I will. It'll get so bad that one day someone will break in because they saw me lock but not double lock or I'll get pulled over because I didn't put my signal on and I'll try to reason with the officer by turning on the hazard lights and stuffing his or her face against the dash so that they can hear, really hear the BEATING OF THE WRETCHED CLICK. But this isn't about the car. It's about the haircut, and this chick is still doing the lower lip thing even when she buzzes, chomping down when it goes bewrawraw.
So she finishes cutting the hair and she starts asking me if I put gel in it but I can see through the motive of the question to see that she wants to put gel in it so I let her go ahead and do it. And it's different. Maybe this is the first time a single chick has cut my hair, or maybe it's the first time I've noticed, but everything about it is different. It's more intimate, more personal. It's as if she's cutting and gelling and buzzing the hair as she would want it to look if she were fucking me. The normal gal does it quick spic and span and gets it done and I look like a nice upstanding young man that goes to church on Sundays and still says I love you to his mom when he gets off the phone with her. Because she doesn't see me as anything but the sweet kid coming in to get his hair cut whistling a happy tune and leaving a nice little tip. She's cutting her little brother's hair or maybe her son's.
And this chick keeps gelling the hair long after it seems like it should be done, putting each and every piece in its place where it goes. And I wonder if the chick from Chicago I met last weekend would still have tried to pick me up had my hair looked like it does tonight. With another woman's touch on it. It's seemingly something base and carnal in the way she tugs at the front and lines everything up in the light and looks in the mirror and at me in the eyes and asks me if it looks alright and I wonder had I been thinking about this the whole time would there be a stain on the sheet.
So I say yes and pay and leave a tip and leave the store and look in the mirror at how different things look and think to myself how different things are. I drive by Wal-Mart and look around at the cans in my car and they're not in boxes anymore they're just scattered about. Probably a good three dollars in there. Still enough for a Code Red and Cupcakes even though prices are up. But the three dollars won't make me happy and I realize this as I pull into the gas station and see yet another unfamiliar face working the till.
The girl's not there anymore. Hasn't been for awhile. And I skip out on the Code Red and Cupcakes and just get a few lotto tickets for myself and some people at work. And I laugh when I think about the 65 million combinations and how I'll never get them all and wonder if anyone's started in on my idea yet. I don't play the lotto alone. I play it with coworkers in the hopes that maybe someday we'll all hit the jackpot together. 65 dollars worth of lotto tickets isn't a whole lot closer to 65 million than 1 or 2 or 5 is, but it's one less thing I have to do alone. So I leave the gas station and another unfamiliar unflirtatious face and walk to my car making sure to double-unlock it and think about how things really never do change. My head's still cold.
See you next month.
User Reviews
Submitted by Fey (user info) at 2007-05-02 06:17:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was the post that lead me to ubersite! I found it!
I don't know whether to minus two you or plus two you for it!
Too many exclamation marks! I don't sleep enough!
Submitted by polyamorousaj (user info) at 2006-05-18 14:53:56 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Y HALO THAR, ALTER!
Submitted by georgemichael (user info) at 2006-05-18 01:14:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by deedee (user info) at 2006-05-18 01:01:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by Method (user info) at 2006-03-08 09:41:29 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
http://www.ubersite.com/m/84852#1873081
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2006-02-09 14:03:40 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
leave this two weeks and rewrite.
leave off the last line.
look at the elbow noise doesn't make sense... i can't even begin to describe it, then you do.
great work.
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2006-02-09 07:30:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
"Then the leper says just to take a couple inches off because really you can't buzz a leper and expect anything good to come of it."
Heh heh. True dat.
This was really good, AJ. Very interesting snapshot of a, I don't know, a neurotic mind? Cool little running social commentary, too. It's not easy to take a fairly boring topic (haircut) and make it an interesting read.
As to whether or not you can "write McCallum under the table," I'm still not convinced. Plus, I get the feeling this isn't entirely fiction.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-02-08 17:30:06 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
+1.5 for YOU
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-02-08 17:29:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
This read like a Seinfeld episode
Submitted by tinactin (user info) at 2006-02-08 13:37:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You care way too much about haircuts
Submitted by polyamorousaj (user info) at 2006-02-08 12:20:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
YOU GET NOSSING CREEP
I wouldn't say I've resigned myself to boredom, I just sort of sit back and think. I usually hate when the haircutter tries to make conversation because I can't stand not being able to look someone in the eyes when I talk to them.
Submitted by Durae (user info) at 2006-02-08 11:26:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by BLITZKREIG_BOB (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:57:11 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You would avoid all of the trauma of getting a haircut if you just shaved your head.
Submitted by corn_nugget (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:30:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
you need to get laid.
Submitted by Sacrilicious (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:27:52 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I wish everyone would just come right out with whatever it is that makes them different and celebrate it. I'll start flexing my left calf over and over again and hold my pantleg up while I do it to lay all that shit out on the table. No fucking around. Haircut chick can bite her tongue/lower lip, and everyone else can be free to do whatever else it is that sets them apart. But this isn't about the psychology of quirks and foibles.
===========
The world would be a far more interesting place if this was the case. This was great.
Submitted by Jeanneee (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:13:13 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
very nice
Submitted by creep_firebombing (user info) at 2006-02-08 09:05:56 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I'll call this a "reluctant +2". It's good, but it needs more. It's almost like you're resigned to boredom. Dig deeper. What put you there? If you're going to be introspective for the whole world to see, give me all of it or give me nothing.
Submitted by phuzzygish (user info) at 2006-02-08 08:44:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
And people think you need a picture of a cat with melon on it's head to get a good rating here.
This is where it's at.
Submitted by OneCheapGeek (user info) at 2006-02-08 08:26:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
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Submitted by CaptainThorns (user info) at 2006-02-08 08:10:49 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
For a seemingly ADHD story, I was somehow able to follow all of that.
Way to keep me riveted.
Submitted by polyamorousaj (user info) at 2006-02-08 08:09:01 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
You forgot the lotto tickets, Dervel.
YU DIND'T EVEN READ IT@1!
Submitted by viciousthawts (user info) at 2006-02-08 04:42:32 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
I've read much better but this was still entertaining
Submitted by Dervel (user info) at 2006-02-08 04:00:48 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Cunt needs haircut.
Cunt gets haircut.
Fin.
Submitted by Davros (user info) at 2006-02-08 03:01:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I really like this, as I did with the previous one.
-Dave
Submitted by coley (user info) at 2006-02-08 02:54:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I still don't like you but here's a +2
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-02-08 01:20:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I like the insight to your perspective AJ. Well written also.
Submitted by shandythedog (user info) at 2006-02-08 00:32:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
"Does she know the frequency with which I come"
that is the question!
Submitted by Death_Metal_Dude (user info) at 2006-02-08 00:23:18 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by honoursystem (user info) at 2006-02-07 23:31:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked this
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-02-07 23:24:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
One more +2,dude. I'm gone nitey-nite. . .
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-02-07 23:19:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
You are actually an OK guy. Too bad I don't like guys. . .
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-02-07 23:15:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Have another one, AJ. You gots no sense of hoomer, dude. . .
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-02-07 23:11:35 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Heh! G'nite folks, just having fun. . .
Submitted by polyamorousaj (user info) at 2006-02-07 23:07:33 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
OH NOES MY AVERGAE RAITNG!!11
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-02-07 23:05:17 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Great writing!! Hippies RULE!!
Submitted by Dreg (user info) at 2006-02-07 23:02:44 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
not gonna read it now, but I know it deserves a +2
Submitted by earth_collapse (user info) at 2006-02-07 22:49:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh man, great fucking writing, and I particularly liked this line...
"It's more intimate, more personal. It's as if she's cutting and gelling and buzzing the hair as she would want it to look if she were fucking me."