LJ Idol: Season 9, Week 13: Confessions from the Chair
It’s definitely time for something a little more lighthearted.
For those of you who have seen pictures of me any time since, well, after I left home you’ve seen me with long hair. I went short again about two years ago, and while I’m glad I did, I am just as happy to have my long hair back. Follow along in my little story of Confessions from the Stylist’s Chair.
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I was raised by fundamentalist Christian grandparents. The circles I was around used to like to tell this joke:
A preacher’s son had just turned 16 and wanted to get a car. His father wasn’t so impressed, but offered him a deal. If he would get his grades up, study your Bible, and get a haircut, then we’ll talk. So sure enough, he starts doing better in school, he learns his Bible, but doesn’t get the haircut. He approaches his dad anyway, who recognizes what he’s done, but tells him he doesn’t get a car until he gets a haircut. The son tells his father that he’s been studying, but it occurred to him that Moses had long hair, Sampson had long hair, and heck, and even Jesus had long hair. His father was quick to retort - “Yes, and they walked everywhere they went.”
Now I am not sure of the Biblical, let alone historical accuracy of any of this. Nonetheless, I was required to have short hair growing up. This meant regular trips to the barber. Now there were two barbers in town, but all of the men and boys went to only one of them. Why, I’m not sure. Or, well, actually, I think I do know. One day I had to use the bathroom when I got there, and there was a line, so I was shown the way back. I got in, sat down on the toilet, and saw a magazine on the floor. Yup, it was Penthouse. I was all of eight years old and had never seen anything like this before. I was staring at this thing as if the whole world had opened to me! I was fascinated. Not so fascinated though, that I didn’t look around a bit. Yup, in the cabinet under the sink, there were a whole stack of pornographic magazines. While I was so enthralled, someone not my grandfather knocked at the bathroom door to tell me it was my turn. I quickly put everything back as close to the way it was as I could, zipped up, and came back out.
Every other guy there has this huge shit-eating grin on his face. I had been in there for 20 minutes. One of them quipped to my grandpa, “Yup, I think he just became a man today.” Maybe the world I grew up in was not so far different than the world of Fess Higgins from Firefly.
----------
As you might expect, guys with long hair tend to have other things in common. An unlikely one though was many years ago I played competitive bridge, the card game, on the Internet. I managed to find a player close to me and we actually hit the local bridge clubs. My partner was a professor of chemistry at a local university. A much older gentleman, he had plenty of long hair of a much lighter color than my own.
Nonetheless, we were an incredibly intimidating pair to play against. My hair pulled back in a ponytail, and him with a long, silver, braided beard. Yes. He was more than twice my age and we looked like the oddest couple ever. I didn’t believe this was possible, but we would walk into the Kodak Club and jaws would drop. Maybe we looked gay to them or something. This was true, but we weren’t each other’s partners in that sense.
----------
It took me a while since moving to Albany to find another stylist that I really clicked with. Now this is a problem most guys don’t have for obvious reasons. Finding someone that knows how to work with long male hair is not as easy as you might suppose - there are plenty of subtle differences I am told, and it responds better to different sorts of products. So I went calling around to salons to find if they had someone who was experienced in working with people like me.
My first attempt was a near disaster. There was a popular local establishment that had both a women’s and men’s salon in separate buildings next to each other. I called for an appointment and was taken care of by a middle-aged man of Indian descent. We had a good experience, but the ambiance was completely wrong. I found out this establishment catered to men who were less interested in having their hair cut well than they were having their hair cut by busty women that would brush up against them and make the occasional sultry comment, all while they got to drink beer and watch a sports game. The experience was somewhere between a sports bar and strip club, and I only got out of it because I passed for gay that day.
Passing privilege is its own issue sometimes and one I don’t deal with so well. But the happy ending (no, not THAT happy ending) came from finding the right guy in the end. My now regular stylist is a gay man who owns his own shop. He makes his bread and butter from having a staff of women who take care of most of the client base, but mostly so he can afford to take care of his own. My biggest confessions in his chair were of just how much I love my family just as they are, but that my passing privilege eats at me because it was really only luck that I happened to fall in love with a female. Just how it goes. I have to remember to not hold this against myself.
But there’s one other nice thing about his chair. I am apparently susceptible to this thing called ASMR. It is best described as a unique feeling that comes from certain tactile, audible, and olfactory triggers that lead to a very interesting head space. Haircuts are quite the perfect storm of triggers for many and it does the job for me. It’s hard to describe, and many people consider it pseudoscience, but I can tell you it works for me and is really an amazing feel for those who get it. (If you’re not sure if this is you, you can find any number of ASMR videos on the Internet, or better yet, have someone spell out words on your back. You’ll know it if you experience it.)
----------
So why do I have long hair? I understand that baldness runs in my family, but I haven’t seen any signs of it yet. However I was reminded recently that for the places I go, my hair is seen as a measure of trustworthiness, not of non-conformity. I was with my girls, taking the bus through a neighborhood predominantly other-than-white. In the course of a half hour bus ride I got to play with other kids while riding. I had a lady with no warning hand me her baby to hold on the bus while she got herself settled in (this of course meant cooing and giggles). While waiting to change buses my girls ran around with a couple of other kids underneath a bridge in a grassy area, while their father, an older black man, and I chatted about all sorts of things. It was clear that to the people I want to be around, conventional appearance is not an asset. I’m not one to say people with straight-laced appearances are somehow selling out, but I’ve learned who my people are, and most of them don’t look like me.
For those of you who have seen pictures of me any time since, well, after I left home you’ve seen me with long hair. I went short again about two years ago, and while I’m glad I did, I am just as happy to have my long hair back. Follow along in my little story of Confessions from the Stylist’s Chair.
----------
I was raised by fundamentalist Christian grandparents. The circles I was around used to like to tell this joke:
A preacher’s son had just turned 16 and wanted to get a car. His father wasn’t so impressed, but offered him a deal. If he would get his grades up, study your Bible, and get a haircut, then we’ll talk. So sure enough, he starts doing better in school, he learns his Bible, but doesn’t get the haircut. He approaches his dad anyway, who recognizes what he’s done, but tells him he doesn’t get a car until he gets a haircut. The son tells his father that he’s been studying, but it occurred to him that Moses had long hair, Sampson had long hair, and heck, and even Jesus had long hair. His father was quick to retort - “Yes, and they walked everywhere they went.”
Now I am not sure of the Biblical, let alone historical accuracy of any of this. Nonetheless, I was required to have short hair growing up. This meant regular trips to the barber. Now there were two barbers in town, but all of the men and boys went to only one of them. Why, I’m not sure. Or, well, actually, I think I do know. One day I had to use the bathroom when I got there, and there was a line, so I was shown the way back. I got in, sat down on the toilet, and saw a magazine on the floor. Yup, it was Penthouse. I was all of eight years old and had never seen anything like this before. I was staring at this thing as if the whole world had opened to me! I was fascinated. Not so fascinated though, that I didn’t look around a bit. Yup, in the cabinet under the sink, there were a whole stack of pornographic magazines. While I was so enthralled, someone not my grandfather knocked at the bathroom door to tell me it was my turn. I quickly put everything back as close to the way it was as I could, zipped up, and came back out.
Every other guy there has this huge shit-eating grin on his face. I had been in there for 20 minutes. One of them quipped to my grandpa, “Yup, I think he just became a man today.” Maybe the world I grew up in was not so far different than the world of Fess Higgins from Firefly.
----------
As you might expect, guys with long hair tend to have other things in common. An unlikely one though was many years ago I played competitive bridge, the card game, on the Internet. I managed to find a player close to me and we actually hit the local bridge clubs. My partner was a professor of chemistry at a local university. A much older gentleman, he had plenty of long hair of a much lighter color than my own.
Nonetheless, we were an incredibly intimidating pair to play against. My hair pulled back in a ponytail, and him with a long, silver, braided beard. Yes. He was more than twice my age and we looked like the oddest couple ever. I didn’t believe this was possible, but we would walk into the Kodak Club and jaws would drop. Maybe we looked gay to them or something. This was true, but we weren’t each other’s partners in that sense.
----------
It took me a while since moving to Albany to find another stylist that I really clicked with. Now this is a problem most guys don’t have for obvious reasons. Finding someone that knows how to work with long male hair is not as easy as you might suppose - there are plenty of subtle differences I am told, and it responds better to different sorts of products. So I went calling around to salons to find if they had someone who was experienced in working with people like me.
My first attempt was a near disaster. There was a popular local establishment that had both a women’s and men’s salon in separate buildings next to each other. I called for an appointment and was taken care of by a middle-aged man of Indian descent. We had a good experience, but the ambiance was completely wrong. I found out this establishment catered to men who were less interested in having their hair cut well than they were having their hair cut by busty women that would brush up against them and make the occasional sultry comment, all while they got to drink beer and watch a sports game. The experience was somewhere between a sports bar and strip club, and I only got out of it because I passed for gay that day.
Passing privilege is its own issue sometimes and one I don’t deal with so well. But the happy ending (no, not THAT happy ending) came from finding the right guy in the end. My now regular stylist is a gay man who owns his own shop. He makes his bread and butter from having a staff of women who take care of most of the client base, but mostly so he can afford to take care of his own. My biggest confessions in his chair were of just how much I love my family just as they are, but that my passing privilege eats at me because it was really only luck that I happened to fall in love with a female. Just how it goes. I have to remember to not hold this against myself.
But there’s one other nice thing about his chair. I am apparently susceptible to this thing called ASMR. It is best described as a unique feeling that comes from certain tactile, audible, and olfactory triggers that lead to a very interesting head space. Haircuts are quite the perfect storm of triggers for many and it does the job for me. It’s hard to describe, and many people consider it pseudoscience, but I can tell you it works for me and is really an amazing feel for those who get it. (If you’re not sure if this is you, you can find any number of ASMR videos on the Internet, or better yet, have someone spell out words on your back. You’ll know it if you experience it.)
----------
So why do I have long hair? I understand that baldness runs in my family, but I haven’t seen any signs of it yet. However I was reminded recently that for the places I go, my hair is seen as a measure of trustworthiness, not of non-conformity. I was with my girls, taking the bus through a neighborhood predominantly other-than-white. In the course of a half hour bus ride I got to play with other kids while riding. I had a lady with no warning hand me her baby to hold on the bus while she got herself settled in (this of course meant cooing and giggles). While waiting to change buses my girls ran around with a couple of other kids underneath a bridge in a grassy area, while their father, an older black man, and I chatted about all sorts of things. It was clear that to the people I want to be around, conventional appearance is not an asset. I’m not one to say people with straight-laced appearances are somehow selling out, but I’ve learned who my people are, and most of them don’t look like me.