Every man has a barber. It’s a special relationship.
I have the Turk. I call him the Turk because he’s Turkish. The Turk is the only man in the world that truly understands me.
The Turk knows. He knows me. He knows that I don’t want to talk. I don’t care about the footballs, the crickets, the trumps, the labor or the liberal.
The Turk just nods. I nod back. He knows.
Then the Turk grabs his clippers and shaves my head down to the skin. I’m in and out in ten minutes.
Do you want to know what’s the best part about the Turk? The Turk doesn’t charge woman’s prices.
The Turk knows I’m not some hysterical female that feels compelled to spend the equivalent of a mortgage payment on a haircut.
The Turk isn’t running some kind of effeminate beauty salon. The Turk’s operation is for men and it’s man prices the Turk charges.
I’ve known the Turk forever.
But sometimes I’m away from home, away from the Turk. In these times my hair still grows.
All the men in my family are bald. Long ago I chose to ride on the wings of destiny rather than struggle against her. The Turk shaved my head. I’ve never looked back.
Over the years I’ve become so accustomed to my hairlessness that just 3mm of growth is enough to make me feel like a dirty hippy.
I might be away from the Turk, but I still require the services of a barber often.
And herein lies the problem.
You see, going to another Barber is like cheating on your wife. Yea, another Barber can do the same job as the Turk. Maybe he could do it better or worse. But, the whole process is wrought with anxiety and guilt.
Concubine barbers don’t know me. They talk. They ask me stupid questions like what do you do for a living and where are you from?
Do you want to know what’s the worse thing about going to another Barber? Sometimes they charge woman’s prices.
There are these new age barber philosophies out there promoting some kind of weird Marxist gender equality.
“A woman pays on average ten times more for a haircut than what a man pays.”
These new age barbers are levying a “man tax” onto their prices. They also want you to do equally emasculating things like make an appointment and listen to house music.
The Turk would never abide by such madness.
Going to another Barber is a roll of the dice. And today was one of those days when the dice were rolled.
I walked into the closest barber shop I found on Google maps. The shop was completely empty apart from a young man sweeping the floor.
“Do you have an appointment?” The young man asked.
I returned to the same barbershop exactly one hour and twenty-five minutes later. Five minutes early for my scheduled appointment.
Twenty minutes after my arrival the haircut began and so did the awkward conversation.
“Where are you from?”
“Australia.”
“Nice. I have a cousin in Australia.”
“Yea, me too.”
“What brings you here?”
“Work.”
“Oh, what do you do for a living?”
“I’m kinda unemployed at the moment.”
The haircut was done well enough. However, shaving a head isn’t the most precise of procedures.
Then something strange happened. The chatty barber finished his work and did that thing where he holds up a mirror so you can inspect his craftsmanship.
I knew the drill and nodded with enthusiastic approval every time he repositioned the mirror giving me an alternate view of the piece.
Then he said, “I will shampoo your hair now.”
“Wh.. wh... what hair?”
But it was too late.
The chair was swung around and before I knew what was happening the back of my head was resting in a sink and a towel was draped over my torso.
I was confused. It didn’t make sense.
I heard a faucet open and water began to run. The warm water then ran over my hairless head. Then I felt the unfamiliar coldness of oily shampoo oozing onto my scalp.
I’ve always liked girls.
Really, I have.
But, when those hairy man hands begun to massage that shampoo into my hairless scalp, I was instantly transported into a mystical realm of man on man sensuality I never knew existed.
It felt like I was falling into a deep sleep. But, it wasn’t sleep. No, not sleep. This was more than sleep. This was bliss.
This was the 7th level of enlightenment. I was now like the Buddha. I had transcended the physical world and was reborn as light itself.
This was the universal oneness with all living things the yoga vegans had told me about.
I never wanted that moment to end. I wanted to stay there in that place of peace and serenity forever.
The Turk never made me feel like that.
But then I felt warm water being washed over my head again. Then a towel. And suddenly I was back.
Some weird chemical was rubbed on my head and face that made me smell like a toilet in an expensive hotel.
“All done. Everything ok?”
I nodded and smiled sheepishly still drunk on our shampoo love.
I felt dizzy as I walked up to the counter, barely able to keep my balance.
“What do I owe ya?” I asked.
Woman’s prices.
I picked up my jaw from the floor, reattached it to my face, and reached for my wallet.
And, as I handed over a sum of money that is equivalent to what most people in the country I’m in earn in a day I began to wonder.
The Turk, like me, was a dying breed. A relic from a different age.
The world had changed. Barbershops would never be the same again.